50books_poc | Entries tagged with religion

This is a broad and wide-ranging introduction to Islam, and assumes the reader has no prior knowledge of the subject. (I didn't, so that worked for me.) A lot of time is spent on the origins and ancient history of the religion, including the cultural background of the region and how the very earliest Muslims lived and practiced their faith.

The middle section, after Muhammad's death but before the modern face of Islam had really arisen, kind of lost my attention. Too many names, dates, and battles, and I wasn't sure how it all fit together in the bigger picture. Aslan is knowledgeable but his style is pretty dry. I felt like asking if this was all going to be on the test.

Things picked up more when he got into discussion of the divisions between Sunni, Shi'a, Sufi, and their own subdivisions, and modern attempts to create Muslim states and how they've gone about it differently. This is where it really shows, though, that it's just a general introduction. It seemed he took on more than he could do justice to in a short-ish book. A number of interesting topics are brought up but then given only cursory treatment.

Aslan himself is a liberal Shi'ite, and he definitely puts forth his own views, not only on what Islam is, but on what it *ought* to be, religiously, culturally, and politically. I don't think arguing one's own position is bad -- it's certainly better than pretending to be neutral when you're not -- but again, the book seemed like it was being too many things at once. Is it a quick historical overview for beginners, or an argument for Islamic democracy, liberalism, and pluralism? It's both, and in a way that ultimately didn't read as cohesive for me.

tags: a: Aslan Reza, Iranian-American, Muslim, subject: Islam, genre: non-fiction

pauraque

When I was a kid I enjoyed Virginia Hamilton's collection of African-American folktales, The People Could Fly, so I was hoping I'd like this book of creation story retellings.

The stories, which range from ancient Greece and the Bible to various lesser-known societies of Oceania, Asia, and the Americas, are of course fascinating in their own right, but as I read on I became increasingly uncomfortable. The people who first told the story of Pandora are long gone and perhaps beyond caring how it is retold, and Hamilton can claim the Christian creation story as part of her own tradition, but what of the rest? Did the people of the Marshall Islands or Tahiti tell her she could repeat their stories? Did they have the opportunity to review what she had written and say whether it was accurate or appropriate?

At the front of the book Hamilton thanked some academic writers and researchers for allowing her to use the stories. I would love to believe that, where applicable, the people to whom the stories actually belonged were consulted. Call me cynical, but I doubt it. The origins of the stories are only briefly mentioned at the end of each one, as though they're just generic, contextless Creation Myths and the people who originate them barely merit a footnote. The writing style of the book is aimed at the middle grades, but I wouldn't give it to a kid unless they were mature enough to question the validity of the presentation.

The illustrations by Barry Moser (who is white if I'm not mistaken) are technically proficient but pretty bland, and some of them are completely inappropriate. One Siberian story (I would say which Siberian people told it, but Hamilton does not inform us!) that explains how the first dog got his fur is accompanied by a formal portrait of a pure-bred spaniel wearing a collar. What was he thinking? Did anyone think at all when this book was being put together?

As I said, I liked at least one of Hamilton's other books, so hopefully this was a rare lapse. In any case, it was very disappointing.

tags: a: hamilton virginia, w-illus: moser barry, african-american (author), religion, folklore, middle grades

seekingferret.livejournal.com

46) The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr

This is a survey of Shia history, culture, and politics by an Iranian-American academic. Nasr has several big theses: That Shia states would make a better ally for the West in the Middle East than Sunni states, that the Shia world is experiencing a revival of identity and culture as it challenges Sunni domination, but all are overshadowed by one primary theme: The West has historically done a poor job of understanding Shiism, and this needs to change fast.

I found I was mostly reading it as a vocabulary book, because it was stunning to me how words whose Western meaning I understand well hold totally different valences when you understand the history of Shiism and Sunnism in the Middle East. Words like 'democracy' or 'freedom' don't mean what I thought they meant. I feel like I've been having conversations for the past ten years where everyone was talking at crosspurposes, and I'm just now realizing.

Taking democracy as an example, some Shiite clerics have spent the past century positioning what I would term Islamic theocracy (velāyat-e faqīh) as the true democracy, because Islamic law is the true representation of the will of the people. This is by no means the only definition of democracy in circulation that Nasr shows, but Nasr vividly illustrates how this definition, which didn't originate with Khomeini but which he perhaps most prominently brought to the fore, influences even the most Western-minded Middle Easterners' understanding of the concept.

After brief but important discussion of the origins of Shiism and its historical touchstones (important because Nasr continually makes callbacks to these touchstones, showing how memories of Ali and Umar, memories of the Safavids and the Ottomans, continually influences the conversation in the Middle East in a similar way to how references to the Framers constantly influence American ideology and politics), Nasr spends most of the book on the political landscape of the past 30 years, essentially from the Iranian Revolution to today, showing how a major theme in the Middle Eastern political scene has been Shiites discovering a voice and learning how to use it. He spends a lot of time on the Iraq war, naturally given the book's publication in 2006, and the framework he has laid for understanding the war's Shia/Sunni dynamic in previous chapters makes his sections on the Iraq War incredibly potent. For me it was a string of sudden realizations, moments of shock when my past understanding of a concept combined with some new premise about Shia/Sunni politics to generate a new, deeper and more complicated vision of the war.

seekingferret.livejournal.com

43). What's So Great About Christianity? by Dinesh D'Souza

A response to the rhetorical barrage of pro-atheism literature we've seen in recent years, D'Souza goes on the offensive against Dennett and Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris and the rest of the atheists who have labeled Christianity and theism as destructive, dangerous ideas that should be eradicated.

I liked this better than I liked The End of Racism. There were less ideas that I immediately rejected as outright crazy, and also there was an admission that sometimes D'Souza adopts unacceptable or crazy ideas as a rhetorical pose to force moral relativists to admit they do think some principles are absolute. (I suspected this was true in The End of Race, and was relieved to hear him say it.)

Of course, as a Jew I am suspicious of a lot of the theology he advances. But I thought he did a relatively tasteful job of arguing that the Inquisition wasn't as bad as it's been claimed. That was a section of the book that had the potential to make me hyperventilate, and it didn't.

D'Souza's an extraordinarily agile thinker. He moves quickly and skillfully through big and complicated ideas, dealing with Kant and Hume and Nietzsche and Augustine in digestible but not dumbed-down form. If you're looking for a response to The End of Faith, this is a pretty decent place to look.

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

40. Reza Aslan, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror

A non-fiction pop book dealing with a wide range of subjects, from the history of the state of Israel, to the difference between Islamist groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Jihadist groups like al-Qa'ida (as well as the inaccuracy of referring to al-Qa'ida as any kind of unified group), to historical examples of other 'cosmic wars' such as the Crusades or the Zealot rebellions of the Roman Empire, to the history of Fundamentalist Christianity in the United States, to others. He doesn't always tie these many, many topics together as tightly as one might wish, but if you look at the book as a smorgasbord of various information about the "war on terror", it's a pretty awesome book.

One of my favorite things about Aslan is that he's a much more lyrical, thoughtful writer than I tend to expect from pop non-fiction. Let me quote a paragraph at you: "When I close my eyes, I see white. Strange how synesthetic memory can be. I am certain the insular town of Enid, Oklahoma, where my family alighted three decades ago, was chockablock with buildings, homes, churches, parks. And surely other seasons came and went in the stretch of time we lived there, months when the city's empty streets were not blanketed in snow and the sky did not rumble with dark and silvery clouds. But I remember none of that. Only the clean, all-encompassing whiteness of Enid, Oklahoma, snow as it heaped on the sidewalks, perched on the trees, and settled evenly over the glassy lake." See? How can you not be willing to spend a couple of hundred pages with the man, even if he wasn't telling you fascinating, important things.

Overall, I think I prefer Aslan's other book, No God But God, to this one, but for a broad summary of many things relating to modern Middle Eastern politics and the American response, this book is great.

Current Mood: cheerful

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

31. Nu Nu Yi, Smile As They Bow

This short novel (translated from Burmese by Alfred Birnbaum and Thi Thi Aye) takes place during the week-long Taungbyon nat religious festival, a annual festival located in a small, rural village which swells dramatically with pilgrims and other people who come to attend. The narration skips between different people at the festival, from pilgrims to the spirit mediums and musicians who make their living off such festivals, to pickpockets who take advantage of the crowds. The main character is Daisy Bond, a 50-ish gay/transgender (the Western categories don't really map onto the Burmese characters) well-known spirit medium. Daisy's relationship with Min Min, his 18-year-old servant/factotum/lover is the center of the plot, but the book seems concerned less with a typical straight-forward chain of events than with showing the chaotic feel of the festival, jumping backward and forward in time, constantly introducing new characters and perspectives, making and breaking connections.

The book is very short (about 100 pages), so it's an easy, fun read. As an American reader, I knew very little about the festival, nats, the role of spirit mediums, or gay/transgender people in Myanmar culture, and the book does not take the time to explain any of the connotations of these. Which, of course, it's under no obligation to do, but I feel sure that I was missing a lot of depth from the story. It would have been nice if the translators had included a few pages with cultural information. Despite my own problems, I still recommend this book, even if you (like me) know very little about Myanmar. It was never hard to follow the plot or sympathize with the characters, and I found it to be a very enjoyable read.

Current Mood: busy

whereweather.livejournal.com

#28. Skim, Mariko Tamaki (writing) and Jillian Tamaki (art)
2008, Groundwood Books

Another book that I found through reviews on this comm. (Thanks again to all of you: you keep leading me to wonderful books.)

I enjoyed the book for many of the same reasons others did, especially those mentioned by

kyuuketsukirui,

sanguinity and [Bad username or unknown identity: puritybrown .] As regards the art style, I also loved, as someone else mentioned, that it clearly evokes Japanese aesthetics and the Japanese artistic tradition... but the influences it draws on are not manga. There's something about that, especially given the often troubling aspects of gender representation in mainstream manga (I'm thinking of exaggerated gender dimorphism, neoteny, and hypersexualization), that I found profoundly refreshing and even kind of inspiring.

Very highly recommended. I'm putting Mariko Tamaki's other graphic work, Emiko Superstar, on my to-read list, and I'd love to see other work from Jillian Tamaki. (Actually... let's see. Her website is here, there's an interesting illustrated interview with her here, and I see mention of a 2006 book called Gilded Lilies. Has anyone read it?)

[Tags I would add if I could: spirituality (or: religion/spirituality), high school]

Hey, by the way: [Bad username or unknown identity: puritybrown ,�]did you ever send the Tamakis that fan letter?

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

30. Reza Aslan, No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam

I adored this book. It's a non-fiction book detailing Islam as a religion; about half of it is devoted to an incredibly detailed description of life and culture in the Arabian peninsula immediately before and during Mohammad's life. The second half of the book lays out some of the most prominent evolutions of Islam since then, from the basic branches of Sunni, Shia, and Sufism, to more recent developments like Iran's Khomeinism to Saudi Arabia's Wahhabism.

This book was fantastic. It's perfect both for the reader who knows nothing about Islam and the educated reader. It contains so many details and interesting perspectives that I think there's something new for everyone to learn*, and yet it lays things out so clearly that it's also a great introduction. Aslan is a wonderful writer; despite it being a non-fiction book, it has a very conversational tone, which is totally engaging and enthralling. I have not read many non-fiction books that have sucked me in like this one.

Very, very highly recommended, and I'll be checking out Aslan's other book.

In particular, I spent a lot of time shrieking "Oh my God! Did you know this?!" during the section about Britain's role in the formation of Saudi Arabia.

Current Mood: sleepy

rootedinsong.livejournal.com

29. Ten Things I Hate About Me, by Randa Abdel-Fattah

I liked this a lot more than Does My Head Look Big In This? Real, honest examination of passing, dual consciousness, and holding on to one's cultural identity.

One thing that got on my nerves about it was the protagonist's older sister, who is one of these "smart kids" and uses (or is portrayed as using) strings of big words that actually don't make much sense. That's a particular pet peeve of mine...

30. Persepolis (complete edition), by Marjane Satrapi

I really liked this. Comparing this to a lot of other books that portray authoritarian regimes, real or fictional, really illustrates for me one of the main things that

50books_poc is about: the viewpoint matters.

So many books depict the horrors of a regime and the devastation it wreaks on the citizens, emphasizing how resistance is crushed and the people's spirits are broken. This shows oppression, but not the breaking of spirits; it shows the little everyday resistances, the extent to which the regime does not control the people, the fact that the people are emphatically still human and life is still life.

And the book is not about that. It's about the author's own story.

31. No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, by Reza Aslan

I read this on

sheafrotherdon's recommendation. I agree with her assessment: it's really beautifully written, really clear, and really engaging. (And I find most books of history to be excruciatingly boring.)

The author starts with a depiction of the society in which the Prophet Muhammad lived and goes on to explain the social and religious reforms that he championed, the reception of his message, and the evolution of Islamic thought, practice, and politics from then until the present day. I kept thinking, "Oh, that makes so much sense now!" or "Now I understand what people mean when they say..." (It shed a lot of light on books on Islam that I've previously reviewed here.)

At the end, he argues for a reformation within Islam - new ways of understanding the religion, formulations of an indigenous Islamic conception of democracy. (It actually reminded me a lot of what I said in my review of The Whale Rider - he doesn't think of it in terms of a conflict between Western conceptions of human rights and the traditions of Islam, but in terms of Islam evolving, reforming itself from within.)

Recommended.

rootedinsong.livejournal.com

15. Why I Am a Muslim, by Asma Gull Hasan

There was very little I liked about this book. Although it's directed towards adults, it is written in a very simplistic, repetitious style, as if the intended audience were twelve-year-olds. I read it because I do not know much about Islam and wanted to learn more, but it didn't teach me very much of interest.

The author is very focused on convincing her readers (who are assumed to be non-Muslims who have very little accurate information about Islam) that Islam is not a religion of terrorism, women's oppression, and intolerance of all other religions, and that these things are actually un-Islamic. Most of the information she gives about Islam is in service to these goals; this is not sufficient to provide a real picture of what Islam is like and what Muslims believe and practice, which is what I was looking for. She also does what seems to me to be exegetical gymnastics to explain away passages in the Qur'an that don't fit into her modern liberal conceptions of equality and religious tolerance (as I have seen liberal Christians do with the Bible); I don't think these issues can really be that simple.

I found the last chapter, "Because Being Muslim Makes Me a Better American (And Being American Makes Me a Better Muslim)," to be very problematic. The author says, "What surprises many Muslims and non-Muslims alike are the many striking parallels between the principles of Islam and the founding ideals of the United States..." and goes on to list what she sees as elements that Islam and American ideals have in common, such as social justice, freedom of speech, diversity, and capitalism, uncritically praising the US for these things; she seems to have almost no skepticism about the rosy myth of the American dream. This paragraph especially bothered me:

Like all American schoolchildren, I learned about Columbus's journey to America. He was looking for India, though, not America. When the Native Americans greeted him on the shore, he called them "Indians" because he thought he had found India. The purpose of his search for India was to overcome Muslim control of the East Indies spice trade. The "discovery" of America was motivated by a desire to outflank Muslims. How funny that in pursuit of Spain's policy against Muslims, Columbus, who had been commissioned by Spain, inadvertently found America? Years later, America would become home to over seven million Muslims, maybe even as many as twenty million. The country that Columbus has been credited for "discovering" would stand for the same principles of the religion his voyage was meant to undermine.

I do want to take into account the forces that would drive her not to be critical of the US in a book defending Islam - many people in her intended audience would probably take substantial criticism of the US to be a confirmation of the worst stereotypes and slanders they had heard.

Does anyone know of a better book on the topic?

(Edit: too many tags again)

whereweather.livejournal.com

#9. The Eternal Smile, Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim
2009, First Second

The Eternal Smile is a collaborative anthology by comics artists Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim. Before reading this, I had read Yang's American Born Chinese (which won the Eisner award in 2007, and which I recommend highly, albeit with a few reservations). I hadn't previously read anything else by Kim; after reading The Eternal Smile, though, I went and added his earlier books to my reading list (Same Difference and Other Stories, which won the Eisner and the Harvey in 2004, and Good As Lily, which was published by Marvel's tween Minx imprint in 2007).

It's a little hard to know how to review this book, partly because what it really is is a compilation of three different stories which differ so widely in style and tone that it would be a stretch to call this a cohesive work. You can make an argument, though (as did my brother, who also read this book) that they treat one or two of the same core themes, and that their collective comment on these themes is more complex than any of the pieces would be alone.

I can't really go into much thematic criticism without spoiler-ing the stories, so I'll confine myself to other aspects.

( Here we go... )