Posts filed under 'Controversial Issue/Debate'
“They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan”
They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan by Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng and Benjamin Ajak with Judy A. Bernstein
In the introduction, Judy Bernstein compares the situation that the three ‘lost boys’ of this title have been through as analogous to that of the novel Lord of the Flies. I liked this because you are reading this book for your English II Honors class and Lord of the Flies is required reading during the sophomore year. Once you have read both of these books, I think you’ll have great class discussions on the ideas of whether individuals need to be governed—whether they behave differently if they know that there is no policeman (or policewoman) on the corner, keeping them in line.
The three young men who tell their stories here are brothers and a cousin from ‘Dinka Land’ in the Sudan. They walked a 1,000 mile journey to the safety of a refugee camp in Kenya. (The map in the book is very helpful.) One of the first things that the lost boys did when they came to the United States (to San Diego, CA) was buy journals and write their stories. They begin with ordinary life in their villages—coming-of-age rituals of being circumcised, daily meals, caring for animals, the relationships between husbands and wives. As rumors of war spread, the boys are instructed on how to hide when the government soldiers come through the village. Eventually, the villages are raided and the boys lose track of their parents and other family members. They are on their own, trying to make it to safety.
Their trips—both together and separately, in the company of soldiers or with groups of similar lost boys—are circuitous. As the reader, I wondered about the long-term effects of their having witnessed so much death—murder, kids stepping on land mines, bombs going off in other kids’ hands. I wonder how they survived starvation and death from lack of water on numerous occasions. I also thought that, at your age, you may not have heard of some of the more awful things the book addresses, such as female circumcision.
If you are very moved by this book, you may enjoy reading A Long Way Gone, which I’ve reviewed on this blog. The boy in that book did not escape the rebel soldiers (as the three in this book managed to do), so his story is a bit different. He is forced to become a soldier as a mere child and to brutally murder villagers. The veteran soldiers keep him and other boys drugged all the time, so that they don’t have a real awareness of what they are doing.
Both books give us an idea of what war is really like when it is happening in your own backyard.
Add comment May 29, 2010
“Fast Food Nation”
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Though I’d read several books about food in the last few years, I missed this one. So when it came up as a choice for summer reading in the English II Honors class, I thought I’d try it as well.
Fast Food Nation follows a tradition of muckraking journalism—it takes a problem, reports on it in depth, and hopes that through education, people will come together and demand change. I recommend reading the paperback edition because there is a section about the blowback from the original book. It made some very powerful people very angry. Also—don’t let the length of the book scare you. The last 100 pages are just the notes and bibliography.
Fast Food Nation begins by making interesting connections between the American Dreams of Walt Disney and Ray Kroc, one of the founders (the man who started the franchise we know today) of McDonald’s and goes on to discuss those of Carl Karcher (founder of Carl’s Jr.). Schlosser shows the darker side of these men as well as the energy, hard work, and vision that each needed to make his dream come true. (If your understanding of Walt Disney is completely rosy, and you are interested, you can find documentation of the other side in any biography written in the last 15 years—his involvement in fast food in minor. So FFN doesn’t spend too much time on him.)
Well, unfortunately, some big dreams turn into nightmares, and fast food dreams came to cause many problems across the nation. As McDonald’s and Ronald McDonald became the most recognized brand and character across the country, Americans ate more and more fast food, becoming fatter and fatter—and thus unhealthy in many ways. Schlosser discusses some of the social forces that are involved as well—with both parents working outside the home, often no one feels like cooking.
The sections of the book on teenage employees and how easy it is to create an uneducated, low-wage, benefits-free work force are interesting, as is the successful efforts of McDonald’s to keep workers from unionizing, and fast food employers’ ability to get millions of dollars in federal funds (yeah, taxpayers’ money) to train their workers while mechanizing jobs so that no training is necessary. There’s also the outrage of vegetarians and Hindu people over beef stock in French fires (it makes them taste better) as well as how fast food production has eliminated that American icon, the cowboy on the range. But the part of the book that really had people upset—that caused attacks on Schlosser’s credibility—was the section on the meat-packing industry. This feels like a flashback to The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. (A comparison of the two books would make a great class project.)
The speed with which cattle are killed and processed has risen exponentially. A job that once required the skill of a butcher is done in assembly-line fashion. Large meat-packing corporations advertise for workers in Mexico, who come to the jobs (legally or illegally). They have no health insurance, and the injury rate is very high. Injured workers are ‘kicked to the curb’ and new ones replace them. Reading this section of the book makes you think that working in meat packing must be one of the worst jobs in the world. But the part that makes you sick is that, due to the speed and lack of training in butchering, when cattle are disemboweled, feces sprays on the meat which is later ground in and arrives in your fast food hamburgers. That’s one reason why E. coli started breaking out, leading to illness and death. In addition, sick cows are killed, dirty meat and blood from the floor is mixed in with the final product. While this section of the book is stomach-turning, it’s also riveting—you can’t stop reading.
And there’s a great lesson. Although people have tried through government to pass laws to change the industry (pretty unsuccessfully—meat packers donate a lot of money to conservative legislators, and one who was vital to these decisions at the time the book was written was married to a woman on the board of the largest meat packer in the world), what has worked much better is to stop eating at fast food places. When business declines, they make changes to bring it back.
Add comment May 25, 2010
“Telling”
Telling by Marilyn Reynolds
The novel begins with twelve-year-old Cassie meeting her new neighbors, the Sloans, and agreeing to baby-sit their children. Each time Cassie baby-sits, Fred Sloan makes a sexual advance toward her, progressively becoming more obvious and direct. In the beginning, Cassie doesn’t tell anyone, but instead tries to beg off the baby-sitting jobs. Unfortunately, Cassie’s mother often says ‘yes’ for her, thinking that Cassie should enjoy making the money.
When Cassie finally tells her older cousin, the two go to baby-sit together. Cassie only baby-sits alone when Fred is out for his bowling night and will be home later than Angie. One night this plan backfires and Fred catches Cassie alone. He forces kisses upon her and promises he won’t hurt her. She freezes in fear. Afterward, she won’t go out. Once the truth comes to light, not all adults believe Cassie –and Fred and his wife won’t admit what happens. The novel continues with the effects of the truth upon both families and the danger that Cassie is in while she is ‘telling.’
We just got two copies of this book for our ‘SSR’ library in the textbook room at COHS. I thought it was realistic and recommend it. Ask in the textbook room if you’d like to read it.
Add comment May 18, 2010
“Freakonomics”
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
When your econ teacher assigns some outside reading, this is the book to grab. It’s entertaining as well as informative. Its authors are a well-respected economist (as you’ll learn from your reading, back in 2003, Levitt received the Clark Medal as the best economist under 40) and a journalist who writes for some great publications including The New York Times and The New Yorker. Together, they look at some very odd issues and apply the science of economics to them. The result is written in a style that anyone can understand and that makes the subject fun. I mean it’s really a wacky book.
Freakonomics asks questions such as: What do school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? (Given the right incentives, these people, known for integrity, will cheat). What does the legalization of abortion in the U.S. have to do with declining crime rates? (This discussion is quite politically incorrect and sadly enlightening.) Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers? (Unless they are on the top of their business pyramid, they don’t make enough money to move out–but drug dealing is a ‘glamour’ job like being a movie star. Everyone dreams of making it to the top.) What can parents do to make their children smart and successful? (Sadly, everything they can do must be done long before they become pregnant or have children. So forget Baby Einstein.) Do first names help or hinder children in being successful? (The names that successful people give their children are later popular with less successful parents, and they don’t alter lives very much.) How are member of the Ku Klux Klan like real estate agents? (When they’re looking out for number one, don’t get the idea that it’s you.) What kind of profile on a dating service gets results?
In Freakonomics, you’ll learn that incentives matter—and how odd some incentives are; that the phrase ‘conventional wisdom’ was never meant to indicate that it was ‘smart’ or ‘right’ (and it still isn’t most of the time). The authors tell us that there’s no unifying theme in this book, and that turns out to be true. Reading it is just a chance to look at economics in a new way and to turn some old assumptions upside down. Lots of fun—and it just meets that 200 page requirement, so it’s a quick red. Come check it out.
P.S.—The authors wrote another book—Superfreakonomics. I haven’t read it yet, but I bet it would make another great outside reading book for econ class.
Add comment March 2, 2010
“Beautiful Boy” and “Tweak”
“It hurts so bad that I cannot save him, protect him, keep him out of harm’s way, shield him from
pain. What good are fathers if not for these things?” Thomas Lynch, “The Way We Are”
David Sheff begins Beautiful Boy with this quote. The fact that he can’t save his son Nic, from his addiction to meth doesn’t stop him from trying again and again, doesn’t stop him from blaming himself for any and every mistake, small or large, that he made in raising Nic, doesn’t keep him from the intense research about meth addiction that informs this memoir.
To say I was riveted from page one is not hyperbole. I wanted so badly for everything to get better, for Nic to wake up and see what his addiction was doing to his family, to him. But as a meth addict this wasn’t even possible for Nic. The research tells you why and Sheff explains it. It seems the best possible hope to stop meth addiction is never to start, not once. If this is hard for you to believe, if this just seems like the sort of fairy tale that teachers tell, YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK. And—if you are suffering because someone in your family is an addict—if a parent, brother or sister is lying, stealing your money, breaking into your house or your room, promising to do better but never acting on that promise—YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK. It will reinforce the “three C’s of Al-Anon” for you: you didn’t cause it, you can’t control it and you can’t cure it. One focus of this book is to help addicts’ family members to stop being ‘addicted to addiction’—to work on living their own lives.
Beautiful Boy is as much a story about relapse as it is about anything. As it opens, Nic returns from college very excited to see his family, his little brother and sister. But he’s relapsed into crystal meth addiction and life explodes. From here, we track back to look at the course of Nic’s addiction. David Sheff, as Nic’s father, will blame himself about so many things: his divorce from his first wife, his unconventional raising of Nic, the fact that he did drugs himself when he was young. Yet to the reader—who will acknowledge that Nic’s joint-custody life must be lousy because it requires him to jockey between the Bay Area (San Francisco) and Los Angeles—parts of Nic’s childhood seem ideal. He is allowed so much creativity; he lives with his father, step-mother, sister and brother in one of the most beautiful, desirable neighborhoods in the country (in Marin County); his step-mother is an artist and encourages Nic’s own artistic skills. He is not only smart and well-loved by his teachers at his exclusive private school—he’s an agile athlete too, and has the time and money to surf. His father joins him and takes the kind of interest in Nic’s activities that most kids only dream about.
How does all this turn out so terribly wrong? Nic experiments with alcohol and marijuana in middle school. From there, he moves on to harder drugs. After going away to Paris as an exchange student, he not only comes home with an ulcer, but has become an addict. His many efforts at rehab fail over and over in a heartbreaking cycle of addiction and sobriety. He is depressed. He uses up his health insurance allowance for rehab and then his parents dive into their bank accounts. Meanwhile, David Sheff, the father, has a brain hemorrhage and nearly dies. It seems he’s going to have to let go or he won’t be around to raise his younger children. Yet even his father’s near death doesn’t stop Nic’s addiction. He takes up with a girlfriend who shoots meth and speedballs with him.
Since Sheff has done so much research, he will tell the reader how meth burns away nerve endings and wipes out the brain’s dopamine (a neurotransmitter responsible for feeling good, for feeling pleasure); how addicts cough up the lining of their lungs. He points out the fact that if the body and mind are to heal, the addict must be sober for two years. Nic is sober once for eighteen months and relapses; then again for almost two years and relapses.
Tweak is Nic Sheff’s telling of his own tale, but he covers a shorter time period than his father does in Beautiful Boy. Tweak is a young adult book (it’s meant to be read by teens), and it covers some pretty scary territory. As a crystal meth addict, Nic has ‘turned tricks’ for drug money; he gets an infection from shooting up and nearly has his arm amputated. It’s tough to read about someone destroying himself—especially if you’ve read Beautiful Boy first and are thinking of Nic as his father portrays him. However, Nic’s story might be the incentive you need to bolter yourself against peer pressure, to reject a life in ruins.
Add comment February 25, 2010
Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
I loved Speak and when someone told me that Twisted was Speak for guys, I had to read it.
The New York Times Book Review (Oct. 27, 2009) tells us that Anderson’s “novel Speak (1999) was one of the first seriously good books published for teenagers to be read widely by them. It tells the story of Melinda Sordino, a clanless outcast who barely endures her freshman year at a suburban high school, and it features one of the best young narrative voices this side of Holden Caulfield.”
So, did Twisted meet the high mark of Speak? Well, it might be too much to ask for another book that good by the same author, but I think Twisted comes close.
Tyler is a former geek with a geek best friend. At the end of his junior year, when he’s had it with being a bullied nobody, he spray paints graffiti all over his school. (He regrets misspelling ‘testicle.’) He’s caught. His punishment is to do community service hours with a landscape community. In doing so, he builds big muscles and gets a great tan. He begins his senior year looking beautiful and attracting the goddess girl of his dreams—Bethany Milbury, sister of the jock who antagonizes him, daughter of Tyler’s father’s boss. So, yeah, Tyler’s life is still complicated.
Tyler seems to be trending lightly, but somewhat successfully, between two worlds. That is until Bethany invites him to a wild party where she proceeds to get very drunk and asks Tyler to have sex with her. Of course, he wants to. But if he doesn’t, he thinks he can be a sort of hero to her, the good guy—and that she’ll really love him. But that’s not what happens. Especially not after sexually explicit pictures of an unconscious Bethany hit the Internet and Tyler is accused of this assault.
There are many good themes in this book—much about class privilege and the rich always coming out on top; teens making ethical choices; how teens are viewed as ‘bad’ people after one mistake; how rotten parents (Tyler’s dad is cruel and emotionally abuse) affect the course of a kid’s life—and whether the kid can alter that course. Twisted will speak to all readers, but especially to guys who are just trying to do the right thing.
Add comment January 22, 2010
“Readicide”
Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do about It by Kelly Gallagher
The dedication of this book states: “For those educators who resist the political in favor of the authentic.” So this is a book for teachers, and teachers of language arts will find it especially useful. (This review is directed primarily to teachers.) However, if you are a student who is doing any sort of research project on high-stakes testing (like STAR/CST tests) or on why teens don’t read very much, you’ll find this book useful. You can check it out from the textbook room (rather than the circulation desk at the library).
In his introduction, Gallagher, an English teacher from Southern California, introduces the term ‘readicide’ “because it cuts to the central ironic thesis of this book: rather than helping students, many of the reading practices found in today’s classrooms are actually contributing to the death of reading.” I agree with this premise, as do many folks who want to nurture a love of reading in teens (such as librarians and English teachers). Gallagher discuss how we can turn the trend around.
Basically, Gallagher uses data to show that school are more interested in nurturing test-taking skills than in nurturing a love of reading. We limit positive reading experiences; we overteach pleasure reading books (which should just be read, not studied!); we underteach classic books (so that they are too confusing–and students hate them and give up).
Readicide quotes Marzano (so what Gallagher discusses lines up with what teachers here at COHS are working toward practicing); argues that testing data is something beyond damn lies (as Mark Twain so aptly put it); that current practice leads to word poverty and a deficit of knowledge capital (it doesn’t matter if you can read the words if you don’t know what the writing is about); that we spend so much time teaching to the test, we can no longer study long, challenging works–and thus, students don’t develop higher-level thinking skills; and that SSR is necessary to allow students to build their prior knowledge and background.
Gallagher offers many suggestions and examples lessons for helping teens read books for pleasure without ruining those books with long reports and worksheet interruptions. He also shows how to approach a difficult text that requires teaching so that teens can still enjoy the ‘deeper meaning’ without getting either bored or lost.
There’s an appendix of 101 books that Gallagher’s reluctant readers love–these are current titles (and happily, I’ve read many of them–several are reviewed in this blog).
Add comment January 4, 2010
“Endgame”
Endgame by Nancy Garden
Here’s a new one,and I admit I haven’t read it yet, but it intrigues me. Here is the blurb from the book jacket.
A new town, a new school, a new start. That’s what fourteen-year-old Gray Wilton believes as he chants, “It’s gonna be better, gonna be better here.” But it doesn’t take long for Gray to realize that nothing’s going to change–there are bullies in every school, and he’s always their punching bag. Their brutal words, physical abuse, and emotional torture escalate until Gray feels trapped in a world where he has no control, no support systems, and no way out–until the day he enters the halls of Greenford High School with his father’s semiautomatic in hand.
Add comment December 8, 2009
“So Sexy So Soon”
“So Sexy So Soon” by Diane E. Levin, Ph.D. and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D.
I don’t think the blurb on the book jacket—which uses examples straight out of the 1970s and 1980s for parent strategies to counteract the assault of a sexualized society—does justice to this book. So Sexy So Soon really is up-to-date and helpful. It doesn’t mince words, but shows immediately how deeply sexualized America society is and just how young are the children affected by popular media. For example, these are selections from the first paragraphs of the introduction:
“A four-year-old girl, in the dramatic play area of her preschool, begins swaying her hips and singing, “Baby, I’m your slave. I’ll let you whip me if I misbehave.’ When her teacher goes over to talk to her about it, she volunteers that she learned the song from her eight-year-old sister. After doing a bit of research, the teacher discovers that the words are from a highly popular Justin Timberlake song.”
“A six-year-old casually asks at dinner, ‘What’s a blow job?’ Before his parents can respond, his ten-year-old sister knowingly screeches, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe he asked that!’”
“An eight-year-old boy comes home and reports to his father that he didn’t know what to do when his friend showed him pornography on the Internet during a playdate at the friend’s house.”
“A furor erupts at a bar mitzvah when two girls are caught performing oral sex on the thirteen-year-old bar mitzvah boy in a ladies’ room stall.”
So Sexy So Soon discusses why children are so sexualized in American society. One of the big reasons is that it sells—it’s a marketing tool, which has always been true for adult products. (I’m getting pretty darn old, and can remember a commercial from my childhood for Noxzema shaving cream that had a beautifully voluptuous girl saying, “Take it off. Take it all off!” with strip-tease music in the background.) However, children’s products were advertised to appeal to kids’ fantasies. Ironically (for the kids at least—not the sellers), “Products are not intended to sell children on sex—they are intended to sell them on shopping.”
“’Teach seven-year-olds that sexual expression is a matter of accessorizing and you’ve secured a lifetime of purchases in the lingerie department. Disassociate sex from non-market feelings (pleasure, desire, intimacy) and associate it instead with consumable superficialities, and you’ll not only keep the rabble in line, you’ll have them lined up at the mall.’” (Cynthia Peters, commentator for ZMag.com)
So Sexy So Soon discusses how parents can work through the onslaught. There are a few chapters on teens as well, and these could (should?) appeal to high school students. And if any of you, as high school students, are going to approach the topic of advertising or of sexualizing children as part of a controversial issues report, don’t pass this book up! If you are a teacher or parent of young children, this is a good read.
1 comment September 11, 2009
“The Giver”
“The Giver” by Lois Lowry
180 pp.
Jonas lives in a future utopia in which everyone seems to behave well and apologizes when they hurt someone’s feelings or do something wrong. In the evenings, families share their days, expressing their happiness and frustrations. In the morning, they dutifully report their dreams to one another.
There are many indicators that children are growing up. All children are presented with jobs or tools at the yearly Ceremony. Jonas’ sister, at 8, will start her volunteer hours and at the age of 12, Jonas receives his assignment for life. Rather then become the usual such as an engineer or nurturer, Jonas is to be the receiver, the most important job in the community. He will go to the current Receiver to be given communal memories which individuals don’t know about. Memory is considered too powerful and painful for the general population. The communities, encased in an artificial and perfect environment, know nothing of the heat of the sun or the cold of the winter snow. Jonas is disturbed by many of the memories he receives–of war especially. But he also receives a memory of love that that is more deep and binding than possible in the rational world of his community.
Jonas’ father is a nurturer. He accepts babies from the birth-givers, and works in a nurturing center where babies are kept until they turn one year old. One baby, Gabriel, is not very healthy, and Jonas’ father gets special permission to bring him home to sleep at night, hoping the extra care will help him gain a little weight. If Gabriel does not do better, he will be “Released”. Jonas helps Gabriel sleep by giving him memories, which is strictly forbidden.
Gabriel does not do as well as Jonas’ father had hoped and is scheduled for Release. Jonas and the Giver hatch a plan to bring memory back to the community, but to do so, Jonas must flee “elsewhere.”
I know that many people read this novel before they get to high school, but if you haven’t read it, do so. It is often censored and would make a good read for “Banned Books Week.”
1 comment May 15, 2009
