Swing Time by Zadie Smith: A review

Two young girls growing up in poverty in North London in the '80s and '90s meet at a Saturday dance class. One of them has natural talent as a dancer. Both of them love music and rhythm. 

They become friends and remain close, with only occasional adolescent fallings-out, through all the years of growing up, sharing a love of old musicals and of dancers like Fred Astaire and Bojangles. They watch those movies over and over again, learning and copying the moves of the dancers.

Swing Time is the story of those two girls as they make the passage through adolescence and into young adulthood and increased responsibilities. The girls grow apart, but their friendship will always be the major influence and touchstone of their lives.

The talented young dancer is Tracey, friend of the narrator of this book. The narrator is never given a name. Both girls are biracial; Tracey has a white mother and black (Jamaican) father and the narrator has a black (Jamaican) mother and a white father. 

The narrator's family is intact, both parents present and caring. Her father is the primary caretaker of the home while her mother pursues her education and supports the causes about which she is passionate.

Tracey's family is a mess. Her father is not present in the household, at least not on a regular basis. He makes occasional visits and Tracey adores him and constructs an entire fantasy life for him as a back-up dancer for Michael Jackson. In her story, his being on constant tour with Michael is the reason he's never home. In truth, he is in and out of prison, plus he has a whole other family in another part of town. Her mother dotes on Tracey and is particularly proud of her dance talent. She sees it as the girl's ticket out of poverty.

Eventually, Tracey does get some professional dancing jobs, while the narrator goes on to college at her parents' insistence. In her early twenties, she goes to work for a company that seems modeled on MTV and there she comes to the attention of rock superstar Aimee.

Aimee hires her as a personal assistant and she spends the next nine years in Aimee's orbit, flying around the world on tour with her and easing her passage through life. When Aimee becomes obsessed with West Africa and wants to establish a school for girls there, the narrator spends a lot of time there with the villagers. She comes to admire them, but never really seems to understand them.

Much of this story, on its surface, seems torn from Entertainment Weekly headlines; the superstar superficially obsessed with Africa, building schools, adopting African children, etc. But Zadie Smith is only using that superstructure as a broad outline. She is interested in what lies beneath.

Smith writes brilliantly about modern culture and about female friendship, identity, and family. All of this medley is sifted through timeless themes of power and powerlessness, misunderstanding and crass manipulation of others, and the dichotomies between third world values and values of what we are pleased to call the "developed" world. It is a heady mix that makes for a huge and powerful novel.

Although she raises many issues in her narrative, Smith does not necessarily provide us with the answers. In the end, her narrator, not a particularly likable person, has to acknowledge, as the mother she has battled with lies dying, that even though she is in her early thirties she has not grown into a fully realized and admirable human being. Cut loose from her ties to Aimee, she is adrift in the world with little idea of where to find a mooring.  

I loved this book. The story has such energy and is so deeply human. It reminds us once again that we can never truly grow away from our roots. Of course it helps that Zadie Smith is such a brilliant writer.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars 

Wordless Wednesday: Monarch

 

Welcome to the post-truth world

Hat tip to cartoonist Tom Tomorrow and Daily Kos.

Click on the image for easier viewing.

Poetry Sunday: Winter Trees

The deciduous trees have mostly shed their leaves by now and, bare-limbed, they stand prepared for a long winter nap. 

Winter arrives for real, according to the calendar, on Wednesday, but it is already present in cold spirit in much of the country. 

We don't get much winter here in the subtropical south in most years, but still our trees shed their leaves and prepare. Just in case.

Winter Trees

by William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details

of the attiring and 

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds 

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold.

This week in birds - #236

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

Golden-crowned Kinglet photographed at Big Bend National Park in West Texas. The Ruby-crowned variety is more common here. I've never seen a Golden-crowned in my neighborhood.

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Few of the 20,000 Earth scientists meeting in San Francisco this week had much to say about the takeover of the government by climate science deniers in 2017, but the shadow of the incoming administration loomed over the conference. Some viewed the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the largest Earth and space science gathering in the world, as a call to action, and on Wednesday, they heard that call loud and clear from Gov. Jerry Brown who told them "It's up to you as truth tellers, truth seekers, to mobilize all your efforts to fight back."

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Winter is the time when birders really learn to appreciate the small birds who are with us year-round. In my area, that would include birds like Carolina Wrens, Tufted Titmice, Downy Woodpeckers, Carolina Chickadees, and Brown-headed Nuthatches.

Carolina Wren having a snack.

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A recent study reveals that hundreds of species of animals and plants are going extinct locally as they attempt to move their ranges due to the effects of climate change.

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A study published on the Avian Conservation and Ecology website posits that the estimates of bird mortality due to collisions with windows and other structures is probably too low because many of the bodies are removed by scavengers.  

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Photo courtesy of Audubon.

A rare white hummingbird, a leucistic Anna's Hummingbird, has been creating excitement for birders in California. The bird has been present in the Australian Gardens at the University of California, Santa Cruz Arboretum, almost continuously since May. The bird is male and was probably hatched this year.

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The lionfish is an ornamental tropical fish native to the Indo-Pacific that has long been a part of the aquarium trade. Unfortunately, aquarium owners sometimes get tired of the fish and irresponsibly set them free in local waters. In the waters of the southeastern United States, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, the fish has made itself at home. Too much at home. It is now an invasive species posing a threat to native species in those waters and scientists are seeking a technological means of stopping the invasion.

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The EPA has released its final report on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and it confirms that the controversial practice can contaminate drinking water "under some circumstances." This is a reversal of the position that the agency had taken earlier under heavy political pressure.

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Interior Secretary Sally Jewell also addressed the American Geophysical Union this week and urged the 20,000 scientists there to "fight disinformation" about science, to speak up and talk about the importance of scientific integrity.

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Lady beetles (ladybugs) are usually identified by the number of spots that they have, but counting the spots is not always an easy matter. "Bug Eric" gives us some ID tips.

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A rule allowing wind energy companies to operate high-speed wind turbines for up to 30 years has been finalized. They will be allowed to operate even though they kill many protected species such as Golden and Bald Eagles.

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Birds are adaptable creatures and they are doing their best to adapt to climate change. Generally, that involves moving ranges farther north, but a study by the University of Massachusetts found that birds are shifting their populations in unexpected ways.

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America's first offshore wind farm started operation this week. Its turbines will supply electricity for small Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island. In spite of concerns about damage that turbines may do to wildlife, wind power is an essential part of the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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The Texas bow-legged bug looks like an ant and acts like an ant, but it isn't an ant. They are actually ant mimics - at least the nymphs of the species are - and they can probably fool most non-entomologist observers.

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A new study has nearly doubled the number of known bird species in the world from 10,000 to 18,000. The increase is mostly due to the splitting of some species. Birds that were once thought to be all one species have been found to have differences that justify them being classified differently. This gives a new goal for all those guys that engage in "Big Years"!

*~*~*~*

An area the size of Virginia off the New Jersey coast has been protected as a marine sanctuary by the federal government. It is designated as the Frank R. Lautenberg Deep Sea Coral Protection Area. It covers more than 40,000 square miles and includes about a dozen deep water chasms.

Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer: A review

The Bloch family of Washington, D.C., are very annoying people. They embody the worst of all the traits that "flyover states" right-wingers mean when they scathingly refer to "East Coast liberals." On a personal level, they are all wise-cracking, fast-talking smart-asses, except for five-year-old Benjy who still manages to retain an aura of sweetness.

Jacob and Julia Bloch are an enlightened liberal Jewish couple. Jacob is a novelist turned writer for a successful television series. Julia is a frustrated architect, with big ideas for structures that she never gets to build. They have been married for sixteen years and live with their three sons (Sam, who is on the brink of becoming bar mitzvah; Max, who is nearly eleven; and the aforementioned Benjy)  in a posh townhouse in a posh neighborhood in Washington. 

They see themselves as special people. They are essentially living in a bubble. A bubble that encompasses Washington and Israel. But there are plenty of problems lurking underneath that bubble.

Sam is resisting the whole idea of bar mitzvah and has recently been accused of writing racial epithets on a paper at his Hebrew school. He denies having written them. His father chooses to believe him. His mother does not. The first sign of a rift perhaps.

Then Julia discovers sext messages sent to another woman from Jacob's phone. He says they were just words and that he never acted upon them. The rift widens.

Julia is attracted to another father of one of the students at Hebrew school. Jacob senses the attraction and is jealous. A little wider still.

The family's old dog, Argus, has become incontinent and Julia is constantly having to clean up his messes. She had never wanted a dog in the first place and yet she's often the one caring for him. Another tiny fracture.

The Blochs receive a visit from two of their Israeli cousins who have come to be present for Sam's bar mitzvah. In the midst of their visit, a massive earthquake hits the Middle East, causing enormous destruction and casualties in Israel and neighboring countries. All air traffic to Israel is halted and the cousins cannot go home. 

The earthquake disaster leads to a predictable humanitarian crisis. Israel chooses to withhold assistance from its neighbors, essentially closing its borders and hoarding medical and food supplies. The humanitarian disaster leads to a war against Israel by its united neighbors and the Israeli government puts out a call to all Jews of a certain age group to come to Israel and defend it. Will Jacob answer the call?

The main action of Here I Am takes place over a period of four weeks in the present. It's a period during which the Blochs wrestle with the disintegration of their marriage and the potential destruction of Israel. The author explores the questions of what it means to be a Jew in modern America and what are the ties that bind such a person still to the country of Israel. How does one reconcile the conflicts inherent in familial duties and religious identities and an international crisis?

Here I Am is a jigsaw puzzle of all these pieces and it is a credit to Foer's talent that he is able to piece them all together as well as he does. He gives us a thoughtful and understanding account of how history affects families, even to the third and fourth generation, as we see the effects of the Holocaust on the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the survivors. It feels like a very personal novel on many levels, particularly at the end.

I did not learn to love most of the Blochs, but at least after reading the book I understood them a little better. They are just another family, broken by the events of history and trying to piece themselves together in a way that makes sense to them. In that, their story is universal.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - December 2016

Blooms are sparse in December, but there is still plenty of color in my zone 9a garden.

The ornamental pepper looks like a Christmas tree all lit up with multi-colored lights.

Never let it be said that we don't get any autumn leaf color here, for we do have crape myrtles and, although some have already lost all their leaves, others are now at their peak of color. 

The Meyer lemon tree is weighted down with bright yellow balls.

The Mandarin orange tree is similarly weighted but with bright orange balls.

The Duranta erecta is full of the flashy yellow berries that give it its common name - golden dewdrop.

But wait! The duranta is also still carrying loads of these pretty blooms that are so attractive to butterflies.

The weird little shrimp plant carries its blooms for weeks, months even, before they fade.

The orange flame justicia is still burning brightly.

Yellow cestrum is virtually a year-round bloomer here.

Convolvulus 'Blue Daze' still sends out a few of its tiny flowers every few days.

The well-named firespike, Odontonema strictum.

The daisy-like blossoms of the wedelia continue to brighten gray December days.

Another plant with daisy-like blooms is the Farfugium japonicum, giant leopard plant.

It's not a leopard but the White-tipped Black moths, Melanchroia chephise, really, really like those blooms.

The tropical jatropha is still blooming in its protected spot along the south wall of the house.

The lavender is a little past its prime but is still colorful.

Anisacanthus wrightii is sporting a few blossoms.

Almond verbena has periodic flushes of bloom over our entire long growing season and it is in the middle of one of those now.

I can depend on 'Old Blush' to send out a few of these pretty little roses on a regular basis.

And few plants are more dependable in our gardens than lantana.

The loquat tree is in full bloom. The blossoms are not much to look at but they have a lovely scent.

Turk's cap, another year-round bloomer.

Purple trailing lantana.

What would December be without violas?

And pansies, of course.

The unstoppable blue plumbago, blooming since April.

In mid-December, a week before the official start of winter, we are still waiting for our first frost. So far our lowest temperature has been 35 degrees F. Will we have another winter like our last one when we never had temperatures below freezing and never even experienced a killing frost? The weeks ahead hold the answer to that question.

Meantime, we will enjoy our coolish, mostly pleasant weather, wonderful conditions for getting things done in the garden.

Thank you for visiting my garden today, and thank you, Carol of May Dreams Gardens, for hosting this meme.