Reading Envy 197: Surly Magnificence

Lauren is back and fresh from June's Read Caribbean challenge and July's Sci-Fi July. We also talk summer reading, Women in Translation Month, and colonization.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 197: Surly Magnificence

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Books discussed:

Dancing in the Baron's Shadow by Fabienne Josaphat
That We May Live edited by various
Soviet Milk by Norah Ikstena
Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell
The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull

Other mentions:

Contribute to the 200th episode (words, not money)
Chef by Jaspreet Sing
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
Hadriana in All My Dreams by Rene Depestre
Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia by Sigrid Rausing
Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
Dublin Murder Squad by Tana French
Justine by Lawrence Durrell
Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell
Clea by Lawrence Durrell
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
The Durrells in Corfu (tv show)
Arc of a Scythe trilogy by Neal Shusterman
Wayfarers by Becky Chambers
Dawn by Octavia Butler
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

 
Related episodes:

Episode 097 - Blank Spaces with Lauren Weinhold
Episode 123 - Godlets and Forests with Lauren Weinhold
Episode 133 - To Understand the World with Lauren Weinhold
Episode 138 - Shared Landscape with Lauren Weinhold 
Episode 147 - Bonus Poetry Recommendations with Lauren
Episode 161 - Women in Translation Month Recommendations with Lauren
Episode 163 - Fainting Goats with Lauren
 

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Lauren is @end.notes on Instagram
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Around the World: 18 of 52 (Haiti)

Beautifully written stories, featuring women in difficult lives. I particularly enjoyed the epilogue, "Women Like Us," that has a sense of a recited poem to it.

I had selected a pile of books set in various Caribbean places to read when I was in the Caribbean, so it was interesting to end up reading Krik? Krak! while I was in the Bahamas. A recurring theme throughout these stories is how Bahamians treat Haitians cruelly. Just a few islands away!

"They treat Haitians like dogs in the Bahamas, a woman says. To them, we are not human. Even though our music sounds like ours. Their people look like ours. Even though we had the same African fathers who probably crossed these same seas together."

"We know people by their stories."
This is true. I'd like to read more of Danticat, particularly post-earthquake.

"Are there women who both cook and write? Kitchen poets, they call them. They slip phrases into their stew and wrap meaning around their pork before frying it. They make narrative dumplings and stuff their daughter's mouths so they say nothing more."