"Same Sun Here" by Silas House and Neela Vaswani--Book Review

 

This is an adolescent book by Silas House and Neela Vaswani which has been widely applauded for several reasons.  It is a cooperative work by Silas House, who is the Director of The Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College, and Neela Vaswani, who has written several other books in a couple of genres including short stories and memoir.  This is the first book I have read by either author.  I read it primarily because my wife and I bought it to possibly give to our 11 year old nephew in Wisconsin and wanted to review it before sending it to him.  The book is written in the form of pen pal letters between a 12 year old Appalachian coal miner's son, River Dean Justice, and an Indian immigrant girl, Meena Joshi, of the same age in Chinatown in New York City.  Obviously, each of the authors wrote the letters for the child of their own heritage and I am willing to assume the book was produced primarily through e-mail exchanges between the authors.  The two children are both bright, quite emblematic of each of their native cultures, and have grandmothers who are very important parts of their lives.  River's "Mamaw" is his primary caregiver due to health and/or mental health problems of his mother who spends most of her time in bed and, for most of the book, takes little active part in his parenting.  Each of the children is facing and attempting to deal with personal and family problems which are common in their cultures and geographic areas.  River's father is an unemployed coal underground coal miner who has gone to South Alabama to find work and comes home only when he can.  Meena's father works in a catering company in New Jersey and comes home only on his days off and both father's are forced to stay near their work at times instead of returning home.  Meena's parents and older brother have immigrated to New York when she was quite young and left her in the care of her grandmother, Dadi, in India for several years due to problems related to money.  Both children love their grandmother's deeply.  

As the book progresses, a coal company opens a mountain top removal mine on Town Mountain overlooking the town near which River's family lives and also overlooking his school where he is a member of the middle school basketball team.  Meena's family live in an illegally sublet rent controlled apartment in Chinatown and they are very close to the elderly Chinese woman whose son is actually the legal tenant of the apartment in which they live.  They are always in fear of being evicted because landlords can sell such apartments for high dollar if they can get rid of the tenants.  River's grandmother is an active member of an anti-strip mining group and fighting to stop the mountain top removal project.  Eventually, Meena's gradmother dies in India, River becomes more actively opposed to strip mining and mountain top removal, and Meena's family continues to live in fear of eviction and homelessness.  The book is loaded with current hot button political issues in both locations with environmentalism, rent control tenant's rights, immigration, and the economic issues related to the low end working class.  

As the book nears its climax, River's basketball team is practicing in the school gym when a massive rock slide caused by the mountain top removal strikes the school and injures several of the players.  Meena's family and all of the other tenants are evicted and become homeless.  River and his grandmother join a protest in Frankfort, Kentucky, and River accidentally becomes a media darling with a planned trip to New York to appear on television and hopefully to finally meet Meena.  The book is well written, especially in light of the fact that is uses the authorial techniques it does.  The social issues discussed are timely and important in America.  This book has a great deal of merit and is well worth buying for an adolescent reader, especially such a reader in a liberal leaning family.  It says a great deal about inclusivity, environmentalism, immigration, Appalachia, tenant rights, and discrimination against both the Appalachian poor and immigrants.  I would suggest that, for the average adolescent reader, it would be a good idea for a parent or grandparent to read the book either before or with the child and have a structured discussion of the social and political issues it raises.  It is a very unique book and well worth placing in your child's private library. 

"While Earth Still Speaks" by Nancy Werking Polling--Book Review

Poling, Nancy Werking, Illustrated by Jerald Pope, While Earth Still Speaks (Black Mountain, NC. Screech Owl Press In Conjunction With Old Mountain Press, 2019)

Nancy Werking Poling is a writer who lives in Western North Carolina but has spent most of her life in other areas of the country.  This is not and is not billed as an Appalachian novel.  It is more accurately described as an environmental novel and is the author's second novel and fifth book overall.  It comes from two presses in Western North Carolina, one of which is a small vanity press,  possibly an imprint of the author, and the other a small press which actually did the printing.  The work on the book printing and binding is an aspect which I watch closely when I read such essentially self published books.  Many, if not most, of these presses are simply in it for the money and unless the author is very diligent and oversees every aspect of the process from start to finish they often produce shoddy work which simply does not appear professional to the trained eye.  This book has a few errors in the review copy which I received but they are minimal and the work is  acceptable overall .

Now, let's talk about the book itself.  The protagonist is a woman of middle to late middle age who has spent her life in a very conservative and restrictive religious sect which devalues and restricts women to something not quite a beast of burden but far less than an equal to their male counterparts.  She is the mother of two essentially grown children, a son and a daughter.  The book is broken into segments which include the family life on the farm, the protagonist's eventful month or so with her daughter in a revolutionary environmental group which kidnaps the head of the North Carolina environmental agency, and interspersed visions which come to the woman from Mary Surrat and the Virgin Mary and can be loosely connected to the main story line. For those  of you who have never heard of Mary Surrat, she was a boarding house operator who was arrested, convicted, and hanged for taking part in the Booth plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.  She was the first woman executed in the United States. Mary Surrat is seen, by the author, as an example of the fact that dying for a cause is not always virtuous.  The author states in her acknowledgements section that several people who had read the manuscript had suggested that she remove Mary Surrat from the book.  I agree with those people. But there are hundreds of stories of highly successful authors who resisted strong opposition to their first drafts from editors, family, friends, and the unsuspecting strangers upon whom they foisted their unpublished work in public places. However, in my life, I have known quite a few well known and successful writers who often doubled as mentors, professors, and friends.  I like to believe that I learned at least one or two things from every one of them.  One of the most important things I ever learned was voiced by many of them. That truth is the overly simplistic admonition to write about what you know best.  I also found that truth to be wonderfully expounded upon in the classic motivational book "Acres Of Diamonds" by Russell H. Conwell although his discussion of the subject applied to life and personal achievement instead of writing.  It could be that I have already or will in the future learn something from Nancy Werking Poling.  She has already reinforced a concept for me that many others have expressed in the past: Writers should write every day and avoid the naysayers.  Ms. Poling has published five books and this is her second self-published book while I have only accumulated a couple of dozen publications in three different genres and a book chapter or two while approaching the grave without a published major work while diligently eschewing the vanity presses. But I am not certain that Ms. Polling was writing about what she truly knows in this book.  I do sincerely believe that she is fully and deeply committed to the environmental and the women's rights movements just as is her protagonist.  But I doubt that Ms. Polling has ever joined or even had personal knowledge about a deeply secretive environmental activist group.  I doubt that she ever engaged in a kidnapping to prove a political point as her characters do.  And, in spite of the validity of Stockholm Syndrome and the shining example of Patty Hearst, I doubt that she ever fell in love with a hostage or hostage taker.  I believe her book would have been stronger if she had stuck to the things she knows best in her heart of hearts and written an activist environmentalist book without kidnappers, their victims, or their implausible love affairs. I believe she could do a much better job of writing non-fiction on this subject.  She has actually written one non-fiction book, "Before It Was Legal: A Black-White Marriage (1945-1987)", which I have not read but would like to do so before I make any all encompassing blanket judgments about her skills as a writer.

Speaking of Ms. Poling's skills as a writer, this book is well written but not exceptionally so.  The linguistic skill is above average but the plotting and character development of most of the characters other than the protagonist is thin.  Many of these characters other than the protagonist and her daughter are one dimensional.  They do not live and breath in the highly credible manner which the best writers have developed.  To go beyond what I said earlier about having learned at least one thing from many, if not most, of the writers I have known, I have, for many years, held firmly to two of my own beliefs and theories about good writing.  The first of these ideas espouses a comparison of good to excellent writing as being similar to human DNA.

I have always thought that in the best books I have read in my life  plot is a lot like the double helix spiral structure of human DNA as discovered by Drs. Crick and Watson.  The double helix spiral of DNA is a twisting spiral of two long strands which wrap around each other and twist from one end to the other much like a pair of snakes or two strands of ribbon. Along each of these strands, there are chromosomes and genes for the entire length of the spiral which serve to make up the multi-faceted contents of the DNA structure.  An above average plot also works in much the same way.  In the plot we have parallel plots and subplots which progress for the length of the novel.  Along each of these “strands” of plot and subplot we also have characters, characterizations, key pieces of information, human interactions between characters, individual and group actions, and other elements and portrayals which advance the major plot or subplots throughout the length of a novel.  "While Earth Still Speaks" is not such a well plotted book.  It does not contain that double helix style of writing.  But I will not say that I believe it is the best writing Ms. Poling is capable of producing.  It could well be within her grasp to develop that level of writing.  She has not fully developed what I believe to be her best potential in this book.  


My second idea about good writing is a comparison to good boxing.  Superficially, it seems to be illogical to compare a purely mental vocation such as writing to what many people consider to be a fully physical vocation like boxing.  But good boxing is not purely physical.  It requires a great deal of thought both before entering the ring and definitely inside the ropes against a worthy opponent.  A good to exceptional boxer must think on their feet, constantly assess their opponent and his actions, swiftly adjust to changes in the opponents style, and always counter with both the best defense and offense for fifteen rounds.  A good boxer has an arsenal of several different punches and styles which they use as the circumstances require.  They have jabs, uppercuts, roundhouse blows, body pounding short punches, and every now and then a few kidney punches.  Good writing combines long, complex, well structured sentences.  But it becomes boring if every sentence is ten, twenty, or fifty words long.  Good writing must also have some jabs, short sentences composed of, at most, a subject, object, and verb.  When these combinations are used in writing it is a lot like watching Larry Holmes box during his streak of 48 consecutive wins.  In such novels, there are jabs, roundhouse punches, uppercuts, and a few kidney punches, and the total load of such writing literally knocks the reader out.  "While Earth Still Speaks" does not have that kind of arsenal.  It moves along successfully from the scene in which we meet the protagonist to the scene in which she and her co-conspirators are arrested for their crimes.  But it is not holding you on the edge of your seat.  You are not striving to literally lean on the outside of the ropes to see that knockout blow delivered.  It is functional but not dazzling.  It is readable if you are committed to the environmental or women's rights movements.  But it doesn't leave you asking "OK, what happens to these characters after they were arrested?"  

This is a book which you might want to read.  You might enjoy it.  But you are not likely to return to it every few years to remind yourself of what role Mary Surrat played in the story or to remember just why the protagonist divorced her husband to become an environmental activist.  But it did leave me wishing I could read Ms. Poling's non-fiction book, "Before It Was Legal: A Black White Marriage (1945-1987).  Keep writing and watch a lot of good boxing, Ms. Poling. 

"An Inconvenient Truth"---Comments On A Movie

Only eleven years after it was released and immediately recognized as one of the most important American documentary movies ever made, I finally watched "An Inconvenient Truth" starring former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore and directed by Davis Guggenheim.  I finally caught the movie on Turner Classic Movies a couple of nights ago.  I had always known that this was one of the more important documentaries ever made and had known that I needed to see it but had never carried through.  Al Gore has devoted his life since the miscarriage of justice in the 2000 Presidential Election to the environmental cause which he had always been actively supporting.  

The movie is a very cogent, well organized, easily understandable discussion of global warming and the potential worldwide disaster which it is likely to cause.  I have known for many years, ever since reading "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson and "The Everglades River Of Grass" by Marjory Stoneman, that the cumulative damage we are doing to the world with industry, overpopulation, and blatant disregard for their inherent damages, that we are at great risk of making many areas of the world uninhabitable and further complicating world overpopulation.  I have also read other books such as "Chomolungma Sings The Blues" by Ed Douglas and "Never Cry Wolf" by Farley Mowat which have furthered my awareness of the potential natural disaster which hangs over our heads.  As the seas rise, more and more densely populated areas along our coasts are prone to become flooded forcing huge populations to move inland in order to survive.  The tiny country of Kiribati has actually moved to buy land from neighboring Fiji in order to relocate their entire population when they become the first nation to be totally inundated by the ocean.  The Maldives are also likely to disappear underwater.  Numerous coastal cities all over the world are likely to loose hundreds of thousands of acres of land over the next few years.  Millions of people will be required to relocate and the total worldwide damage and costs are impossible to calculate.  Kivalina Alaska is also doomed to disappear under water.  

Sadly, at the present, the United States government is being held hostage by a criminal organization which evidence strongly indicates colluded with Russia and is fully committed to continuing and expanding many, if not all, of the practices which are destroying the environment.  They are also fully committed to destroying the Environmental Protection Agency.  Watching "An Inconvenient Truth" has reminded me of many things I already knew about the environment, taught me a great deal of new information, and renewed my commitment to fight for the environment even as we are engaged in the greater and more important fight to save American Democracy from the TRAITOR & International Terrorist Trump and his Russian Owned Criminal Syndicate.  It greatly increases the likelihood of disastrous environmental outcomes to have such an illegitimate and ignorant group actually holding the country and our environmental policies hostage as part of their usurpation of political power with the assistance of Vladimir Putin and Russia.  

Every reader of this blog should make an effort to watch "An Inconvenient Truth" and its sequel "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power" if you have not already seen them.  Additionally, we should all fully commit ourselves to making changes on both micro and macro levels to improve environmental conditions in our communities and the world at large.  Read environmental books.  Watch environmental movies.  Attend speeches by environmental leaders and scientists.  Learn all you can on a daily basis and take some action on a daily basis to help save the world and the human race.       

 

Observations On Reading The Poetry Of Albert Stewart Once Again

This past week I reread Albert Stewart's "A Man Of Circumstance & Selected Yellow Mountain Poems 1946-1996" and reaffirmed many realizations about Al Stewart as a man and a poet.  I might have also come to one or two new, or at least revised, conclusions.  The long poem "A Man Of Circumstance" is most probably about Albert Stewart's father.  But it is also somewhat a compilation of qualities and observations about many of the positive male role models to whom Al was exposed during his early life.  It is also a compelling representation of Al Stewart's broad based knowledge of the area, the land, and the people around him.  His use of Appalachian metaphors and aphorisms in the poem show him to have been as much a common man in the mountains as he was a poet and educator.  Albert Stewart never forgot that he was a member of the community and culture which had produced him. 

The poem "The New Mule" is a wonderful story about how a man and a mule could change each other and form a relationship over the course of several years making lateral trips along the furrows of a hillside farm.  It is truly a work of art.  The mule progresses, over the course of 23 linguistically spare lines, from an uncontrollable, wild beast to moving "a careful inch in the furrow to my asking".  The man progresses from "goddamning voice" to being able to will "myself to patience".  It is a wonderful poem by a man who understood animals, land, and people and was able to express that knowledge in a minimal expenditure of words.  It is a wonderful poem about slow, positive change in a place where change was generally unwelcome.

Albert Stewart's poetry is a the poetry of an educator, environmentalist, farmer, neighbor, and friend.  It is a rare, wonderful kind of work which has received far too little recognition on the greater world wide stage.  Just like Al, it has had a tendency to stay on Yellow Mountain.  But those of us who knew Al as a friend and mentor keep taking it with us into the wider world and showing it to people who never had the good fortune to know him or his poetry.

Albert Stewart