#bookreaction

Warning: Spoilers & Triggering Issues

*This is not a book review. Just for the sake of letting my feelings out about this book, I’m typing it down.

When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors & Asha Bandele

Synopsis:

A poetic and powerful memoir about what it means to be a Black woman in America―and the co-founding of a movement that demands justice for all in the land of the free.

Raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Los Angeles, Patrisse Khan-Cullors experienced firsthand the prejudice and persecution Black Americans endure at the hands of law enforcement. For Patrisse, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. Deliberately and ruthlessly targeted by a criminal justice system serving a white privilege agenda, Black people are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police brutality. In 2013, when Trayvon Martin’s killer went free, Patrisse’s outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi.

Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, these loving women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who continually turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of Black and Brown skin.

Championing human rights in the face of violent racism, Patrisse is a survivor. She transformed her personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering inequality and a movement fueled by her strength and love to tell the country―and the world―that Black Lives Matter.

When They Call You a Terrorist is Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele’s reflection on humanity. It is an empowering account of survival, strength and resilience and a call to action to change the culture that declares innocent Black life expendable.

Note: 4.5/5 

Review:

In this memoir, Patrisse Khan-Cullors recalls her life as a Black Queer woman and her family’s struggles that led to the Black Lives Matter Movement. She tells the reader how racism was a part of her youth, how it shaped her. Her experience with racism starts when she sees her brother Monte being searched against a wall for just spending time outside with his friends.

She also notices a considerable difference with White people when she goes to have dinner at one of her school friends’ houses who is white. There, she discovers that her friend’s family eats together around a dinner table, talking about everyone’s day when in her family, her mother has to work two to three jobs from sunrise to sunset to make ends meet.

In this book, you will discover how it feels to grow up being African-American in the United States and how the police go to violence instead of healing. As a white person, I’ve learned so much from this book, I’ve always known I was privileged to have been born white in Europe, this memoir made me realize how much.

By reading this book, you will learn how the police forces will deny someone medication when they have mental health issues. How they are beating up and encouraging sexual assaults on prisoners. How they are torturing prisoners and their families. How they are making prisoners disappear for a while, or how they’re tearing up family. Basically, you will discover how hard police forces are trying to strip the Black community of its humanity.

This book is an excellent example of a read to better educate yourself on how to be an ally of the Black community and be an anti-racist. No matter how hard the police try to silence the African-American community, BLACK LIVES MATTER, AND POLICE BRUTALITY AND DISCRIMINATION HAVE TO STOP!

Love in the Time of the Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

Synopsis:

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

Note: 3.5/5

Review:

In this coming-of-age novel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez transports us into the lives of Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza, showing us their love stories in the South America of the late 19th century-early 20th century.

While the writing is absolutely beautiful, Garcia Marquez can describe places and changes with mastery; the story made me quite conflicted. To give you an idea of the writing quality, here are two quotes from the novel:

"Worldly goods: security, order, happiness, contiguous numbers that, once they were added together, might resemble love, almost be love. But they were not love, and these doubts increased her confusion, because she was also not convinced that love was really what she most needed to live."

"All that was needed was shrewd questioning, first of the patient and then of his mother to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of Cholera. The doctor prescribed infusion of linden blossoms to calm the nerves and suggested a change of air so he could find consolation in distance but the man longed for just the opposite, to enjoy his martyrdom."

While there are many examples of Garcia Marquez's talent throughout the novel --he didn't win a Nobel Prize in literature for nothing. Yet, the actions described as "loving" are particularly problematic when they're read with today's perceptions. As a matter of fact, the best example of this is the whole character of Florentino Ariza.

Straight from the beginning, Florentino Ariza's "love story" with Fermina Daza starts with him stalking her, waiting for her, and observing her outside her house. The stalking of Fermina Daza never ceases throughout the length of the book. Then, as soon as Fermina Daza's husband, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, dies, Florentino Ariza goes to her house to renew his vow of eternal love. Later in the book, he told her he had remained a virgin for her.

Yet, while she was living a happy married life, he definitely didn't stay a virgin. First, he lost his virginity when he was raped by a woman. After the rape, he developed feelings of love for that woman, even though he never learned for sure who she was. A similar situation happens with a woman falling in love with her rapist later in the book.

To continue on the topic of rape in the book, we can also read a moment when Florentino Ariza raped on his housekeeper and then sent her away as she fell pregnant from the rape. While his niece of fifteen years old was in his care, he committed statutory rape; he was already in his sixties or seventies. He literally made her "fall for him" by letting her indulge in whatever she desired so he could "make love to her."

While I understand that, when the book was written, the topics of rape were not discussed like they are nowadays, it still feels like Garcia Marquez is romanticizing rape in this novel. So, while I was enjoying the author's writing skills, I was also disturbed by how rapes and stalking women were glorified.

Amazon link