The Rabbi's Daughter
Reva Mann, 2007
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385341431
Summary
In this honest, daring, and compulsively readable memoir, Reva Mann paints a portrait of herself as a young woman on the edge—of either revelation or self-destruction. The daughter of a highly respected London rabbi, Reva was a wild child, spiralling into a whirlwind of sex and drugs by the time she reached adolescence. But as a young woman, Reva had a startling mystical epiphany that led her to a women’s yeshivah in Israel, and eventually to marriage to the devoutly religious Torah scholar she thought would take her to ever greater heights of spirituality.
But can the path to spiritual fulfillment ever be compatible with the ecstasies of the flesh or with the everyday joys of intimacy and pleasure to which she is also strongly drawn? With unflinching candor, Reva shares her struggle to carve out a life that encompasses all the impulses at war within herself. An eye-opening glimpse into the world of the ultra-Orthodox and their elaborately coded rituals for eating, sleeping, bathing, and lovemaking, as well as a deeply personal rumination on identity, faith, and self-acceptance, The Rabbi’s Daughter is at its heart a universal story, a journey toward redemption that is an unforgettable read. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Reva Unterman
• Birth—1957
• Where—London, UK
• Education—Hebrew University; Neve Yerushalayim Seminary
• Currently—lives in Jersulam, Israel
Reva Unterman is a columnist and author who uses the pen name Reva Mann.
Mann is the granddaughter of the former Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of the State of Israel, Isser Yehuda Unterman, and the daughter of Morris Unterman, rabbi of the West End Marble Arch synagogue in London. She was born in London but has lived in Israel since the mid-1980s. She attended a Jewish school in London until the age of ten. After her expulsion from Sinai College, a Jewish boarding school, her father sent her to Queen's College, a non-Jewish upper class high school.
Her autobiographical book, The Rabbi's Daughter: Sex, Drugs and Orthodoxy, describes her teenage experiments with sex and drugs, study at the Or Zion women's yeshiva in Jerusalem, and eventual return to the Orthodox fold.
Mann is a columnist for The Jewish Advocate and TotallyJewish.com. She is divorced with three children. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A gripping tale of a woman searching in all the wrong places.... The book is hard to put down—it’s so personal and raw.
Sunday Times Magazine (London)
Reva Mann reveals how she rejected the respectability of her London parents for years of wild partying and how she has won her battle with addiction.
Evening Standard (London)
Reva’s gripping memoir of her long journey to find herself. This first-time author has written a compelling book about her own experiences, and...insight into the closed world of Orthodox Judaism.... Her story is fascinating and harrowing in equal measure.
Daily Express (London)
There is more to this book than gratuitous sex...there are moments of profound insights.... Reva’s considerable talent with the English language and profound insights into Judaism are in evidence throughout the book.
Manchester Telegraph (UK)
Sometimes shocking, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes very funny, Reva Mann’s story is a fascinating glimpse into a hidden world.
Elle
In her misspent youth, Mann, a journalist and daughter of a prominent London rabbi and granddaughter of a chief rabbi of Israel, was hooked on drugs and promiscuous sex, which led to hepatitis B infection and an arrest for drug possession. In her 20s, she went to Jerusalem, where again she disappointed her progressive Orthodox parents by marrying a born-again American Jew who had become an obsessive and separatist Hasid. Unhappiness and tragedy were Mann's constant companions: a retarded sister; the abortion of a brain-damaged fetus; the unraveling of her passionless marriage and her disenchantment with Hasidism; breast cancer; and her elderly widowed mother's suicide. Mann parades unsavory aspects of her behavior: she and her boyfriend, Sam, knowingly have raucous sex in earshot of her anxious children, and after Sam's brother is killed in a terrorist attack, Mann is upset that Sam isn't paying enough attention to her at the burial. While Mann's clever, fast-paced memoir offers an intimate glimpse of Orthodox Judaism and aptly demonstrates the human yearning for redemption, some of the events she recounts strain credulity, particularly her deflowering in her father's synagogue and a lesbian affair in an ultra-Orthodox women's yeshiva that is overheard by a religiously zealous tattletale.
Publishers Weekly
Mann tells her story with genuine humor and self-deprecating wit, winning the sympathy of even disapproving readers. Mann’s coming-of-age story speaks directly to young people struggling with questions of family, faith and identity.
Booklist
Jerusalem-based newspaper columnist Mann recounts her struggles with men, procrustean religion, drugs, sex, motherhood, breast cancer and the loss of loved ones. Employing the present tense throughout—perhaps to add an urgency that the narrative doesn't always deliver—the first-time author reveals a profound sadness at her center. The daughter and granddaughter of prominent rabbis, Mann rebelled as a teen with drugs and bad boyfriends. Reeling out of a troubled relationship with a druggie, she decided to move from London to Israel, where she studied midwifery and was attracted to the most fundamentalist form of Judaism she could find. She married a Hassidic scholar and adopted a pious lifestyle that puzzled even her father, a more moderate Jew. As she desperately sought happiness, she found herself increasingly repelled by her husband and his ways. Then a hunk of a handyman came to remodel the kitchen. Leers turned to frantic, clawing, biting sex-there is much explicit detail about her romps with this kitchen aide and with other lovers-which, of course, eventually led to the dissolution of her marriage and anguish for their three children. Later, another relationship with another slovenly drug addict went awry, but not before the author describes some luscious nubile bodies on a nude beach with nipples "soft and pink like candy." Lying on that same beach, she felt a lump, learned that she had breast cancer and endured surgery, chemo and radiation. Along the way, her father died, then her mom, in most disturbing fashion. The author then decides it's time to reunite with her sister, institutionalized back in England with Down's syndrome, whom she hasn't seen in 20 years. She vows to visit once a year from now on. A woeful life, related in prose that's largely hollow and unremarkable.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the narrative approach used in The Rabbi's Daughter. What is it like to watch the events in Reva’s life unfold in the present tense, with occasional flashbacks to the past? Why do you think she chose to write in the present tense? Is this approach effective?
2. The Rabbi's Daughter explores many levels of intolerance. For example, Reva’s father, who is a religious man, has contempt for what he sees as the overly extreme religiosity of her husband, while the ultra-Orthodox look down on everyone who does not share their beliefs or their rigid adherence to the elaborate rituals and codes of behavior that govern their every act. Discuss how Reva reacts to these forms of intolerance, and how they shape the life she eventually chooses to lead.
3. Do you think being pregnant and becoming a mother changes Reva? How so? How does it affect her relationship with her own mother?
4. What do you think are the most important lessons that Reva carries over from her ultra-Orthodox life into the quite different way of life she has created for herself by the end of the book?
5. Men play a prominent role in Reva’s life. Discuss Reva’s romantic/sexual relationships with Chris, Simcha, and Sam. How do these relationships differ from one another and what does each bring her? Does Reva change through her encounters with each man? How so?
6. Why is Reva’s relationship with her father so strained? Why was it easier for her to relate to her grandfather, despite the fact that he was even more pious than her father?
7. Why is Reva drawn to Simcha? Do you think her initial doubts about him are well-founded? What role does Simcha play toward the end of the book? Do your initial impressions of him change?
8. When her mother dies, Reva decides to visit the sister she had not seen in twenty years. Why? Do you think her mother’s death played a role in that difficult decision? How did Reva feel about the visit?
9. During the course of the years described in this book, Reva must come to terms with the illness and death of both parents, and must face up to her own mortality as well. How do you think these experiences change her?
10. Describe your thoughts on the following passage that opens the third chapter (p. 58): “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make a helpmate for him (Genesis 2:18).” How does it illustrate the woman’s role in society according to the Old Testament? How does Reva feel about being a “helpmate?”
11. Do you think the chapter titles are appropriate? Do the Scripture and Talmudic writings present each chapter effectively?
12. Reva says, “I am jealous of his ability to study the holy books into the night while I have been trashing the very values written there” (page 234). Is this inner conflict ever resolved? Does Reva find a balance between her spiritual self and her sensual self?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa
Josh Swiller, 2007
Macmillan Henry Holt
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805082104
Summary
These are hearing aids. They take the sounds of the world and amplify them.” Josh Swiller recited this speech to himself on the day he arrived in Mununga, a dusty village on the shores of Lake Mweru. Deaf since a young age, Swiller spent his formative years in frustrated limbo on the sidelines of the hearing world, encouraged by his family to use lipreading and the strident approximations of hearing aids to blend in. It didn't work. So he decided to ditch the well-trodden path after college, setting out to find a place so far removed that his deafness would become irrelevant.
That place turned out to be Zambia, where Swiller worked as a Peace Corps volunteer for two years. There he would encounter a world where violence, disease, and poverty were the mundane facts of life. But despite the culture shock, Swiller finally commanded attention—everyone always listened carefully to the white man, even if they didn't always follow his instruction. Spending his days working in the health clinic with Augustine Jere, a chubby, world-weary chess aficionado and a steadfast friend, Swiller had finally found, he believed, a place where his deafness didn't interfere, a place he could call home. Until, that is, a nightmarish incident blasted away his newfound convictions.
At once a poignant account of friendship through adversity, a hilarious comedy of errors, and a gripping narrative of escalating violence, The Unheard is an unforgettable story from a noteworthy new talent. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1970
• Where— New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A. Yale University; M.S. Lexington School for
the Deaf and League for the Hard of Hearing (both in NYC).
• Currently—lives in New York
A graduate of Yale University, Josh Swiller has had a wide variety of careers: forest ranger, carpenter, slipper salesman, raw food chef, Zen monk, journalist, and teacher, among other things. In August 2005, he had successful surgery for a cochlear implant and partially recovered his hearing. Swiller now speaks often on issues facing mainstreamed deaf individuals, and works at a hospice in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Swiller doesn't deceive either himself or us about the utility of his work…His appealing, intelligent narrative serves both as a coming of age story and as a penetrating light into one corner of a tormented continent.
Juliet Wittman - Washington Post
Unheard takes readers into several different worlds: a young deaf man's individualized perceptions, as well as the violence and poverty of a remote African village. It questions the usefulness of outsiders lending a hand to Third World cultures and is a heartfelt description of friendship and personal growth. The prologue describes Swiller and a friend cowering on the living room floor in the dark, armed with nail-encrusted two-by-fours and fighting for their lives. Chapter one, "First Day," flashes back to the beginning of the author's journey, when he joined the Peace Corps to become "an ambassador" to people who may never have seen or met a person from outside their community. His mission was to encourage the locals of Mununga, a village on the shores of Lake Mweru, Zambia, to dig wells and help improve their sanitation and health. Swiller attempted to follow the guidelines provided in his training, but soon discovered that reality and idealism were at odds. As his story progresses, corruption, dishonest village leaders, and a culture he didn't entirely understand all play a part in his coming to terms with his deafness and his understanding of who he was and just what he intended to do with his life. Swiller's experiences come to life in a way that teens can and will hear, however metaphorically. —Joanne Ligamari, Rio Linda School District, Sacramento, CA
School Library Journal
A former Peace Corps volunteer recalls his battles with deafness, bureaucracy, sex, violence and hopelessness during his mid-1990s tour in Zambia. Swiller's debut recounts adventures most extraordinary in language most ordinary. Even at moments of high emotion, danger or revulsion, he cannot seem to venture outside the tent of convention to say something novel. When, for example, an angry man chops off the leg of a boy who has stolen a single fish, Swiller can manage only, "I couldn't get my mind around it." These and other inanities decorate just about every significant moment-and there are many, for his tale is harrowing and ominous. He begins near the end, holed up in the dark at the home of his best friend Jere, both of them feebly armed, while on the other side of the door a mob of angry villagers led by a baddie named Boniface threatened to kill them. The fairly innocuous resolution comes 200 pages later, but first Swiller cuts away to fill in background about his lifelong struggles with deafness, his desultory pathway through high school, Yale and Gallaudet and his decision to join the Peace Corps. He went to Zambia to help the villagers in Mununga dig wells, but the local mores and politics were almost too much to cope with, particularly for someone who had to read lips to supplement his powerful hearing aids. He accomplished little—perhaps all that was possible. He was (falsely) accused of deflowering a local lovely, got involved with a nurse (it didn't work out), drank a lot, learned the local language, met Jere, who worked in the clinic, fended off fathers who wanted him to marry their daughters, was mugged, threatened, hit with a rock and eventually went back to America. Mediocre prose effectively blunts the powerful blows that these often shocking experiences could have delivered.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Unheard:
1. Josh's experiences in Zambia put the purposes and goals of the Peace Corp to test. You might talk about the usefulness of the Corp, which has recently come under scrutiny nationally. Consider the idealism of the young people who go into the Corps and the reality they usually end up confronting.
2. This has been referred to as a coming-of-age story, in which a young man comes to grips with the adult world. What did Josh Swiller learn in Africa about the so-called adult world—and how was he changed by his experiences.
3. Deafness is certainly a hardship, but Josh Swiller seems to have a remarkable ability to communicate—even in a foreign culture. To what extent did his deafness hinder him...or, perhaps, even help him in his work? What would it be like to be in his shoes? How well would any of us cope?
4. You might even discuss the culture of small African villages and the manner in which the leaders accomplish things— through what we consider corrupt means. How well prepared was Josh for the workings of village politics?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Please.)
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Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy
Frances Mayes, 1996
Crown Publishing
280 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780767900386
Summary
Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden, and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and delightful people.
In Under the Tuscan Sun, she brings the lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler, and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to invite readers to explore the pleasures of Italian life and to feast at her table. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1940
• Where—Fitzgerald, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Florida; M.A., San Francisco
State University;
• Currently—lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, USA, and
Corona, Italy
Frances Mayes is the author of several books about Tuscany. The now-classic Under the Tuscan Sun–which was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years and became a Touchstone movie starring Diane Lane. It was followed by Bella Tuscany and two illustrated books, In Tuscany and Bringing Tuscany Home. She is also the author of the novel, Swan, six books of poetry, The Discovery of Poetry, and her most recent, Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir (2014). Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages (From the publisher.)
More
Frances Mayes is an American university professor, poet, memoirist, essayist, and novelist. Born in Fitzgerald, Georgia, and raised in south central Georgia, Mayes attended Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, and obtained her BA from the University of Florida. In 1975 she earned her MA from San Francisco State University, where she eventually became Professor of Creative Writing, director of The Poetry Center, and chair tof the Department of Creative Writing.
Mayes has published several works of poetry: Climbing Aconcagua (1977), Sunday in Another Country (1977), After Such Pleasures (1979), The Arts of Fire (1982), Hours (1984), and Ex Voto (1995). In 1996 she published the book Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy. The book is a memoir of Mayes buying, renovating, and living in an abandoned villa in rural Cortona in Tuscany, a region of Italy. It went to Number One on the New York Times Best Seller list and remained on the list for over two years.
In 2003 the film Under the Tuscan Sun was released. Adapted to the screen by director Audrey Wells, the movie was loosely based on Mayes's book. In 1999, Mayes followed this literary success with another international bestseller, Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy, and in 2000 with In Tuscany. Mayes's first novel, Swan, was published in 2002. Her memoir, Under Magnolia, about growing up in a Southern family, came out in 2014,
Also a food-and-travel writer, Mayes is the editor of The Best American Travel Writing 2002 and the author of A Year in the World: Journeys of A Passionate Traveller (2006), tales of her and her husband's travels.
Now writing full time, she and her poet husband divide their time between homes in Hillsborough, North Carolina and Cortona, Italy, where she serves as the artist director of the annual Tuscan Sun Festival. (From Wikipedia. Updated 2/21/2014.)
Book Reviews
Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes memoir of buying, renovating and settling into an abandoned villa on the outskirts of Cortona, Italy, [is] what the novelist Laurie Colwin used to call a domestic sensualist. Ms. Mayes will tell you all about making olive oil and rebuilding an Etruscan wall, but you'll never confuse her with Martha Stewart. (One of the things she likes about Italy is that it's ''the only place in the world I've ever taken a nap at nine in the morning.'') She'll tell you lots of charming stories about the locals, but she won't make you wonder—as I sometimes do, reading Peter Mayle— what she'd say about you behind your back. She'll give you a recipe for marmalade from Elizabeth David, one of the doyennes of the cookery business, but add that she probably ''just dishes it up into the jars'' and ''then forgets it, scraping off mold with impunity before spreading some on her toast"... An intense celebration of what [Mayes] calls "the voluptuousness of Italian life"
Alida Becker - New York Times
This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy. loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one. But it's so delicious, read it first yourself.
USA Today
A poet, food-and-travel writer, Italophile and chair of the creative writing department at San Francisco State University, Mayes is a fine wordsmith and an exemplary companion whose delight in a brick floor she has just waxed is as contagious as her pleasure in the landscape, architecture and life of the village.
Publishers Weekly
Armchair travel at its most enticing. Can we really blame ourselves for wanting to strap Mayes down in some ratty armchair while we go live in her farmhouse.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. "What are you growing here?" is the first line of Under the Tuscan Sun. In what ways does that question symbolize how the book came about? What does it say about Frances Mayes's life in Italy, and about her life in general?
2. Mayes writes of the traumatic experience of selling one house and purchasing another on various occasions in the United States. Why is the purchase of her house in Italy so qualitatively different from her other experiences with home ownership?
3. "The house is a metaphor for the self," Frances Mayes writes. Discuss some examples of this, both in her life and in your own.
4. What makes Mayes's writing style effective? How does her particular voice make her descriptions come alive? What images did you find to be particularly striking?
5. What are some of the qualities of Italian life that contrast most sharply with American culture? Which aspects of Italian life did Frances and Ed find it important to incorporate into their own lives? Which aspects would you have been drawn to?
6. How does the experience of purchasing and renovating Bramasole impact Frances and Ed's relationship, and how does their interaction affect their shared experience of buying, owning, and living in Bramasole?
7. How does the author change as the book progresses? How are her changes reflected in her tone and in her writing?
8. Mayes's house is called "Bramasole," which literally means "yearning for the sun." However, soon after she purchases the house, Mayes dreams that its real name is "Centi Angeli," or "one hundred angels." Discuss the ways in which this proves to be a premonitory dream. What are some of the other discoveries made throughout Bramasole and its grounds that lend a magical feeling to the house?
9. What role does food play, both metaphorically and literally, in the sense of delight that deepens Mayes's relationship to Tuscany and the house itself?
10. Mayes often portrays life in Cortona as timeless. How does she also convey that the timelessness is in many ways just an illusion? How does the "sense of endless time" affect her household?
11. What is Mayes's philosophy about the friend who speaks disparagingly of contemporary Italy and says it's "getting to be just like everywhere else—homogenized and Americanized" (p. 110)? How does Mayes's response address globalization in general?
12. Mayes's loving descriptions of food, her recipes, and her gardening tips add sensuality to the book, but what are some of their other functions in Under the Tuscan Sun?
13. What is Mayes's advice to readers who have "the desire to surprise your own life" (p. 191)? How would you respond to this impulse? What are some of the benefits and drawbacks to the time of life Mayes chose for embarking on a major change? Discuss some of your own turning points and "forks in the road."
14. Although Under the Tuscan Sun isn't a novel, would you say that in many ways it reads like one? If so, what is the spring, the inner tension, that propels the book forward and shapes its form? 15. Besides presenting us with wonderful descriptions of food, scenery, and people, what is the other major impetus of Under the Tuscan Sun? 16. As the book draws to a close, Mayes asks rhetorically, "Doesn't everything reduce in the end to a poetic image—one that encapsulates an entire experience in one stroke?" (p. 256). In your opinion, which image or scene best "encapsulates the entire experience" of Mayes's time in Italy?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah, 2007
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
229 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616826543
Summary
My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.
“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
“Because there is a war.”
“You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”
“Yes, all the time.”
“Cool.”
I smile a little.
“You should tell us about it sometime.”
“Yes, sometime.”
This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.
What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.
In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.
This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 23, 1980
• Where—Mogbwemo, Sierra Leone
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College
• Currently—lives in New York New York
Ishmael Beah is a former Sierra Leonean child soldier and the author of the 2007 published memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. His first novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, about the aftermath of that war was published in 2014.
Civil War
Beah was 11 years old when civil war overtook Sierra Leone in 1991. Rebels invaded his hometown of Mogbwemo in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone, forcing Beah to flee. Separated from his family, he spent months wandering south with a group of other boys. At the age of 13, he was forced to become a child soldier, spending the next three years fighting for the government army against the rebels.
Beah says he doesn't remember how many people he killed. He and other soldiers smoked marijuana and sniffed amphetamines and "brown-brown," a mix of cocaine and gunpowder. He blames the addictions and the brainwashing for his violence and cites them and the pressures of the army as reasons for his inability to escape on his own: "If you left, it was as good as being dead."
Rescue and transition
Rescued in 1996 by a coalition of UNICEF and NGOs, Beah went to live with an uncle in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he attended school. That year he was invited to speak at the United Nations in New York. He returned to Sierra Leone, but in 1997 Freetown was overrun by both rebels and the Army, who had since joined forces. With the violence escalating, Beah contacted Laura Simms, whom he had met the year before in New York.
Again, with the help of UNICEF, Beah made his way back to the US. There he lived in New York City with Simms, who became his foster mother, and attended the United Nations International School. He later enrolled in Ohio's Oberlin College, graduating with a Political Science degree in 2004.
Following his 2007 publication of A Long Way Gone, Beah appeared on The Daily Show, telling Jon Stewart that he had found the transition back to civilian life difficult. It was harder to return to society than to become a child soldier, he claimed—because dehumanizing children is a relatively easy task.
Beah credits Nurse Esther, a UNICEF volunteer, with having the patience and compassion required to bring him through the difficult period. She recognized his interest in American rap music and reggae, gave him a Walkman and a Run DMC cassette, and used music as his bridge to his past, his childhood prior to the violence. Slowly, he accepted Esther's assurances that "it's not your fault."
If I choose to feel guilty for what I have done, I will want to be dead myself. I live knowing that I have been given a second life, and I just try to have fun, and be happy and live it the best I can.
Books and recognition
A Long Way Gone was nominated for a Quill Award in the Best Debut Author category for 2007. Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2007, ranking it at #3, and praising it as "painfully sharp", and its ability to take "readers behind the dead eyes of the child-soldier in a way no other writer has."
In 2009, as a 29-year-old, Beah traveled home to Sierra Leone with an ABC News camera, a return that he describes as bittersweet. Later in February, 2013, he traveled to Calgary and spoke at the My World Conference.|
Beah published his first novel in 2014. Radiance of Tomorrow tells of the difficulty of rebuilding a war-torn community for both the victims of violence and its perpetrators. The novel has received wide praise for its compassion and elegant, nuanced style.
Controversy
The accuracy of the events and chronology presented in A Long Way Gone have been called into question, particularly the claim that Beah became a child soldier in 1993, rather than in 1995 as the timeline of events in Sierra Leone's civil war suggests. (Adapted from Wikipedia. 1/12/2014.)
Book Reviews
Beah’s memoir joins an elite class of writing: Africans witnessing African wars. I think of Sozaboy, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s masterly novel about a young soldier during the Biafran war, or Machete Season, Jean Hatzfeld’s book of blood-chilling interviews with Rwandan killers. A Long Way Gone makes you wonder how anyone comes through such unrelenting ghastliness and horror with his humanity and sanity intact. Unusually, the smiling, open face of the author on the book jacket provides welcome and timely reassurance. Ishmael Beah seems to prove it can happen.
William Boyd - New York Times
Everyone in the world should read this book. Not just because it contains an amazing story, or because it's our moral, bleeding-heart duty, or because it's clearly written. We should read it to learn about the world and about what it means to be human.
Carolyn See - Washington Post
In 1993, when the author was twelve, rebel forces attacked his home town, in Sierra Leone, and he was separated from his parents. For months, he straggled through the war-torn countryside, starving and terrified, until he was taken under the wing of a Shakespeare-spouting lieutenant in the government army. Soon, he was being fed amphetamines and trained to shoot an AK-47 (“Ignore the safety pin, they said, it will only slow you down”). Beah’s memoir documents his transformation from a child into a hardened, brutally efficient soldier who high-fived his fellow-recruits after they slaughtered their enemies—often boys their own age—and who “felt no pity for anyone.” His honesty is exacting, and a testament to the ability of children “to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.
New Yorker Magazine
Beah's harrowing story of a boy caught up in the civil strife in Sierra Leone is not an audio to curl up with before bedtime. Beah's even-toned narrative is particularly disturbing because it's almost exactly the same whether he is enjoying the company of a newly found uncle or busy shooting and maiming rebels and even burying them alive. His monotone works particularly well when he is recounting his dreams, for he cannot distinguish his nightmares from his waking life. Beah speaks with a thick accent that omits "th" sounds. Many words are understandable in their context, but a few are not. He also stumbles over some longer and more complex words. Despite these drawbacks, Beah's tale is a riveting snapshot of childhoods stolen from all too many, not just in Sierra Leone but in Somalia, Iraq, Palestine and other places ravaged by civil wars.
Publishers Weekly
Rarely does one encounter anything but outrage, sadness, and pain when reading about the exploitation of child soldiers, but Beah's account also offers hope, humility, bravery, and, yes, peace. Beah was 13 years old when rebels attacked nearby villages in his native Sierra Leone. He was separated from his family (he learned later that they perished) and was on the run from both the rebels and the Sierra Leone Military Forces for over a year. Eventually captured by the military, which could behave as horrendously as the rebels, the boy was forced to join the army, carrying guns or grenade launchers. Like the thousands of other children traumatized by these events, Beah needed rehabilitation when his "tour of duty" was over. A former juvenile center turned counseling house afforded him a safe haven. After being chosen to speak at a UN conference in New York, he began the long process of relocating to the United States. The brutality of war is brought out early in this narrative, and just to have survived is amazing. Beah writes with frankness and honesty about his experiences but also with other people in mind; his account of the healing process after the horrors he saw is remarkable. His book, especially relevant in today's world, should be in all high school, public, and academic libraries.
James Thorsen - Library Journal
The survivor of a dirty war in starkest Africa recounts his transition from 12-year-old orphan to killing machine. To emerge from Sierra Leone's malignant civil conflict and eventually graduate from college in the U.S. marks Beah as very unusual, if not unique. His memoir seeks to illuminate the process that created, and continues to create, one of the most pitiable yet universally feared products of modern warfare: the boy soldier. It illustrates how, in African nations under the stress of open civil war, youthful males cluster in packs for self-protection, fleeing the military forces of all sides, distrusted and persecuted by strangers they encounter, until they are killed or commandeered as recruits. Nearly half the text deals with Beah's life as a fugitive after marauding rebel troops ravaged his home village. He fled with several other boys, but they were separated during another attack and he was forced to spend several weeks alone in the bush; the loneliness there instilled a craving for human companionship of any type. The regular military finally snared Beah and some new companions, telling them they must train as soldiers or die. The rebels, they were assured, were responsible for killing their families and destroying their homes; as soldiers, they would exact manly revenge and serve the nation. Cocaine, marijuana and painkillers became the boys' mind-numbing daily diet. They were indoctrinated by practicing mayhem on tethered prisoners and became willing experts at lying in ambush with their aging AK-47 rifles. For them, killing human beings had replaced ordinary child's play. Beah's halting narrative has confusing time shifts, but it's hideously effective in conveying the essential horror of his experiences.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. How familiar were you with the civil wars of Sierra Leone prior to reading A Long Way Gone? How has Ishmael’s story changed your perception of this history, and of current wars in general?
2. Chapter seven begins with the story of the imam’s death, followed by Ishmael’s recollections of his father and an elder blessing their home when they first moved to Mogbwemo. How do the concepts of faith and hope shift throughout this memoir? What sustains Ishmael emotionally and spiritually?
3. Chapter eight closes with the image of villagers running fearfully from Ishmael and his friends, believing that the seven boys are rebels. How do they overcome these negative assumptions in communities that have begun to associate the boys’ appearance with evil? What lessons could world leaders learn from them about overcoming distrust, and the importance of judging others individually rather than as stereotypes?
4. What did Ishmael’s parents teach him about being a man? How did he define manhood once he began his long walk west? What general life lessons were his parents able to teach him that sustained him during his brutal passage from boyhood, and that he carries with him to this day?
5. Discuss the role of American hip-hop culture in creating a “soundtrack” for Ishmael’s life. Why are rappers so appealing to him?
6. The boys’ discovery of the Atlantic Ocean and their encounter with a cheerful fisherman who heals and feeds them is followed by the tragedy of Saidu’s death after a bird falls ominously from the sky. Discuss Ishmael’s relationship with the natural world. In what way is he guided by the constancy of the earth and sky?
7. When Ishmael arrives at the fortified village of Yele in chapter twelve, what do you discover about the way he began his military career? Was his service, and that of his equally young friends, necessary? What made his conscription different from that of drafted American soldiers serving in previous wars?
8. Ishmael tells us that some of the boys who had been rehabilitated with him later became soldiers again. What factors ensured that he could remain a civilian?
9. Storytelling is a powerful force in Ishmael’s life, even providing a connection to his future mother, Laura Simms. What traits make Ishmael a memorable and unique storyteller? How does his perspective compare to the perspectives of filmmakers, reporters, or other authors who have recently tried to portray Africa’s civil wars?
10. Ishmael describes his use of Krio and many tribal languages to communicate, as well as his ability to quote Shakespeare’s Elizabethan English. What communities and empires are represented in his many speech styles? In which “villages,” from the relatively new UN to the centuries-old Mende and Temne settlements, does the greatest wisdom lie?
11. How does Ishmael’s concept of family change throughout the memoir, from his early life in Mattru Jong, to the uncle with whom he is reunited, to his American family with Laura?
12. It takes many weeks before Ishmael feels comfortable with the relief workers’ refrain that these events are not his fault. What destructive beliefs had he become addicted to? What states of deprivation and euphoria had his body become addicted to?
13. What universal truths does Ishmael teach us about surviving loss and hunger, and overcoming isolation?
14. Ishmael’s dramatic escape during the later waves of revolution concludes with the riddle of the monkey. Is his dream of obliterating the monkey—and its violent endgames—closer to being fulfilled in these early years of the twenty-first century? What would it take for all of humanity to adopt Ishmael’s rejection of vengeance?
15. Ishmael gives credit to relief workers such as Esther, in conjunction with organizations such as UNICEF, for rescuing him. He has dedicated his life to their cause, studying political science and speaking before a broad variety of groups, ranging from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. What steps has he inspired you to take to help end the use of child soldiers? How can each of us join Ishmael’s cause?
16. After reading the chronology of Sierra Leone’s history, what reasons can you propose for the coups in Ishmael’s homeland? Did the arrival of Portuguese slave traders, or the later colonization by the British, contribute to Sierra Leone’s twentieth-century woes? What did you discover about the motivations of the army soldiers versus those of the rebels? In your opinion, what made the leaders of the RUF so ruthless for so long?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir
Jessica O'Dwyer, 2010
Seal Press
312 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781580053341
Summary
This gripping memoir details an ordinary American woman’s quest to adopt a baby girl from Guatemala in the face of overwhelming adversity. At only 32 years old, Jessica O’Dwyer experiences early menopause, seemingly ending her chances of becoming a mother.
Years later, married but childless, she comes across a photo of a two-month-old girl on a Guatemalan adoption website — and feels an instant connection. From the get-go, Jessica and her husband face numerous and maddening obstacles. After a year of tireless efforts, Jessica finds herself abandoned by her adoption agency; undaunted, she quits her job and moves to Antigua so she can bring her little girl to live with her and wrap up the adoption, no matter what the cost.
Eventually, after months of disappointments, she finesses her way through the thorny adoption process and is finally able to bring her new daughter home. Mamalita is as much a story about the bond between a mother and child as it is about the lengths adoptive parents go to in their quest to bring their children home. At turns harrowing, heartbreaking, and inspiring, this is a classic story of the triumph of a mother’s love over almost insurmountable odds. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—New Jersey, USA
• Education—University of Delaware
• Awards—National League of American Pen
Women
• Currently—lives outside San Francisco, California, USA
Jessica O’Dwyer is the adoptive mother to two children born in Guatemala. Her essays have been published in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Adoptive Families, and the Marin Independent Journal; aired on radio; and won awards from the National League of American Pen Women.
She has worked in public relations and marketing at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and has also taught jazz dance and high school English.
Jessica is a member of the Left Coast Writers and Writing Mamas, sponsored by Book Passage. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Jessica lives with her husband and children in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mamalita is her first book. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Richly written book, part thriller, part love story, part exposé.... [A] cautionary tale.
Adoptive Families Magazine
O'Dwyer's harrowing and moving journey to adopt a Guatemalan baby offers a look into one person's experience in the frustratingly convoluted process of adopting from unscrupulous "facilitators." O'Dwyer had gone through an early divorce and menopause at age 32 before marrying Tim, a divorced dermatologist over 50. They put together an adoption dossier and found an L.A. agency that promised a quick adoption while cutting the bureaucratic red tape. Intent on adopting a certain "Stefany Mishell" (they fell in love with from her online photo), the desperate couple soon discovered that the agency's methods were dilatory and sloppy, neglecting the important legal paperwork, such as filing the requisite DNA test, and using shady notarios (private attorneys), so that in the end the promised six-month adoption extended over a year. Moreover, O'Dwyer's occasional visits to Guatemala, where she met Stefany's foster family and spent a weekend with the baby at the Camino Real hotel in Guatemala City, turned into a permanent residency, as she moved to a city north of the capital, Antiqua, to live with Stefany (now Olivia) until family court finalized the adoption. Dealing with the greedy foster family, managing the baby's early separation anxiety, navigating the middlemen and interminable waiting are all deftly handled in O'Dwyer's somber tale.
Publishers Weekly
Debut memoir about trying to adopt a Guatemalan child amid the adversity of a corrupt system. "I've never given birth," writes O'Dwyer, "but I know the exact moment when I became a mother: 10:00A.M., September 6, 2002"—the moment she and her husband sat in a hotel lobby, awaiting the infant girl they hoped to adopt. Yet this celebratory moment was soon overshadowed by the corrupt Guatemalan adoption system. The author recounts her initial naiveté, how she and her husband shelled out vast amounts of money to adoption facilitators and notarios in order to assist them in wading through the red tape of a foreign adoption. Yet nearly two years and thousands of dollars later, O'Dwyer and her husband remained no closer to their goal. Rather than continue her transcontinental flights, the author quit her job and moved to Antigua to focus on her daughter's adoption full time. This decision led her into the dark side of adoption, a seedy terrain in which she was forced to weave through the barbs of a system set up to exploit the most money and resources from potential parents. Armed only with her elementary-level Spanish, she was forced to rely on a small band of trustworthy Guatemalan officials and potential American mothers struggling through the same experience. Her obsessive quest was constantly hampered by paperwork, signatures, DNA tests and countless other bureaucratic pitfalls. But despite the tragic circumstances, the optimistic author tells a hopeful tale in which she viewed every procedural misstep as a step leading her closer to her daughter. A scathing critique on a foreign adoption system and the harrowing account of one woman's attempt to fight it.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(Author Jessica O'Dwyer kindly provided the following Discussion Questions to LitLovers.)
1. The first scene opens in a hotel lobby in Guatemala City, when Jessica is handed her baby for the first time. She claims to have become a mother at that moment. Do you think that’s possible? When do we become parents? Can you name that moment for yourself?
2. Jessica went through early menopause, which prevented her from creating children “of her own.” For Jessica, adoption was the right choice. If faced with a similar diagnosis, what choice would you make?
3. The country of Guatemala plays an important role in the book. How do you feel about the way Jessica represents the country? Is she balanced in her observations? What did you learn about Guatemala from reading the book? Do you feel you understand it better?
4. Jessica and her husband, Tim, proceed with the adoption despite their growing distrust of Yolanda and Theodore. Were they naïve to trust their facilitators? Should they have abandoned the process and started over with a new agency, and therefore a different baby? How loyal should an adoptive parent be? At what point should they walk away? What would you do?
5. When the foster family invites Jessica and Tim to their home, they are able to see their daughter in her familiar setting, with a family she has lived with for nearly a year and has grown to love, and who loves her. Seeing Olivia with her foster mother is extremely painful for Jessica, because she understands they have developed a strong bond. At the same time, the foster family asks Jessica and Tim for shoes, blue jeans, a new car. What do you think of that relationship? Later in the book, Jessica says, “There is no map for the road on which we are traveling.” Would you navigate the foster family relationship the same way as Jessica, or differently?
6. Jessica and Tim decide to change their baby’s name from “Stefany” to “Olivia” when they learn Yolanda named all the babies “Caitlyn or Emily or Stefany, because those are names Americans like.” How do you feel about their decision? How important is name to our identity?
7. When Jessica sees the DNA photo of Olivia on her birth mother’s lap, she says she grasped the enormity of adoption: “That for one woman to become a mother, another mother had to give up her child.” How do you feel about adoption? Has reading the book changed your feelings? Enlarged them? What have you learned about the process?
8. Jessica and Tim were newlyweds when Jessica made the decision to quit her job and move to Antigua, Guatemala, to live with her daughter and fight to complete the adoption. Was that the right decision? Is it right to potentially sacrifice a marriage in order to become a mother?
9. What defines a mother? Or father. What does it mean to be a parent?
10. Imagine your reaction if, like Jessica, you saw your adoption facilitator caught on hidden camera on national TV, accused of being an “adoption broker.” Jessica decided to hire a professional searcher in Guatemala to find her daughter’s birth mother, Ana, to confirm that the adoption was Ana’s decision, made with free will. Did you agree with Jessica’s decision to search?
11. Most adoptions in the U.S. are “open,” meaning the birth mother and adoptive family maintain contact. In general, international adoptions are “closed,” with no contact. Jessica went against this trend by finding Olivia’s birth mother. Do parents have the “right” to make contact with birth family? Or should the decision to search be left up to children themselves, when they are older? What are the benefits and hazards of each?
12. How important is it to connect with biological family? Has reading the book influenced your opinion on the subject? If so, how?
13. Guatemala endured a 36-year civil war and is now a country in chaos, wracked by violence, unemployment, and drug trafficking. Jessica calls it “the beautiful and flawed country.” Adoptions closed in Guatemala in December 2007. Should efforts be made to reopen the system? Or is the system beyond repair? Is it better for children to remain in their country of origin, even if that means growing up in an orphanage? Families in Guatemala very rarely adopt non-blood relatives. How do you feel about international adoption, in general?
14. In the final scene, Jessica is about to introduce Olivia to Ana. Can you visualize the meeting? How would feel as Olivia’s adoptive mother, witnessing Olivia meeting her birth mother for the first time.
15. Did reading the book change you in any way?
(Questions courtesy of author)
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