Month: November 2016

A collection of twenty-six short stories & essays written by Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls, Broken Monsters, and Zoo City. Why haven’t I read any of Lauren Beukes’s work before? This book was my favorite kind of strange!

You might think of a city as a map, all knotted up in the bondage of grid lines by town planners. But really, it’s a language—alive, untidy, ungrammatical. The meaning of things rearranges, so the scramble of the docks turns hipster cool while the faded glamor of the inner city gives way to tenement blocks rotting from the inside. It develops its own accent, its own slang. And sometimes it drops a sentence. Sometimes the sentence finds you. And won’t shut up. (Ghost Girl)

The stories in this book address a wide range of topical issues: corporate and government exploitation of the underprivileged, the effects of reality TV and social media on culture, government surveillance, obsession/toxic relationships/domestic violence, and creativity. Most of the stories are set in South Africa, but we also visit Pakistan, Japan, and unfamiliar planets. The author occasionally uses language specific to South African culture, so be sure to turn to the glossary at the end if you have trouble with any unfamiliar terms.

Dehumanizing is not only something that other people do to you. It can be self-inflicted, too. Switch off the light behind your eyes. Focus on the lowest rungs of Maslow. Get through the day, however you can. (Inner City)

The overall atmosphere is dark and disturbing. Many of the stories are spine-chilling in a “sensing a sinister presence while walking alone in the dark” way. Most of the characters seem to have a deep longing for something better and are doing the best they can to survive in the harsh and unforgiving world they were born into. There’s a mix of realistic stories and science fiction, but even the ones set in a strange environment have a recognizable tinge. Throughout the entire book, I felt like I was in the middle ground between fantasy and reality. Beukes takes the current state of affairs to an extreme using familiar attitudes and rationalizations. Strip away all the strange details and it’s all uncomfortably real!

The young people don’t see it. It’s all nonsense, they say, apartheid is over and done, leave it behind. But the past infests everything, like worms. They’ve cut down the old trees, the new government, but the roots of the past are still there, can still tangle round your feet, trip you up. They go deep. (Smileys)

My seven favorites in the fiction section:
• Slipping: A young woman with a disability has the opportunity to lift her family out of poverty when she agrees to be enhanced with biotechnology. Her custodians use her as a showpiece to obtain military and pharmaceutical contracts.
• Pop Tarts: Sponsorships are king in a competitive market where everyone has the opportunity to broadcast their lives on television. These new celebrities are willing to go to extreme lengths to improve their ratings and keep fickle audiences entertained.
• Tankwa-Karoo: An eclectic mix of people gather together at a music festival as society collapses around them, but the situation at “civilization’s last stand” quickly deteriorates.
So in order to avoid the same anxieties or doubts it’s possible that he now looks to avoid any situations that buy generic levitra amerikabulteni.com can become intimate. It is hard to swallow tablets or capsules. buy cheap levitra You don’t want them to ask questions and discuss buy tadalafil canada your sexual condition. It is essential to be secure when buying prescription drugs on the lowest price for cialis internet. • Riding With the Dream Patrol: Written as a news article, correspondent Lauren Beukes interviews a government surveillance unit that’s dedicated “watching the greatest show on earth. You.”
• Easy Touch: A 419 scammer preps his next victim.
• Algebra: The tale of a complicated relationship told from A to Z.
• The Green: A corporation recruits people with underprivileged backgrounds to travel to a dangerous planet and mine a unique substance that’s potentially valuable to the military.

At least in fiction, unlike real life, you can get justice. (All the Pretty Corpses)

There were only five essays/articles in the non-fiction section and I wished there were more! The five non-fiction pieces included reveal how Beukes’s career as a journalist informs her fiction. In Adventures in Journalism, the beginnings of the short story Smileys come to light. In All the Pretty Corpses, she addresses the media treatment of murder victims and explains why she wrote The Shining Girls. There is also a really touching essay, On Beauty: A Letter to My Five Year Old Daughter, that I hope every young girl has the opportunity to read.

Real beauty is engaging with the world. It’s the courage to face up to it, every day. It’s figuring out who you are and what you believe in and standing by that. It’s giving a damn. You are interesting because you are interested, you are amazing because you are so wide open to everything life has to give you. (On Beauty)

As is the case with many collections of short fiction, not all the stories resonated with me. Sometimes the weird little details are so distant from my own frame of reference that I have a hard time visualizing what was going on and/or feeling like I had a full grasp of the message being given. The absolute weirdest–and most fun–story was Unathi Battles the Black Hairballs (available at link), a short story that readers of Haruki Murakami will appreciate. It’s hard not to be intrigued by a badass flight sergeant wearing “knee-high white patent combat boots made from the penis leather of a whale she had slaughtered herself”!

This author is definitely on my must-read list now. I love her empathy, imagination, and how she explores important issues in a creative way. If you like this book, I think you might also like Some Possible Solutions by Helen Phillips or Children of the New World: Stories by Alexander Weinstein. You might also want to check out director Neill Blomkamp’s movies: District 9, Elysium, and Chappie.

Fast-paced and engaging story about the dark side of the chocolate industry. For 12 & up.

I don’t count how many trees we pass because I don’t count the things that don’t matter. I don’t count unripe pods. I don’t count how many times I’ve been hit for being under quota. I don’t count how many days it’s been since I’ve given up hope of going home.

Two years ago, Amadou (15) and his brother Seydou (8) left their home in Mali to find a seasonal job and earn money for their family. Instead, they were brought to the Ivory Coast and sold into slavery on a cacao farm. The work is dangerous and the children are beaten and starved if they don’t meet the undefined quota. The bosses promise they can return home when they pay off their debt, but Amadou has never seen anyone being released from duty. One day, a girl is brought to the camp. Khadija (13) is defiant and determined to escape. Amadou had lost all hope of ever going home, but her willful spirit makes him start thinking about the outside world again. When Seydou’s life comes under threat, Amadou sees no other choice but to attempt an escape.

“A lot of bad things happened to us . . . Just because you were there when they happened doesn’t mean they’re your fault.”

The story is told from Amadou’s perspective. Amadou feels guilty about bringing his beloved brother into this horrific situation. He’s done everything he can to protect Seydou, but he’s beginning to feel resentful. His brother is young and doesn’t fully understand the consequences of his actions. The farm bosses know Seydou is Amadou’s weak spot and they exploit that weakness when they can. Seydou wants to be treated more like an equal than a baby brother. He’s frustrated that Amadou doesn’t see him as capable.

A girl has never been brought to the farm before and all the boys at the farm are fascinated when Khadija arrives. Khadija is different from the girls in Amadou’s village. He assumes her family must be wealthy because she’s well-fed and educated. He wonders how she ended up at the farm, but she isn’t ready to tell her story. Khadija’s defiance makes his life difficult, but they have no choice but to work together as their situation grows worse.

It hurts too much to think that, after all this work, there may be some journeys that you just never come all the way home from.

While this book isn’t extremely graphic, there is disturbing content: beatings, descriptions of bodily injury, starvation, and rape (Chapter 6, the description of what Amadou is witnessing is vague). The journey these kids embark on is terrifying. They have little food or money. They have no means of communication, so help is not just a phone call away. No one can be trusted and they have to worry about encountering wild animals. They have to come up with creative solutions to get out of terrible situations. Their survival didn’t feel guaranteed at any point. Amadou has to make some very adult decisions by the end. The anxiety I felt for these characters was real. I could not stop turning the pages, yet I was also scared of what these kids would come across next.

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There are thousands of kids like us, working across the country to make a sweet for rich kids in other places. Thousands. It’s a number that matters so much I can’t wrap my mind around it.

This book sheds light on the industry practices that bring us our cheap sweets. The major chocolate companies distance themselves from the actions of the farmers, even though low compensation and lack of oversight contribute to the situation. While there are laws against child labor in many countries, over 150 million children around the world live and work without those safeguards. The Bitter Side of Sweet is a reminder of the importance of being an informed consumer. It shows how our dollars may be indirectly funding things that go against our values and actively harming our fellow man. As Sullivan writes in her author’s note, “chocolate companies cannot exist without consumer demand.”

Relevant Links:
A six-minute video that shows cacao farmers taste chocolate for the first time and also shows some of the harvesting process:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEN4hcZutO0
The Dark Side of Chocolate – 2010 documentary recommended by the author
List of Ethical Chocolate Companies
Chocolate: the industry’s hidden truth (and the easy stuff we can do to still enjoy it) – This writer suggests looking for chocolate that has a short supply chain and/or purchasing chocolate that is produced in Central America and South America.

Expertly curated anthology of short speculative fiction by Chinese writers.

I’ve really enjoyed reading short science fiction lately and Invisible Planets is a fantastic addition to my collection! It features thirteen short stories from seven Chinese writers, collected and translated by writer Ken Liu. Liu is upfront about the book’s limitations and he cautions the reader to not draw any broad conclusions from the selections. He selected works that were most accessible to a wide audience. Liu urges Western readers to abandon their preconceived notions of China and remember these writers are “saying something about the globe, about all of humanity, not just China.” I assume a greater knowledge of Chinese history, culture, and anxieties would add an extra layer of nuance to many of the stories, but the themes are resoundingly universal. One thing I love about science fiction is that it takes modern-day anxieties and pushes them to the next level. Sometimes it’s easier to see clearly when you’re looking at another world.

[We are] only pawns, stones, worthless counters in the Great Game. All we can see is just the few grids of the board before us. All we can do is just follow the gridlines in accordance with the rules of the game: Cannon on eighth file to fifth file; Horse on second file to third file. As for the meaning behind these moves, and when the great hand that hangs over us will plunge down to pluck one of us off, nobody knows. But when the two players in the game, the two sides, have concluded their business, all sacrifices become justified. (The Year of the Rat)

The short stories featured are diverse, ranging from surreal fantasies to hard sci-fi. One is even written like a fairy tale (Grave of the Fireflies). In a collection with such a variety of styles, it’s going to be difficult for each story to appeal to every reader. I didn’t enjoy the surreal stories (A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight or Call Girl) as much as the more traditional selections, but I could still appreciate the skill of the writer. While the stories are all very different, a few themes popped up more than once: government manipulations, corporate exploitation of workers, social class divisions, aging populations, and the impact of storytelling. Most of the stories take place Earth. The last section includes three essays about Chinese science fiction that serve as historical context and a starting point for analysis.

My favorites:

• The Year of the Rat by Chen Quifan – Programmed rats have become an important export, but everything goes horribly awry when the rats escape their farms. College students who can’t find jobs are enlisted in a war against these genetically modified creatures. Some begin to question their duties when they see that the rats have developed signs of intelligence. Not everything is as it seems: “The truth is ever elusive.” If you like this one, you might also enjoy The Green and Unaccounted by Lauren Beukes or the Men Against Fire episode of Black Mirror.

• Tongtong’s Summer by Xia Jia – This was the most emotionally affecting one for me! Tongtong’s grandfather moves in with her family after an injury, but he is not the grandfather Tongtong remembers. He’s depressed about losing his independence and lonely from isolation. Tongtong’s family buys a robot caretaker and eventually the technology is harnessed so that those that are homebound can actively participate in society. My favorite part of this story was Tongtongs’s sweet relationship with her grandfather and her evolving understanding of the aging process. Xia Jia dedicates this short story to her own grandfather in a touching author’s note. If you like this story about the positive aspects of technology, you might also enjoy the short story Saying Goodbye to Wang by Alexander Weinstein.

• The City Of Silence by Ma Boyong – This one takes Orwell’s 1984 to a modern level: “The author of 1984 predicted the progress of totalitarianism, but could not predict the progress of technology.” In this oppressive society, the citizens are constantly pushing the boundaries of language and the government’s surveillance technology is always improving. The constant battle between the opposing groups is causing the list of “healthy words” to shrink to the point where communication is becoming impossible. Arvardan is exhausted with his monotonous life. He requests access to the BBS forums in hopes of freer communication, but the online situation is even worse. He begins searching for clues of other’s discontent and the journey leads him in unexpected directions.
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The real key isn’t about whether what I say is true, but whether you believe it. From start to end, the direction of narrative is not guided by the tongue, but by the ear. (Invisible Planets)

• Invisible Planets by Hao Jingfang – The narrator describe their travels to far-flung planets across the vast universe and the diverse alien cultures they encountered. Are the narrator’s stories true? Does it matter if they are? Even though these alien civilizations seemed strange on the surface, I was reminded of the many different people who make up human civilization. My favorite society was Amiyachi and the Aihuowu, who “live on the same planet but belong to entirely separate worlds.” Both cultures are unable to see the other one as intelligent beings because they’re only able to contextualize the other within the framework of their own experiences.

When I am done telling you these stories, when you’re done listening to these stories, I am no longer I, and you are no longer you. In this afternoon we briefly merged into one. After this, you will always carry a bit of me, and I will always carry a bit of you, even if we both forget this conversation. (Invisible Planets)

• Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang (Winner at the 2016 Hugo Awards for Best Novelette) – A fascinating story about a father’s love and economic inequality. Beijing is a complex folding city, with a portion of the city always hidden underground. There are three separate spaces divided by social class. The space a citizen lives in determines the amount of time they have to live their lives; First Space gets 24 hours, while the more densely populated Second Space and Third Space get twelve hours each. A Third Space waste worker decides to go on a dangerous and illegal journey across the other two areas, in order to earn money for his daughter to attend a decent school. Will he be able to complete his task while escaping detection?

Pretending that the fake is real only makes the real seem fake. (A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight)

• Taking Care of God by Liu Cixin– Three years ago, 21,530 spaceships descended to Earth. Millions of elderly people appeared in cities around the world, all repeating the same phrase: “We are God. Please, considering that we created the world, would you give us a bit of food?” Earth’s citizens were initially happy to help their creators, but the resentment builds as the Gods become seen as burdens on their new families. Why have the Gods come back to Earth?

Time flows like a river, halting for no one. There’s nothing in this world that can outlast time itself. (Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse)*

Invisible Planets is a great introduction to contemporary Chinese science fiction and I’m grateful to Ken Liu for translating these fantastic stories. This book exposed me to many writers that I wouldn’t have been able to read otherwise.

So what’s next on my reading list for when I’m in a science fiction mood? I’ve added translator Ken Liu’s collection The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories to my list. I recently saw the movie Arrival, which is based on the short story Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. I couldn’t help but think of this collection as I watched it, especially Taking Care of God. Chiang’s short story collection Stories of Your Life is on my priority to-read list now. For more collections of short science fiction, you might also like Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein, Slipping by Lauren Beukes, and Some Possible Solutions by Helen Phillips.

*Check out this video of dragon-horse in action! Such a magnificent machine!

Katya Grubbs is the owner of Painless Pest Relocations, a humane pest control company. A successful pest removal at the home of property developer Martin Brand earns her the opportunity to tackle the pest problems at Nineveh, Brand’s residential sanctuary for the wealthy in the middle of bustling Cape Town, South Africa. The mysterious “gogga” has invaded the gated paradise, making it uninhabitable. The job is more challenging than expected because there are no obvious signs of an infestation. As Katya searches for any clue related to the hidden bug problem, she also has to address the past that she’s attempted to distance herself from.

Caterpillars, like migrating wildebeest – very slow, small ones – have a strong herding impulse. They sense a stirring, they start to push. Perhaps they feel some dim invertebrate anxiety: that the swarm has not yet been consummated, that this is not the right tree, that a better tree awaits, that they will be left behind. This is as far as her study of caterpillar psychology goes.

Katya is a complex and irritable character. She got her start in the pest control industry by working for her father’s extermination business, but they are now estranged. She eschews attachments and hates change. Her relationship with her sister Alma is difficult because of their unconventional childhood. Their undependable, dishonest father never gave them the opportunity to put roots down anywhere and both sisters are marked with scars from the past. The sisters live completely opposite lives as adults. Alma has settled down into a manicured community with her perfect family, while Katya lives alone in controlled chaos. It’s in her family where Katya begins to search for signs of her father escaping his boundaries, as she seeks hints of the Grubbs’ bloodline in their features.

[Katya looking through a book that compares old photos of Cape Town to how it looks now:] “Each person snapping the shutter had been trying to fix the city as it was, but there is no fixing such a shifting, restless thing as a discontented city. If you strung these pictures together in a giant flip-book, or put them together to make a jerky film reel, year on year, the city would be hopping and jiggling, twitching and convulsing in a frenzy of urban ants-in-the-pants. Colonial cities are itchier than most, no doubt, fidgeting in the sub-Saharan light; harsh, even in a sepia world.

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She likes to put distance between herself and her father. It’s necessary, she thinks, for both of them. She is like a ball of string unravelling, always connected, but lighter the further she goes.

This short book will be interesting for anyone who likes strange, character-driven stories with atmospheric settings that are an integral part of the story. The descriptions of nature and architecture give us insight into Katya’s state of mind. Her family issues, professional struggles, personal growth, and the world around her are all intertwined. I usually prefer more human interaction, so the abundance of descriptive settings and inner reflection were sometimes a little too much for me. A scene at the end was so descriptive and almost unreal that I lost my ability to visualize. Even so, I loved the strangeness and the complexity of Katya’s story. The author is brilliant! All the interwoven layers would reward a reread and a discussion. This isn’t science fiction, but I think fans of Lauren Beukes (Slipping) and Helen Phillips will appreciate the uniqueness of this author’s work.

Everything’s in motion, changed and changing. There is no way to keep the shape of things. One house falls, another rises. Throw a worn brick away and someone downstream will pick it up and lay it next to others in a new course in a new wall – which sooner or later will fall into ruin, giving the spiders a place to anchor their own silken architecture. Even human skin, Katya has read, is porous and infested, every second letting microscopic creatures in and out. Our own bodies are menageries. Short of total sterility, there is no controlling it.

Trevor Noah is a South African comedian who currently hosts The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Born a Crime is about growing up in South Africa: living under apartheid when his existence was evidence of a crime, life after apartheid, the deep bond between a mother and son, the unique challenges of growing up mixed race, and living with an abusive stepfather. It’s filled with humor and biting social commentary, but the main words that describe this book are insightful and heartfelt. I was already a casual fan, but this book can be read by anyone since his career is barely mentioned.

People are willing to accept you if they see you as an outsider trying to assimilate into their world. But when they see you as a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the tribe, that is something they will never forgive.

Born a Crime is a collection of stories from Trevor’s life with a generally linear timeline. There was a tiny bit of jumpiness– occasionally there would be something mentioned that would be elaborated on in another story. Overall, I really liked the format because there was no filler. Each chapter worked on its own and had a clear lesson, so I viewed them each individually. Trevor was always getting into trouble growing up and some of the chapters are about his antics. While these stories are hilarious on their own, he also places these anecdotes within a wider social context.

I’ve read a few books by South African authors this year and I wish I would’ve read this one first! Of all I’ve read and seen on the topic, this is the one that made the history ‘click’ the most. Each chapter is preceded by either historical or personal context. He also puts everything in perspective for outsiders: “In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid.” It’s a good reminder of the similarities between cultures and institutions, even though the specifics may vary.

Love is a creative act. When you love someone you create a new world for them. My mother did that for me, and with the progress I made and the things I learned, I came back and created a new world and a new understanding for her.

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His close relationship with his mother was one of my favorite parts of the book. He describes his mother as a rebel and I loved reading about how she subverted the system! She raised Trevor to know that there was no limit to what he could accomplish: “Even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I’ve done enough.” He reveals the wisdom she imparted that made him the man he is today. Like his mom, he has a remarkable ability to adapt. I could also see where he gets his sense of humor! Even in one of the most tragic moments of the story, she’s able to joke around. Though his father isn’t in the book as much, the chapter about him and the gift of being chosen is one of the chapters that hit me the hardest.

We live in a world where we don’t see the ramifications of what we do to others, because we don’t live with them. If we could see one another’s pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place.

Born a Crime is an insightful memoir that strikes the perfect balance of historical and personal. I learned a lot and it gave me a better context for what I already knew. It made me laugh and cry. I know I love a book when I’m giving everyone around me daily updates! If you are interested in the subjects addressed in this book, you might be interested in the short article Inner City by Lauren Beukes. Her short story collection Slipping is coming out in November, which features some stories about South African culture.

People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.”