HUMANITY – Page 25 – REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE

SUDAN’S RELEVANCE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

What Is the What

By: Dave Eggers

Narrated by Dion Graham

As Ronald Reagan famously said in his successful campaign against Jimmy Carter, “There you go again”.

Dave Eggers writes another book about a tragic human event. However, Eggers avoids character controversy like that which followed “Zeitoun”, a story about the Katrina disaster.

Eggers classifies “What Is the What” as a novel, without any claim to source-vetted facts or the integrity of its primary character.

SUDAN IN THE WORLD

“What Is the What” is about Sudan and its 20th century genocidal history. This is a story of the complex religious, ethnic, and moral conflict that exists in Sudan and in all nations peopled by extremes of wealth and poverty.

“What Is the What” is a tautology exemplified by a story of one who has something, knows it, and another that has nothing, and knows not why.

Valentino Achak Deng, the hero of Eggar’s story, tells of his father. Achak’s father explains the story of “What is the What”.

God offers man a choice of cows or something called the What. God asks, “Do you want the cows or the What?

But, man asks, “What is the What”? God says, “The What is for you to decide.”

Achak’s father explains that with cows a man has something; he learns how to care for something; becomes a good caretaker of a life-sustaining something, but a man who has no cows has nothing, learns nothing about caring; and only becomes a taker of other’s something.

By mixing truth with fiction, Eggers cleverly reveals the story of Sudan’s “lost boys”, refugees from the murderous regime of President Al-Bashir in Sudan. At every turn, Achak is faced with hard choices.

Omar Al-Bashir is deposed in April 2019 after almost 30 years in power.

Omar Al-Bashir, a Muslim Sudanese military leader who becomes President, releases dogs of war by condoning the rape and pillage of indigenous Sudanese by Muslim extremists. It is partly a religious war of Muslims against Christians but, more fundamentally, it is about greed.

Greed is engendered by oil reserves found in southern Sudan in 1978. Bashir strikes a match that ignites a guerrilla war. Eggers reveals the consequence of that war in the story of Achak, one of thousands of lost boys that fled Sudan when their parents were robbed, raped, and murdered. Bashir’s intent was to rid Sudan of an ethnic minority that held lands in southern Sudan.

Eggers cleverly begins his story with Achak being robbed in Atlanta, Georgia. But, this is America; not Sudan.

Robbers knock on Achak’s door with a request to use his telephone. Achak is pistol whipped, tied, and trapped in his apartment while his and his roommate’s goods are stolen.

There is much to be taken from the apartment. The robbers leave a young boy to guard Achak while they leave to get a larger vehicle to remove the stolen goods.

Achak identifies with the young boy. Achak recalls his life in Sudan and his escape to America; i.e.the land of the free; the land of opportunity. Achak sees the young boy as himself, victimized by life’s circumstances, hardened by poverty, and mired in the “What” (the takers of other’s something).

Eggers continues to juxtapose the consequence of poverty and powerlessness in Atlanta with Achak’s experience in Sudan. Achak’s roommate returns to the apartment to find Achak tied and gagged in an emptied apartment. He releases Achak.

They call the police to report the robbery and assault. An officer arrives to investigate. The police officer listens, takes brief notes, offers no hope for the victims, and leaves; i.e., just another case of poor people being victimized by poor people.

The episode reminds one of the Sudanese government’s abandonment of the “lost boys”. They are citizens governed by leaders who look to rule-of-law for the rich, and powerful; not the poor and powerless. They are leaders of the “what” (takers of other’s something); rather than leaders of all citizens.

Achak has been injured in the robbery. He goes to a hospital emergency room for help. Achak waits for nine hours to be seen by a radiologist. He presumes it is because he has no insurance but it is really because he has no power.

He has enough money to pay for treatment but without insurance, this emergency room puts Achak on a “when we can get around to it” list. The doctor who can read the radiology film is not due for another three hours; presumably when his regular work day begins. Achak waits for eleven hours and finally decides to leave. It is 3:00 am and he has to be at work at 5:30 am.

As Achak waits for the doctor he remembers his experience in Sudan. When the Muslim extremists first attack his village, many boys of his village, and surrounding villages are orphaned. These orphans have nowhere to go. By plan or circumstance the lost boys are assembled by a leader who has the outward-appearing objective of protecting the children. The reality of the “what” (takers of other’s something) raises its head when the children are recruited by this leader for the “red army” of South Sudan (aka SPLA or Sudan People’s Liberation Army).

The reality of the “what” (takers of other’s something) raises its head when Sudanese children are recruited by this leader for the “red army” of South Sudan (aka SPLA or Sudan People’s Liberation Army).

These are boys of 8, 9, 10, 11 years of age. This army-of-recruits begins a march from South Sudan to Ethiopia, a journey of over 700 miles, gathering more orphans as they travel across Sudan. Along the way, they become food for lions, and crocodiles; they are reviled as outsiders by frightened villagers and, unbeknownst to Achak and many of the boys—they are meant to become seeds of a revolution to overthrow Al-Bashir’s repressive government. These children are to be educated and trained in Ethiopia to fight for the independence of South Sudan. They are led by leaders of the “what” (takers of other’s something).

The lost boys are victims of believers in the “what”. Achak and other Sudanese’ refugees walk, run, and swim a river to arrive in Kenya, hundreds of miles south of Ethiopia. Some Sudanese were shot by Ethiopians; some were eaten by crocodiles; some died from disease and starvation.

Then, in 1991, Ethiopia’s government changes. The lost boys, a part of an estimated 20,000 Sudanese’ refugees, are forcibly ejected by the new government.

The Sudanese’ refugees arrive in Kakuma, Kenya. Achak says Kakuma is a Swahili word for “nowhere”. In 1992, it becomes home to an estimated 138,000 refugees who fled from several different warring African nations. The SPLA remains a part of the refugee camp but their recruiting activity is mitigated in this new environment. The camp is somewhat better organized but meals are limited to one per day with disease and wild animals as ever-present dangers. Education classes are supported by Kenya, Japan, and the United Nations to help refugees manage themselves and escape their past.

Achak survives these ordeals and reflects on his unhappiness in Atlanta, Georgia. Achak clearly acknowledges how much better living in America is than living in Africa. However, Achak makes the wry suggestion that Sudanese settlement in America changed his countrymen from abusers to killers of their women.

He suggests Sudanese killing of their women is because of freedom. He explains freedom exercised by women in America is missing in Sudan. In Sudan, Sudanese women would not think of doing something contrary to wishes of their husbands. Achak infers Sudanese women adapt to freedom while Sudanese men feel emasculated. The emasculation leads to deadly force in Sudanese families; a deadly force that includes murder of wives or girlfriends and suicide by male companions.

Eggers successfully and artistically reveals the tragedy of Sudan. Cultural and religious conflict in the world and American freedom are called into question. The cultural belief of parts of the Middle East, Africa, and America drive Achak from nation to nation. Achak, despite misgivings, appears to love America. But, American democracy is no utopia. Achak realizes no system of government is perfect. His ambition is to educate himself and his home country. Achak realizes education is the key to a life well lived.

What is the What? Ironically, it is more than cows; it is education that combats cultural ignorance and celebrates freedom and equal opportunity for all.

Eggers story implies America needs to re-think its policy on immigration. We are a nation of immigrants. Achak’s story highlights what is wrong with America and other parts of the world. But it also shows the “what” (“the ‘what’ that is for you to decide”) can be made better because it is more than cows.

LOS ANGELES REDUX

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

All Involved: A Novel

Written by: Ryan Gattis

Narrated by: Anthony Rey Perez, Marisol Ramirez, Jim Cooper, Adam Lazarre-White, James Chen

RYAN GATTIS (AUTHOR)

Ryan Gattis’s novel, “All Involved”, tells of the Los Angeles riots in 1992. It illustrates a cause for broken trust between minorities and the police. It is the story of public safety departments struggling with criminality, poverty, addiction, and discrimination.

STACEY KOON (L.A. POLICE SERGEANT)

Four Los Angeles Police officers inflict a beat-down on Rodney King while arresting him after a high-speed chase. Sergeant Stacey Koon, the commanding officer at the scene is said to have tazed King twice.

Koon argues the tazing is effective but suggests King is “dusted”; i.e. meaning hyped by PCP. The four involved officers are white. Rodney King is black. King is handcuffed and dragged to the side of the road to wait for an ambulance. There is no clearer example of how difficult it is–to be Black in America.

Officer Koon’s drug use comment is resurrected by officer Derek Chauvin in the restraint of George Floyd in 2020. Is drug use justification for beating or killing a human being?

RODNEY KING (APPEARANCE 3 DAYS AFTER BEATING 3.6.92–KING DIES IN JUNE 2012 @ 47 YEARS OF AGE) There is no clearer example of how difficult it is to be Black in America.

All four officers are indicted for “excessive force”. After acquittal by the State, six days of rioting begin. It is April 29, 1992. In the end, four police officers, Stacey Koon, and Officer Laurence Powell are convicted by a Federal court. Each serves two years in prison. Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind, the other accused, are acquitted. Gattis does not dwell on the King’ beat down but infers it is the primer for society’s explosion in South Central Los Angeles.

In the end, four police officers, Stacey Koon, and Officer Laurence Powell are convicted by a Federal court. Each serves two years in prison. Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind, the other accused, are acquitted.

RODNEY KING RIOT - SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES

Gattis’s novel looks at L.A’s riots through the eyes of minority communities living in the poorest parts of South Central Los Angeles. His story begins with the brutal murder of an innocent Latino by a Latin gang. The murder occurs just after the State’s acquittal of the four officers. Gattis infers the murder occurs because it could be disguised by the Angeleno’ riots.

The murder introduces a cast of characters that will scare most reader/listeners. Sadly, Gattis’s book will also energize gun-toting vigilantes, reinforce socioeconomic prejudices, and encourage right-wing pundits to argue socialism is ruining America. Fundamentally, Gattis’s novel exhibits the appalling consequence of America’s neglect of the poor.

One may argue there is no justification for rioting in America but current events and past history suggest otherwise. From the days of the American Revolution to the murder of a 32-year-old woman in Charlottesville, North Carolina by James Fields Jr. in 2017, rule-of-law has been violated by both moral and miscreant Americans.

Every riot is justified and vilified in measures equal to the power and prestige of prevailing interests. Victims of riots range from rule-of-law enforcement agencies to all socioeconomic levels of American society. However, the powerless, disrespected, and poor are recycled as perennial victims in every riot.

Those who protect the general public suffer at the time of riot but, as peace is restored, the poor return to a life of quiet desperation and crime that is largely contained and hidden from public view.

GANGS IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES (Money, power, and prestige are important to all human beings. However, the ways of making money in poor communities are often illegal because, like Willie Sutton said about banks–robbing, murder for hire, extortion, and drug trafficking are where the money is. Gangs proliferate in poor communities.)

Human self-interest is at the heart of what is good and bad in societies based on rule of law. The rich and middle class are served by rule of law while the poor are often left to fend for themselves. What Gattis shows in his story is that citizen’ self-interest in poor communities is the same as the general public’ but it takes a different form.

Money, power, and prestige are important to all human beings. However, the ways of making money in poor communities are often illegal because, like Willie Sutton said about banks–robbing, murder for hire, extortion, prostitution, and drug trafficking are where the money is. Gangs proliferate in poor communities. They have their own rule of law because the general public’s rule of law does not equally protect the poor.

If the poor cannot find a job, they sell their bodies or their loyalty. Turning tricks for money buys food, clothing, and housing–the necessities of life. Being a gang member or leader becomes the primary ladder for success of the poor.

The stress of being poor is a cycle of illegal selling and buying. With the use of one’s body or drugs, the poor escape the mind-numbing reality of being poor in America; i.e. at least until they run out of money, are murdered, or die from the pestilences of life. American police and fire departments treat the poor less equally because the problems of the poor are increasingly unmanageable.

The stress of being poor is a cycle of illegal selling and buying. With the sale of one’s body or the trafficking of drugs, the poor are employed in ways that satisfy the human desire for money, power, and prestige.

Gattis’s novel posits a solution. He suggests an American gang of corrections officers to threaten poor community gang leaders with murder and mayhem if they choose to persist in their murderous control of poor communities. One has to ask oneself–how can vigilantism cure the problem? The victims of this mentality are decent police and fire department operations that have sworn to protect life and property in the jurisdictions of all citizens of the United States.

Police and fire departments are caught in the middle of a war that cannot be won.

The solution for America does not lie in public safety departments being drawn down to the level of gangs but to raise gangs to the level of good citizens by genuinely educating and providing equal opportunity for all.

The map for poverty’s elimination is a destination at the end of a long road. The road to a police state, a gang-like sanction of government enforcers, is a short cut to Democratic’ Armageddon. Gattis tells a story that exposes poverty’s sharp edges and democracy’s vulnerabilities.

BROKEN TRUST

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America

Written by: Jill Leovy

Narration by: Rebecca Lowman

JILL LEOVY (AUTHOR)

Broken families, broken hearts, but most of all, broken trust are described in Jill Leovy’s book, “Ghettoside”.

Leovy’s “true story”, somewhat surprisingly, deals mostly with the relationship between Black communities and local law enforcement in an area known as South Central Los Angeles. The surprise in the story is that the 2000 census shows 87.2% of the population of South Central Los Angeles is Latino–only 10.1% is Black; the remainder white, Asian, or other.

SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES (51 SQUARE MILES, 25 NEIGHBORHOODS)

The 2000 census shows of 49,728 people live on 2.55 square miles of land, made up of nine communities. One presumes Leovy chooses the relationship between Blacks and the police because it fits the particular facts of her story.

Food distribution as a result of Covid19 and unemployment.

It seems fair to suggest broken families, hearts, and trust are equally true for Latin South Central Los Angeles families because poverty and gang violence are common denominators of its residents.

Though Leovy’s story is not about poverty, “Ghettoside” (a coined word for ethnic groups killing themselves) is partly related to poorly regulated capitalism; just as genocide is partly related to totalitarianism. The poor in American cities have few legal means of escape.

“Ghettoside” appears most obviously in modern cities because of population concentration. The poor have few available living-wage jobs. The poor congregate in run down inner-city neighborhoods because that is all they can afford.

Decent education is a cost without immediate benefit; i.e. robbery, extortion, prostitution, and other illegal activities provide gainful employment, put food on the table, and pay the rent. On-job-training is provided by street gang activities.

Violence provides “street-cred” and gang affiliation provides power. Money, power, and prestige, the hallmarks of capitalism, are as coveted by the poor as the middle class and rich.

GANGS IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES (A son rejects the gang culture but, like all teenagers, craves his own identity. He ignores gang-culture rules of living in South Central. Standing on a corner, with a hat that is the wrong color, he is shot in the head by another teenager that presumes gang affiliation.)

This story about South Central is primarily told from the perspective of the police department. Leovy tells the “true story” of a black South Central Los Angeles’ cop who works and lives in a South Central L.A.’ community. He is an exception to the rule of most South Central policemen because he lives in the neighborhood he polices. He is an excellent homicide detective, who works hard to solve crimes in a city he loves. He raises a family that exemplifies the American dream. He comes from a lower middle class family, marries a Costa Rican wife while in the marines, and returns to South Central to become a cop. They raise three children; two younger children went to college while the oldest struggled in school. With extra effort, the oldest finishes high school. He is not interested in college but is a conscientious, hardworking young man; much like his father. The oldest son rejects the gang culture but, like all teenagers, craves his own identity. He ignores gang-culture rules of living in South Central. Standing on a corner, with a hat that is the wrong color, he is shot in the head by another teenager that presumes gang affiliation.

LAPD IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES (Leovy explores police department reaction to inner-city homicide to reveal how good cops are overwhelmed by a culture that victimizes itself.)

Leovy explores police department reaction to inner-city homicide to reveal how good cops are overwhelmed by a culture that victimizes itself. As the story unfolds, the police officers’ oldest son dies. The investigation is turned over to a different department that initially fails to solve the crime; not because of lack of effort but because of a bureaucratic way of conducting the investigation. The officer in charge is a meticulous detective but the record of his investigation shows he repeatedly knocks on doors of possible witnesses without actually making contact. The effort is duly noted in the “murder book” but no new evidence is found. A new officer is assigned to the case that is equally organized but pursues witnesses until he finds them. A record of attempted contacts is not acceptable to this detective.

Leovy provides detail of the new officer’s interrogation of a suspect that rivals the skill of the investigator of Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s classic fictional story of “Crime and Punishment”.

The interrogation description is a pleasure to listen to and a high commendation by Leovy for the investigating detective. The case is solved but one is left with the feeling that justice is not done. A young man, a teenager, is dead. The killer is also a teenager. When asked why he murdered the police officer’s son, he said he shot him with his eyes closed; he only did it because the officer’s son looked like he belonged to a rival gang, and, after all, he is Black, so who cares?

Leovy systematically reveals how difficult it is for a good police officer to keep up with the murder rate in South Central L.A. Everything from budget cuts, to bureaucratic “cover your ass” investigation, to a culture that feeds on itself, makes a good policeman’s job un-doable.

Leovy explains how Black families believe they do not matter to the police because murders do not get solved.

Police officers are faced with mistrust that makes solving murders less important than bureaucratic record keeping that shows they are working

“Ghettoside” is a picture of hell; i.e. a picture of broken families, broken hearts, and broken trust.

When trust between citizens and police is broken, witnesses will not cooperate because they fear reprisal from the accused.

Ineffective police bureaucracy is compounded by officers that are not part of the community for which they are responsible. The irony of that observation is made obvious in Leovy’s story of a good officer who lives in the community and has a son murdered for being part of the community.

Being a cop in South Central L.A. looks like the hell described in Sartre’s play, “No Exit”. It is a play where three dead characters are locked in a room with no exit. In Leovy’s story, there are the police, the citizens, and the perpetrators. Sartre is saying “hell is other people” because each is perpetually viewed by the other as the worst part of themselves.

AKIN TO PROUST

Knausgaard’s precise descriptions of a lived life reminds listeners of how much men have in common, whether Norwegian, American, or other.

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.com

My Struggle, Book 1

Written by: Karl Ove Knausgaard

Narration by: Edoardo Ballerini

KARL OVE KNAUSGARD (NORWEGIAN AUTHOR)

Karl Knausgaard’s “My Struggle, Book 1” is akin to Proust’s oeuvre about life and coming of age. This comparison is somewhat apt but Knausgaard’s journey is visceral and personal while Proust’s is intellectual and universal. A listener feels like they are peeking into Knausgaard’s personal diary; while Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” is an intellectual exercise.

With Knausgaard, a listener feels stuck in a web, without exit; with Proust, one feels stuck but sees a way out.

Even the name of Knausgaard’s book, “My Struggle”, has an emotional feel and personal meaning. In contrast, Proust’s first book is called “Swann’s Way” which infers a more abstract and recollected universal insight.

Marcel Proust (French novelist, criitc and essayist, 1872-1922)

This is not a criticism of Knausgaard’s or Proust’s writing. Knausgaard and Proust are like spiders that weave words into webs that capture listener’s consciousness.

Knausgaard struggles with his freedom. On the one hand, he likes the independence; on the other, he misses the stability associated with family. He becomes accustomed to being alone. He covets being alone, even among friends.

Knausgaard craves the oblivion of alcohol.

Acquiring alcohol becomes a challenge that is met by having others buy it for him and eventually using his 6’ 2” height to fool corner store owners into selling him beer.

Knausgaard seeks companionship to compensate for unstructured independence but shies away from intimacy.

He struggles with growing interest in sex. He has his first ejaculation in an unconsummated bedroom experience with a girl schoolmate. He is sixteen years old.

At fifteen, Knausgaard is struggling with his need for independence.

Knausgaard reveres both his mother and father. He deeply loves both but is ambivalent and somewhat fearful of his father. Knausgaard’s need is served by a mother and father that become separated, first as a result of work, but in the end by divorce. Knausgaard begins to effectively live alone when his mother and father separate.

The way Knausgaard views life waivers between the radical left and outright anarchism.

He is financially supported by his father but his father allows Knausgaard to live largely by himself. When parental divorce becomes a fait accompli, Knausgaard emotionally cleaves to his mother while revising views of his father.

“My Struggle, Book 1” is an excellent memoir of boyhood. It is filled with experiences that remind adult men of what it is like to grow-up in modern times. Some embrace the “Sturm und Drang” of life while others close themselves off and become observers rather than participants. Knausgaard is an observer.

Knausgaard begins to see his father as an individual; as a vulnerable human being, capable of crying and subject to the same weaknesses of all men. He is married twice. He is driven by desire for success with relationships in life as a means to an end rather than ends to a mean.

Knausgaard is less observant of his mother’s humanness because he measures his life against his father’s actions and reactions. In consequence, his understanding and relationship with women is degraded.

Knausgaard’s depiction of his father’s death in the squalor of Knausgaard’s grandmother’s home shocks the senses. It reflects a truth about neglect of the poor, physically or mentally challenged, and the elderly in cultures based on self-interest.

Children who grow into relatively healthy adults believe they are immortal; i.e. “boys grown to men” believe achieving economic security, psychological health, and physical well-being is part of every life’s struggle. Knausgaard infers that when life’s struggle slaps people down, the recovered forget the un-recovered.

Knausgaard suggests those who succeed in a self-interest’ culture believe failure to overcome life’s struggle is the their own fault. One cannot escape the feeling that this is a leading cause of homelessness in one of the richest nations in the world.

Knausgaard tells of his father’s descent into alcoholism, and his grandmother’s mental collapse. Both are ignored by Knausgaard and his brother until confronted by his father’s death in their demented grandmother’s pee and shit-stained house.

There is a homeopathic comfort in hearing Knausgaard’s vignettes of life because they remind one of life as a boy growing into a man. There are no revelations in Knausgaard’s journey to adulthood. However, there are interesting and informative recollections.

Knausgaard’s precise descriptions of a lived life reminds listeners of how much men have in common, whether Norwegian, American, or other. It reminds us that we are human, imperfect, and ephemeral.

WOMEN

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Written by: Elena Ferrante

Narration by: Hillary Huber

ELENA FERRANTE (A writer who chose to be anonymous until she was revealed by the press to be the author of the Elena Greco/Lila trilogy.)

“Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” reflects on the difference between women “doing” and women “thinking”.

“Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” is the last book of four by an author known by the pseudonym Elena Ferrante. It is a book about Italy in the 1960s and 70s. As in the United States, this is a time of social upheaval. Student revolution and class warfare headline Italian media.

In Italy, neo-fascists and communist parties compete for Parliamentary seats at opposite ends of the political spectrum. A neo-fascist’ party presses to capitalize on economic prosperity of the 50s while communist sympathizers rail against economic disparity between owners and workers.

Ferrante’s story is about a young female author, Elena Greco, who has written a book about coming of age in this era of Italian upheaval. To men, Elena reveals insight to an erotic chasm between the sexes. To women, she offers insight to inequality of the sexes.

Elena reveals how life is a struggle for all women; i.e. those who escape poverty, as well as those who remain mired in it.

Sadly, Ferrante ends her book in bewilderment. Her hero, Elena Greco, appears to surrender to a world tainted by male domination. To add to that bewilderment, her counter-culture maven named Lila, succumbs to the sterile belief that self-interest is all that matters in life.

The author reflects on how formal and street-wise education in Italy impacts social change. Elena Greco, Ferrante’s protagonist, is a lower class Italian that rises to fame and fortune by being the first in her family to graduate from college. She is a writer. She is a thinker. Her first book is published to wide acclaim for its depiction of a girl growing into a woman. She is struggling to find her way through middle life by writing a second book. She has a tumultuous relationship with her mother who secretly admires her daughter’s accomplishment and ability. She becomes engaged and marries a rising college professor but grows to resent his intellectual beliefs and dominating self-interest.

WOMEN ON THEIR OWN (Ferrante creates a less conventional character named Lila.)

Lila, who comes from the same neighborhood as Elena but escapes poverty by marrying a relatively successful merchant, whom she later divorces. The divorce can be explained in different ways and for different reasons but the immediate consequence is Lila’s return to poverty. She did not pursue a formal education but is educated by the street. She is a doer. She is tough, insightful, and independent.

Lila has two children, a daughter who stays with her former husband, and another, a boy, that she is pregnant with when she divorces. She, like Elena, has a tumultuous relationship with her mother. The relationship appears irreconcilable because her mother believes her a whore who left a husband that gave her security and extended family respectability.

To survive, Lila breaks with her extended family, goes to work in a sausage factory, and lives with a male friend to reduce living expenses. Partly out of necessity, Lila leaves her boy with neighbors when working but also resents the un-shared burden of motherhood.

Elena and Lila are friends from childhood but their paths to adulthood diverge. As adults, their lives periodically intersect to crystallize differences between revolutionaries that think, and revolutionaries that do.

Lila is a pioneer; a woman ahead of her time, “a doer”.

Elena becomes part of the intelligentsia–those who think, while Lila is street educated–those who do. In their journey through life, one sees Elena using her intelligence to parse the difference between love, sex, success, and failure. With knowledge as a thinker, Elena pursues independence.

In Lila, one sees an equal intelligence that deals daily with being a woman, a worker, and mother in a man’s world; doing what is necessary to win independence. Lila sees potential in the technology industry and capitalizes on its growth. She eventually starts her own company.

Both heroines seem to break free to become independent human beings. Elena achieves freedom as a consequence of thinking; while Lila achieves freedom as a consequence of doing. Both bear the consequence of their independence.

In the end, a listener becomes bewildered by Elena’s view of freedom because it seems constrained by how a man views women rather than how women view themselves. It seems, to a believer in equality of the sexes, that Elena Ferrante abandons her “female independence and equality” theme.

Ferrante’s main character–Elena Greco, in her second book, ironically writes about man’s creation of woman; i.e. an odd assessment for one who wrote a first book that infers women are independent and equal to men.

In the beginning, Ferrante shows women are the sun, around which men revolve. In Ferrante’s second and last book of the trilogy, a cloud appears between the sun and its planets. Independence and equality become something else.

TO A HAMMER, EVERYTHING IS A NAIL

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Emperor of All Maladies, A Biography of Cancer

By Siddhartha Mukherjee

Narrated by Fred Sanders

SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE (AUTHOR, PHYSICIAN)

Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee examines the history of cancer in “The Emperor of All Maladies”.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports heart disease and cancer are the two leading medical causes of death.

At first glance, one thinks–so what? We are living longer, and everyone dies of something. However, Mukherjee notes a study showing cancer deaths are rising: i.e. they decrease in one age group only to be offset by increase in another. The net effect is a rising number of cancer cases.

In researching the history of cancer, Mukherjee exposes the arrogance of medical specialization. Mukherjee shows early attempts to cure cancer were led by surgeons who removed cancerous growth.

Cancer, like the threat of a pandemic, induces fear and panic. Both maladies are unpredictable in the face of a human desire for predictability, health, and well-being. There is no certainty in either diagnosis. All a human can do is persevere. And so it is today with Covid19, the most horrific pandemic since the 1918 flu epidemic.

“The Emperor of All Maladies” reminds one of the saying—”To a hammer, everything is a nail”.

Cancer, like Covid-19, is a slippery killer. Thinking Covid-19 is the flu is as misleading as a singular solution for cancer.

COVID-19 affects different people in different ways. Infected people have had a wide range of symptoms reported – from mild symptoms to severe illness.

Symptoms that may appear 2-14 days after exposure to the virus:

FeverCough
Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
Chills
Repeated shaking with chills
Muscle pain
Headache
Sore throat
New loss of taste or smell

The world scrambles for a vaccine to treat COVID-19. Fear drives people to desperation.

The public needs to discipline itself when offered an alleged medical treatment without verifiable proof of efficacy by medical science.

Mukerjee recounts the missteps made by medical professionals in their search for a cure to cancer.

The hammer, in the early days of cancer treatment, is a scalpel wielded by surgeons who cut deeper and deeper into the body until the patient is physically disabled, in limited remission, or laboring toward death. The surgeon believes he has removed the cancer only to find it returns in weeks or months later.

Surgery works but the scalpel is a hammer that only works when cancer is localized and non-systemic.

The next specialty is radiation. Here the physician replaces the scalpel with focused radiation; another hammer. Radiation cannot kill systemic cancer without killing or diminishing a patient’s health.

Next up is the internal medicine specialist, the oncologist. This specialty argues that cancer can best be treated with designer drugs to specifically attack or starve cancer cells. The problem is medicines that kill cancer cells are generally toxic; i.e. they kill both good and bad cells.

The final specialization is immunotherapy which ranges from bone marrow and blood antigen enhancement to bone marrow transplantation. The purpose of immunotherapy is to make the body more resistant to cancer cell growth.

Though each specialization advances cancer remission, specialists lauded their own treatments and ignored each other’s accomplishments.

Specialists were historically proprietary about their treatments. Some went so far as to distort their results with false clinical studies. They felt their treatment was the best way of attacking “The Emperor of All Maladies”.

Specialists exclusively pursue their singular research, treatment, and reporting until a few physicians argued all disciplines should be enlisted to cure cancer.

The cure begins with physician attention and empathy for the patient. Mukherjee infers cancer therapy is not for physician self-congratulation. Hubris is a failing in physicians; just as it is in all human endeavors. Cancer is an eternal war. It changes with the environment and life’s evolutionary laws.

Mukherjee’s history explains how the chain of discovery for a cancer cure can be broken at different levels.

There is physician self-delusion about how effective their treatment is for cancer. There is the integrity of research studies and how they are conducted. There is industry and government support of industrial waste production that is proven to be carcinogenic.

The door is opened to interdisciplinary research by philanthropists who created foundations to clinically study causes and cures for cancer. Mukherjee addresses the continuing need for funding to expand cancer research. He is not Pollyannaish about the need. He acknowledges cancer research is not going to be like America’s race to the moon in the 1960s. There is no definitive goal. The goal is not fixed like a mission to Mars. Cancer’s etiology evolves. It is unlikely for there to be a single-bullet solution that will cure cancer.

Mukherjee expands on the difficulty in curing cancer because of capitalist resistance to scientific research, and discovery.

Mukherjee recalls the battle with the cigarette industry when research clearly shows a correlation between cancer and smoking. The cigarette industry lies to the public about their own studies correlating lung cancer with smoking.

Cigarette industry lobbyists influence legislation that delays concerted action by the government to curb the addictive characteristics of smoking. Money talks, cancer proliferates. (This reminds one of the gun lobby and their insistence that guns designed only to kill people are a right that should not be infringed upon. Though gun use may not be addictive, there is a distinct correlation between the number of deaths in one incident and the proliferation of fully automatic weapons designed only to kill people.)

Mukherjee also recounts the incidence of cancer in England for chimney sweeps that inhaled carbon and asbestos from cleaning chimneys. Today’s confrontations are carbon, other cariogenic, and environmental contaminants created by industry.

The National Institute of Health reports an estimated 1,735,350 new cancers will be diagnosed in the United States in 2018. Of that number, 609,650 will die. Worldwide, NIH reports 14.1 million new cases were identified in 2012. 8.2 million died. The only killer more prolific than cancer is heart disease, and only by a small margin (In 2009, the CDC reports 610,000 people die every year from heart disease.)

Mukherjee implies all physicians need to step back, abandon their professional bias, and pursue treatments that are based on scientific research, symptoms, and reports of their patients.

Physicians need to listen, do no harm, and when necessary, offer palliative treatment—until, hopefully, a lasting cure is found. When the world is struck by a deadly virus, urgency is admittedly a gamble. Searching for a cure comes from science. When multitudes are dying, no-risk cures are unlikely to be discovered. Those who choose not to be vaccinated are risking more than their own lives when a pandemic strikes.

Medical research and experimentation is costly.

Mukherjee’s history shows the weakness and strength of capitalism and human nature in supporting what humanity needs to defeat cancer. His history should be required reading; particularly for physicians, and researchers, but also for the general public.

CHILD ABUSE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

A Little Life: A Novel

A Little Life

Written by: Hanya Yanagihara

Narration by: Oliver Wyman

HANYA YANAGIHARA (AUTHOR,WRITER,JOURNALIST) — HANYA YANAGIHARA (AUTHOR, WRITER, JOURNALIST)

“A Little Life” is about the difference between coping and overcoming. Hanya Yanagihara writes of a boy growing to manhood. Though the story is about a boy, it is a universal and gender-less story about child abuse.

Yanagihara draws one into a story like John Irving lures one into “A Prayer for Owen Meany”. One feels captured in a quicksand of feeling and thought about an enigmatic character. Yanagihara creates Jude, an extraordinarily handsome and intelligent man who secretly mutilates unseen parts of his body. The story drags a listener’s thoughts into a dark place. Why is this extraordinary person cutting himself with razor blades? The reader turns a page; the listener listens to the next paragraph; needing to know the answer. Yanagihara slowly develops a backstory that explains something about human nature and why one chooses to punish themselves.

Jude is an abused child, raised in an orphanage run by priests. At 8 years of age, Jude is pimped out by a pedophile, a felon who parades as a priest. His name is Father Luke. This false man-of-God kidnaps Jude and pimps him out as a prostitute while making him believe he loves him and protects him from harm.

CHILD ABUSE STATISTICS — Yanagihara’s story drags a listener’s thoughts into a dark place. Why is this extraordinary person cutting himself with razor blades?

Yanagihara’s horrific story is revealed in flashbacks as Jude grows into a successful career as a lawyer. One begins to feel this is a story about many lost boys and girls abused by adults. It is an abuse founded on betrayal of purported guardians’ trust, and exploitative adult motives. But Yanagihara offers more.

Most children suffer from remembrance of things past. Every life copes with intentional, unintentional, true, and false hurts from childhood. Yanagihara fictionalizes a person’s life story to show how extreme those hurts can be. She offers slender hope that someone will cast a line that will rescue them from their sinking despair. The slenderness of hope is inferred by the extra-ordinariness of her main character.

A criticism of “A Little Life” is that the story is too long. It offers revelation but its insight is too long in the making. A most over-used phrase in “A Little Life” is “I am sorry”, a refrain that becomes cloying by the end of the story.

COPING WITH LIFE — Yanagihara suggests there is a chasm between coping and overcoming life’s hardships.

Yanagihara suggests there is a chasm between coping and overcoming life’s hardships. Yanagihara infers most of life is coping with hardship rather than overcoming real or imagined hurt. Friends, lovers, psychiatrists, and physicians can help one cope with real and imagined hurts; but true overcoming lies in the mind of the traumatized.

What Yanagihara makes blindingly clear is the ugly truth of pedophilia and how sex-trafficking scars children for life. This is a story that needs to be told and understood, but not in so many words. For that criticism of the author, “I am sorry”. CHILD ABDUCTION

NATIONALIZED MEDICINE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery

Written by: Henry Marsh

Narration by: Jim Barclay

HENRY MARSH (BRITISH NEUROSURGEON AND AUTHOR)

An interesting insight offered by Henry Marsh’s memoir, “Do No Harm”, is a contrast between American and British Medicine. Marsh’s candor about his life and profession surprise his audience and endear his curmudgeonly personality. The surprise is in Marsh’s profound empathy and personal conflicts over neurosurgical decisions.

Marsh’s endearment comes from explicit “f-word” rants about incompetence, technology, and bureaucracy. In addition to his rants, Marsh endears himself to an audience by explaining the distinction between a physician’s self-confidence and hubris. Marsh suggests physicians need understanding and competence; not undue preciousness, and pride-full medical knowledge. Jim Barclay’s narration perfectly suits the tone of Marsh’s memoir.

Marsh is able to enter into medicine with little pre-medical education in the sciences.

Either by dint of a formidable intellect or a quirk of the British education system (maybe both), Marsh takes all his science courses after deciding to become a doctor. One doubts an American medical school would have considered his application in the 1960 s.

Marsh graduates and begins his career in medicine under the guidance of experienced physicians. As he acquires experience, he chooses to specialize in neurosurgical medicine under the supervision of a Consulting Neurological Physician. The Consultant (a neurology physician trainee’s guide) works within the English national health care system as a qualified physician who supervises aspiring neurological physicians. This consultant chooses cases for trainees; under varying levels of supervision.

Though a neurological procedure may be done by a trainee, the consulting physician is responsible. This appears to be similar to internships in the United States. However, an interesting difference is in the insurance for interns.

MEDICAL INTERNSHIPS- English hospitals carry a trust to protect physicians from mistakes made in treating patients.

The UK’s physician-group self-insurance may be a distinction without a difference but, as in all medical insurance systems, mistakes do occur, and patients are harmed. The difference between physician-group self-insurance and American physician’ private insurance raises the specter of limited settlement for egregious mistakes. On the other hand, it suggests British physicians are more likely to be more forthcoming on mistakes that are made.

Marsh completes his trainee experience and decides to become a Consulting Neurological Physician in the national health care system. Marsh interestingly reveals several mistakes he and his trainees make during his years of consultancy. In revealing those mistakes, a listener pauses to think about risks of patients who depend on English’ or American’ medical services. Marsh’s stories of mistakes reflect on medical training, family apologies, and personal anguish over patient’ quality-of-life and death issues.

MEDICAL MALPRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES

Marsh explains, at best a Consultant Surgeon expects to learn from surgical mistakes to avoid repetition.

The worst, for Marsh, is the apologies to families for the mistakes that are made. In contrast to Marsh’s way of addressing mistakes, American physicians seem more likely to avoid family apologies; while hiding behind legal and insurance company shields.

MEDICAL TREATMENT-WAITING FOR TREATMENT IN ENGLAND

A more subtle message in Marsh’s book is the failure of the English National Health Service to provide adequate care for the general population; e.g. its long lines of patients who wait for attention when rapidly growing tumors are destroying a patient’s neurological system.

Doctor/patient ratios in 2016 were 2.6/1,000 people in America. In 2018, the doctor/patient ratio was 2.8/1,000 in the United Kingdom. This raises the question of how long would Americans have to wait in line with a national health care system? Some argue physician assistants could be trained to take care of less serious medical issues. That would spread the burden of patient treatment.

Marsh complains of inadequate bed availability for patients that need operations. Financing for the National Health Service is inadequate for the number of patients that need help. This seems a likely consequence of an American national health care system.

Marsh notes that he carries private health insurance to supplement his family’s medical needs. At the same time, he infers private hospital services tend to gouge patients for their medical service; in part, from charges for unnecessary tests and superfluous operations.

Marsh attacks the bureaucratic nature of the National Health Service that hires hospital administrators who are directed to reduce costs; regardless of patient’ load or patient’ need. Technological improvements for England’s National Health Service are delayed because of lack of financing, poor administration, and inadequate training. These are maladies that will plague a national health care system in the United States.

Marsh leavens his criticism of England’s national health care by writing of his experience in the former U.S.S.R. (specifically Ukraine) where problems are monumentally greater.

In the end, America’s effort to improve national health care is tallied in one’s mind against the current English picture painted by Marsh. For medical patients, the English system seems riskier than the American system. Doctors in England seem more insulated from medical mistakes. If doctors are more insulated, they may take more risks; i.e. risks that can lead to patient’ disablement or death. The American system, if one can afford the service, seems more conservative and less likely to take risks.

It seems England’s national health care offers a level of societal comfort because there is hope for affordable treatment. On the other hand, Marsh clearly shows how government bollixes National Health Care with inadequate funding and a bumbling administrative system. Some would say this is why the U. S. should not nationalize health care.

Marsh notes England’s private system has not met the needs of citizens who can afford additional service. The private system suffers from human nature’s folly; i.e. the lure of wealth at the expense of fairly priced or truly needed medical treatment.

Marsh suggests the private system suffers from human nature’s folly; i.e. the lure of wealth at the expense of fairly priced or truly needed medical treatment.

Is medical health service a human right or privilege? One draws their own conclusion about British and American Medicine. Marsh shows the monumental problems of affordable health care in England.

A listener of “Do No Harm” infers problems of the British system for medical care will challenge America’s desire for universal health care. Dr. Marsh’s answer seems to revolve around empathy for all human beings; i.e. regardless of whether a country has a nationalized or private health care system.

MASOCHIST’S GUIDE TO AFRICA

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough
(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons

A PRIMATE'S MEMOIR

Written by: Robert M. Sapolsky

Narration by: Mike Chamberlain

ROBERT SAPOLSKY (AMERICAN NEUROENDOCRINOLGIST, PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, NEUROSCIENCE, AND NEUROSURGERY AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY) — ROBERT SAPOLSKY (AMERICAN NEURO-ENDOCRINOLGIST, PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, NEUROSCIENCE, AND NEUROSURGERY AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY)

Robert Sapolsky’s “A Primates Memoir” is a masochist’s guide to Africa. (Our 2017 trip to Africa was luxurious in comparison.) Sapolsky’s trip is what you would expect from a biological anthropologist who sojourns to Africa in the early 80s. Sapolsky lives in a tent while studying baboons.

AFRICA JULY 2017_7695.JPG — Our stay in Africa is luxurious in comparison to Sapolsky’s in the 1980s.

At the age of 12, Sapolsky appears to know what he wants from life. In his middle-school years, he begins studying Swahili, the primary language of Southeast Africa.

Sapolsky’s career is aimed at understanding Southeast Africa. Sapolsky’s 1984 PhD. thesis is titled “The Neuro-endocrinology of Stress and Aging”. Presumably, his trip to Africa became the basis for his academic thesis. Sapolsky’s experience in Africa is recounted in “A Primate’s Memoir”.

AFRICA JULY 2017_8101.JPG — Animal preserve in Southeast Africa

While studying Baboons, Sapolsky is exposed to the worst of African society. His memoir of those years touches on the aftermath of Africa’s colonization, Africa’s ubiquitous diseases, its governments’ instability, and its abundant and frequently poached wildlife.

Robert Mugabe (President of Zimbabwe) — Robert Mugabe (Former President of Zimbabwe)

JACOB ZUMA (FORMER PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA)

Though some of what Sapolsky writes has changed, today’s news shows characters like Robert Mugabe, and Jacob Zuma, who are accused of victimizing the poor to enrich themselves.

Some African, and other nation-state leaders around the world, are corrupt. Many Southeastern African bureaucrats, foreign business moguls, indigenous apartheid promoters, and wildlife exploiters still walk, drive, and bump down streets and dirt trails of this spectacular continent.

Self-interest often conflicts with general economic growth and stability. Today’s Southeast Africa is great for tourism (one of the three biggest industries) but the poor remain poor, the rich richer, and the middle class nearly non-existent.

AFRICA JULY 2017_7219.JPG — Today’s Southeast Africa is great for tourism (one of the three biggest industries) but the poor remain poor, the rich richer, and the middle class nearly non-existent.

Sapolsky returns to Africa after marrying. He squires his science and marriage partner to revisit a baboon troop he was studying in the 1980s. At the same time, he touches on the cultural norms of a society that seems little changed from his early years in Africa.

Sapolsky recounts the melding of a tragi-comic story of an African who is mauled by a Hyena. In telling the story, he reveals the stoic acceptance of life as it is. However, each time the story of the mauling is told by different people, it changes. The change comes from a blend of truth and fiction that conforms to the tellers’ view of themselves. The essence of the story is that an African man sleeping in a tent is mauled by a Hyena looking for food.

CHANGING STORY — Re-telling of an African story changes with each narration–The change comes from a blend of truth and fiction that conforms to the tellers’ view of themselves..

When the story is told by Masai warriors hired by a company to protect its employees, the victim is saved when the Hyena is speared by the Masai warrior’s courage. When the story is told by the victim, it is a company cook who bashes the Hyena that runs away. When the story is told by a newspaper reporter, the Masai warriors were drunk and not doing their job; the cook bashed the Hyena, and the victim survived. When the story is told by the cook, the victim’s yell brings the cook to the tent; the cook grabs a rock, bashes the Hyena, and the Hyena flees. Finally, when the story is told by the company employer, the victim is not an employee, the Mesai warriors did spear the Hyena, and the employer had no responsibility for the victim.

A cultural interpretation is inferred by these many versions of the same story. Some humans indulge in alcohol to escape reality. Most humans wish to protect an idealized version of their existence. News coverage is sometimes a mix of truth and fiction to make stories more interesting than accurate.

Life is happenstance with each human dealing with its consequence as an end or beginning that either defines, or extends their understanding of life. Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Some people are willing to risk their lives for others. Private companies focus on maximizing profit and minimizing responsibility. Life is not an either/or proposition despite Kierkegaard’s philosophy. Humans are good and bad; no one is totally one or the other–not even America’s morally corrupt and ethically challenged leader.

BABOONS — Sapolsky shows that baboon families, like all families, are born, mature, and die within a framework of psychological and physical challenges imbued by culture. All lives face challenge but culture can ameliorate or magnify the intensity and consequence of the challenge.

The overlay of Sapolsky’s memoir is the research and reported evolution of a baboon family in Southeast Africa. He shows that baboon families, like all families, are born, mature, and die within a framework of psychological and physical challenges imbued by culture. All lives face challenge but culture can ameliorate or magnify the intensity and consequence of the challenge.

Sapolsky gives the example of Kenyan “crazy” people who are hospitalized, treated, and fed to deal with their life circumstance. In America, it seems “crazy” people are left to the street. The inference is that Kenyan “crazy” people live a less stressful life than American “crazy” people. This is a positive view of Kenyan culture but there are ample negative views in Sapolsky’s memoir. Rampant poverty, malnutrition, and abysmal medical treatment are Sapolsky’s recollected examples.

Sapolsky’s memoir shows he clearly lives an unconventional life, but it seems a life of purpose. What more is there?

American

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas

Written by: Anand Giridharadas

Narration by: Anand Giridharadas

More mass shootings this weekend. Twenty innocents murdered in El Paso and nine in Toledo.

Who are we? What have we become? A deplorable habit of humans is to classify others as either one of us or one of them.

“The True American” is a news reporter’s story of two Texas murders and a wounding. The victims are people living and working in 21st century America. By birth, the three victims are Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani. “The True American” is the story of murder and mayhem that tests Texas’s death penalty. The facts of the story expose human nature’s habit of “us and them” categorization.

The Texas’ murders could have been anywhere in America. Anand Giridharadas’ book is about “us and them” choices people make every day.

There is a causal link in America’s mass shootings that goes beyond the gun lobby and AK-47s. Many of these horrific events are motivated by the isolation from Covid19 and “us and them “categories” that make one person different from another.

There is a causal link in America’s mass shootings that goes beyond the gun lobby and AK-47s. The isolation caused by Covid19 raises social tension. Both guns and Covid19 link Americans to unnecessary death.

Yesterday’s examples of “us and them” in America are shootings in El Paso, Texas and Toledo, Ohio. Other examples of “us and them” mentality are our President’s categorization of illegal Mexican’ immigrants as murderers and rapists, a white man’s slaughter of nine Americans because they are Black, a Muslims’ murder of five soldiers because they are American, and the 2019 Poway synagogue shooting in Califorinia. Then there are this week’s murders of innocents at a parade in Waukasha, Wisconsin.

RAISUDDIN RAIS BHUIYAN (BANGLADESHI AMERICAN-TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONAL IN DALLAS, TX.)

The focus of Giridharadas’ book is the maiming of Raisuddin “Rais” Bhuiyan. Bhuiyan is an aspiring American émigré from India, who is shot in the face by Mark Anthony Stroman.

Stroman murders two and maims Rais Bhuiyan, because he sees himself as a part of “us” (Americans) and his victims a part of “them” (Arab terrorists). Ironically, none of the three victims are Middle Eastern.

Like our President’s slander of Mexicans, a white man’s slaughter of Blacks, a Muslim’s murder of soldiers in 2015, and the 2019 murder in a Jewish synagogue, Stroman believes anyone that looks or acts like “them” is not worthy of “us”.

Bhuiyan’s life is worthless to Stroman because he is avenging destruction of the World Trade Center in New York. To Stroman, Bhuiyan and two un-related Asians are terrorists because of the color of their skin. Ironically, both Stroman and Bhuiyan, in the beginning of this true story, think in “us and them” terms. By the end of Giridharadas’ book, Stroman and Bhuiyan realize there is only “we”.

Bhuiyan and Stroman are polar opposites in many ways but the same in some ways. Bhuiyan is raised in a loving family in India. Stroman is raised by an uncaring mother and stepfather. Bhuiyan is strongly supported by his family to get a good education. Stroman is ignored or abused by his family and drops out of middle school. Bhuiyan excels in a private India’ school and becomes an elite citizen of Bangladesh’s government Air Force. Stroman is a “lost boy”; in and out of jail, and largely educated by government penal institutions. Bhuiyan decides to immigrate to America. Stroman knocks around Dallas, Texas, slipping in and out of jobs and jails.

However, Bhuiyan and Stroman are alike in their social isolation. Bhuiyan arrives in America without friends or family. Stroman breaks ties with family and makes few friends. Stroman isolates himself from society with drugs that make him belligerent. Stroman is prone to relationships with fellow societal misfits. Bhuiyan isolates himself from society by the circumstance of being a stranger in a strange land. Bhuiyan moves from New York to Dallas because a fellow Asian immigrant offers him a job. Stroman is a “…True American”. Bhuiyan is an aspiring “…True American”.

Bhuiyan’s early associations in America are with fellow Bangladeshis with the goal of finding employment. Stroman’s associations are with outliers of American society with the same goal of finding employment. Bhuiyan’s effort to find jobs is difficult because of his recent immigration and ethnic isolation. Stroman’s effort to find lawful jobs is difficult because of his prison record, drug use, and volatile temper.

Stroman is convicted for one of his two Dallas’ murders and sentenced to death. After ten years of appeal, Stroman’s execution is imminent. Bhuiyan, in that ten years, continues his journey to become a “…True American.” In the course of their troubled lives, Bhuiyan and Stroman grow to understand each other’s humanity.

Stroman re-imagined his life as his execution date approaches. On the face of Stroman’s written and video confessions, Stroman either manipulates the media or has truly recognized the error of his ways.

Stroman may have grown to understand, humanity is not a matter of “us and them” but a complicated mix of good and evil in every human being. Ironically, Stroman’s and Bhuiyan’s journey is through religious belief, one as a Muslim; the other as a Christian.

Stroman is executed by lethal injection on July 20, 2011.

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