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NonfictionEducation

Restoring normalcy after the storm

Review by bookpagedev

Sugarcane Academy begins as the tale of a one-room schoolhouse created to educate children who were forced to flee as Hurricane Katrina approached. But it evolves into a broader account of how residents of New Orleans struggled to find safety and stability after the storm disrupted, and in some cases destroyed, their lives. A handful of parents, including author Michael Tisserand, provided some stability for their children by opening the schoolhouse near a sugarcane field, which the students named Sugarcane Academy. The school became the eye of the storm, a place where children could continue to learn how to read and write, and also reflect on their experiences related to the hurricane. Taught by an innovative teacher named Paul Reynaud, the children share their fears of the recent past and their optimism for the future through discussions, journals and art projects.

A journalist by trade, author Tisserand goes in search of the experiences of other hurricane evacuees. His quest takes him to a temporary shelter inside a domed sports stadium, where families sleep on cots and eat bag lunches while trying to figure out where they will live next. He returns to New Orleans to examine the death and destruction experienced by the victims, including neighbors and close friends. And he finds others who were inspired to create schools like Sugarcane Academy to educate their children until the troubled New Orleans school system could reopen.

Through his personal account, the experiences of his two children and the stories of people he encounters, Tisserand is able to accomplish what the extensive news coverage could not: He puts a human face on the tragedy, allowing readers to better understand the experiences of the victims of Katrina. John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

Sugarcane Academy begins as the tale of a one-room schoolhouse created to educate children who were forced to flee as Hurricane Katrina approached. But it evolves into a broader account of how residents of New Orleans struggled to find safety and stability after the storm disrupted, and in some cases destroyed, their lives. A handful […]
Memoir

Untold story of women who marched

Review by John T. Slania

The ancient Chinese tradition of foot binding involved using cloth to tightly wrap a young girl’s feet so that they would fit into three-inch slippers, because a Chinese woman’s beauty and stature was measured by the tininess of her feet. The practice would crush the bones at the end of a girl’s feet so that her toes could be bent under her heels. But foot binding was permanently outlawed when Communists took control of China, a fact Dean King (Skeletons on the Zahara) mentions in Unbound because it is symbolic of how, in some small ways, Chinese women were liberated by the Communist revolution.

King’s book tells the story of the women who joined the Red Army—an action revolutionary in itself—and participated in a historic military maneuver that would eventually lead to the Communist takeover of China in 1949. The maneuver, known as the “Long March,” began in October 1934 when the Red Army, surrounded by Chinese Nationalist soldiers, staged a daring retreat that would cover more than 4,000 miles and last over a year. Communist leader Mao Zedong and Nationalist General Chiang Kai-shek are the men most often associated with the Long March. But King chooses to focus on the 30 women who took part in the journey. Among this diverse group was Ma Yixang, 11, a peasant girl sold by her family; Wang Xinlan, 10, who came from wealth; Jin “Ah Jin” Weiying, 30, a college-educated teacher who became active in the Chinese labor movement; and Zhou “Young Orchid” Shaolan, 17, a nurse who refused to be left behind when the army tried to send her home.

King spent five years traveling the length of the Long March, interviewing those women still alive to tell their tales. Theirs are stories of courage, remarkable not only because of the physical and psychological rigors of their journey, but also because of their determination and leadership in a country not known for granting equal rights to women. China has always been a mysterious and secretive empire, but Unbound peels back the curtain to reveal a story of strength and survival.

John T. Slania teaches journalism at Loyola University in Chicago.

The ancient Chinese tradition of foot binding involved using cloth to tightly wrap a young girl’s feet so that they would fit into three-inch slippers, because a Chinese woman’s beauty and stature was measured by the tininess of her feet. The practice would crush the bones at the end of a girl’s feet so that […]
LiteratureArts & Culture

Writers talking the walk

Review by Leslie Budewitz

There is nothing a writer craves more than to be told she is on the right path, that her creative processes and habits will inevitably produce a head-turning work of fiction—and nothing a writer needs more than to be denied that assurance and told firmly by one who knows to get back to work. The Secret Miracle, edited by Peruvian-American novelist Daniel Alarcón, does both.

In a Q&A format, many notable writers contribute valuable insights. The book’s strength is the range of writers included: literary icons Amy Tan and Mario Vargas Llosa; crime novelist George Pelecanos; household names Stephen King and Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket); prize-winning novelists Edwidge Danticat, Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem and Roddy Doyle; and dozens more. The geographical spread is vast: writers live in Cairo, Mexico City, Barcelona, Tel Aviv, Paris and across the United States. Several are published in English in translation. The questions asked range just as far: What, and how, do you read? Is there a book you return to over and over? What do you learn from other art forms? Do you research? Outline? Plan a novel’s structure or let it happen? Identify with a character? Draw from your own life? Writers talk about their schedules, where they write and how they measure a successful day. When do you share a draft, how do you revise, what about false starts?

That breadth is also the book’s weakness. With so many writers on so many topics, some answers are too short to offer much help. Contradictions are inevitable, but delightful, and may fan the occasional flames between writers and readers of literary and genre fiction. Still, it isn’t only genre writers who value plot, or literary novelists who savor language. These people stand on common ground, though their walk and talk varies tremendously.

Proceeds from the book will benefit 826 National, a nonprofit network of tutoring and writing centers in eight cities, named for its original location, at 826 Valencia in San Francisco. In 2009, more than 4,000 volunteers worked with 18,000-plus students ages 6 to 18 on creative and expository writing; offered 266 workshops for students and teachers; provided after-school tutoring for 130 students a day; and produced more than 600 student publications. Each center also sponsors roundtable discussions with published writers.

Read a page of The Secret Miracle when you’re stuck or need a break from your own writing, or if you’re a reader, when you want a glimpse of the world behind the page. Dip in, then get back to work.

Leslie Budewitz’s short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchock Mystery Magazine, and The Whitefish Review.

RELATED CONTENT

Interview with editor Daniel Alarcón

There is nothing a writer craves more than to be told she is on the right path, that her creative processes and habits will inevitably produce a head-turning work of fiction—and nothing a writer needs more than to be denied that assurance and told firmly by one who knows to get back to work. The […]
Medicine

The power of one very simple tool

Review by James Webb

Atul Gawande writes for The New Yorker, but by trade he‘s a surgeon; after a particularly harrowing operation in which the patient nearly died, he took a hard look at what had gone wrong and he found that a simple error had nearly doomed his patient. Not long after, he happened upon an anecdote that piqued his interest—an account of an Austrian community hospital where a girl had been brought back from apparent brain death due to drowning. Intrigued, he began searching the literature for a confirmation of what had occurred in Austria, and he found it in a Johns Hopkins study detailing a reduction in infections after surgery. They had one factor in common, and that was the use of a checklist.

The Checklist Manifesto is Gawande’s account of this “aha!” moment, and his search—under the auspices of the World Health Organization—to find out if something as simple as a checklist could improve patient survival rates. The quest led him in many different directions, one of which was the obvious idea of trying it out in real-life situations. As he recounts, this was not as easy as it might seem, because surgeons as a rule are confident and headstrong and don’t take kindly to being second-guessed by a sheet of paper. It also led him to the construction industry and the complex process of building a skyscraper. To ensure that tasks get done correctly (and to keep the thing from collapsing), construction engineers use—you guessed it—a checklist. Finally, Gawande gained some priceless insight from the aviation industry.

Unless you avoid newspapers and television, you’ve probably heard of Captain “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549. After taking off from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport on January 15, 2009, the plane struck a flock of geese, unbelievably losing both engines in the process. While he was justly heralded for gliding the airliner to a safe landing in the Hudson, Sullenberger resisted efforts by the press to make him a hero, insisting that it was a team effort. Gawande points out that today’s modern airliner is so incredibly complex that no one person, or even a team of people, can operate one safely on their own; the crew of Flight 1459 relied on a simple tool during their forced landing. That tool is one that has been used by pilots everywhere almost since the dawn of aviation—the checklist.

Atul Gawande’s determined effort to see his theory through is at the heart of The Checklist Manifesto, and its implications are widespread; he shows us a simple tool for complex problems that can be applied to business, government and just about any situation where unanticipated complications can lead to disaster. It remains to be seen whether this surgical Cassandra’s solution will be heeded.

James Neal Webb works for the Vanderbilt University Library.

Atul Gawande writes for The New Yorker, but by trade he‘s a surgeon; after a particularly harrowing operation in which the patient nearly died, he took a hard look at what had gone wrong and he found that a simple error had nearly doomed his patient. Not long after, he happened upon an anecdote that […]
Nature

Finding comfort in the natural world

Review by Marianne Peters

Why does nature awaken our joys and soothe our sorrows? Kathleen Dean Moore explores this question in her fourth book of personal essays, Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature.

Moore, an activist and professor living in Oregon, had planned to write about joy. However, as she explains in the introduction, “Events overtook me. I guess that’s how I’ll say it. That autumn, events overtook me, death after death, and my life became an experiment in sadness.” Several of her loved ones died that season, both close friends and her father-in-law, who “faded away like steam from stones,” and in her grief, she turned to the natural world to be healed.

The three sections of Wild Comfort mirror Moore’s journey from gladness through solace to courage. Her interactions with nature—fishing for salmon, canoeing a misty lake, observing an eagle feather—reveal unexpected connections to her own joys, fears, doubts and memories.

Moore’s descriptions are powerfully visceral. In her essay “The Patience of Herons,” she writes, “And here is the work of patience: to become brave and fierce, set like a spring to seize whatever life puts in the way of our stiletto beaks. To stalk it and impale it and with a flip of our muscular necks, to fling it into the air and swallow it whole. Seize the day in a razor beak. This patience is the birth of joy.”

Employing a naturalist’s understanding of the world and a poet’s gift for language, Moore faces nature’s bracing truth and endless cycles of birth and death, wrestling to reconcile her own eventual death with a life of joyful surrender. “The bottom may drop out of my life,” she writes, “what I trusted may fall away completely, leaving me astonished and shaken. But still . . . there is wild comfort in the cycles and the intersecting circles, the rotations and revolutions, the growing and ebbing of this beautiful and strangely trustworthy world.”

Readers will not find much sentimental musing in Moore’s book. However, they will find that the world seems larger, wilder and yet safer than they had thought—more beautiful, and more like home.

Marianne Peters is a freelance writer and editor based in Plymouth, Indiana.

Why does nature awaken our joys and soothe our sorrows? Kathleen Dean Moore explores this question in her fourth book of personal essays, Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature. Moore, an activist and professor living in Oregon, had planned to write about joy. However, as she explains in the introduction, “Events overtook me. I guess […]
HistoryAmerican History

Soldiers for their new country

Review by Martin Brady

In The Long Way Home, journalist David Laskin sets out to tell the stories of 12 immigrant men who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War I. Like half a million other non-native combatants fighting for Uncle Sam in “the war to end all wars,” Laskin’s dozen—three Jews, four Italians, two Poles, an Irishman, a Norwegian and a Slovak—were relatively new to America, having endured  Ellis Island during the great wave of U.S. immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Still struggling to establish themselves in an alien land where they spoke little English, where low-level employment was the norm and where they were looked on with some suspicion, these plucky fellows embraced the U.S. mission in Europe and distinguished themselves with honor. Three died in France, two won the Congressional Medal of Honor and all fought in major engagements, including the breaking of the Hindenburg Line and the taking of the Argonne Forest. Laskin’s thorough research into these lives encompassed digging into letters, diaries, battlefield reports and the National Archives and, whenever possible, conducting interviews with family members, including a face-to-face sit-down in 2006 with one of his subjects, Tony Pierro, who lived to be 111.

A marvelous craftsman, Laskin interweaves the soldiers’ personal profiles into a greater context, which positions his work equally as a history that deftly covers the background of the war and all its contemporary political ramifications, and also as a keen piece of social reflection on the role of the immigrant in shaping the fabric of American society. Laskin’s work also proves invaluable for readers interested in World War I military operations, as he follows the 12 men into battle, offering detailed accounts of their experiences and bravery on the front lines. A concluding chapter summarizes the postwar lives of those who survived, all of whom returned to America to live relatively quiet and productive lives, fully committed to the new homeland for which they fought.

Martin Brady writes from Nashville.

In The Long Way Home, journalist David Laskin sets out to tell the stories of 12 immigrant men who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War I. Like half a million other non-native combatants fighting for Uncle Sam in “the war to end all wars,” Laskin’s dozen—three Jews, four Italians, two Poles, an […]

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