5 comments about The Witch's Dream: A Healer's Way of Knowledge (Arkana).

1. I did not find the book all that appealing. I purchased it, in hopes it would be simualar to Carlos Castaneda's work. It wasn't. It was very different from the work of Castaneda. It takes you to a whole different world and way of viewing the world. I did enjoy the book but thought it was very unspecified in making the points clear. It left me with a feeling of going nowhere. That's just my personal opinion though.



2. I can't leave this marvelous book with a couple of limited reviews here at Amazon, even though it's been ten years since I last read it. Donner's story is simply a great human story; it's really about becoming more human. It's about the simple necessities in life, about the choices we are forced to make when choices are most limited, and about the life we find through that "cubic centimeter of chance." It gets outside -- thank God! -- the crime and punishment limited mentality of America....and of course that is why such a book will bore some readers and frighten others.



3. ...this book works. You don't have to believe Florinda Donner experienced or witnessed everything in this book to find something useful about her portrayal of the life of a Venezuelan healer and spiritualist (our modern, American terms). Read it like a novel that certainly feels like it was thoroughly researched. You'll find it an excellent journey to a place you've never been before.



4. Great read, kept me going. Not meant to be everyone's taste, but if it is, you will enjoy. Fiction or non-fiction... we may never know. Why do we have to classify? For about the same price as going to a bad movie, you will almost certainly get more out of it, whether you liked it or not. Go for it!



5. Didn't care for the cover on first impressions but as you read and discover the story line its a great read. The way many of the I want to say disiples of this subject matter write is alarming in resemblance to each other. Not in style or anything but in the way it flows / reads. Great book.

5 comments about Rollergirl: Totally True Tales from the Track.

1. Amazing, witty and informative. Melicious' book taught me new ways to practice, ways to perfect my persona and even how to develop an awesome signature for autographs. This book is amazing for girls just starting their derby adventure and for girls that have been in the "biz" for years. I ate it UP! Ace Face, Star City Rollergirls. Roanoke, VA.



2. This book was just what I needed. I just started as freshmeat with the Philly Roller Girls and read this book before I went to tryouts. It gave me an inside look at what I might expect in the derby world. Reading about Melissa's experience coming into her league and starting from scratch was really inspiring. She explains what it takes to be a derby girl, what to expect, how tough it all really is, and how rewarding it and the derby community can be. I definitely recommend this book if you're at all interested in the most recent derby revolution. It's taking over and it's awesome!



3. While Melicious' book does provide some insight into the modern roller derby revival, "Totally True" it's not. It is factual - that is to say there is nothing "made up," but she was under no obligation to apply journalistic standards of balance and integrity to her book. The facts that she did select reflect this.



4. This book was so hard to put down that I read it in one day. It explained the inner workings of derby and motivated me to skate even faster and hit even harder!
   
   -Madame Switchblade #75
   Rogue Rollergirls, Fayetteville, NC



5. Roller derby is back, but very different from the banked track derby that many people remember from the 70's. The reimagination of derby as a flat track, skater-run sport started with a single league in Texas in 2003. Today, there are leagues of smart, strong women all over the country ready and willing to step into their skates and knock a bitch down.
   
   A fascinating history of flat track roller derby, starting with the founding of the Texas Rollergirls in 2003, and continuing through th Dust Devil National Championship in 2006. Quotes, stories, and profiles from real rollergirls, in addition to fast-paced derby action, make this a book that will be almost impossible for skaters or fans of derby to put down.
   
   Melicious describes her immediate enchantment with the sport after seeing a bout and her subsequent trip to the rink for her first practice. I could relate because I had the same reaction. Even though I hadn't been on skates since middle school, my local team has welcomed me and is patiently teaching me how to hold my own on eight wheels.
   
   HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

5 comments about Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana.

1. 
   Ay, caramba!
   
   AROUND THE BLOC is more than a coming of age story, dear Readers.
   
   The following is a laundry list of what you're genuinely missing when you ascribe such facile titles to this amazing little read:
   
   1) The wonderful (and many) impactful lines of prose that emanate from the pen of someone so young, yet with so much on the ball (at the time of writing, that is -- the "young" part, not the "on the ball" part). Griest is possessed of an awareness that few individuals of mixed ethnicity and/or race choose to properly acknowledge. Inside the pages of this book, Elizondo Griest attacks this concept with a doggedness and reckless deliberation that's so downright inspirational! I would like to travel in her wake.
   
   2) There were several passages which I came across where I just had to place the book down beside me to take a deep "resetting" breath. How author managed to touch so many sensitive chords within me, I'm positive the effect was similar on the others. Ms. Elizondo Griest doesn't hold punches. When she refers to things like love, lust, heartbreak, depression, devastation, and sex, she does **precisely** that. When Griest refers to how pained she was when the man who meant everything in her life dropped her for the second time (in as many chances), you hurt right along there with her. If you don't, you don't have much of a emotional bone within your body. Someone so outspoken and delightful doesn't deserve to get hurt like that. At least this was my initial reaction.
   
   3) This is a young woman who has criss-crossed the world and back again, all in an attempt to seek the answers for the most essential life-donning questions which those of us who take such things for granted are never inclined to ask. Essential burning questions of indentity. Of the need and desire to understand who she really is at her core--not as a by-product of some consumerist collective--or where she really came from. By dipping into the collective unconsciousness of several nations of which she herself wasn't a descendant (Russia, China)...then beginning to relate these lessons to the things she knew and loved about herself (which came about more in Havana). Just gorgeous. In several spots the narrative, the author delivered up this story with a dramatist's expert flourish.
   
   ~~~~
   
   The pages just turned. I never **once** felt a need to stop reading (the only time I had was because I'd been interupted by something other than the read).
   
   Intentionally, I believe, Griest constructs the narrative with a rising crescendo. The story commences in Moscow, Russia and moves through Beijing, China. As the journey concludes in Havana, Cuba, in a country closest to her US home, Stephanie comes face to face with a daemon which has been dogging her for most of her early adult life.
   
   When she least expects to find the answer which has been plaguing her mercilessly, as she describes it, it confronts her hard. It hammers her when she finds herself doing an activity which one might consider enough to pull her thoughts away from such critical existential questions. Dancing the rhumba, or talking with a couple of Cuban college students on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean.
   
   Rather than writing AROUND THE BLOC and ending things with a question mark, Elizondo Griest is even more convinced by the book's end about the righteousness of her choice of having travelled around the entire world, steadfast in her desire to want to know more about her essential self.
   
   Like a highly sympathetic character in a novel or a film, you really want this person to succeed--dareisay win (?)--because the righteousness of her mission is just so important. It becomes as important to you as it initially is to Stephanie.
   
   Haven't we all had such dilemmas in our life?
   
   In this age of mixed identities, to be able to claim a purity of a connection to one's ancient or not-so-ancient culture is indeed a complicated decision, rife with paradoxes.
   
   Even those who are "so-and-so"--how much of that "so-and-so" can they really be in the face of an environment which pulls them into defining themselves as something much more general than merely the binding specificity of one particular race or (former?) nation-state?
   
   There are so many things which lay claim to our selves, at our cores. Griest cannot be blamed for having been sucked into this simplifying evening-out vortex, too. So deep has she been submerged into the commonality of the "Western experience," that it has become a compelling struggle to pull herself out. Like it is for others in her situation, who have written about things similarly.
   
   It has been an honour and a privilege to follow her along her path. I can't thank her enough for having made me a part.
   
   It's been to a gift to witness the changes, as she wrote about them, and as the book appears to be the culmination of many months and years of introspection and sometimes piercing self-doubt.
   
   I've cherished each and every one of these pages. Thank you Stephanie.
   
   If there ever were a sixth Amazonian star, it would go to Stephanie Elizondo Griest.
   
   --ADM in Prague



2. I guess when you're 59, like me, you shouldn't be buying books written by people under 25. Around the Bloc is sort of the tale of somebody's junior year abroad. Unfortunately, it takes more than a year to learn anything valid about somebody else's culture. So here's a woman who's reaped the affirmative action benefits of being Mexican in gringo America, and when a Cuban asks her what country she's from, she says "Canada." That's when I tossed the book into the box for the used book store. This woman needs to go live in the third world someplace for 15 years, without the benefit of a paycheck from the US. Then she can write a book.



3. This book energized me. Reading this book was almost as fun as traveling. I can't wait to visit Cuba. But this story is not just about travel. It's also about identity, family, language, and everything else important. Every traveller and every young woman must read this book. Keep your eye on this author! She's going to make it big. She's going to show us the world with fresh eyes.



4. I could not put this book down. Her voice is refreshing and honest. I learned a lot about all of the places she lives in. I found the part about the censorship in China to be especially revealing.



5. My mom and I both recently read this book and our reactions were the same as we discussed our thoughts. When we were finished with the book, there was a sense of something missing. The sub-title of the book - "My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana" - is misleading. It should have been "My Visits to Moscow and Beijing and My Spur-of-the-Moment Holiday in Havana." Ms. Griest didn't really have a life in any of those places. It would be like me writing a book called, "My Life in Thailand, Germany,and Puerto Rico." All places I have spent some time, but my "life" is where I have resided for many years. I agree with the reviewer who said this should have been a MySpace page - which is exactly where I put the (amusing and insightful!) tales of my adventures in foreign countries.
   
   Don't get me wrong, this book is not without some merit and Ms. Griest does relate some interesting experiences. The most interesting part to me was her short trip to Havana. Cuba is a mystery to most of us and I was surprised to hear that the people aren't quite as depressed and miserable as I had imagined. When they can't do anything about it, people tend to make the best of whatever situation they are in. But, all in all, it was just a light-weight travelogue for us.

5 comments about My Journey to Lhasa: The Classic Story of the Only Western Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City.

1. I did not see what the big deal was, and would not recommend it. Her language and the way she treated people is offensive, Eurocentric, condescending and narrow-minded -- typical of many travel books of this period. For those trying to learn about Tibet, there is not enough here to satisfy. This is your classic I-am-to-be-admired-because-I-left-the-comforts-of-civilization-applaud-me themed books. She is not a traveller but a trophy collector.



2. When I was reading the reviews of this book, I was struck by the one of the reviews. It was very negative, and the reviewer missed the beauty of this book entirely. I was glad that I had already read it. I read the reviews because I was curious to see if others had enjoyed the book as much as I did. I was buying it again as a present for a friend. The author was a very unusual person, and this book is very much worth the read. She wrote about customs and values honestly as she saw them. She was not a dispassionate viewer, but I also felt that she was not judgemental or superior. When customs of two peoples are as different as some of Tibet and France are, they will shock a person and that person will remark. However, I felt that she loved and respected the people she wrote about, and she did a remarkable job in recounting what she saw. She gave her readers the pleasure of a most unusual journey with her and her young companion through a country that was worth writing about.



3. In 1923 at the age of 55, Alexandra David-Neel put on the robes of a Buddhist monk and walked across Tibet for four months on a pilgrimmage to the holy city of Lhasa. No European woman had ever entered the holy city before, and the road promised many dangers, from wild animals to blizzards to bandits. Her descriptions bear witness to a spunky evolved soul whose scholarly knowledge of Buddhism served her well in her adopted role as an itinerant monk. Her writing is elegant, punctuated by an unselfconscious humor and relentless perspicacity. Truly an adventure trek of many wonders.



4. Personally, I love this book and have read it more than three times. If, for no other reason, you have an interest in Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion in 1950, this book leaves for posterity a Tibet that no longer exists. The border is gone from modern maps, but even a Westerners' interpretation of their daily lives, is treasure to us all of what once was, a free and spiritually ruled Tibet.
   
   The Chinese have a built a "Disneyland" at the foot of Potalla Palace. I need to remember it before the modern attempt at Chinesification of Tibet.



5. Every warm-blooded traveler knows that to savor a journey, to experience a journey, one has to become the journey. Of course, that same traveler will also tell you that typically that also means parking one's notions of comfort at home in exchange for rewards that happily outstrip bodily discomfiture, because places of intense emotion reveal themselves only to the hardy and the intrepid.
   
   But this story chronicles a veritable traveler boot camp! To bed down on rocks, sleep on snow, go hungry, thirsty and unclean, travel by starlight, dangle from a rope over a gorge, beg for food, awaken to the snuffle of wild predators... all this by a woman, almost a 100 years ago, 55 years old and on the run. I thrill and shudder at once and envy her the journey sometimes (and not so much at other times!).
   
   I recently had a tantalizing taste of Tibet's fantasmagoric beauty - like that of a land spellbound by unscrupulous sorcery, where life is harsh, unforgiving, unbending but so endowed by natural splendor that one is unable to escape its thrall. As her adventure unfolds in this well-paced account, I could imagine her tramping through these fabled lands, forging through fog-filled valleys, melting into the moonshine or greeting a golden sunrise at the end of a hard night's trek. I regret that she doesn't pause to paint a fuller picture of what must have been spectacular scenery.
   
   It is also interesting to sketch her personality through her own pen. The portrait that emerges is that of a strong-willed, intelligent, somewhat arrogant woman of unwavering determination, gritty endurance and one who loves a challenge. I have to applaud her unconditionally for the original motivation that launched her on this endeavor. She would have made a great CEO in our times.
   
   Yes, the style is a little dated, as one reviewer commented, but why should that be surprising? This is a period piece. I find her use of Tibetan words occasionally distracting and the Introduction by Diana Rowan is downright hagiographic and entirely dispensable, or at least, deferrable until the end of the author's own story.
   
   If you are a traveler at heart this travelogue cannot fail to touch you.

5 comments about How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great.

1. I must admit I'm still a few pages away from finishing the book, but I had to write to say that I'm loving every page of it. It seems to read part biography, part love letter from a devoted fan, and part amazing graduate thesis in the way each part of Kate's life is analyzed and seen from a feminist's point of view. I so thoroughly enjoyed Karbo's personal comments, and at times comedic footnotes, that I think the author should take the book on the road and do a one woman homage stand up performance of it. If she did, I would be the first in line to offer any help on it in any way. The only reason I couldn't give 5 stars is the lack of any photos that is a must have for Hepburn fans like me, and the fact that it was too short, as I trust I will be sad to come to the ending. Thank you Karen Karbo for a fascinating new look at our never-to-be forgotten Katherine, as well as ourselves.



2. As I was looking at the biographies section of my local independent bookstore, I noticed this compact book snuggled between much larger books about two screen icons who share the same last name, Audrey and Katharine Hepburn. Given the provocative title, I wanted to venture a guess as to which Hepburn the author was talking about since both women have inspired various levels of imitation and adoration even after their respective deaths. As I suspected, the book turns out to be about Kate on the not-so-coincidental occasion of her centenary. However, author Karen Karbo is not really examining the legendary actress's life in detail but rather taking a more cursory look at the cues in her life and memorable quotes that helped shape her enduring persona. Hepburn obviously lived life on her own terms, and Karbo sets out to define what the guiding principles were behind the actress's 93-year-old life.
   
   Toward that end, the author does a reasonably entertaining job of presenting the Hepburn philosophy, steeped as it is in self-mythologizing, but there is nothing revelatory here that would surprise fans. It's common knowledge that the woman was a difficult personality with a wealth of idiosyncrasies. At the same time, she continues to be a beloved icon for her unmovable sense of self and her non-conformist mindset just as much for her enduring career. Karbo's treatment reads a bit like a manifesto, which I'm sure is intentional, but without the cumulative context of Hepburn's life events, there is a lack of resonance to the life lessons presented. Several comprehensive biographies on the market offer theories on her life, though none more accurately encapsulates her philosophy than the subject herself in Me : Stories of My Life. Even better is the two-part 1973 interview Dick Cavett conducted with a 66-year-old Hepburn (mentioned briefly in the book and available on the first disc of The Dick Cavett Show - Hollywood Greats). With her crackling persona in full bloom, the legend threatens to make Cavett into a whipping boy with her unapologetic honesty and lacerating wit. That will give you a more vivid impression of Hepburn's outlook on life than this book really can.



3. Anyone knowing anything about Katherine Hepburn knows, despite film roles and a public persona, that she was in a groveling and servile relationship with Spencer Tracy, the love of her life. No feminist would want to copy her.



4. I'm a woman who loves movies, loves Katharine Hepburn, and loves self-help wisdom. So when I picked up How to Hepburn, all 3 of these antennae were waving. I was taken by the Dick Cavett epigram on the very first page hinting at "some secret" of Hepburn's that made her so successful and content, and found myself in that greedy, plundering mode of reading where you look for something that can benefit YOU. I kept finding absolute gems. The first chapter, for example, is called The Importance of Being Brash, and right away you get what Karbo's doing: entertaining us with inside stories about and insights into Hepburn but also genuinely extracting important ideas for all of us. Hepburn started wearing pants and outraging people in grade school when girls and women in pants were unheard-of, and never stopped; she was the first girl to wear pants to class at Bryn Mawr, and in fact "they became her trademark... her baggies were so raggedy she held them up with safety pins, a style that, when combined with Hepburn's devotion to the pursuit of fun (smoking; skinny-dipping in the library fountain; breaking and entering), could best be described as Hobo Flapper." This really makes me want to cut loose. Maybe I will get some black jeans and wear kohl on my eyes like that boy I saw the other day in the museum.
   
   One of my favorite chapters is Fear Management, the Hepburn Way, mainly because it reveals that Hepburn's seeming fearlessness masked horrible stage fright. This is great news. Katherine Hepburn had stage fright? And went and did all that theater acting anyway? What Karbo says is "The flinty truth is that mostly things get worse, including our fears. Solace is found in acclimation: we may not overcome our terror, but we get used to the sensation of being terrified." This is a wonderful nugget that is not unfamiliar to those of us familiar with cognitive-behavioral therapy.
   
   Like Hepburn herself, this book defies categorization. It is bracing and thoughtful and a lot of fun. It's... well, it's inspiring. It would make a great birthday present for a woman of any age.



5. I looked forward to reading this book, largely because I am such a Hepburn fan. However, I was deeply disappointed. Ms. Karbo is a wonderful, breezy writer. However, the lessons in this book aren't much more than her personal opinions backed up by Hepburn anecdotes. While it's clear Ms. Karbo admires Kate Hepburn, I was not inspired nor enlightened by the material. If you are interested in learning about the actress, I suggest one of the other biographies. If you are interested in life lessons, I suggest a different book.

5 comments about Poster Child: A Memoir.

1. One of the best autobiographies I've read. It's heartwrenching, but with no self-pity. It's also funny and dry with great prose and turn of phrase. Outstanding!



2. Rapp's beautiful description takes you through the crowded streets of Korea, the romantic cafes of Dublin, the dingy offices of doctor after doctor as she tries to get a leg that fits, all the way to the brutally honest mirror in her bathroom. Or is it yours? Her story is frank and engaging. Her struggle one that each one of us can identify with at some point in our lives: the struggle to be "normal."
   Poster Child is one of those books that makes you question your own values and assumptions. Poster Child is one of those books that will stay with you forever.



3. I love to read memoirs, especially "little guy" memoirs. Celebrity memoirs are okay, especially if the celebrity is a writer, but time after time I'm drawn to books written by ordinary people. I find it easy to imagine myself in their lives. So it was small wonder that I gravitated to POSTER CHILD with its cover picture of a pert red-headed girl posing with her training bike. It's warm out. She's wearing shorts. Her artificial right leg looks like it's made of plastic; a bulb in its knee joint lets her pedal.
   
   Emily Rapp, the author and the poster child, turned out to be a remarkable writer. She told me her story in such detail, including emotional detail, that I was swept into her anguish of being a child and a young woman who had a portion of her leg amputated when four. I had no idea, really, when I picked up this book what living with an artificial leg would be like. But soon I felt I was alongside her as she went through dozens of operations to replace her artificial leg as she outgrew it.
   
   Listen to how clearly Rapp writes. "For my first fitting, I stood barefoot on the dirty floor of the changing room while the prosthetist took measurements of my stump. The stink of the healing wound was finally gone; the limb was clean. Now that the left foot had been removed, or "disarticulated"--the sharp sound of the word matching the rough nature of the action itself--I had my natural heel at the end of the short leg."
   
   But no wonder Rapp writes well. A Fulbright Scholarship recipient educated at Harvard, she is a professor in the M.F.A. program at Antioch University Los Angeles.
   
   I highly recommend this book, primarily for the skill with which Rapp leads us through the first thirty years of her life, showing us what it was like to live with her "grievous, irrevocable flaw." Unflinchingly honest and sometime darkly humorous, POSTER CHILD is written without sentiment. I watched her struggle to keep up with her fashionable friends, her agony about making love to a man (should she leave her prosthesis on? off?), her final, tenuous, gift of acceptance.
   
   An elegant writer, an amazing book.
   
   Marilyn Coffey is an award-winning writer of poetry and a widely published author of prose. Read her work at Amazon.com: GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK, MARCELLA, or KANSAS QUARTERLY Vol. 15 No. 2.



4. This is a very special and unusual work. Emily's description of growing up with a deformed leg, and all that entailed is honest and difficult at times to read. Nonetheless, there is no self pity, just a straigtforward and detailed description of what it was like emotionally, physcially and spiritually. There is a lot of pain in this book but it is really a coming of age story as well. The writing is wonderful. It is very personal and yet informative especially about the efforts to obtain a prosthiesis that allowed Emily to function as normally as possible and the advancements made in the field over a 20 year period. Finally, the unwavering love and sacrifice of her parents was portrayed simply and gratefully. I read it twice and the second time was better!



5. I especially appreciated the authors in depth reflexions on disability and body image, both as a child and an adult, especially for women (in her case) but for all of us.

4 comments about Blessed Among All Women: Women Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time.

1. Blessed among women is the latest volume from the finest interpreter of holiness in life we have, Robert Ellsberg. He has edited the writings and written about such living icons of our time as Dorothy Day, Charles deFoucauld, Carlo Caretto, to note but a few. His award-winning volume, All Saints, gave us a porrtrait of a holy man or woman each day for a year from across the centuries and the communities of faith. It remains one of the best gifts for spiritual reading for any occasion. In The Saints' Guide to Happiness he dug deeply into the holy life: the tools of sanctity, the struggles, questions, the ways in which people have lived a godly life. I have used this with great profit in my undergradute courses. Now, Blessed Among All Women takes us into the personalities, the lives, the accomplishments of holy women all too often overlooked and ignored. Using the Beatitudes as a framework he presents to us remarkable but not always familiar women of valor such as poet and Carmelite Jessica Powers, martyr of the concentartion camps and writer Etty Hillesum, theologian and mystic Adrienne von Speyer and social activist Cornelia Connelly, among dozens more martyrs, prophets, teachers, and reformers. This is but one more gift to our spiritual lives, for our spiritual reading and most of all to our imitation.
   Fr. Michael Plekon, priest in the Orthodox Church in America, Professor, City University of New York, Baruch College, Sociology/Anthropology, Program in Religion & Culture



2. If you're like me, your childhood was saturated by mawkish tales of holier-than-life saints who were always going around suffering martyrdom with eyes piously turned heavenward. The sheer unreality of such stories inhibited me from taking saints seriously until Robert Ellsberg's 1997 book _All Saints_ awakened me to the fact that saints, both "official" and "unofficial," are ordinary people who manage to love kindness, do justice, and walk humbly with God in extraordinary ways. They're not other-worldly fictions. They're brothers and sisters whose examples help awaken us to our own sainthood.
   
   In his new _Blessed Among All Women_ Ellsberg continues his exploration by offering nearly 150 new vignettes of women saints (again, "official" as well as "unofficial") who have been touched by God and whose witnesses in turn touch us. The vignettes are organized into eight sections that correspond not only to the eight Beatitudes, but also to different approaches to God: contemplative enclosure, gospel-based activism, penitence, mysticism, artistic creativity, and so on. Some of the women Ellsberg writes about are traditional figures: Clare of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena. Others are less conventional but totally deserving of our consideration: the four girls martyred in 1963 at the bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the "witches" of Salem, and Karla Faye Tucker, executed by the state of Texas in 1998.
   
   Ellsberg's treatment of the saints in _Blessed_ is loving and insightful, with no hint of false piety or sentimentalism. Moreover, he's sensitive to the fact that the spiritual journeys of women saints are often complicated by cultural assumptions about gender, and that many were (and are) persecuted because their fierce devotion to God led them down paths that violated conventional gender norms (the Beguine saints are tragic examples of this) as well as conventional religious sensibilities.
   
   All in all, a fantastically inspiring, thought-provoking book. Highly recommended.



3. This is a superb book dealing with women who might well be forgotten.
   The author has emphasized their heroism wihtout bravado.
   He has also presented their spirituality without being sacharine.
   A very good read. Highly recommended especially for the macho class.



4. Robert Ellsberg has another extraordinary book here. As with "The Saints' Guide to Happiness" and "All Saints," he has done obviously extensive research in learning of well- and not-so-well-known people who have heard how God was prompting them to a mission. This time, the spotlighted people are women who discerned that prompting and the book tells how they moved forward with it.
   Ellsberg has a marvelous gift of taking the details of rarely wonderful lives and compacting those details while also making them totally readable, fascinaing and inspiring. The women about whose lives he has written are remarkable.
   No matter what your gender, if you are looking for spiritual inspiration, this book is well worth considering.

No comments about Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory: Women Scientists Speak Out.

5 comments about In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story.

1. This is a wonderful book that shows the humnan tragedy of becoming a refugee. In this case, the book talks about a refugee of the 1948 war for Palestine. While the book explains how the creation of the state of Israel have shattered the lives of three quarter million palestnians, it tells the story of one of them. The story of personal conflicts that face any palestnian refugee now, then and in the future:
   - Can I return to Palestine and where is it now?
   - How can I stay palestnian and at the same time contribute to my current non-palestnian community?
   - Do I have the capacity to forgive israelies for what they did to my family and country?
   
   While Ghada's responses to these questions were positive, and she insisted to find an answer to these questions, it is the role of each palestnian to find his/her own answers. Also, it is the role of non-palestnians to understand the palestnian refugee before addressing their plight. Therefore I highly recommend this book.



2. This book is like a narrative of two different lives: the end of one and the beginning of another. Two lives that are not independent of each other though, as remnants of the one may not be overpowering to the point of eliminating the other, but are certainly powerful enough to haunt it, shape it, give it its final form.
   
   Although in essence totally overwhelmed by emotions, Karmi manages to almost detach and distance herself from her own being, leave her body and float above everything and everyone. That way she describes people, situations and feelings in a detailed and factual fashion, devoid of the empathy that would crush the reader, immerse him in a whirlwind of unfulfilled expectations and unrelieved tension, and ultimately leave him feeling nothing short of miserable and exhausted.
   
   Throughout the entire book, there's a marked emphasis on Karmi's relationships with other Jews, the friendships she formed and her refusal to see them in any other way than as individuals with traits that were or were not compatible, likable or acceptable to her. She almost goes out of her way to make clear that Jewishness never hindered her from befriending someone and not only that, but in an unfamiliar environment such as London was in the aftermath of the second World War, Palestinians and Jews that found themselves stranded there were entities that shared the misfortune of exile, and as such could indeed relate to one another. Moreover, the fact that Judaism was as much a respected as a familiar religion for Muslims, much more so than Christianity, played a role. As did the writer's initial stance, adopted by her parents and passed onto her from an early age, that it wasn't so much the Jews that were responsible for the Palestinians' fate and the violent takeover of their country, as ultimately the British, who as custodians of Palestine had the obligation to protect and safeguard the interests of the indigenous population. Instead, they forsook and betrayed them, and disposed of the Palestinian land -that was never theirs to dispose of in the first place- as served their purposes at the time.
   
   Karmi experiences an internal conflict, wavering between her British identity and her Arab origins, desperately longing to be accepted by and fit in either society. She often describes the war that rages inside of her, the opposite forces pushing and pulling, on the one hand the need to put everything behind her and lead as normal a life as possible, and on the other the need to seek out her roots and fight with all her might the injustice that was meted out to her.
   
   This book is so much more that a simple memoir, as it goes deep inside the mind of people who experience exile and dislocation, and gives a picture of the psychological turmoil they find themselves in and the void they will probably never be able to fill.



3. This is truly an outstanding work. The search and confusion of identity is made even more difficult when one is a Palestinian refugee. Add to this the issue of gender and Ghada Karmi assertion of herself and her rights and you get a fascinating indeed thrilling mix. The first third of the book deals with the exodus from Jerusalem ..it is very moving and sad to see the events rushing to make little Ghada and her family refugees. In the next part we see Ghada the British emerging and finally with all the contradiction between home, school (with mostly Jewish friends) and the society at large especially with backdrop of the 1956 Suez war. The third and final part is the return and the contradictions of identities and the battle to assert herself as a single woman working for the cause. Ghada's move from the completely apolitical to the activist as part of her search of identity is very well nuanced and gives us a great insight into the meaning of being a Palestinian refugee.
   
   Ghada Karmi is a gifted writer. This work is fascinating enough even if it was given as bullet points in a PowerPoint presentation, but this is hardly the case. Karmi has a facility with prose and is able to get into great detail to transform the readers into her life; this was very much the case in the fist part of the book, the exodus from Jerusalem. You can almost picture Ghada abandoned dog as their car sped away from the house never to return.
   
   This is a thrilling work on par with Leila Ahmad Border Passage. Leila Ahmad an Egyptian American was not a refugee but here Tri-cultural experience in Egypt, England and America and her search of identity and issues of gender are very interesting and highly developed. Another highly recommended work of a Palestinian American is Nadia Captive of Hope, deals with exodus and gender issues and less so of identity.



4. In Search of Fatima is a beautifully written story, a true story, written by a woman with a real gift for writing. The whole experience of the Palestinian Catastrophe, know as the Nakba, comes alive in this book on a very personal level. The fear of the Palestinians as the events unfold during the years leading up to 1948 are so vividly expressed that you feel that you are there too, sharing the feelings of foreboding and horror.
   The second section of the book describes the difficulties in settling in a new country, with totally different customs, language, weather, everything. Her mother, incapable of adapting to a new life, makes a truly pitiable figure.
   
   Although this is the story of one person,the experience of the 1948 Nakba was shared by three quarters of a million others, yet we rarely hear about the terrible suffering inflicted on so many. This book fills a huge void.



5. I just finished Ghada Karmi's captivating autobiography. She is honest, poignant, funny and reflective. She takes you back to pivotal moments in history, while at the same time drawing you into her and her family's personal struggles. Many readers who have also grown up with traditional parents, whether they be Catholic, Muslim or Jewish, will be able to relate!
   
   But more importantly, she offers an insightful view of a much misunderstood dilemma. For anyone who has wondered, "Why don't the Palestinians just stop fighting?", you owe it to yourself to read this book!
   
   I admit to fact checking Karmi because I assumed since she was Palestinian, that some of the information she gave could have been exaggerated. She mentions the massacre at Deir Yassin, the bombing of the King David Hotel, and the booby trapping of the dead body of a British soldier. I was shocked to learn that armed Jewish groups did indeed carry out these and other acts of violence before 1948. What we are usually taught is that Israel always respects human rights, but the Arabs do not. Karmi gives another point of view.
   
   Yet she does not paint all Jewish people with the same brush. She differentiates between her Jewish friends she holds dear, the Jewish faith she respects, and the state of Israel which has robbed her of her homeland.
   
   This book is well worth your time!

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