Book Review – A Testament of Hope : The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. edited by James Melvin Washington

I read an essay by June Jordan on Martin Luther King recently, and I realized that I haven’t read a proper book by him. Of course, I have read words spoken by him and have seen others quote him, but I haven’t read a book by him. So I looked around and found this book and picked it up, and I’ve been reading it for the past few weeks. I finished reading it yesterday. I read it for ‘Black History Month‘.

‘A Testament of Hope‘ is a collection of Martin Luther King’s important essays, speeches, interviews, and excerpts from his books. It has something of everything and it seemed to be the best one-volume collection out there and is a beautiful introduction to his work. The first part of the book has essays by King in which he describes his philosophy of nonviolent protests. It has one of the most beautiful descriptions of the philosophy of nonviolent protests that I’ve ever read. He talks about the three words for love in Greek, eros, philia, and agape, and it made me smile, because it took me back in time, to my teenage years, when I first encountered these three words. King also talks about how Gandhi pioneered the use of nonviolent methods to fight against oppression. There is even an essay on his trip to India, which was insightful to read. Throughout this part of the book, King also talks about the struggle against segregation, the fight for integration, and how equality can be achieved by peaceful, nonviolent means. One of my favourite essays of his was ‘Letter from Birmingham City Jail‘.

The second part of the book has many of his famous speeches and sermons. I think all his famous speeches are there, including ‘I Have a Dream‘, ‘The Drum Major Instinct‘, and ‘I See the Promised Land‘. Martin Luther King was a powerful speaker, and all his speeches were inspiring. My favourites were ‘The American Dream‘, ‘The Drum Major Instinct‘, and ‘A Time to Break Silence‘, his famous protest and condemnation of the American government for its role in the Vietnam war. One of the things I was looking forward to, while reading his speeches and other parts of the book, was to find where his most famous lines made their first appearance. My most favourite quote of his, and probably the most famous lines he ever spoke, is ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice‘. I found it in many places, in his essays, speeches, book excerpts. It was lots of fun to spot it.

There were five interviews in the interviews section of the book, and my favourite out of them was the Playboy interview. Playboy is a magazine which is famous for its centrefold pictures, but Playboy also has a serious side, and it has featured wonderful interviews with important people. This interview was very detailed and insightful and beautiful.

The book section had excerpts from all his books. My favourite was ‘Stride Toward Freedom‘, which was about the Montgomery bus protests. ‘The Strength of Love‘ is a collection of sermons and there was one sermon in it called ‘A Knock at Midnight‘ which was incredibly beautiful.

One of the things I loved about Martin Luther King was that he didn’t shy away from difficult questions and didn’t try to sweep things below the carpet. He answered these questions precisely and clearly. In one of the interviews, he is asked about whether nonviolence will continue to be effective as in recent times protestors have started resorting to violence after being influenced by the Black Power movement. The reply he gives to that is one of the best defences of the nonviolent movement that I’ve read. In another interview, a Jewish Rabbi asks him about why some of the black leaders are anti-Semitic and whether the overall African-American community is anti-Semitic. The answer he gives to this tricky question (in cricket parlance, it was a total bouncer or a googly) is one of the best parts of the book. As we say in cricket, Well played, MLK! 😊

I loved ‘A Testament of Hope‘. It is one of the most important books I’ve read in my life, and definitely one of my favourite books of the year. It was 700 pages of pure inspiration which gave me goosebumps all the time. I read it from the first page to the last, like a regular book, but I feel now that it is a book which is best read a few pages at a time, one essay at a time, with time spent after that in thinking and contemplation. I think that is the best way to get the maximum pleasure and learning out of the book. The book has a beautiful introduction by the editor James Melvin Washington, which talks about Martin Luther King and his life, and puts this book in context.

Martin Luther King was a soft-spoken, gentle preacher who suddenly emerged as a civil rights leader in 1955 during the Montgomery bus protests. He was 26 years old at that time and he was virtually unknown. In the space of a little more than a year, he emerged as a national and international icon and as a leader who fought for the rights of the oppressed through peaceful means. Fame, awards, and glory followed, including the Nobel Peace Prize, which he was the youngest to win. He didn’t rest on his laurels and continued his crusade and fought for the rights of his people, gently and nonviolently. He died when he was 39, when a mad man shot him, when he was planning a new nonviolent crusade the next day. He was still so young, with a rich future ahead. It is amazing to contemplate on the unbelievable things that he accomplished in this short span of 13 years. It also feels sad to contemplate on what he might have accomplished if he had lived a long life. Out of the three great nonviolent crusaders of the 20th century who fought against oppression and for the rights of their people – Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela – two were assassinated by mad men. I don’t know why people hate gentle souls who favour peace over war, and love over hate. Only Nelson Mandela survived as he managed to come out of prison and see off the apartheid era and take his country to a new age.

It is hard to believe that once upon a time a gentle soul like Martin Luther King walked on this earth, spread the message of peace and love while fighting for the oppressed, and accomplished great things. We are in his debt.

It is hard to choose a few favourite passages from a book like this, because the whole book was so beautiful and inspiring. As John Updike once said, “Just as the impossibly ideal map would be the same size as the territory mapped, the ideal review would quote the book in its entirety, without comment.” This is that kind of book. But I can’t inflict it on you and quote the whole book to you. So I’m just sharing some of my favourite passages here. Hope they’ll inspire you to read the book.

Three Kinds of Love

“Now when the students talk about love, certainly they are not talking about emotional bosh, they are not talking about merely sentimental outpouring; they’re talking something much deeper, and I always have to stop and try to define the meaning of love in this context. The Greek language comes to our aid in trying to deal with this. There are three words in the Greek language for love; one is the word eros. This is a beautiful type of love, it is an aesthetic love. Plato talks about it a great deal in his Dialogue, the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. It has come to us to be a sort romantic love, and so in a sense we have read about it and experienced it. We’ve read about it in all the beauties of literature. I guess in a sense Edgar Allen Poe was talking about eros when he talked about his beautiful Annabelle Lee, with the love surrounded by the halo of eternity. In a sense Shakespeare was talking about eros when he said “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove; O’no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken, it is the star to every wandering bark.” (You know, I remember that because I used to quote it to this little lady when we were courting; that’s eros.) The Greek language talks about philia which was another level of love. It is an intimate affection between personal friends, it is a reciprocal love. On this level you love because you are loved. It is friendship.

Then the Greek language comes with another word which is called the agape. Agape is more than romantic love, agape is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive, good will to all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. So that when one rises to love on this level, he loves men not because he likes them, not because their ways appeal him, but he loves every man because God loves him. And he rises to the point of loving the person who does an evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. I think this is what Jesus meant when he said “love your enemies.” I’m very happy that he didn’t say like your enemies, because it is pretty difficult to like some people. Like is sentimental, and it is pretty difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all of their time trying to defeat civil rights. But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemp- tive, creative, good will for all men. And it is this idea, it is this whole ethic of love which is the idea standing at the basis of the student movement.”

On Being Maladjusted

“There are certain technical words which tend to become stereotypes and cliches after a certain period of time. Psychologists have a word which is probably used more frequently than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted.” In a sense all of us must live the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the inequalities of an economic system which takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence.

It may be that the salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted. The challenge to us is to be maladjusted – as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, “Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream”; as maladjusted as Lincoln, who had the who had the vision to see that this nation cannot survive half slave half free; as maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out in words lifted to cosmic proportions. “All men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit Happiness”; as maladjusted as Jesus who could say to the men and women of his generation, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.”

The world is in desperate need of such maladjustment. Through such courageous maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom justice.”

Human Progress

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. The Darwinian theory of evolution is valid in the biological realm, but when a Hubert Spencer seeks to apply it to the whole of society there is very little evidence for it. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of dedicated individuals. Without hard work, time itself becomes ally of the primitive forces of irrational emotionalism social stagnation.”

Just and Unjust Laws

“Much has been made of the willingness of these devotees of nonviolent social action to break the law. Paradoxically, although they have embraced Thoreau’s and Gandhi’s civil disobedience on a scale dwarfing any past experience in American history, they do respect law. They feel a moral responsibility to obey just laws. But they recognize that there are also unjust laws.

From a purely moral point of view, an unjust law is one which is out of harmony with the moral law of the universe. More concretely, an unjust law is one in which the minority is compelled to observe a code that is not binding on the majority. An unjust law is one in which people are required to obey a code that they had no part in making because they were denied the right to vote.

In disobeying such unjust laws, the students do so peacefully, openly and nonviolently. Most important, they willingly accept the penalty,  whatever it is, for in this way the public comes to reexamine the law in question and will thus decide whether it uplifts or degrades man.

This distinguishes their positon on civil disobedience from the “uncivil disobedience” of the segregationist. In face of laws they consider unjust, the racists seek to defy, evade and circumvent the law, and they are unwilling to accept the penalty. The end result of their defiance is anarchy and disrespect for the law. The students, the other hand, believe that he who openly disobeys a law, a law conscience tells him is unjust, and then willingly accepts the penalty, gives evidence thereby that he so respects that law that he belongs in jail until it is changed. Their appeal is to the conscience.”

Civilization and Culture

“We have allowed our civilization to outdistance our culture. Professor MacIver follows the German sociologist, Alfred Weber, in pointing out the distinction between culture and civilization. Civilization refers what we use; culture refers to what we are. Civilization is that complex of devices, instrumentalities, mechanisms and techniques by means of which we live. Culture is that realm of ends expressed in art, literature, religion and morals for which at best we live.

The great problem confronting us today is that we have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance ends for which we live. We have allowed our civilization to outrun our culture, and so we are in danger now of ending up with guided missiles in the hands of misguided men. This is what the poet Thoreau meant when he said, “Improved means to an unimproved end.” If we are to survive today and realize the dream of our mission and the dream of the world, we must bridge the gulf and somehow keep the means by which we live abreast with the ends for which we live.”

“Where Do We Go From Here”

“Now, in order to answer the question, “Where do we go from here?” which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the African-American was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare that he is fifty percent of person. Of the good things in life, the African-American has approximately one half those of whites. Of the bad things in life, he has twice those of whites. Thus half of all African-Americans live in substandard housing. And African-Americans have half the income of whites. When we view the negative experiences of life, the African-American has a double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality among African-Americans is double that of whites and there are twice as many African-Americans dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population…This is where we are.”

Roget’s Thesaurus

“Even semantics have conspired to make that which is black seem ugly and degrading. In Roget’s Thesaurus there are 120 synonyms for blackness and at least sixty of them are offensive, as for example, blot, soot, grim, devil and foul. And there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity and innocence. A white lie is better than a black lie.  The most degenerate member of a family is a “black sheep.” Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced teach the black child sixty ways to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of inferiority, and the white child 134 ways to adore himself, and thereby perpetuating his false sense of superiority.”

The Bootstrap Philosophy

“Now there is another myth that still gets around; it is a kind of overreliance on the bootstrap philosophy. There are those who still feel that if the African-American is to rise out of poverty, if the African-American is to rise out of slum conditions, if he is to rise out of discrimination and segregation, he must do it all by himself. And so they say the African-American must lift himself by his own bootstraps.

They never stop to realize that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil. The people who say this never stop to realize that the nation made the black man’s color a stigma; but beyond this they never stop to realize the debt that they owe a people who were kept in slavery 244 years.

In 1863 the African-American was told that he was free as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation being signed by Abraham Lincoln. But he was not given any land to make that freedom meaningful. It was something like keeping a person in prison for a number years and suddenly discovering that that person is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. And you just go up to him and say, “Now you are free,” but you don’t give him any bus fare to get to town. You don’t give him any money to get some clothes to put on his back or to get on his feet again in life.

Every court of jurisprudence would rise up against this and yet this is the very thing that our nation did to the black man. It simply said, “You’re free,” and left him there penniless, illiterate, not knowing what to do. And the irony of it all is that at the same time the nation failed to do anything for the black man – through an act Congress it was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest – which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.

But not only did it give the land, it built land-grant colleges to teach them how to farm. Not only that, it provided county agents to further their expertise in farming; not only that, as the years unfolded it provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize their farms. And to this day thousands of these very persons are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies every year not to farm. And these are so often the very people who tell African-Americans that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps. It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

On the Vietnam War

“And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think if them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know them and to hear their broken cries.

They must see the Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people weren’t ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned international atmosphere for so long.

For nine years following 1945 we vigorously supported the French in their abortive attempt to recolonize Vietnam. After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva Agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops, who came help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown, they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us – not their fellow Vietnamese – the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know that they must move or be destroyed by our bombs, and they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops, and they wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American fire power to one Viet-Cong inflicted injury. They wander into the towns and see thousands of children homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think, as we ally ourselves with the landlords, and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions : the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in crushing one of the nation’s only non-Communist revolutionary political forces, the United Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators!

Now there is little left to build on – save bitterness. And soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these; could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them, and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.”

Have you read ‘A Testament of Hope‘? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite Martin Luther King quote?

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Book Review – The Dragons, The Giant, The Women : A Memoir of Family, War and Peace by Wayétu Moore

I wanted to read Wayétu Moore’s novel ‘She Would be King‘, but when I discovered that she has written a memoir, I wanted to read that first. I read this for ‘Black History Month‘ and for ‘Read Indies’.

‘Read Indies’ is an annual event hosted by Kaggsy (from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings) and Lizzy (from Lizzy’s Literary Life), which promotes independent publishers and runs through the whole of February. ‘The Dragons, The Giant, The Women’ is published by ONE, which is an imprint of Pushkin Press.

‘The Dragons, The Giant, The Women‘ starts with the story happening in Liberia. It is narrated by the five-year old Wayétu Moore. We discover that her mom is in America and she and her sisters are living with her dad. Civil war breaks out in Liberia, and Wayétu Moore and her family have to flee their home. What happens to them is told in the rest of the book.

The book is divided into multiple parts. The first part, which is the longest part of the book, is narrated in the voice of the five-year old Wayétu Moore. That voice is beautiful, charming and authentic. I loved it. That was my favourite part of the book. Then the story shifts to the present say, and it is narrated by thirty-something Wayétu Moore. Then at some point, the story moves back to the past and continues from where it left off at the end of the first part and we hear the story through the voice of Wayétu Moore’s mom. And then the story is continued by today’s Wayétu Moore while she describes the events of the past, and the pages fly by and the tension increases, as the last part reads like a thriller.

I loved the first part of the book. It was my favourite. I also loved the last two parts which carried on the story which was told in the first part. The part in between was different – the voice was different, the themes were different. It talked about Wayétu Moore’s life in America as an African immigrant and the discrimination she suffers. What that part talked about is important, but it didn’t hang well with the rest of the book. It felt like Wayétu Moore decided to write another book in the middle of the first book. Maybe this middle part deserved a book of its own.

I enjoyed reading ‘The Dragons, The Giant, The Women‘. ‘Enjoyed’ is probably not the right word, as the story describes war and suffering. Liberia is a complex country with a complex history, and I learnt some of it through Moore’s book. It is so unbelievable that all this happened. When I read these lines on the last page of the book –

“My Ol’ Ma says the best stories do not always end happily, but happiness will find its way in there somehow. She says that some will bend many times like the fisher’s wire. Some make the children laugh. Some make even the Ol’ Pas cry. Some the griots will take a long time to tell, but like plums left in the sun for too long, they too are sweet to taste.

Suffering is a part of everyone’s story. As long as my Ol’ Ma is here, and I am here, as long as I become an Ol’ Ma myself and my children’s children become Ol’ Mas and Ol’ Pas, there will be rainy seasons and dry seasons too long to bear, where troubles pile up like coal to burn you to dust. But just like suffering makes its bed in these seasons, so does happiness, however brief, however fleeting.

There are many stories of war to tell. You will hear them all. But remember among those who were lost, some made it through. Among the dragons there will always be heroes. Even there. Even then. And of those tales ending in defeat, tales of death and orphans wandering among the ruined, some ended the other way too.”

– when I read this, I cried.

I’ll leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.

“The restlessness made a home on my shoulders, tormenting me as the day went on. This was the other side of love. Love gone is painful, and I existed in that grief…But love almost gone — the lurking threat of loss — that was a daily torture, death realized every morning.”

“An Ol’ Ma, a grand-aunt maybe, told us that all of our dead and missing were resting peacefully in wandering clouds, and when it rains and you listen closely you can hear the things they forgot to tell you before leaving.”

“We had been together for two years, all of which were long distance. Long-distance relationships begin beautifully, end suddenly, sometimes by accident, and thereafter smoke rises not because all is burned to ashes but because there is always something left in the pipe…The Ol’ Mas did not tell us that you could not throw away love once it was finished. That it would remain on us like blackened scars, under neath blouses and in those places only we could see. That we would reach a point where it, once solid, would melt in our hands and we would never fully wash off its residue; and that some love, the truest love, also the most dangerous, could disfigure our core.”

“I thought of Mam in that moment. She had taught me many things, and at times, especially during those teenage years of promising her I would move far away to New York as soon as I got my diploma, she was more than I deserved. She taught me how to cook, how to write, my posture, how to care for a home, how to love God, how to read. She taught me politeness, creativity, how to write a letter, especially to those who had offended me. How to pray, how to fold clothes, how to love my sisters, how to love my brothers, how to love myself. She taught me about women—how to be one, how to know them, how to befriend them, how to give advice and love them, and how some would betray me because they saw kindness as weakness, and at the first sign of such brutality I should walk away, for such women did not even love themselves. That not all who chose to be around me liked me. That some knew too well how to pretend, and they would raise daughters with these doctrines, so I should remember her words and the words of my Ol’ Mas to raise mine. And some would raise sons they did not want to let go of, and would handle them like marionettes, and I should be careful never to sit in the audience of such a show for too long.

But there were things I went into the world not knowing. We did not talk about what to do when a boy was unkind, in words or actions, breaking my heart. I was lousy in the ways of healing. Mam had one true love and she married him. She had one true love in a country of women like her, whose sun took turns resting on their deep, dark skin. My true loves in our new country, by either inheritance or indoctrination, were taught that black women were the least among them. Loving me was an act of resistance, though many did not know it. And Mam could not understand this feeling, the heaviness of it, to be loved as resistance, as an exception to a rule. To fight to be seen in love, to stay in love throughout the resistance. This was my new country.”

Have you read ‘The Dragons, The Giant, The Women‘? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – Black Foam by Haji Jabir (Translated by Sawad Hussain and Marcia Lynx Qualey)

I discovered ‘Black Foam‘ by Haji Jabir recently. It looked quite fascinating and so I decided to read it. I read this for ‘Black History Month‘.

The main character in ‘Black Foam‘ is a man who seems to be homeless, rootless. As we read the story, we discover that he is a young Eritrean soldier on the eve of Eritrea’s independence. Circumstances change for him after a while and he has to flee his country and he is on the run. He ends up in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. He changes his identity – his name and his religion – and from Dawoud, he becomes David. When things don’t go well for him at the refugee camp, he changes his name again to Dawit, somehow gets into a Jewish community, and migrates to Israel. What happens to this man, who belongs nowhere, or rather who belongs everywhere, is told in the rest of the story.

This is my first book by an Eritrean author and I found it very fascinating. The author is Eritrean, the book is written in Arabic, and the story happens in three places, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Israel – all these together made it a very unusual and fascinating book. At some point we read this passage in the book –

“He wasn’t asking for much: he just wanted to survive, live a normal life, wake up, sleep, love and have children, and then die in his bed. He wasn’t asking for more.”

It is such a simple life to wish for. The main character just wants this. But this is hard. For him, this is almost impossible. He has to change his identity, his name, his religion, his language, his country, and still this simple life is out of his reach. There is a famous place in Jerusalem where there is a ladder against a building. The ladder is short and is not able to reach the window. This ladder and window have been there like this for 300 years. It is described in the book. The main character’s life is like that. Inspite of reinventing himself multiple times, he ends up being like the ladder, which never reaches the window, which is the simple life he yearns for. It is heartbreaking.

This book asks big profound questions on who we are as individuals and humans – whether we really have an identity or whether it is all just a fleeting thing which can be changed at will, whether we belong anywhere, or we belong nowhere, or maybe we belong everywhere. It made me think a lot.

I enjoyed reading ‘Black Foam‘. It is an important book for our times. It is the first book I’ve read which is written by a black writer in Arabic. Black writer, writing in Arabic, translated into English – this is as diverse as it can get.

I’ll leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.

“An idea he had often entertained popped back into his mind—that Eritreans didn’t know anger, that they only grieved and were broken and withdrew, while never losing their temper. For the oppressed, anger was a luxury, and between them and anger there stood a fence of humiliation and oppression. Anger was an act of will, and the oppressed had no will and no ability to make decisions. He wanted to explain all of that to her…”

“Each time, he got deeper into the construction of his story, making many unnecessary embellishments. He usually didn’t like this method since this way he wasn’t the owner and master of the story. Instead, it became the property of his listeners. Storytelling was a dangerous game, and the tale could slip from your hands at just the moment you thought it was fully yours. Still, he felt this was a good test of his ability to narrate, or rather to fabricate. After all, narration was fabrication. Anything else was just a poor imitation, merely passing on a story made up by someone else.”

“Then suddenly she lifted her head and asked : “By the way, which of your names would you like me to call you?” The question threw him into confusion. Should he say Dawoud, with all the defeats and losses that old name carried? Or should he choose David, a newer name, yet with as many bitter experiences? Or should he stick with the infant Dawit, without knowing for sure whether it was any different from its predecessors? He couldn’t get rid of these names and everything they carried. Each one was a weight that dragged behind him, like a cupboard full of memories, and he couldn’t seem to pass by any bit of anguish without storing it inside them. He didn’t know if he gave each name its wretched shape and features or whether it was the other way around. What he did know was that his many names were a lot like him, a good fit for him and his amputated life. These names, which he had wanted to save him, had instead become a burden. It occurred to him that, even if he continued to switch between all the names, it wouldn’t change his fate. Thus, he felt a little more charitable toward the names since the jinx was part of his destiny. Names were just rags, after all; they couldn’t hide his fate. He surfaced from his confusion and told her to call him whatever she wanted.”

Have you read ‘Black Foam‘? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – Addis Ababa Noir edited by Maaza Mengiste

I thought I’ll continue reading books set in Ethiopia and so picked this one, ‘Addis Ababa Noir‘ edited by Maaza Mengiste. I read this for ‘Black History Month‘ and for ‘Read Indies‘.

‘Read Indies‘ is an annual event hosted by Kaggsy (from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings) and Lizzy (from Lizzy’s Literary Life), which promotes independent publishers and runs through the whole of February. ‘Addis Ababa Noir’ is published by Akashic Books, an independent publisher based out of Brooklyn.

‘Addis Ababa Noir‘ is a collection of 14 short stories. They are all set in Addis Ababa, of course  Many of them are poignant stories, sometimes with heartbreaking endings. Many of them are set during the period of the Derg, between 1974-91 when the military dictatorship was in power in Ethiopia and during which time innocent people suffered. As you might have guessed by now, this is not a book of classic noir. So you won’t find stories like a woman plotting with the insurance agent to kill her husband and pocket the insurance money, or a woman plotting with a guest to kill her husband who is the motel owner and get his money. This is not that book. The noir aspect here is that things are sad and dark and bleak and there are no happy endings. There are some stories which don’t have heartbreaking endings and sometimes the endings are almost happy, but the endings in general are sad ones.

My favourite story from the book was ‘Father Bread‘ by Mikael Awake. In this story a young boy ends up in an orphanage. His family has been attacked and killed by hyenas. The man who owns the orphanage tries to put the young boy up for adoption to an American couple. But this man’s intentions are not necessarily noble. And the young boy, he is no ordinary young boy. The ending of the story was stunning and surprising and I didn’t see that coming. It was wonderful how the author took an idea from Ethiopian mythology and adapted it to a modern setting.

My second favourite story from the book was ‘Agony of a Congested Heart‘ by Teferi Nigussie Tafa. It is about the struggle of the Oromo people, who have been oppressed by successive Ethiopian governments. This story offers an insightful, tragic lesson in history. When the narrator says that while his African brothers and sisters suffered under white colonialism, his own people the Oromo suffered under black colonialism, it breaks our heart. Einstein once said – “Two things are infinite : the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” Humans just keep proving it everyday with their infinite levels of oppression. The oppressed continue to oppress others who are less fortunate than them, and this continues to infinite levels, and this has been there since the dawn of time with no end in sight. We’d assume that humans would have learnt the lessons of history by now and would try to be more kind and do better, but human stupidity is infinite as Einstein said, and it looks like they’ll never learn. When the narrator says in the end – “When I discovered this, I realized that my forty years of struggle had ended in nothing. Maybe struggle is not good. Maybe struggle is a curse! We all carry the agony of a congested heart. My agony, my people’s agony” – it breaks our heart.

I also loved the first story in the book, ‘Kind Stranger‘ by Meron Hadero, in which a man who is passing through a churchyard, is pulled aside by a stranger who then starts telling this man his story. ‘A Night in Bela Sefer‘ by Sulaiman Addonia is about a young man who responds to a strange ad in the paper and is hired for a job. It is a beautiful story about desire and identity and orientation. ‘A Double-Edged Inheritance‘ by Hannah Giorgis is about family and love with some revenge thrown in. ‘Dust, Ash, Flight‘ by Maaza Mengiste is a heartbreaking story about people who lose their family members to government-sponsored violence. ‘The Blue Shadow‘ by Mahtem Shiferraw is a beautiful, heartbreaking story about a mother’s love for her son. The mother is an unusual person, and you’ll know why when you read the story. ‘Of the Poet and the Cafe‘ by Girma T. Fantaye is about a man who goes in the morning to open his cafe and discovers that it has disappeared. He is even more surprised when no one seems to remember him or his cafe. It is a fascinating, surreal story and is almost Borgesian. ‘Kebele ID‘ by Linda Yohannes is a simple story but also a beautiful one. ‘None of Your Business‘ by Solomon Hailemariam is a story which asks questions on what is really a democracy and what happens when we fight for it and demand it.

I loved ‘Addis Ababa Noir‘. It was not at all what I expected. The stories explored Ethiopian culture and history and mythology and contemporary life and it was hard to classify them as classical noir. This noir series by Akashic Books is big and there is a huge backlist. Hoping to dip into that in the future.

I’ll leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.

From ‘Kind Stranger‘ by Meron Hadero

“Those subtle stings to pride—they’re worse than the big ego blows because they’re not like some obvious pebble you can remove from your shoe. They are like shards that you know are there but can’t find and can’t get rid of.”

From ‘Ostrich‘ by Rebecca Fisseha

“My father waited. I knew that wait. It meant that their conversation was one response away from becoming a fight. All it needed was for her to say words sharper than his. Unlike other adults, my parents never hid their fights from anyone. They believed that disagreeing was normal and good, and always kissed afterward, no matter who won. But my mother didn’t respond that day. She let the silence be. It lingered even after my father rolled down his window to the sound of the city.”

From ‘The Blue Shadow‘ by Mahtem Shiferraw

“Although Weyzero Fantish was a woman afflicted by many sorrows, she also loved life deeply. Mourning was what she did best, and she wanted to do it because everyone deserved to be mourned for, to be longed for, and the seed of sorrow she planted in her mourners’ hearts always loomed larger and more intricate, and would come back to her in the shape of kindness and kinship.”

From ‘Insomnia‘ by Lelissa Girma

“A mirror is a compassionate object reflecting false images the reflection wishes to believe,” his friend said. “If that man had watched himself from our vantage point, if he saw himself dining with his present condition, he would have thrown himself off a bridge and died. You can’t find out the truth about yourself until you come across your own self on the street, and then you observe yourself at a distance to decide what condition you are in.”

From ‘Of Buns and Howls‘ by Adam Reta

“To him, dead people were cool, because dead people couldn’t kill you.”

Have you read ‘Addis Ababa Noir‘? What do you think about it? Have you read other books in Akashic’s noir series?

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Book Review – Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste

I got Maaza Mengiste’s first novel ‘Beneath the Lion’s Gaze’ many years back, when it first came out. I was waiting for the right time to read it. It looks like now is the right time. I read this for Black History Month.

The story told in ‘Beneath the Lion’s Gaze‘ is set sometime in 1974. Haile Selassie is still the Emperor of Ethiopia. But there is unrest brewing in the country. There is a famine in parts of the country. Students and other people protest against the government for not helping those suffering from the famine. Parts of the army protest against the government for higher pay. We see all this through the eyes of one family and their friends. The head of the family is a doctor. His wife is unwell right now. His eldest son is a professor. His youngest son is a student who is one of the protestors against the government. What happens when this family is swept away by historical events over which they have no control forms the rest of the story.

‘Beneath the Lion’s Gaze‘ is a fascinating introduction to Ethiopian history of the 1970s, when great, terrible events overtook the country. Though it is a work of fiction, the story feels very real, and the author has done her research well. For me the book felt very personal. I spent my childhood in Ethiopia, and when I read names like Almaz, Kifle, Amman, Dawit and places like Arat Kilo, Sidist Kilo, Mercato, I cried, because those were all names I knew, and those were all places I’ve been to. We had a family friend called Almaz who was like a big sister to me. Yayehyerad Kifle was one of my best friends (we used to call him Mamush. Mamush was a kind of pet name for many Ethiopian boys.) Amman was another friend of mine. He told me that he was named after the great Ethiopian general. There was an old Italian man who used to live in Amman’s house, probably his grandmother’s boyfriend, who stayed back after the Italians left after the Second World War. He had an old Second World War Italian motorcycle, and every year he used to service it and get it ready and then ride it on the streets, and we kids used to run after him. Dawit (Ethiopian version of David) was the name of the son of one of my mom’s friends. The school my dad used to work in, Menelik School, was located at Arat Kilo. Mercato was a bustling market, and I’ve been there many times. So reading the book took me back across time and made me relive my own experiences.

During the time period that the story is set, the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by the military and then killed. (The Ethiopian military probably followed the French and Russian playbook – kill the king and all his relatives. The only guys who did it differently and which had interesting results, were the Chinese. They put the emperor through a ‘re-education’ programme, and then offered him a government job. He became a government employee, lived life like a regular person, and retired as a government employee. It was almost like a Kafka story.) The military dictatorship called the Derg took over, imposed a communist totalitarian rule across the country, banned private property, and the dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam eliminated all his critics and opponents. This book describes how rebels were shot dead and their bodies were thrown on the streets as a warning to other rebels and people who wanted to protest against the government. I can’t remember any of this from my childhood though. My childhood was filled with regular childhood stuff – going to school, coming back home, making my parents’ lives challenging, playing football with my friends on the streets, or doing crazy stuff like climbing water tanks like a monkey. I don’t remember gun battles on the streets and people being shot dead and bodies being thrown on the main streets. On one or two occasions, I remember soldiers carrying stenguns knocked at our door and searched our apartment. My dad said later that they do this everytime there is a coup. I remember the soldiers being polite and nice. It all felt like an adventure to me.

So the book was a big surprise to me, of course. I didn’t know that the horrors that were mentioned in the book had happened. I can’t believe that I had lived in the middle of it. My dad went to work in Ethiopia when the Emperor was still around, and he continued to work there after the coup when the military took over. A year after my dad came back, the Derg dictatorship was overthrown and Mengistu Haile Mariam fled the country. I need to talk to my dad and find out how things were at that time, especially at the time of the coup and the years after that, when things were really hard and the government of that time did unspeakable things. When you are living in another country, you are mostly living in a bubble, and you never know what is happening to a local citizen and what kind of pressure and fear they are living through. I think that is what happened to my family and others like mine. But my dad taught Ethiopian and African history and so he probably knew better. Need to talk to him soon.

I enjoyed reading ‘Beneath the Lion’s Gaze‘ though it was mostly heartbreaking to read. I’m looking forward to reading Maaza Mengiste’s next book ‘The Shadow King‘ soon.

Have you read ‘Beneath the Lion’s Gaze‘? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – Pepperpot : Best New Stories from the Caribbean

I was looking for short stories by Caribbean writers, recently, and I stumbled upon this collection, ‘Pepperpot : Best New Stories from the Caribbean‘ . I read this for #ReadIndies hosted by Kaggsy from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy from Lizzy’s Literary Life. ‘Pepperpot‘ is published by Peekash Press, an indie publisher which promotes books by Caribbean writers who live in the Caribbean.

There are thirteen stories in the book. I enjoyed reading all of them. Some of my favourites are these.

The Whale House by Sharon Millar – A woman is mourning the loss of her baby. Then we learn about her past and her younger days and some beautiful secrets are revealed. The ending of the story was beautiful and perfect.

A Good Friday by Barbara Jenkins – A beautiful woman walks into a bar. A man tries courting her. It all looks quite predictable. But halfway through the story Barbara Jenkins steps on the pedal, and the story kicks to a different gear, in an unexpected way. I loved the way it ended. Barbara Jenkins has written a novel which features some of the same characters from this story, and I want to read that.

Amelia at Devil’s Bridge by Joanna C. Hillhouse – I loved Joanna C. Hillhouse’s novel ‘Musical Youth‘ and so was excited to read this. A young woman finds herself in the rocky shore of the sea and she is naked. She doesn’t know how she got there. What happens next and the truth when it is revealed is unexpected and heartbreaking.

Berry by Kimmisha Thomas – A beautiful lesbian love story. Loved it. Berry is such an awesome character. One of my favourite passages from the book is from this story. It goes like this –

“Berry once told me that she had always thought of herself as both female and male. I understand why some men are confused by lesbian logic. I’m confused too. I am sure Berry, so talented and beautiful, always has men lusting after her. I asked one time how she deals with that. She shrugged and said, “I just become their friend. They stay or they leave.” She told me her family knows about her. They neither accept nor deny it. “We just be, you know?” I didn’t know. I didn’t know whether I was gay or not, or whether this was just a phase. But maybe I did know, cause I was just being, like Berry’s family.”

The Science of Salvation by Dwight Thompson – A spiritual leader and his wife meet an old friend. This old friend has ended up on the wrong side of the law. The spiritual leader tries changing him. What happens after that is the rest of the story. Beautiful and moving and thought-provoking.

Waywardness by Ezekel Alan – It is about a person who is regarded as ‘wayward’. You should read the story to find out what that exactly means. The story was filled with dark humour and it made me laugh throughout.

“Father, Father” by Garfield Ellis – A teenager is fleeing his attackers. What happens next is the rest of the story. It is gripping and fast-paced and scary.

I loved ‘Pepperpot‘. There are stories in it about love, loss, family, being gay, forbidden relationships, faith, bad things happening. They were fascinating to read. The book has a beautiful introduction by Jamaican legend, Olive Senior.

Have you read ‘Pepperpot‘? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

I discovered Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘A Small Place‘ through Rowena’s (‘Les Reveries de Rowena’) recommendation. It was just 80 pages long. I finished reading it in one breath.

The book is structured like a conversation, but mostly with the author talking to the reader. Initially, she takes the reader to be a tourist and then she continues the conversation after that. In the initial part of the book, Jamaica Kincaid talks about how a tourist who lands in Antigua experiences the island. Then she takes the reader by their hand and shows them around and describes how the life of an actual native Antiguan is. While doing this, she also tells us about Antiguan history, the British colonialism in the past, the recent history of independent Antigua, the government, the politics, the corruption, the disproportionate influence of foreign nationals. It is a fascinating journey.

The unexpected thing for me in the book was Jamaica Kincaid’s style. Though the book addressed serious topics, there was an underlying humour throughout, and I was laughing through most of the book. I’m not able to differentiate between the different types of humour these days, but I think what was depicted in the book was either satire or dark humour or a combination of both. Kincaid trains her guns on everyone and everything and we can’t stop laughing. But when we stop to think about it, it is also heartbreaking. When we reach the last chapter and we read –

“Antigua is beautiful. Antigua is too beautiful. Sometimes the beauty of it seems unreal. Sometimes the beauty of it seems as if it were stage sets for a play, for no real sunset could look like that; no real seawater could strike that many shades of blue at once; no real sky could be that shade of blue…”

– we realize that inspite of everything, this is Jamaica Kincaid’s love letter to her beautiful Antigua. I wish that I could quote the whole chapter, but it runs into a few pages, and so I’ll let you read it yourself and discover its beauty.

I loved ‘A Small Place’. I can’t wait to read more of Jamaica Kincaid’s books.

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite passages from the book.

“An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you, that behind their closed doors they laugh at your strangeness (you do not look the way they look); the physical sight of you does not please them; you have bad manners (it is their custom to eat their food with their hands; you try eating their way, you look silly; you try eating the way you always eat, you look silly); they do not like the way you speak (you have an accent); they collapse helpless from laughter…They do not like you. They do not like me! That thought never actually occurs to you. Still, you feel a little uneasy. Still, you feel a little foolish. Still, you feel a little out of place. But the banality of your own life is very real to you; it drove you to this extreme, spending your days and your nights in the company of people who despise you, people you do not like really, people you would not want to have as your actual neighbour…

That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain. For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. But some natives—most natives in the world—cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go—so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.”

Have you read ‘A Small Place‘? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – The Street by Ann Petry

I stumbled upon Ann Petry’s books sometime back and decided to read her first book ‘The Street‘.

Lutie Johnson is a single mother. In the first scene in the story, she is looking for an apartment to rent. It is in a street which doesn’t seem to be nice, but that is the only place where she can afford to rent an apartment. She doesn’t like the Super of the apartment building, she doesn’t like her potential neighbours, the apartment building and the apartment she looks at are both dark without many windows and not good ventilation, but she takes it. We learn that Lutie used to have a husband and they were happy, but then he lost his job, and she found a job as a maid in a rich household, and she could visit home only once a month, and unfortunately, her husband cheated on her and this led to the breakup of her marriage. Since then, it has been hard for her. How Lutie navigates life as a single mom living in a poor neighbourhood, with weird and dangerous neighbours, when the street is everyday trying to get its hands on her and her kid, and whether she is able to triumph over the street and over her circumstances, forms the rest of the story.

‘The Street‘ is a powerful, moving book. Watching Lutie trying to protect herself and her kid from the street and from their neighbours and from their economic circumstances, and watching her work infinitely hard to achieve small gains, and seeing her efforts stymied by people who hold the reins of power in her little world is heartbreaking to read. When I reached the end of the book, I couldn’t stop crying.

I’ve seen heartbreaking movies during my teens in which a woman is trying to do her best to keep her head above water and is trying to progress in life in small ways and the system crushes her. I can see now where the inspiration for those movies came from. Ann Petry’s book was first published in 1946 and it was a bestseller when it came out. It was the first book by an African-American woman writer to sell more than a million copies. It is a pioneering book, because of the way it describes the life of a black woman who is a single mom who struggles in life and fights against the system. Ann Petry’s prose and the way she describes events is fresh and contemporary and it is hard to believe that the book was published in 1946.

One of the things I loved about the book was the way Ann Petry depicted the characters. None of them were black-and-white but were complex and fully fleshed out and flawed. Even one of the characters whom I regarded as a proper villain had a side which was unexpectedly childlike. The characters were just people who were thrown into difficult circumstances and each of them had a complex story and they were just struggling to survive and some of them were kind sometimes and not-so-kind at other times, while others were just plain ruthless because that was what was required to survive in the street. It was hard to love many of them, but it was hard to hate them too. Lutie, of course, towers above all of them, and she is one of the great heroines of 20th century literature. I loved her and cried when things didn’t go well for her. There were two other characters whom I found fascinating, Min and Mrs.Hedges. I loved Min and her small acts of rebellion and was happy when she won sometimes. Mrs.Hedges showed that even in these difficult circumstances one can be a kick-ass person, and can also be kind.

I loved ‘The Street‘. It was moving and heartbreaking, but I loved it. When I’m feeling brave, I’d like to read Ann Petry’s ‘The Narrows‘ next.

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite passages from the book. It is featured on the first page, and it is a premonition of the things to come and it is what pulled me into the book.

“There was a cold November wind blowing through 116th Street. It rattled the tops of garbage cans, sucked window shades out through the top of opened windows and set them flapping back against the windows; and it drove most of the people off the street in the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues except for a few hurried pedestrians who bent double in an effort to offer the least possible exposed surface to its violent assault. It found every scrap of paper along the street—theater throwaways, announcements of dances and lodge meetings, the heavy waxed paper that loaves of bread had been wrapped in, the thinner waxed paper that had enclosed sandwiches, old envelopes, newspapers. Fingering its way along the curb, the wind set the bits of paper to dancing high in the air, so that a barrage of paper swirled into the faces of the people on the street…It did everything it could to discourage the people walking along the street. It found all the dirt and dust and grime on the sidewalk and lifted it up so that the dirt got into their noses, making it difficult to breathe; the dust got into their eyes and blinded them; and the grit stung their skins. It wrapped newspaper around their feet entangling them until the people cursed deep in their throats, stamped their feet, kicked at the paper. The wind blew it back again and again until they were forced to stoop and dislodge the paper with their hands. And then the wind grabbed their hats, pried their scarves from around their necks, stuck its fingers inside their coat collars, blew their coats away from their bodies. The wind lifted Lutie Johnson’s hair away from the back of her neck so that she felt suddenly naked and bald, for her hair had been resting softly and warmly against her skin. She shivered as the cold fingers of the wind touched the back of her neck, explored the sides of her head. It even blew her eyelashes away from her eyes so that her eyeballs were bathed in a rush of coldness and she had to blink in order to read the words on the sign swaying back and forth over her head.”

Have you read Ann Petry’s ‘The Street‘? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – Why We Kneel, How We Rise by Michael Holding

Michael Holding – Mikey to fans and admirers – is one of the greatest cricketers who ever played the game. He was a much admired and feared fastbowler during his playing days. A few years after he retired he got a call from someone asking him whether he would like to commentate on the game on TV. Mikey said ‘Yes’ and before long he became a well-respected and admired and popular commentator. Legend has it that female fans loved his voice and he was a big hit. I couldn’t follow Mikey’s cricket career, because I was too young at that time, but I followed him when he commentated during matches. The thing I loved about Mikey was that he was fearless. He didn’t care what people thought, or if it would offend them – if he had opinion during the game he commentated on, he shared it. Sometimes, I didn’t agree with him, especially when he criticized his home team, the West Indies (for me, it doesn’t matter whether they win or lose, I’ll always love the West Indies cricket team. I’ve loved them since I was a kid, and I’ll love them till the end of my days. Before me, my dad loved them since he was a kid. It is a family tradition in my house ), but I always admired Mikey for being fearless. He was one of the few commentators who didn’t kowtow to the Indian cricket board (the only other commentator I know who was similarly fearless was Ian Chappell – I love him too), and I always get goosebumps thinking about that.

So, sometime in 2020, Mikey was commentating during a test match in England, and play was cancelled that day due to rain. Such rainy days are good times for commentators in the studio to have a cricket conversation. Someone asked Mikey what he thought about the Black Lives Matter movement. It opened a dam and Mikey opened his heart out. Viewers who were disappointed that the day’s play was rained off, were engrossed listening to Mikey, and soon the messages started pouring in. The next day Mikey was interviewed on a live TV news channel and he spoke more about it. People started telling Mikey that he shouldn’t stop with this, but Mikey felt that he had said everything he wanted to say. At some point his friend who helped him write his memoirs a few years back, told him that with the voice and platform he had, he can write a book about this and that will reach more people. So Mikey decided to write this book, ‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise‘.

In this book, Mikey interviews leading black and indigenous athletes of contemporary times, all of whom are legends in their fields, and asks them to share their experiences when they were discriminated against because of their race. Some of the famous athletes interviewed are Usain Bolt, Thierry Henry, Naomi Osaka, Michael Johnson, Ibtihaj Muhammad, Hope Powell, Adam Goodes, Makhaya Ntini. Mikey also shares his own experiences when he was the target of racism.

But Mikey doesn’t stop with this. If he had done that, this book would have been a collection of interviews. He also talks about the history of Black people across the centuries till the present day and covers the recent violent incidents by the police against innocent Black people. It is essentially Black History 101. If you have read books about it before, you would know most of it. But, like me, if you have read about it in a scattered fashion, you’ll find many new things in it. As Mikey says in his preface –

“Just finally, before we get started, I want to be clear : this is not a book of complaints. It is a book of facts. I hope it will enlighten, inspire, surprise, shock, move. And, above all, help to bring about real change.”

If we are not familiar with the facts Mikey describes, it will make us angry, it will make our blood boil, we’ll find them unbelievable, it will break our hearts, it will make us cry. All these happened to me. I knew some of the facts, but it was unbelievable that some of these bad things, pure evil things, were happening well into the 20th century. There were two chapters called ‘Dehumanisation’ and ‘History Lesson’ which were very hard to read, because what they described was heartbreaking. It was unbelievable to read about some of the things, that scientists and philosophers that we admire from previous centuries, had said.

Mikey describes every important word and concept be uses, in simple language, so that you don’t have to Google or search for the dictionary if you don’t understand them. For example, when talking about Jim Crow laws, be describes who exactly Jim Crow was, and what these laws exactly said. In another place Mikey describes what ‘redlining’ exactly means. This enhances the reading flow of the book and makes it a beautiful experience.

After talking about bad experiences by sporting legends and giving us a history lesson, Mikey also shows the way forward. He talks about how education is important, how teaching history which is unbiased and factual and which doesn’t sweep the past below the carpet, is important, and how this will help in changing people’s minds and help in making our shared future better and more equal for everyone.

‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise‘ is a beautiful book, a powerful book, a heartbreaking book, an inspiring book. Mikey is famous for being fearless and for speaking his mind, and he does that in every page of this book. He sometimes turns his critical, unflinching gaze on himself, and describes how he sometimes failed to protest against racism and fight back, during his playing days. It is stirring to watch. The book is filled with anger, of course, the anger of the right kind, because of the inhuman things that happened, but it is not an angry book. Mikey’s tone is neutral and pitch-perfect, and he doesn’t make sweeping judgements and generalizations but sticks to the facts. I still don’t know how he managed to do that, because in a book like this, it is easy to get into an Us Vs Them mode, but Mikey doesn’t do that. His analysis is based on facts and it is nuanced. It is perfect. At the beginning of the book, he says this to make his point –

“this is not a story about hating white people. The word I used on Sky Sports was ‘brainwashed’. White or Black, pink or green, we have all been indoctrinated to believe that one colour is the purest and best. The further down the colour chart you go, the lazier the person, the more aggressive, untrustworthy, less intelligent. Of course it is ridiculous to blame ‘white people’ for that. They don’t know any better and have been to the same schools and colleges and lived in the same societies and cultures as the rest of us. You are a product of your environment. As I said on Sky that morning, this thing gets into your head and psyche almost by osmosis. It happens without you being aware.”

Later in the book, he says this about Tony Greig, which I found very interesting –

“Tony Greig, the England captain, had said he intended to make us ‘grovel’. I wince at the word. Tony, as I realised once I got to know him much later when we worked as co-commentators, was not a racist. But he was ignorant of the slave era connotations of the word. Particularly spoken by a white South African who was only playing for England because the country of his birth was banned from international sport due to apartheid. It was incredibly insensitive. I may only have been twenty-two, wet behind the ears to the ways of the world and just be beginning to understand racism, but I knew what he said was wrong.”

In another place, while talking about the informal quota system which is prevalent in some sporting teams he says this –

“but discrimination – positive or negative – to my mind does not work. What if that Black person who gets picked purely because of the colour of his or her skin, rather than his or her ability, is shown up to be hopelessly out of their depth? And this goes for any industry – not just sport. It is counterproductive. If you start filling positions in sport, business, industry or whatever because you need to tick a box based on ethnicity, gender or age, instead of employing the best person for the job, you don’t solve a problem, you create one. In fact, you create lots of problems. For a start that person might not be capable of doing the job and, in a high-profile area like sport, that person is embarrassed. How is that good for inspiring someone or being a role model?”

Very surprising, unexpected and beautifully said.

‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise‘ won the William Hill prize in the UK in 2021. The William Hill prize is given every year to the best book on sport in the UK, and it is the sports book equivalent of the Booker Prize or the Pulitzer Prize. Typically a book on cricket or football wins this prize, because these are the two biggest team sports in the UK and both have a rich literature. But ‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise’ is no ordinary book on sport. It is much more than that. It looks at racism through the lens of sport, but then goes much beyond that. It is a book about our contemporary world and it is an important, powerful book. This book is a bestseller in cricket-playing countries, because of Mikey’s background in cricket, but it is not just a cricket book. It deserves to be widely read by readers across the world. It is destined to become a classic.

I can’t think of any sportsperson, present or past, who would have written this book. Sportspersons might make individual gestures on particular occasions or even share their experiences, but writing a full-length book like this, they’d avoid. Because it is filled with inconvenient truths and would offend a lot of people. Maybe Serena Williams might write a book like this after twenty years. I can’t imagine anyone else doing it. But Mikey was brave and fearless and stuck his neck out and wrote this book. I don’t know whether there were any repercussions. I’m sure he lost some friends because they were offended. But sometime after the book was published, Mikey suddenly announced that he was retiring as a cricket commentator. It came out of the blue and was totally unexpected. It was heartbreaking for fans like me. Somehow one felt that there was some connection between his book coming out and him retiring. They happened too close to each other to have been a coincidence. It was almost as if Mikey thought that this book was his parting gift to his fans and admirers. The truth might just be that Mikey wanted to spend more time playing with his grandkids, tending to his garden, and taking walks with his wife to the beach. I hope that is the truth. I want to believe in that.

Thank you for this precious gift, Mikey. We’ll miss your fearless, wise commentary. Have fun playing with your grandkids 😊

Have you read ‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise‘? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – The Names of all the Flowers by Melissa Valentine

I discovered Melissa Valentine’s memoir ‘The Names of all the Flowers‘ recently, through Olga’s recommendation, and I just finished reading it.

When Melissa Valentine moves back to Oakland after being away for many years, she gets in touch with her childhood friend and they catch up. Then this friend’s brother and their cousin also join and Melissa looks at this friend’s brother and remembers her own brother, whom she calls Junior, whom she loved very much, who was shot dead by unknown assailants when he was nineteen. The rest of the book is about Melissa and her family, and especially her brother Junior, the good times and the bad, and how things happened which ended in this heartbreaking tragedy.

Melissa is biracial – her mom is black and her dad is white. Her mom’s side relatives treat her and her siblings as one of their own, and they even accept her dad as a part of the family, while her dad’s side relatives attempt to show affection, but it looks like condescension. This adds to the complexity of her and her family’s experiences, because frequently they are treated as outsiders, both by the black and the white community, and so things are doubly hard and challenging for them. It is especially hard for the kids, especially Melissa’s brothers, and her favourite brother Junior gets beaten up in school for not being black enough. The book starts with this complex background and gives a perceptive and sensitive depiction on what it means to be a black teenager in today’s America. Melissa’s love for her brother Junior shines through in every page, and Junior comes through as a complex character, someone who is happy and cheerful to start with, but whom the system and society harass and pigeonhole into a box, and when Junior tries protecting himself by any means possible, it all ends in tragedy. It is moving, poignant, heartbreaking. I cried after I finished reading the book.

I loved ‘The Names of all the Flowers‘. I can’t wait to find out what Melissa Valentine will come up with next. This book is published by the Feminist Press and they continue to rock – this is the third consecutive amazing book by them that I’ve read.

I’ll leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.

“Dad is a poet in the way he believes in life, the growing of things, of children. But his poetry is the kind people don’t understand, maybe he doesn’t either, the way it grows out of control, the desire for life so great it escapes even him; he cannot control this life. He loves children, which are another kind of life. I have observed the way he admires babies. He holds them awkwardly, kind of like the way he dances, as if his joints do not easily bend, moving choppily to a rhythm only he can hear. Instead of the normal way of holding a baby—bringing it to your chest, rubbing its back, smelling its skin—instead of the cooing and pleasantries most people make in the presence of babies, he stares into the child’s eyes lovingly, with reverence, while holding its head in his sandpaper palm. I have seen him do this with my baby cousins in Alabama. I have felt the discomfort of the people around him, wondering what this white man is trying to transmit into the skull of this black child. It is usually a black child he holds up with this kind of reverence.”

“She warns us not to show our true colors, warns us regularly—before we go to the neighbors’, before we go to school, before we go to Grandma’s. What color is that? Sometimes it is the color of desire—don’t show hunger, don’t show need or want of any kind to outsiders. But often it is something else—the color of the city, the color of the cement, the color of the curse words that often slip from our mouths, the blackness of our bodies that mixes with the white to make us what the little Southern kids call bright. “Why are you so bright?” they ask in earnest, and I look at them bewildered, wondering with my literal city ears what brightness they see in me. Bright, but still very much not white. Is that the color Mom means? The not-white? Or is it another color? She would prefer we act like we don’t come from the city, like our feet were born dusty, like we came from roads, not streets. She would prefer we act full, satisfied. Junior doesn’t care; he always shows his truest colors.”

“I know by now that nice and good are myths. There is no good, no nice. And if there is, it is impermanent. There is proof all around me : a homeless summer and a burned-down house full of trash that was masquerading as good, as nice; a brother whose bad follows him wherever he goes, no matter how nice—there is no protection from black boyness. Good and nice are only illusory feelings, but, at least for a moment, I enjoy wrapping myself up in the illusion.”

Have you read ‘The Names of all the Flowers‘? What do you think about it?

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