An Unsettling Run

Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
New York : Simon & Schuster, 2005
xix, 262 p. ; 22 cm.

After I read Rodriguez' memoir I told a friend that this book has one of the marks of great writing - it leaves you feeling disturbed, troubled and a little lost in that gray area between right and wrong.  On one had, as a reader I felt such empathy for the main character, young Rodriguez - stuck as he is in a world of racism, poverty, run down schools, and violence (from peers, strangers and police) - but also as a reader there is something truly disturbing and repulsive about the violence and misogyny that he participates in.  However unsettling the book, it is timely and important to read.  We watch the main character make better and better choices as he opts to be a force for organizing change in his neighborhood as he grows and matures (and, importantly, is offered opportunities to be engaged in positive change).

A reader hoping to see mainly the hopeful and positive humanity of gang-involved youths will be disappointed; many of the characters in the world of Rodriguez' memoir ultimately chose a life of predation and violence.  Likewise those looking to justify their belief in a punitive, zero tolerance law-and-order approach to youth and gang violence will also be disappointed; Rodriguez' journey from gang-banger to artist and community organizer passionately demonstrates that human beings can change for the better and leave behind violence and nihilism when they are treated with respect and love and have actual opportunities to better themselves.

I'm pleased to see that this book - originally published in 1993 - has been republished in 2005.  In spite of this book being the frequent target of challenges (most books that don't offer black and white versions of morality are subject to controversy), it is a thoughtful and well written glimpse into the lives of young people growing up in social situations that no young person should have to navigate - so like many of our young people today.

History Uncovered

Kill Anything that Moves by Nick Turse
New York : Metropolitan Books, 2013.
370 p. : ill., map ; 25 cm.

In 2001 Nick Turse was a graduate student doing research at the National Archives on PTSD among Vietnam Veterans when an archivist working there asked him if a veteran could suffer PTSD from witnessing war crimes.  The archivist then presented Turse with the first of many boxes of long (and intentionally) neglected documents of the Pentagon's Vietnam era War Crimes Working Group.  So began Turse's 10 year odyssey of research and interviews that would result in this seminal study of US military policy and practice in Vietnam.  Turse's contention - backed up with copious notes, Pentagon records, and sworn testimonies by veterans and Vietnamese survivors - is that official US policy from the office of the President on down was to wage war in Vietnam in a way that knowingly targeted millions Vietnamese non-combatants. He argues that My Lai was not an aberration, but typical of the US method of waging war in Vietnam.

This book is sure to become a standard reference to the Vietnam War.  It is also likely to be controversial - arguing as it does (and as did Nuremberg prosecutor Telford Taylor) that the highest officers and officials in charge of the Vietnam War warranted proceedings for war crimes.

Kill Anything That Moves is one of those that great histories that calls into question the commonly accepted narrative of US history; in that way it reminds me of Douglas Blackmon's Slavery by Another Name, an expose of the murderous convict labor system in the South, or James Brady's Imperial Cruise, a stunning exploration of the white supremacist ideology in US foreign policy leading up to WWII.

Another Southerner

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
New York : Vintage Books, 1990.
180 p. ; 21 cm.

The past several years I've been updating our library's collection of literary criticism and noticed the availability of several volumes of Bloom's criticisms for Eudora Welty.  I acquired two and added a couple of her novels, too.  I had heard of Welty, but had never read any of her novels so I picked The Optimist's Daughter - the novel that brought Welty a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

In some ways the novel is more of a meditation than a novel.  Very little really "happens" in the novel - a daughter returns to the south to be with her father for a surgery that does not turn out well, and has to deal with the shallow new wife that her father recently married.

Before returning to Chicago where she lives and works, the main character, Laurel revisits the home of her childhood and ruminates on the people her mother and father were.

It's not an incredibly compelling read, but I enjoyed it and appreciated its subtle and light-handed touch, a touch which does not take away from seriousness of the subject matter. I'd definitely recommend Welty for a student looking for an author to research for an English class.

Welty's novel reminded me a bit of Carson McCullers, and made me want to go back and reread some Flannery O'Connor - which I have not read in many, many years.