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Across So Many Seas by Ruth Behar

Oct17

Across So Many Seas, the story of four twelve year old Sephardic Jewish girls from different time periods, felt very . . . educational. I didn’t mind the didactic tone of the story, and I was somewhat fascinated by the saga of the Sephardic Jewish experience from Spain to Turkey to Cuba to the United States (Miami). We tend to know and read more about Ashkenazi, Eastern European Jews and Judaism than we do about the Sephardic Jewish people, who came from Spain after the 1492 expulsion of the Jews under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (yes, Columbus’s sponsors). These Sephardic Jews spoke a Spanish-derived language called Ladino and either became conversos (converts to Catholicism) under threat of death, or left Spain as refugees, going to Italy and Turkey and other places to find freedom to practice their Jewish faith.

The first story in Across So Many Seas features Benvenida, a Jewish girl living in Toledo, Spain in 1492, during the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews. Benvenida’s family is forced to leave Spain, and they end up living in Turkey where the sultan has promised them freedom of religion. Again the story feels as if the author has a lesson to teach: “Here’s a story, children, to teach you about your history and heritage. Listen, while I make it into a tale for your edification.” Benvenida, who speaks and thinks like a miniature adult, never seems like a real person, only a vehicle for the teaching of history. But still, I was interested enough in the history to keep reading.

The other three girls in the story are Reina (Turkey, 1921), Alegra (Cuba, 1961), and Paloma (Miami, FL, 2003). These three are grandmother, mother, and daughter, and their tales are full of more displacement and emigration, as each girl experiences her own story of travel across the seas. Only Paloma seems to have a stable home where she can make free choices for herself without having to labor under the prejudice of others and the expectations that her family has for proper Jewish girls.

The author, Ruth Behar, comes from both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish ancestry. The book is based in part on the story of Ms. Behar’s Abuela, her paternal grandmother, who came to the United States via Turkey and Cuba and who was of Sephardic heritage. It’s a lovely tribute to Ms. Behar’s heritage and to her grandmother, and I enjoyed learning more about this stream of history. But be warned that the book is heavy on the history and light on believable characterization, dialogue, and plot.

The Windy Hill by Cornelia Meigs

May14
Big Hair and Books

I had intended to get a review written and posted about Cornelia Meigs’ 1922 Newbery Honor book, The Windy Hill, soon. I just read the book last night. However, I forgot about Rosemond’s Way Back Wednesday link-up, and of course, The Windy Hill is way back, almost a century back. So, here goes.

The very first year that the Newbery was awarded, Cornelia Lynde Meigs’ story of two young teens solving a family mystery at their cousin Jasper’s house in the country won a Newbery Honor. Ms. Meigs was a teacher whose first book, The Kingdom of the Winding Road, was published by Macmillan in 1915. Meigs’ books won Newbery Honors again in 1929 for Clearing Weather and in 1933 for Swift Rivers. I read and reviewed Swift Rivers a few years ago, and I still remember quite a bit about that story, something I can’t really say about many of the more recently published children’s books I’ve read. Finally, in 1934 Ms. Meigs’ biography of Louisa May Alcott, Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women won the Newbery Medal. Over the course of her career, Cornelia Meigs wrote over thirty books for children.

On to the book at hand, The Windy Hill tells the story of a family feud, a rather polite New England sort of feud, but a family quarrel nonetheless. The author tells her story from the point of view of fifteen year old Oliver and his sister Janet who have come to visit Cousin Jasper in his country mansion near Windy Hill. Unfortunately, Cousin Jasper is not himself. Something, or someone, is troubling him, and Cousin Jasper is not a very entertaining host. Oliver first decides to run away from the problem and return home on the next train. But on his way to the station, he meets The Beeman, a beekeeper with a penchant for storytelling, and as Oliver thinks and listens to the Beeman’s stories of the history of Windy Hill, he decides to stay and figure out what is wrong and do something to help.

The historical stories, one about an Indian named Nashola, another set during the War of 1812, and a third during the California Gold Rush, illuminate both the past and the present, and the main story comes to a climax when evil is revealed, good is rewarded, and all is made right. It’s probably unsuited for the internet generation, but I enjoyed the slower pace. The Windy Hill served as a good old-fashioned antidote to all the dark, weird, and twisted children’s books I’ve been reading for the past week or so. If my children were still young enough for read-alouds, I’d put it on the read aloud list.

QOTD: What’s your favorite Newbery Award or Newbery Honor book? What Newbery Award book do you think should definitely not have been chosen for the award?

1921: Art and Entertainment

Oct7

Five year old Jackie Coogan stars with British comedian Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin’s first full length film, The Kid. In September, fans mob Chaplin when he arrives in London on his first visit to his native country in nine years.

Rudolph Valentino becomes the heartthrob of early twenties after his performance in The Sheik, a movie in which Valentino plays the starring role of Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, the romantic interest of English Lady Diana Mayo, played by actress Agnes Ayres. Women who see his silent movies swoon over Valentino, aka “The Latin Lover.”

A popular song of 1921 was My Little Margie, recorded by Eddie Cantor:

1921: Books and Literature

Oct7

Luigi Pirandello’s play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, is first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of “Manicomio!” (“Madhouse!”). It’s a play about six characters from a play who appear at a rehearsal after having been abandoned by their author. The Director thinks they are crazy, but he begins to listen to them and even have his actors act out their story because they have such a compelling drama to tell. I read the play many years ago in a modern theater class I took in college, but I have never seen it on stage. Pirandello himself wrote about this play within a play within his mind and yet on stage:

“Why not,” thought I, “represent this unique situation —an author refusing to accept certain characters born of his imagination, while the characters themselves obstinately refuse to be shut out from the world of art, once they have received this gift of life? These characters are already completely detached from me, and living their own lives; they speak and move; and so, in the struggle to live that they have persistently maintained against me they have become dramatic characters, characters who can move and speak of their own initiative. They already see themselves in that light; they have learnt to defend themselves against me; they will learn how to defend themselves against others. So why not let them go where the characters of a play usually go to attain full and complete life—on a stage? Let’s see what will happen then!”

French writer Anatole France won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921 “in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament.”

Booth Tarkington’s novel Alice Adams was published in 1921 and won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1922.

The Boston Post won the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for “its exposure of the operations of Charles Ponzi by a series of articles which finally led to his arrest.” And newspapers have been exposing Ponzi schemes ever since–usually after most of the financial damage is done. What Ponzi proved is that you can fool a lot of people for long enough to take in a lot of money, but you had better have an escape plan. Eventually, any scheme in which there is no actual valued product or labor involved will fall apart. Or as Dave Ramsey says, “Something that sounds too good to be true IS too good to be true! It’s very difficult to be conned if you’re not greedy.”

Playing mind games in a play on stage (Pirandello) can be fun, especially since you know it’s fiction. Letting somebody play games with your money isn’t fun, no matter what he promises you.

1921: Events and Inventions

Oct7

January, 1921. The Allies from World War I fix German war debts at 132 million gold marks, to be paid out over 42 years. Germany is practically broke and unable to pay, so the German government asks for a postponement of the debt.

February, 1921. Greece defies the League of Nations and declares war on Turkey, invading Anatolia (western Turkey).

'Middle_East_Map' photo (c) 2008, openDemocracy - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/February 12, 1921. The Democratic Republic of Georgia is invaded by Bolshevist Russia.
On February 25, the Red Army enters Georgian capital Tbilisi and installs a Moscow-directed communist government. The Russian Communists are expanding their influence and power throughout the region of Eastern Europe.

April 11, 1921. Out of territory taken from the Ottoman Empire, the British create The Emirate of Transjordan, with Abdullah I as emir. The British continue to exercise some control over the region, and a smaller part of the British mandate in Palestine is reserved to fulfill the British promise of a Jewish homeland. More and more Jews are coming to Palestine, especially since the U.S. has tightened its immigration laws to allow very few immigrants from Eastern Europe.

July 11, 1921. The Red Army captures Mongolia from the White Army and establishes the Mongolian People’s Republic. Mongolia will be a close ally of the Soviet Union for the remainder of the twentieth century.

July, 1921. Canadians Sir Frederick Grant Banting and Charles Herbert Best demonstrate that they can control diabetes in dogs by giving them an extract of insulin from the pancreas of healthy dogs. For this work, Banting and laboratory director MacLeod receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923. Banting and Best make the patent for insulin available without charge and do not attempt to control commercial production.

August, 1921. As a result of drought, disease, and civil war, famine is devastating Russia. Lenin appeals to the international community for aid.

'Map Of Ireland' photo (c) 2009, Michael 1952 - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/September, 1921. The world’s first racing track/highway, the Avus Autobahn in Berlin, Germany opens exclusively to motor traffic. The racing track, also a public highway, is 19.5 kilometers (12 miles) long.

November, 1921. Benito Mussolini declares himself to be “Il Duce” (the leader) of the National Fascist Party of Italy.

December, 1921. The predominantly Catholic counties of southern Ireland become the independent country, the Irish Free State. Northern Ireland, mostly Protestant but with a significant Catholic minority, remains a part of the United Kingdom (Britain). Neither North nor South is entirely satisfied with the compromise.

The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh

Sep15

Jill Paton Walsh has continued the story of Dorothy Sayers’ famous sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, in her books Thrones, Dominations and A Presumption of Death. These two bring the story into the early 1940s, while Paton Walsh’s third installment, The Attenbury Emeralds, takes place after World War II with Lord Peter and his wife, the famous mystery novelist Harriet Vane, dealing with post-war changes and reminiscing about the good old days of post-World War I Britain and Peter’s very first case.

So the book happens in two time periods, both post-war. As fans know, Lord Peter was quite torn up by his part in the Great War, and he only recovered with the help and ministrations of that perfect manservant, Mervyn Bunter. As The Attenbury Emeralds begins, Lord Peter is telling Harriet the story of how he rejoined society after the war (slowly and with much trepidation) and how he blundered into his first detective case, recovering a stolen emerald for his friends, the Attenbury family.

Jill Paton Walsh isn’t Dorothy Sayers, but she’s a good writer in her own right. She’s written several good children’s and young adult books, and if anyone can presume to extend the story of Lord Peter Wimsey, Ms. Walsh has made a good claim on the right to do so with her first two volumes. (I wrote a little about Walsh and Sayers and the Lord Peter books when I first discovered Ms. Walsh’s sequels back in 2004.)

There is a big change in store for Lord Peter in his personal and his public life in this book, and I think Ms. Walsh writes about Lord Peter’s later years (he’s sixty plus by the time this story takes place) convincingly, with respect for Sayers’ creation and with some charm. This older Peter Wimsey is not quite so tortured and emotional as the youthful Lord Peter was, but he’s still just a bit vulnerable and highly attractive.

I recommend all three sequels by Jill Paton Walsh, if you’ve read the original series by Dorothy Sayers and just can’t get enough of Lord Peter Wimsey and his family and his lovely wife, Harriet. If you haven’t read Dorothy Sayers’ mysteries featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, you have a treat in store for you. Get thee to a library or bookstore and read. Here’s a chronology of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories and novels. I’d suggest that you start with the first novel, Whose Body?, and travel through the book-length stories, not worrying about the short stories unless you’re particularly fond of short stories.

Children’s Fiction of 2007: Celeste’s Harlem Renaissance by Eleanora E. Tate

Nov16

I like historical fiction. I liked this book set partly in Harlem, New York City, 1921 and also in Raleigh, N.C. But I must say that the author is a namedropper. Every single famous or semi-famous black American who could have been expected to show up for a cameo appearance in Harlem in 1921 is in this book: Caterina Jarboro, Duke Ellington, Bert Williams, Marcus Garvey, James Weldon Johnson, even Madame C.J. Walker, who was dead by the time of the story, but living on in her prosperous business of providing hair care products for “Colored folks’ hair.” Then, too, the author uses historical events and places to lend authenticity to her story: the lynching of two black men in North Carolina in 1921, the North Carolina Negro State Fair, the first musical produced on Broadway starring black entertainers called Shuffle Along, and many historical markers and occasions.

I did feel as if I were in a Black history class every once in a while when I read the book, but then the story would come along and pick me back up and deposit me inside a narrative about family and friendship and forgiveness that was absorbing and universal in its themes. Celeste, the main character, lives in Raleigh with her father and her Aunt Society. Celeste’s mother died four years before the beginning of the story. In the first part of the book we spend some time getting to know Celeste (shy and quiet, but talented at playing the violin), Aunt Society (grouchy and strict), Celeste’s Poppa (hard-working and indulgent toward his only daughter), and Celeste’s almost mythical Aunt Valentina who lives in a mansion in Harlem, an actress who drives a big car and wears fancy clothes.

Then, everything changes for Celeste when her beloved Poppa must go to a sanatorium to rest and recover from tuberculosis. Aunt Society can’t take care of Celeste, and the only option left is for Celeste to go to Harlem and live with Aunt Val. Harlem life isn’t anything like what Celeste expected, and later the book changes course once again when Celeste must leave all the friends she’s made in Harlem to go back to North Carolina. The characters in the novel are complicated and multi-dimensional, and Celeste must learn, as she grows up physically, to grow in her assessments of other people, to forgive, and to understand, even as she becomes more confident in her own decisions and abilities.

I think I’ll give this book to my sixteen year old daughter who’s studying twentieth century history this year. We’re covering the decade of the twenties, and even though my dear daughter is a little older than the target audience for this book, she could learn something and enjoy reading it.

Other views:

Celebrate With Books: “This is a delightful book, rich with a strong female character, who is witty and very self reliant. The author (Tate) makes the reader feel as though you are there in 1921 Harlem, New York.”

A Fuse #8 Production: “It’s so frustrating that I liked this book. I liked it so much. I thought the story of Celeste was fascinating and that the arc of the story said some wonderful things. But there were at least 75 pages that could and should have been taken out right from the start.”

Eleanora Tate’s website (including a study guide for Celeste’s Harlem Renaissance)