9.16.2013

"A Constellation of Vital Phenomena" By Anthony Marra


""You're here," Sonja said, surprised.  "Yes," Havaa agreed.  "I'm here.  This is the waiting room."  Sonja glanced down to the floor, to the chairs, puzzling over this and then nodding.  "You're right.  This is the waiting room," she said, and sat in the folding chair beside Havaa.""

9.06.2013

"We Need New Names" NoViolet Bulawayo

"Come, Ethiopia, move, move, move; Israel, Kazakhstan, Niger, brothers, let's go!  The others spoke languages, worshiped different gods, ate what we would not dare touch.  But like us, they had left their homelands behind.  They flipped open their wallets to show us faded photographs of mothers whose faces bore the same creases of worry as our very own mothers, siblings bleak-eyed with dreams unfilled like those of our own, fathers forlorn and defeated like ours.  We had never seen their countries buy we knew about everything in those pictures; we were not altogether strangers."

As an aside:  A well-written & good read, but seemed, perhaps, over-worked.  Every piece of "African plight" seemed contained in these pages (which may be how it is in Zimbabwe), and ended up not really saying enough about any of it.  Also, the main character illegally immigrates to the US, and all I could think was, "This is why his dad couldn't be here when he was born.  Why he wasn't given a tourist visa.  The choice of the one affects many.