The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi - 4.5 stars

In Kabul 2007 with a drug addicted father and no brothers Rahima and her sisters only hope lies in the ancient custom of Bacha Posh.  This custom  allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age.  As a boy she can attend school, go to the market, and accompany her sisters in public.  Separated by a century, Rahima’s great great grandmother, Shekiba is scarred by boiling kitchen oil and is reviled by her family.  She disguises herself as a man and works as a guard at the women’s quarters in the king’s palace in Kabul where she finds refuge.  The book deals with gender inequalities and violence against women in the two different centuries.  Although Russians, the Taliban, Americans, and Europeans are mentioned, the book primarily involves the traditional Afghan culture which has not changed much in a century.

Afghan-American, Nadia Hashimi’s debut novel

The author is a pediatrician and was the democratic candidate for congress from the 6^th congressional district in Maryland

Citizens Of London: The Americans who Stood With Britain in its Darkest by Lynne Olson - 4.5 stars

How the U.S. finally came to the aid of Britain, the only European power left fighting the Nazis.  The book revolves around three U.S. characters: Gil Winant, Averill Harriman, and Edward R. Murrow all of whom wanted the U.S. to enter the war even tho Roosevelt tarried.  As England held on by her fingernails our U.S, ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, hid out at his country house and told Roosevelt that England was going to lose the war and the U.S. should not waste its resources trying to save her.  Kennedy was also a Nazi sympathizer.  The English people and its government did not care for him. The appointment of Winant was a game changer and he was greeted upon his arrival at the train station by the King of England.  Winant, Harriman, and Murrow were very close to the entire Churchill family.  This is not a dry read of history, It was a page turner. You will also read about Pamela Harriman and how she seduced so many men close to power.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones - 4 stars

This was an Oprah pick.  While it was very readable I doubt it would have been the bestseller it was had she not selected it.   The couple featured in the book, Roy and Celestial were black as were all the other characters.  The book is narrated by the three main characters, Celestial, Roy Jr., and Andre.  It is the relationship between the three of them that forms the spine of the book.  Celestial’s father, Franklin, was a high school chemistry teacher who tinkered in his basement and invented an additive for orange juice.  He became rich when he sold it to Minute Maid. The Davenports lived in the biggest house in the neighborhood, a previously broken down Victorian mansion which the Franklins restored. Instead of moving to affluent north east Atlanta which was white, they stayed in southwest black Atlanta.  The characters of Celestials parents, The Franklins were not well drawn.  On the other hand Roy’s lower middle class parents Roy Sr. and Olive were well drawn.  You felt like you knew them.  Roy was not Roy Sr’s biological child.  Roy Jrs. Real father abandoned Olive when she was pregnant and Roy Sr. took up with her.  They named him after Roy Sr. who was for all intents and purposes a true father to his namesake. Roy and Olive had no other children, because Olive made sure they didn’t.  Roy attended Morehouse college.  He met Celestial through his friend Andre.  She was attending Spellman after leaving Howard.  Celestial had an unhappy romance with a Howard professor and came home to Atlanta.

Celestial and Roy now an executive in a company in Atlanta meet, fall in love and marry. Prior to the marriage Roy thought of himself as a Lothario.  Celestial sports a decent diamond engagement ring which Roy describes as a flashlight.  In the African community it was impressive, but it was probably a ¼ to ½ carat diamond in a tiffany setting.  They settle into a middle class life in the house the Franklins gifted to Celestial in the black south west Atlanta neighborhood where she grew up.  Andre lives in the house next door.  Andre’s family was not intact.  His father left his mother when he was about 10. His father, Carlos, was of Puerto Rican descent.  Carlos remarried and had two children with his second wife and abandoned Andre. Mr. Franklin became his de facto father.  Though Celestial thought of Andre as her brother when they grew up, Andre always loved her in a romantic way.  Celestial was an artist who made artistic dolls which became well received and popular.  Celestial and Andre were planning a long and comfortable life with the children they wanted and with want for nothing.

On a trip to Eloe, Louisiana, Roy’s hometown, they stay in a motel overnight.  A woman Roy met at the ice machine was raped in her room and she accused Roy of the rape. This must have been before the advent of DNA evidence.  Celestial’s uncle, Mr. Banks provides an adequate defense for his nephew by marriage.  Nevertheless, Roy is convicted and sentenced to 12 years.  The makeup of the jury and the judge doom him to failure.  Once he is arrested, it is obvious to the reader that he will be convicted.  Celestial who is brokenhearted swears her allegiance to him.  However, Andre who comforts her has other ideas in mind.  Celestial terminates a pregnancy that would have been much welcomed had Roy not gone to prison.  There is no question in anyone’s mind that Roy was innocent.  Celestial makes a doll in a prison uniform and it becomes a hit in the art/craft community.  All her dolls look like Roy. She has a solo show in New York with dolls that look like Roy in prison uniforms.  Some sell for $1000 or more.  Her father sets her up in an upscale store selling her dolls in Atlanta.

Now we have a story about a love triangle brought about by Roy’s wrongful conviction.  After two years Celestial becomes romantically involved with Andre and sends Roy Jr. a dear john letter.  About this time Olive who visited Roy every week became ill with lung cancer.  She dies soon afterward.  Roy is heartbroken that he could not attend his beloved mother’s funeral.  His father, Roy sr. comes to visit but he too mourns the loss of Olive. While in prison Roy meets his biological father, Walter who befriends him and is his cellmate. The notion of a biological versus an adoptive father is an issue brought up by these two relationships. Roy Sr. is junior’s real father in every way except for his DNA.  Yet Walter becomes a father to him in prison guiding him in how to avoid prison difficulties and protecting him as best he can.  Even after he leaves prison, Roy Jr. visits his biological father, Walter on a regular basis.

Mr. Banks appeals Roy’s conviction.  After 5 years of a 12 year sentence, Roy Jr. is released.  He stays in Eloe for about a week. He believes that Andre betrayed him, and he is correct.  However, a different outcome is hard to imagine. Roy times his return to Atlanta when he knows Andre is arriving to pick him up from prison.  He arrives at the house he and Celeste lived in as a married couple.  She is surprised to see him and she is not pleased.  She is unnerved.  She does not welcome him in her arms though she and Andre were happy that his conviction was overturned and he was released.  Still after five years apart it was unreasonable for Roy to assume he could move back in where he left off.  When Roy confronts Andre, a fight ensues.  After that fight it is obvious that Roy and Celestial will have no future even tho they try.

The wrongful imprisonment of black males occurs too often.  It ruins families and lives.  This story is an example of that.  However, in this case, the family is living the American dream.  It is not a family on the edge of poverty.  The imprisonment does not bring about an economic crisis in the family as is more often the case.  However, Roy believes he has some cache as a “Morehouse man”.  I have never thought there was status in graduating from a historically black college such as Howard, Spellman, Morehouse, or Tuskegee Institute.  With their easy entrance requirements, course work that can be completed over 8 or 9 years other institutions are more prestigious.  Had Roy attended Emory, Tulane, or the University of Virginia, those would have been more prestigious.  Considering the leg up and scholarship offers available at those Universities for black male applicants, I was not too impressed with Roy, Celestial’s, or Andre’s scholarship.

Had Roy attempted to pick up his career where he left off, he would have found difficulties.  He would have had to explain his 5 year absence from the workforce.  Explaining that he was wrongfully convicted of rape would not endear him to future employers.  Some perpetrators are released because of a technicality rather than actual innocence.  Obtaining a finding of actual innocence from a court is very difficult and another matter entirely. Instead of pursuing a white collar career in Atlanta, Roy  opens an upscale barber shop with his father Roy sr.  He marries the local woman, Davinia, who welcomed him home and into her arms when he was released.  She is older than roy and has an adult son doing time in prison.  He does not feel he can develop a relationship with this son nor does he want children of his own.

Though this book deals with the dreadful consequences of the all too frequent wrongful imprisonment of black males much of the rest of the novel was at times sentimental.  The characters except for Olive, Roy Sr., Walter, and Davinia were in my opinion clichés.  I am sure that African American readers could identify with these characters.  I could regarding their middle class status.  However, I could not identify with them culturally.  A possible cure for some of the defects in the novel would have been to have the three main characters and narrators attend white universities and perhaps to live in Atlanta’s northeast white neighborhoods.  The book also reveals the often deeply flawed familial bonds and lack of responsibility in the black community.  When Franklin Davenport begins courting his wife Gloria, he is married to another.  When Olive becomes pregnant with Roy, Roy Sr. takes responsibility for Walter’s son.  There is no talk of terminating the pregnancy.  Pregnancy termination is not discussed until Celestial pregnant by her incarcerated husband decides to terminate that pregnancy.  That was a responsible though regrettable action.

Life In A Jar - 4 Stars

 by Mayer

 The Irena Sendler story tells the true story of a Polish social worker who during WWII rescued 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto.  Her story is brought to life by Liz, Megen and Sabrina, three high school girls in a small impoverished southeastern Kansas farming community where many people live hand to mouth.  Liz who starts the project along with her teacher, Mr. Conner brings the story to life for a history project after reading a one-line reference to Irena’s war time work and courage.  After researching her life thoroughly, the girls create a play with props fabricated in the school’s shop class to tell her story.  The holocaust play is inspirational leading to out of town performances and several trips to Poland financed by philanthropic people mostly affiliated with Jewish organizations throughout Kansas and the U.S.  There are even some international dates. The success of the play leads to college scholarships for the original three girls something they could only have hoped for before.  Each girl has her own family issues and tragedies which play out against this backdrop.  My only criticism of the book was that it was overly sentimental.  There were too many professions of love between Irena and her young biographers.  However, I thoroughly enjoyed this holocaust era true story of which I knew nothing before.  This book makes Poland’s recent passage of a law criminalizing any aspersions against the  Polish Christian community for its collusion with the Nazis in the German persecution and murder of its Jewish citizens.  One of my friends who survived the holocaust best described Poland’s attitude toward its Jews this way:  The Germans killed the Jews. The Poles enjoyed it.

Pachinko - 5 Stars

 by Min Lee

This is the story of four generations of Koreans living either in Korea under Japanese occupation or in Japan as second class citizens.  Hoonie, a Korean boy with a cleft palate and a limp, the only surviving child of blank and blank is betrothed to Yangjin the fourth of four girls in a peasant family.  She has no money and his family runs a boarding house with a little garden.  They do not own the boarding house.  They lease it and provide room and board to three Korean fishermen who work the shores of their island.  Yangjin becomes pregnant four times but only carries her fourth pregnancy to term and the child survies into adulthood.  Sunja, their child is only 13 when her beloved father Hoonie dies.  Though Hoonie has physical defects, he was literate and quite intelligent.  Yangjin continues to run the boarding house and support her daughter during the Japanese occupation of Korea.  The Koreans are looked down upon by the Japanese and deprived of many civil rights.  Sunja has an affair with a financially successful Korean named Hansu.  Unbeknownst to her he is married.  Hansu truly loves Sunja, but he cannot offer her marriage when she becomes pregnant.  Isak who was traveling through their island on the way to Osaka, Japan was referred to the boarding house by his brother, Yoseb.  Isak is ill with TB, but Yangjin accepts him as a boarder and allows him to stay until he is well enough to continue his travels.  He is a devout Christian minister and is on his way to work as a minister in a Christian church in Osaka.  Isak is a kind, ethical person and of a higher class of people than Yangjin’s typical boarders.  He is learned and literate.  When Sunja finds out she is pregnant and that Hansu is married she breaks with Hansu immediately.  Yangjin arranges for Sunja to marry Isak to give her child a name and a father.  It was not a match made in heaven, but they marry and become quite fond of each other.  Isak is always sick and the job he has taken comes without any compensation.  Sunja and Isak move in with Isak’s brother and his wife, Kyunghee.  Yoseb went into debt to pay Isek’s passage to Osaka.  He works in a factory for a Japanese business man and though he is often mistreated and exploited considers himself lucky to have such a good job.  Most Japanese will not employ Koreans who are considered dirty, conniving, unreliable, and lazy.  It is true they are poor b/c of the bias against them.  So many avenues of income are foreclosed to Koreans.  Kunghee and Yoseb have no children of their own and look forward to the birth of Sunja’s child.  The two families live together in a tiny house.  Kunghee would like to take a job, but Yoseb has forbid it.  In their culture it is unseemly for a married woman to work.  Still Kunghee makes a marvelous Kimchi.  She talks Yoseb into allowing her to prepare it in their tiny kitchen so that Sunja can sell it in the market.  It is successful and later picked up by a local restaurant.  They become suppliers to the restaurant.  Next they try a candy making business.  They prepare the candy in their kitchen and sell it in a stall in the market place near the train station.  This is how Sunja supports her family. 

Her first child Noa is born.  He is named after the biblical figure “Noah” and the name is given a Japanese language treatment.   When Noa is about six, Sunja gives birth to a boy, Mosesu who is biologically the offspring of both Isak and Sunja.  Noa is never made aware of the fact the Isak is not his biological father.  Unbeknownst to Sunja and the reset of the family, Noa’s biological father, Hansu pops in and out of their lives to assure them of a decent income.  Sunja will not knowingly accept his help b/c she is still hurt and angry that Hansu had an affair with her and never told her he was already married and had three daughters.  When debt collectors come to call on Yoseb, Sunja takes the gold pocket watch Hansu had given her when they were seeing each other and pawned it. Yoseb is angry, but they are finally out of debt.  Toward the end of the war Yoseb is employed in Nagasaki, an opportunity Hansu arranged unbeknown to the family.  Yoseb suffers a horrible injury with burns that won’t heal and he returns to the family.  They struggle to pay for his medicine and treatment.  He is in constant terrible pain.  Noa is a very good student and he aims to attend a highly competitive and expensive Japanese university named Waseda.  Though the family cannot afford tutors and coaches for the entrance exam, Noa finally succeeds in passing the test and gaining admission.  It is hard for Koreans to get into the school.  Now the family must find a way to pay for it.  Out of desperation, Sunja turns to Hansu.  He promises never to tell Noa where his tuition money came from, but he pays the tuition and Noa’s living expenses.  Noa has a luxury apartment.  He begins meeting Noa for a MEAL ONCE A MONTH.  He purports to be his benefactor.  Noa does not notice how much he looks like Hansu.   Noa is having an affair with one of the prettiest Japanese girls at school.  She wants to meet the benefactor and begs to attend one of the dinners.  Noa rejects the idea.  Finally, she surprises them both by following Noa and showing up at the dinner.  Noa is angry.  Afterword she shares her observation that he must be Noa’s biological father b/c they look so much alike.   He is at the end of his 3^rd year in school.  He returns home suddenly to confirm what his girlfriend suspected. He realizes his biological father is a Yakuza boss instead of the mild mannered clergyman, Isak, who he believed was his father. When Sunja admits as much, in shame Noa leaves school.  He takes a job and begins paying back Hansu all the tuition and living expense money.  He lives as a Japanese man, marries a Japanese woman with whom he has three children and cuts off all ties to his family.  They do not even know where he is.  His wife does not know of his background or that he is Korean.     

After more than 10 years Hansu finds Noa and takes Sunja to his office. Noa has a good job that is not offered to Koreans.  Hansu advises Sunja not to try to see him and to just observe from afar.  She doesn’t listen to him.  She goes into his office and they talk.  He is shocked by her visit.  He is cordial and invites her to spend time with him and meet his family.  The very next day he kills himself.  He was in a terrible quandary.  He would have had to tell his wife that he was Korean and had a family.  This was a shame with which he could not live.  Sunja is shattered and moves to Osaka to help care for her grandson, Solomon, who is Moses child.  Moses is a successful Pachinko boss and is able to send his son to Columbia University in the U.S.   There he meets a Korean American girl, Phoebe.  Moses wants his son to work for one of the big investment banks.  He does not want him working in the Pachinko parlor business which is looked down upon by the Japanese. The son returns to work for a large Japanese investment bank with his girlfriend in tow.  He has often heard the phrase that behind every successful Korean family is a Pachinko business somewhere.

Meanwhile Solomon completes his education at Columbia in NYC.  Wishing to return to Japan, he takes a job with a British investment bank in Tokyo.   Phoebe, accompanies him.  His boss Kazu includes Solomon in many extracurricular activities appearing to like and respect him.  Kazu needs to obtain a piece of land owned by an elderly Korean woman to complete a deal for a client.  He has had no luck, because the woman won’t sell to the Japanese.  Goro a family friend induces her to sell to him and sells it to Kazu for the price he paid earning no money on the deal.  A few days later the old woman dies.  Even though neither Goro nor Moses are Yakuza, Kazu suspects that they are Yakuza and that something untoward happened to her as a result.  He owns the property but no longer wants to make the deal.  He fires Solomon who returns to his family. Phoebe realizing that Solomon will not marry her leaves him and returns to the states.  In spite of the fact that Solomon has a solid gold education, the Japanese still look down on him because he is Korean.  He decides to work instead in his father’s Pachinko business.  While Moses is disappointed that his son will no longer be in the prestigious field of investment banking, he is proud that Solomon has respect for him and the business he built without a formal education beyond the first two years of high school.

Sunja visits Isak’s grave.  The cemetery master informs her that for years Noa visited the grave every month in secret.  Sunja is surprised by this.

All The Tea in China - 4 Stars

by Rose        

I was convinced to read this book by being led to believe that its main thrust was the difference the discovery and cultivation of tea made for the health of the British people and in particular maternal health.  It is barely mentioned in this book and only at the end.  It is the subject of one paragraph.  Still it makes sense.  Lacking modern sanitary conditions people including pregnant mothers and children drank beer which was safer than water. Ingestion of alcohol caused birth defects and delays among newborns in the British Isles and delays and brain damage in their young who drank it instead of water.  All that makes sense.  However, if that is the subject about you which to read, then read something else.  This is the biography of Robert Fortune the man who was single handedly responsible for the theft of tea plants from China where their exportation was strictly regulated to the lands of India at the base of the Himalayas.  England did not have the same control over China as it did over India in spite of the fact that it won The Opium Wars which put China and its people at great disadvantage.  Robert Fortune was a self-educated botanist, the son of peasant stock who was paid very little to dedicate his discoveries to the crown.  Men who were from merchant or landed gentry could afford to attend schools of higher education including University which entitled them to higher salaries and income from property that provided them with a pleasant life style.  On the other hand, Robert Fortune was provided a house for his family at first on the grounds of the state botanical gardens and later elsewhere.  In addition to the value of the house, he received about $10,000 per year.  Due to his wife’s scrimping and saving, they were able to get by but just barely.   Robert Fortune went abroad for 3 years at a time.  He lived in China where he was instructed to study the exotic plants located in China including tea plants and to bring the m home to England.  He brought a number of exotic plants including orchids to England.  The Chinese were extremely secretive about their tea growing technology and the tea seeds and plants themselves.  Fortune was to obtain the plants and secret them to India where England had set up future tea plantations.  England had little control over inner China which was an anathema to them, but they occupied and had great control over India.  The best Chinese tea plantations were located in Northwest China at the base of the Himalayas.  On just the other side of the Himalayas lay India and the perfect soil and climate for tea growing plantations.

By now Robert discovered a way to augment his meager salary.  He could send porcelains, silks, and trinkets home on British bound ships.  There he auctioned off these treasures for sizable sums and at the end of his life was earning a sizable yearly income.  Though not mentioned in this book, it is likely he was hired as a consultant or a public speaker and/or consultant between the two 3 year trips in China and after the second trip.

Because white folks who often strayed out of the European colonies in China which were in Shanghai or Hong Kong in southern China were often killed, Robert Fortune had to devise a method to travel and return to Shanghai safely. The tea plants grown in Shanghai which enjoyed a tropical climate and monsoons were of inferior quality.  Fortune devised a method to travel to the less desirable green tea growing and processing plantations first.  He repeated it to travel to the black tea growing plantations later.  Even though he was quite tall, he disguised himself as a Chinese Mandarin (a person of high social status), and took with him native Chinese guides and coolies to make the trip.  The chief guide was the son of one of the green tea plantations and processing plants.  Fortune took the seeds and seedlings back in “wardian cases” or terrariums.  After traveling to the green tea plantations, he learned that the difference between black and green tea was in the processing rather than the plants themselves.   The green teas employed a green dye which did not appeal to the English as much as the black tea did.  Unfortunately, though he sent the wardian cases and seeds well packed to India, first they were delayed by a doubling back by the shipper who received a more lucrative contract and then by the caretaker at the second to last stop who opened the terrariums.  Opening the terrariums was the worst action that could have been taken.  Out of thousands of seeds and seedlings that were shipped only 16 plants survived. The ultimate botanist occupant of the final tea plantation was not much of a botanist either and he over watered the seedlings nearly killing them.

Next Fortune traveled to the black tea growing regions again at much personal risk.  Again masquerading as a Mandarin from a distant province (presumably a tall one) He took and experienced guide who held a standard giving him the monarch’s protection.  This standard came in handy at one troubling and possibly life threatening encounter.  This time Fortune was even more successful in obtaining tea saplings and seeds from Northwest China at the base of the Himalayas. These were the tea stocks used to make the favored black tea. On his return to Shanghai he prepared even more carefully for their shipment.  However, at no place in the book does the biographer explain why he did not accompany the shipment since the shipping conditions were so crucial.  These tea plants survived and took hold.  One brand is called Darjeeling after the Indian tea plantations that grew and processed it.  Upon succeeding at this endeavor, Fortune returned to England and made his fortune by importing Chinese goods.   The author opines that tea was the impetus for the French building of the Suez canal, but I think it was for trade in general.  She also claims that it helped maternal and childhood health as well as health in general which it did.  She portrays this as the greatest theft of technology in history and perhaps it was.  I think Rose overstates the importance of tea as a reason to read her book.  The book is less than 300 pages. * If you are really interested in botany, particularly tea botany than this is a well written biography.  However, I think Pachinko, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, and the Rent Collector are all better reads and you would be more entertained by reading one of those. For that reason I am giving this 4 stars.  I am just not that interested in tea botanists. However, if you are a National Geographic and Economist reader you might prefer “All The Tea in China “ by Rose.  Of interest is the fact that this book mentions a specific tea variety grown by an isolated tribe called the Hakha tribe.  The same tribe is mentioned in The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by See.  The Hakha tribe is so isolated and superstitious that the 1 child policy did not apply to them.

The Russians were better at protecting similar state secrets.  Russian sables cannot be exported alive and no one has been successful in stealing them.  Someone should take a lesson from Robert Fortune.

The Rent Collector - 5 Stars

                                                              

By Cameron Wright

This is a tale of historical fiction inspired by the documentary, River of Victory.  Set in the biggest dump in Cambodia Kim Li and Sang Ly eke out a living in Stung Meanchey, the municipal garbage dump. They live in a hut that leaks when it rains and offers only the barest protection from the elements.  Additionally, Sang Li tries to find a treatment and cure for their chronically ill son, Nisay. The rent Collector, Sopeap Sin is frequently drunk, sloppy, and nasty.  Sang Ly and Ki Lim search through the Cambodian detritus to try to find things they can use or sell.  In this way they earn their living.  In the dump there are kind and helpful people as well as thieves and gangs.  Sang Li knows that the way to improve their lot in life is through education, and she desperately wants to learn to read.  When Sopeap learns of her desire, she begins teaching her to read and Sang Li learns part of Sopeap’s secret.  At one time she was an English teacher.  During the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge Rule all of the rich and educated people were murdered.  Hence, Sopeap kept her education a secret.  However, she began bringing Sang Ly books and teaching her to read.  Sang Li loved to read and could not get enough of the lessons and books.  Sopeap enjoyed teaching her.  With her literacy she was able to find  better treatment for her son, Nisay, from a real doctor and he seemed to improve.   Besides finding someone learned enough to treat him scientifically, Nisay’s parents had to be able to pay for the treatment and medicine. Both were challenges.  (spoiler alert) Eventually, Sopeap’s appearances became less frequent and it became apparent that she was quite ill.  Sang Li knew she had another secret so she followed her one day and saw her visit a large house in an affluent section of Phnom Penh where she left much of the rent she collected from her tenants in the dump.  Sopeap’s story turns out to be one of redemption.  In spite of the extreme poverty in Stung Meanchey there is hope, determination and redemption among its inhabitants. This is an inspirational story, and  I could not put this book down.