The Farming of Bones (By Edwidge Danticat 1998)

This is the book that I have to read for my Spanish V class, even though it is written in English. The story takes place in the Dominican Republic and is about a young woman, Amabelle, who is a native of Haiti, but works in the home of a wealthy family in the Dominican Republic. She is in love with a man, Sebastian, who works in the sugar cane fields, which the author refers to as "the farming of bones." So far, a concrete plot has not yet presented itself; I don't know what the point of the book is. The summary states that the story is about Haitians being prosecuted in the DR, but none of that has happened yet. Amabelle's parents died when she was eight, leaving her orphaned in Haiti. The author has not yet said how Amabelle came to the DR, but I assume that it was to find work. Like in "A Mayan Life," the outsiders of the country are not looked at fondly. Haitians really only work as servants to the people in the DR and are viewed as lowly and unimportant. Books like "A Mayan Life" and "The Farming of Bones" educate the reader about other civil rights problems. In school, we have only really been taught about the Civil Rights Movement in America, but not about the discrimination that takes place in other countries. Reading these books gives the reader a new understanding about social issues in Spanish Countries.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly #2

I will only be able to do 2 posts on this book; I just got assigned to read a book from the Dominican Republic in my Spanish class, so next week I will start blogging about that and, if there is enough time in the year, I will come back to this book.

The whole concept of "Locked In Syndrome" is terrible. Day after day, Bauby is visited by mourners, coming to console him on his tragic accident. I can imagine how awkward it would be to visit someone in Bauby's condition, someone who could not respond to anything you said. You couldn't even read facial cues or body language to glean his emotions. It would be like talking to yourself, except you would have the knowledge that you weren't. It would still be the same person in that hospital bed that you knew before the accident happened, the same mind functioning the same way, but how could you ever have a normal conversation again? You couldn't, unless you patiently dictated every letter, which would then destroy the air of casual banter that your old conversations used to have. Bauby's chapters are very short, little vignettes that do not necessarily connect. So far, he has described his daily routines and feelings towards the accident. He has not said much about his past life or family. In the movie, his ex wife, children, and girlfriend visit him. The girlfriend is in utter shock, but reasonably so. Slowly, Bauby's relationship with his wife starts to re-bloom, which really shows how the cliche that "love can conquer anything" is true. Inside, Bauby is in utter torment; he longs so much to perform the simple tasks he once took for granted, such as swallowing his food and bathing himself. Reading about the despair and embarrassment that Bauby feels really makes you think about the simple things in life that can be taken away so easily. There are little things we don't even notice, like the ability moving an eyeball, but when taken away, can cause so much pain.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Jean Dominique Bauby 1997)

I saw the movie "the Diving Bell and the Butterfly" a while ago and thought it was fantastic. The book, a memoir, was originally written in French by a man, Jean Dominique Bauby, who suffered a massive stroke and was then diagnosed with "Locked In Syndrome," where the person is fully capable of thinking, but unable to move his or her body. To me, and based on how Bauby describes it, this condition sounds like utter hell, the only part of his body that Bauby can move is his left eyelid, which is his only means of communication. Amazingly, Bauby was able to write his book by a special method in which someone, a hired assistant, slowly repeated the alphabet to Bauby. He then blinked when she said the letter he wanted to write. So letter by letter, the entire book was dictated from Bauby's still functioning mind. Bauby's book is quite short, a little over a hundred pages, but that is understandable given the circumstances under which he wrote the book. He had to memorize every paragraph and do all of the editing in his head before he could rely it to his assistant. I do not think I could do this; I would forget what words I wanted to say and get frustrated by how long the process took. Bauby and his assistant spent hours upon hours repeating the same process over and over again. The fact that Bauby was even able to write this book is a grand accomplishment that I suspect few people would be able to do under the same circumstances.

Uglies #6

Finally, the plot has become more exciting and less predictable. Throughout the entire book, I really thought that Zane, Tally's boyfriend, would become a Special along with Tally. Because of Zane's brain damage, which happened in the second book because of a cure for the lesions gone wrong, he had poor motor skills. Tally though that if she could make Zane seem like a rebel, a trait which the Specials all posses, the Special committee would turn him into a Special as well and cure his brain damage. To make Zane seem like a rebel, Tally broke into the town's armory and lead Zane, along with some other Pretties, to the New Smoke. Her plan was to then call the Specials and say that Zane broke into the armory and found the Smoke all by himself. This plan was not so great to begin with, but it turned disastrous. The specials thought that the neighboring town, where the smoke coincidentally was, had attacked their armory and declared war. The smoke was attacked with the strongest weapons that the specials had, destroying the city. Zane had been in the hospital when this had happened, while the doctors searched for a cure for him. The doctors were forced to evacuate the building and left Zane behind, where, without the attendance of the doctors, he lost all of his cognition. The doctors had to then, when they returned, take Zane off of life support in order to use the machines for other patients. This is a great ending to the book because it was literally the last thing I was expecting to happen. Based on the previous book's predictability, I assumed this book would end with a similar ending, one where Zane and Tally lived happily ever after as super-human crime fighters. Zane's death sort of saved the book from being boring, even though it was sad.

Uglies #5

"Specials" is getting a bit tedious to read. The three books in the series seem to have very parallel story lines. In "Uglies" Tally is ambivalent as to weather or not she should reveal the "Smoke" to New Pretty Town and goes on a long journey to get to the "Smoke". In "Pretties" Tally does pretty much the same thing with a few minor changes, such as the addition of her boyfriend and the fact that she's pretty. But in the end, the plot of "Pretties" mirrors the plot of "Uglies". Tally, again, goes through a long journey to get the smoke and then has mixed emotions when she gets there. In "Specials" Tally is, obviously, a Special. So her perspective has drastically changed; she looks at the world with a much more critical eye. She has nearly superhuman strength and speed, and is terrifyingly beautiful. But, nevertheless, Tally, again, goes on a long journey to the "Smoke" and then has mixed feelings about it when she gets there! I would like these books so much more if some new things happened. Sure, there are new characters and new experiences for Tally, such as meeting a tribe of people living like "pre-rusties", her boyfriend's brain being eating by nanos, and robbing a heavily armed armory, but fundamentally, all of these books are too similar to keep the reader excited about the story line. Don't get me wrong, I like the books and they are fun to read, but after a while, they get a little old.

Uglies #4

My Spring Break has been uneventful, so I have been reading a lot. Because of this, I finished "Pretties" and have now moved onto "Specials," the third book in the series by Westerfeld that came out in 2006.

In this book, Tally has become a Special, a scary sort of police officer that keeps Pretty Town in order and possesses super-human skills. Right now, she is on the hunt, chasing down her old friends from the Smoke, a rebel party who do not believe in becoming pretty. As a sequel to "Pretties," this book is all right so far. "Uglies" is definitely the best book in the series; the other two books are too predictable. From the beginning of "Pretties," the reader knew that Tally would successfully cure herself of the brain lesions. In "Specials," based on the books predictable plot line, I foresee Tally going back to the smoke and having internal conflicts as to whether or not she should turn her old friends Pretty. I am actually getting kind of tired of these books, probably because I read them all in one week, but also because the plot line, besides being predictable, is also cliche; it is full of teen melodrama found in basically every teen book, movie, and TV series. For example, Tally first falls in love with David, a leader of the Smoke who has vowed to stay ugly. But then once Tally becomes pretty, she finds a new boyfriend, Zane, who is pretty as well. As Tally journeys back to the Smoke, she realizes that she still has feelings for David, even though he is ugly and she is in love with Zane. This sort of teen angst situation is fine once in a while, but Westerfeld puts his characters in all too many cliche situations, which makes his books a bit boring and annoying at times. But overall, I still like the books; it is easy to lose yourself in cliche plot lines even though they are unoriginal.

Uglies #3

I actually finished the book "Uglies" in about three days, so I have moved onto "Pretties", the second book in the series that is also by Scott Westerfeld and came out in 2005. Because the books are both in the same series, I am going to count them as one book and blog about both.

In "Pretties," Tally, the main character, is finally turned pretty. We learned in "Uglies" that when someone gets the operation that turns people pretty, brain lesions that cloud thinking come along with it. Tally and her friends try out a cure, created by an ex-doctor that is part of the rebellion against pretty society, that hopefully erases the problematic brain scars. This book is so easy to read, maybe too easy. I found it in the Teen section at the book store, which usually has books centered towards younger teenagers, so the books are usually not that good. The plot is enticing but lacks depth, I think. The author should be emphasizing his story's plausibility for the future of our society. I think his books condemns our fixation on beauty and how that obsession can lead to a society where beauty is the only thing that matters, but it is kind of hard to tell. Instead of driving this point home, the author doesn't really mention it at all. Although he frequently refers to the "Rusties," a nickname for our current society, and how we nearly destroyed Earth with all of our pollutants, he never explains how society become the way it is in the book; how our obsession with beauty today sparked the creation of a society where beauty is the sole desire. It would have been a great opportunity to directly condemn our current society. I think it is because this books is aimed towards younger people, people who may not care so much about the societal implications of the book, and only want the juicy storyline. I wish this book was written as a more adult book; the whole story line is a great idea and is very imaginative, but I wish it had more implications about our present-day society.

Uglies #2

The main purpose of this book is to emphasize how American culture revolves around looks. In the book, the main goal of every person is to become beautiful, which, at age sixteen, everyone eventually becomes. Today, Americans go to similar lengths, though maybe not as drastic, in order to feel beautiful. The characters, termed "uglies", who have not yet had the operation that turns them beautiful, have no hope of ever feeling beautiful until after the operation; they have accepted themselves as naturally ugly only because society tells them so. All the people that we deem to be attractive now would be considered ugly in the book because they, for the most part, look similar to the way they were meant to look. The society depicted in "Uglies" is not so different than our society now in America, and perhaps, in a distant future, we could become even more similar. In the book, people have surgery to become beautiful, a surgery in which all of their skin in sanded away and plastic bones are put into their faces in order to reshape them. This is exactly what plastic surgery does, although the technology is more antiquated and the results are not as drastic. But in the future, if our technology keeps evolving at the rate that it is now, it is plausible to say that a procedure similar to the one in "Uglies" would be invented, one that will completely change the way someone looks. This book describes a possible future for American Society. And, honestly, one that doesn't sound so terrible. It is bad to have a society that revolves around looks, like America has right now. But in "Uglies," no one is left out when it comes to beauty, everyone is on the same playing field. As opposed to America now, where there are many different levels of beauty, the highest of which only some can obtain and others are criticised for not obtaining. The though of automatically being beautiful no matter what you looked like before the operation sounds kind of nice, even though it is a very superficial thing to say. It would be fair, and people would be happier. But then there are the people that do not want to be beautiful, like Tally's friend Shay, which is admirable; they want to be "themselves" and not what the surgeons decide to make them look like. I can understand that too.

Uglies (By Scott Westerfeld 2005)

I know that this was one of the options for our summer reading books, but I didn't read it so I think it's OK that I am blogging about it now.

So far, I really enjoy this book. I have been wanting to read it for a while because people keep telling me how good it is. It would have been a good book to read over the summer because it really connects with the themes that we were writing about at the beginning of the year, about utopias and distopias. "Uglies" kind of reminds me of a mixture of "1984" and "Brave New World". "1984" because they have similar technology, the telescreens are like the interface rings. Also, both protagonists in the two books go against societal norms; Tally doesn't become pretty, or so far at least, and Winston does not love Big Brother. One difference, though, is that in "1984," the people are forced to work long hours in harsh conditions. In "Uglies," the pretties just have parties all the time and focus on luxuries. The book is similar to "Brave New World" because both focus on superficial things; "Uglies" on beauty and "BNW" on just material items in general. It is interesting how in "BNW," society puts everyone into different social classes based on their predetermined physical and mental skill, but in "Uglies" society puts everyone in the same class with the same level of beauty. So in the end, really no one is pretty anymore unless they are compared to the young uglies.