5. Discuss a reading (1)

One of the other books that I will be reading this semester is titled Lost Hearts in Italy written by Andrea Lee. Although I am not yet finished reading this book, I have been intrigued since the first page. Lee brilliantly describes how her protagonist, Mira, has contemplated and eventually made life-changing decisions within a span of about twenty years. Mira recalls her life-altering visit to Rome, and how meeting a stranger has changed her life forever. Skipping from Mira to Nick, then from Nick to Zenin, and back to Mira again, Lee allows the reader to witness her characters’ relationships with one another through each of their perspectives. Through traveling to various cities myself in the past two months, I have realized that each experience has allowed me to appreciate the little things about my own culture, both back in New York and what I am now used to in Florence, Italy. Furthermore, the way Lee jumps from one character to the next allows the reader to analyze and compare the contrasting thoughts and perspective of each. I think that I have had the chance to do the same when traveling from one country to the next, and experiencing each culture through varying perspectives of my travel mates, hosts, natives, and educators.

Ok, I'm on my way to catching up with all the missed blogs.
cacerolazosThe book I'm currently reading is called "Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina" by Marina Sitrin. It's this author/researcher's best effort at honestly recording an oral history of a social movement. That social movement is the popular uprising, so to say, of the middle and lower class, employed and unemployed, who intensely experienced the effects of Argentina's economic crash in 2001. I don't know if you guys know much about Argentine history, but basically their peso was held equal to our dollar before the crash, and devalued immensely within a very short period of time, to equal about a fourth (now a third) of one of our dollars. The whole crash is pretty complicated, so I don't know if I'm doing it justice, but the main driving factor was the country's default on huge international debt, and lots of pressure from international banks (mainly IMF and World Bank). During this period, people's bank accounts were frozen, unemployment was ridiculously high, and the masses who suffered basically created something between a revolution and a rebellion. The government was not dealing with the unemployment and other crisis affects effectively, and within two weeks at the end of December 2001, the nation went through 5 different presidential administrations, at the word of the people, who were demanding a government with a better solution.

che guevara and fidel castro

I've decided to start my readings with The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Che Guevara as most of us probably know was a revolutionary in Latin America in the middle 20th century. He helped win Cuba's independence from the Bautista regime and died in Bolivia after being captured by military forces there.

Though the man became a symbol for communist and socialist ideals, he wrote the motorcycle diaries long before he was truly dedicated to such things. He was a medical student from Argentina and the book documents a trip he took with a friend and fellow student through south America on a motorcycle.

Che would later edit the notes he took on this trip for publication. All of the entries have a sort of nostalgic sense of loss in them. Che even describes at the beginning of the book that the man who wrote these notes was not the man he was now.

So far the book shows the culture and essence of rural Chile and Argentina. Ernesto and his friend seem like any ordinary young doctors who are looking for an adventure before they plunge themselves into adulthood. They meander around south america with little to no money and a bike that is falling apart.

flaubertOne of the books I am reading for this class is called Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes. The book was a really interesting read, for a number of reasons. The book begins, more or less, with the figure of a stuffed parrot which the narrator finds in a museum in France, and which is purported to have been kept by Flaubert at his writing desk, inspiring him while he wrote his short work “Un Coeur Simple.” It starts in the narrative mode, but then moves on to address Flaubert’s biography, as well as to examine critically his work and place in French culture. The book continues to shift between the fictional, historical, and critical modes throughout, until, finally, at the end of the book, the character of the narrator himself comes into play, and his own personal life is incorporated into the larger story. The book was both highly informative and really funny, and its innovative structure made it a lot of fun to read.

I have started reading Kiss and Tango: Looking for Love in Buenos Aires by Mariana Palmer and I think this book is hilarious. Maybe I just think this because I have the same sense of humor as the author, or that I have experienced many of the same ridiculous frustrations that she has endured through her south of the equator travels.
The book is a memoir that begins with Palmer’s first visit to Buenos Aires. She initially came to Argentina to visit her cousins, but on her first night they took her to a Milonga (tango bar), and she quickly fell in love with the Tango. After her vacation is over, she returns to New York, where she cannot forget the lure of dancing the Tango and finally decides to put her life on hold and move to Buenos Aires.
I have not gotten too far into the book, but the 80 pages or so that I have read have been amazing. Not only am I entertained by her writing style and her approach to dealing with undesirable situations (sweaty dance partners, language barriers etc.), but I feel I can really relate to her initial experiences with the city of Buenos Aires, its culture, and the Porteños (BA locals). As she explores different areas of the city she describes her opinion of monuments and various spectacles much in the way I experienced them myself: the too-bright-pink “Casa Rosada” (Argentine version of the white house), the eerily quiet Recoleta cemetery where Evita is buried, dusty and slightly skeptical flea markets around San Telmo, and the countries general lack of appreciation for air conditioning. More than any of her other descriptions however, I relate most to her analysis of tango dancing.

The FlaneurI took Edmund White’s The Flaneur on the train with me to Versailles. It’s not a particularly long or complex book, and I had more or less finished it by the time I got to the chateau. Did you know that the French have (or at least, had up until the eighties when the book was published—he should really do an update and see how things have changed) a horror of the smell of cooking food? That’s pretty much all I thought about while I walked around Versailles, wondering where on earth the kitchen was.
Of course, a horror of the smell of cooking food is not a new idea. Last year I lived with a girl who was not very subtle about her dislike of my penchant for cooking what she considered to be bizarre dishes. These pretty much consisted of anything Chinese. I know that a lot of Chinese food is strong-smelling (just because I’m immune to it doesn’t mean I don’t recognize this fact), but really, she looked disgusted every time I even so much as boiled dumplings. I can’t even imagine what my French neighbors think about me.

Elevator to the Top of the Eiffel TowerI had been saving Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon for my arrival in Paris for the past year- ever since I read Through the Children’s Gate. The latter title is a collection of essays written by Gopnik about the daily life of a New Yorker living in New York. Paris to the Moon is a collection of Gopnik’s essays about la vie quotidienne of a New Yorker living in Paris. Interestingly, our very own Alain De Botton commented on Gopnik’s work, and perfectly encapsulated what I love about his writing:

“The distinctive brilliance of Gopnik’s essays lies in his ability to pick up a subject one would never have imagined it possible to think deeply about and then cover it in thoughts… He is truly able to see the whole world in a grain of sand.”

George Packer's Book

I have been reading George Packer’s The Village of Waiting about his experiences teaching English in Togo through the Peace Corps in the early 80’s. Packer was stationed in a small village over and hour from the capital Lomé. He writes about his experiences in Togo and traveling throughout Africa.

One aspect of Packer’s story that I have found particularly fascinating, especially in relation to my own experiences, is his discussion of the role of the white western man in post-colonial Africa. He is not and idealist suffering from a guilt complex by any means, and he often questions his own reasons for being in Africa as well as the reasons so many African nations have developed so little since the end of colonialism.

Many of his experiences and observations are things I myself have come across in Ghana, both the exciting, frustrating and shocking. As a white person in Africa, we have to adjust ourselves to being a minority, a curiosity. Sometimes people smile and welcome me and sometimes they scowl and give me bitter resentful looks. It is difficult not to feel guilty about the situation of the African people, but one must remind oneself that feeling guilty is futile. It is not “our” responsibility to fix every problem.