All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein

          I have found it to be true that one of the pinnacle reasons so many of us are drawn toward literature is that we find a common spark of humanity igniting on the pages below our eyes, and it is there, in that revelation, that we are bought and sold all at the same time to this ideal. We realize that through the written word, someone else’s story can have a significant impact on our own. Not every book has this voice. Not every author can speak with it. Gerda Weissmann Klein, however, summons it in All But My Life.

         All But My Life is a memoir of a girl in her teens during the Holocaust being taken first from her home, then from her family, until she is left quite literally with only her life. As Gerda tells her story, there is courage, hope, contemplation of suicide, miraculous triumph, and great love. She tells of her parents love as they talked on the last night they were ever to be together. She tells of the horrors of a death march from Germany to Czechoslovakia, when a group of 2,000 girls slowly became 150, and when her dearest childhood friend died in her arms a week before being liberated. 
When I finished this book, I began to wonder why more books don’t carry such an impact. But not every author has a story to tell like Gerda’s, and Gerda makes it her duty to tell the stories of those forgotten in mass graves, ditches, and crematoria. 
        All But My Life doesn’t look for sympathy, and it doesn’t raise a loud noise for us to take into account the atrocities of the past. Rather, it sits us down and tells us of things that happened, and inspires us with the courage and hope that overcame it all. Gerda was left to tell her story and the stories of others who no longer can. Stories that ended lost—obscure in the vast population of the dead, but remembered and quickened once again so that they might never be forgotten. 

~Kevin Kaminski~ 

Forged by Fire

Forged by Fire by Sharon Draper is an outstanding book, both for classroom applications and for casual readers.  Gerald, the protagonist, is thrust into the home of his abusive stepfather, Jordan Sparks, after his Aunt Queen, who has provided him for a loving household the past several years, dies of a heart attack.  Jordan verbally and physically abuses Gerald and his mother Monique, while he also sexually molests Gerald's half-sister Angel.  Throughout the novel, Gerald is very protective of Angel against Jordan and from his drug and alcohol addicted mother.  The term "Forged by Fire" is very appropriate to this book, as readers will come to find out. 

In regards to classroom applications, I have seen several aspects that can be used.   There is a strong male protagonist, as well as a strong male role model.  There are children growing up in a lower income household, in non-traditional family settings.  There are parents/step-parents in jail. There is an abusive character, a neglectful character who also suffers from drug and alcohol abuse, and two women who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Battered Woman's syndrome from the abuse they have taken.  There is also a theme of literacy; how influenced a male can be when reading is reinforced and when reading is neglected.  Based on the abuse material, a lot can be drawn into a classroom setting to explore themes that may be prevalent in many students' lives; characters they can relate to either directly or indirectly.

It is for these reasons, and of course, for the pleasure of reading, that I wholeheartedly recommend this book both for the casual reader and for the teacher looking for new material in his or her classroom.

-          ~Jason Wright~

Madness

   We usually go through life trying to figure out what goes inside of people's minds. "Madness: A Brief History" takes it one step further as Roy Porter goes through the history of the mentally insane, showing the reader's a glimpse into their minds. Porter however speaks of how the insane were viewed and treated beginning from the very ancient times to the developments of the twentieth century.
   One of the more interesting concepts in his book however, was that we still question, even after all of our modern medicine what madness truly is. He writes, " The figure of Folly may have also taken her bow, but the original riddle remains: is the world mad, is civilization itself psychopathogenic?...The issue is still alive." (Page 88). After all, there's melancholy poets who are considered mad and that is why their poetry is so alive. Then of course most every genius is pegged as insane, so really this book poses a question, are we all insane and do only a fraction of us have a grasp on reality, truth and greatness?

         I highly recommend this book for anyone who likes to question society and of course for those who are curious as to the history of things, because this book provides only the most pertinent and interesting things about the history of madness. I would also use this book in a classroom as an example of how ideas change over time, and how some treatments of the insane in the past were considered normal then and horrible/ridiculous in today's time; for ideas are ever changing.

- Timea Kernacova

A quick little blurb on "a mercy":

       Toni Morrison¹s latest novel  a mercy is a raw, powerful, and terrifying book. In it, Morrison unleashes an agoraphobic vision of colonial America, a space of constant negotiation (spatially, politically, and pragmatically) and hostility, in which life is brutish and short. The text takes as it starting point the twin horrors that underlie the foundation of the nation: the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of the Native Americans. It does not stop there, though, as Morrison is at pains to also show the tenuous lives of a host of characters who are marginal: those who suffered
under indentured servitude; gay men; orphans; prostitutes; foundlings; widows. In creating the scope of her novel this way, Morrison pens a rich and unspoken history of America, all while maintaining a sense of the very personal and private tragedies that inform the lives of her characters. The lawless and crassly commercial world of colonial America is a space in which individuals are constantly confined to their worth as commodities, but more than this, the text is a subtle and sensuous exploration of the violence of capitalism.
                                                                         
   The scope of the text is ambitious enough and this alone makes it worth reading. But when we add to this Morrison¹s unparalleled skill, we have a novel the reverberates and echoes with a fierce and haunting language. This is word made flesh made poetry made prose. This is a book that leaps off the page and gently buries itself in the throat and the heart. It is a text of extraordinary grace, fear, and sacrifice.
~By: Dr. Lorna L. Perez~

A Long Way Gone- Ishmael Beah

         A Long Way Gone is a great memoir about a young boy who is pressed into service during the civil war in Sierra Leone. When the rebels attack the village, twelve year old Ishmeal learns about survival and death in a personal and painful way. He is forced into military service and the acts of war, seen from the eyes of a young boy are heartbreaking. The acts committed are horrendous but the humanity that surfaces from a place of darkness is heartwarming; the vivid details Ishmael recounts in his story make the scene come alive better than a million dollar film could do justice. Surprisingly, it is not the horrible acts of war committed that stand out in the reader’s mind, but the struggle Ishmael faces in rehabilitation to rejoin society after relieved from his role in the army. Ishmael’s book is being taught in some schools and though the content can be graphic at times, many students are unaware of the many atrocities of war that occur all over the world. The book is incredibly moving and a great read for anyone!
”No one is born violent. No child in Africa, Latin America or Asia wants to be part of war. These are situations children are forced into . . . It is easy for a child to become a soldier but it is much more difficult to recover one’s humanity.” 
-Ishmael Beah: UNICEF conference, 2007, Paris.


~ Jourdan Schwagner Morgan~

Why Write a Book Review?

(Taken from http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/sociocultural/bookreviewtips.html)

Why write a book review?

There are several reasons why you should begin writing book reviews early in your graduate career.

To make a contribution

Even students just starting out in graduate school can often provide very thoughtful evaluations of published work in their area of interest and knowledge. It's important for you to enter the intellectual discussion as soon as you have something to say, and book reviews are one good way to do this.

To perform an academic service

Book reviewing is a valuable service to the academic community, and it's worth getting familiar early on with a task that you'll probably continue to perform throughout your academic career.

To beef up your CV

Book reviews give you a chance to strengthen the publication section of your CV, especially before you're at the stage of your career where you're ready to publish your own research. Although book reviews aren't weighted as heavily as original research articles in hiring and other personnel decisions, they do have some value, and a book review or two will help you begin to develop your CV.

To learn how to write a book

One of the most effective ways to master the conventions of academic writing is to read closely and analytically, the way you need to in order to do a book review. In preparation for writing your own first academic book-length manuscript--your dissertation--it's extremely useful to get a clear idea of how an academic book is put together by looking at some examples in detail.

To read

Most academics, including graduate students, never have enough time to do all the reading they want to do in their field. Doing book reviews gives you an excellent excuse to read books of interest to you and helps you keep on top of current trends in your field.

To get a free gift

A not inconsiderable factor in deciding to do a book review, especially when you're a penurious graduate student, is the added benefit of receiving a free book as compensation for your time and expertise. Academic books can be quite expensive, and receiving a free copy of a book of interest to you (typically in hardback) is a very pleasant bonus for doing a book review.

To become known in your field

Perhaps the most important reason to do book reviews is that it brings you into the scholarly conversation and allows you to make connections with other scholars. As a reviewer, you'll gain attention from the author and from journal readers as a new voice in the field. You may even hear personally from the author (if your review was especially positive or insightful--or, unfortunately, if it was especially negative or clueless, at least in the author's view).

If you submit a well-written review within the deadline indicated by the editor, you may also become a valuable reviewer for the journal. Soon, you may no longer need to offer your services as a reviewer because you'll be receiving requests from editors to review books for them. Having a good relationship with a journal editor as a book reviewer may also help ease the way a bit when you're ready to submit a manuscript on your own research to the journal. In academia, as in Hollywood, it's always better to be known than unknown.

Ted Kooser, the Poet Laureate of the United States, is a writer of brutal brevity. His collection Sure Signs manages to be both stunningly visual and emotionally rich and complex. In Kooser, we get the very best of writing with scissors, as there is not an unnecessary line, phrase, or word polluting his writing. Instead, he gives us a kind of poetic space that is sparse, mid-western, gorgeous and unexpected. Sure Signs is the kind of collection that you continue to go back to; the one you pick up in six weeks or six months or six years and find new and unexpected nuance. This is nothing short of a stunning collection full of wit, humor and surprising beauty. It is a book that one is thankful for.
- Dr. Lorna Perez

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Copper Sun by Sharon M. Draper would be a novel I would be able to teach in my secondary classroom.  Copper Sun could be compared to a slave narrative such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass or The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.  However, this is a work of fiction and told through the eyes of a young girl, Amari.  We see Amari from her life with her tribe in Africa to her journey to and within America as a slave.   Draper does not hold back the hardships that slaves went through on their journey aboard the slave ships, such as sickness, starvation, rape and death.  When in America, we are also not spared the fear of being in a new place, understanding that you no longer belong to yourself and not being able to communicate with anyone around you.  Although, we are not saved from the horror of slave life by Draper, we are shown a new sense of community and family.  Amari becomes part of this community and has new family and friendships.

 Children being taught this book in a classroom may walk away with a better connection and understanding of the history of America and slavery than they would reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass or The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.  Children would be able to better relate to the thoughts and actions of someone their own age as opposed to a story of someone older looking back on their experiences.  Draper depicts accurate portrayal of the history of the slave trade and what occurred in the journey as well in America.  We are still shown the hardships of slaves in Copper Sun that we see in other slave narratives and we see the history intact in the same manner as well.  Children would be able to better relate to this, yet still walk away with the knowledge of America’s history in regard to slaves and the slave trade.

-Amy Widman