Tag: English

A Great Gardner’s Book As Always

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The Book Review of 
“Look For Me” by Lisa Gardner

I always learn something from reading Gardner’s books. It is apparent from her works that she conducts a great deal of research in forensic science and legal procedures, filters through a large amount of informative details and weaves the most interesting parts into her plot lines. I was initially drawn to her books by her characterization of strong, determined and resourceful female leads. As my reading journey continued, I found her books also opened a gateway of knowledge into a line of work I barely knew in real life. She introduced me to the life of a child psych ward nurse, a 911 dispatcher, a police trooper and even a female prisoner. The last, I know, is not a profession, but no less interesting to read about.

There are two recurring themes in Gardner’s writing: troubled childhood and trauma recovery.

Gardner on Child Welfare

In her D.D. Warren series, Gardner directs a spotlight at troubled children, calling attention to this particularly vulnerable group. This book “Look for Me” tells a story of foster kids, and severals other books in the same series also revolve around children born with or into difficult situations, such as children with physical disabilities (“Fear Nothing”), children with mental illnesses (“Live To Tell”), children of narcissistic parents (“Never Tell”) and children sexually abused by pedophilic predators (“Catch Me”).

Gardner’s thrillers are not only exciting reads, but also offer a kaleidoscopic view into various public facilities and services. The crime plots may be fictitious, but the story setting is built on solid research. Schools, hospitals, law enforcement, government agencies, social volunteer groups —— there seems to be no corner of the society that Gardner’s antenna have not reached, investigated and reported.

Reading her books, you can see the tremendous efforts put forth by all the honorable people in our society to protect the younger generation from perils, to nurture deprived children with public resources, to reconnect challenged children, and sometimes their desperate parents, into a social support network. But at the same time, you also see the devil of human nature rearing its ugly head in the depravity of abusive parents, pedophilic criminals and callous bystanders.

All adults were once children. When children grow up, they gain power. Some of them wield this power to protect and guard the younger generation, whereas some pour their anger and frustration onto the defenseless young, and some exploit the curiosity and dependency of children to act out their depraved fantasies. Generations after generations, the war between child protectors and child abusers goes on and children’s welfare depends on the adults on their side winning the war.

A central character of this book is a high school teenage girl who spent several years in foster care, and as the story unfolds, it touches on various aspects and working stages of the US foster care system. Foster kids usually have problematic biological parents, whose custodial rights are terminated by the state on the account of negligence or abuse. Only after the biological parents prove in court that they are mentally, physically and financially stable enough to provide responsible child care, could they win back the custody of their kids. Before that, the children would be placed in foster homes for the sake of their safety and welfare.

However, when put into practice, these laws and policies to protect children may not live up to same ideal by which they were drafted. If the foster home lacks monitoring and supervision, these children, already under distress, become even more susceptible to exploitation and abuse. During the challenging times of parent-child separation, if the foster home fails to provide solace and support, some of children would break down or go astray. Feeling undeserved and unloved, they use drugs, alcohol, unprotected sex to sabotage their physical and mental well-being. Feeling lost in a hostile, estranged world, they join criminal activities to find a sense of community and belonging.

Gardner on Feminism

Another thing I always like about Gardner’s books is how she features strong female characters. In this book, Flora Dane, an abduction survivor (first introduced in “Find Her ”), trains herself to be a vigilante and organizes a support group to offer consultation for other victims. Sara, another survivor from a killing spree, joins Flora’s support group and uses her computer knowledge to help locate a missing girl.

It’s really refreshing to read stories of how female survivors of rape, kidnap and violence regain the control of their life and start to feel strong and powerful again. The survivors study self-defense skills from lock-picking to chemical burning, take on training courses in shooting, kick-boxing and running, bond with other determined survivors, and together form a formidable combat force to destroy the bad guys.

I always like the stories of victims turning into revengers. In a world where all women face constant threats of male violence, these stories tell women that they are not passive and powerless. The stories say that for those who are disgraced, tortured and brutalized, there is a way out of victimhood, and it is not by waiting, begging and praying. Her inner peace is not gifted to her by an omnipotent God, neither does it come back to her spontaneously as time goes by. To reclaim her control of life, she has to believe in her own strength and shrewdness. She has to plan, prepare, strategize, and take revenge on the offenders, rapists and kidnappers. She has to rack her brain to outsmart those who wronged her and hold on to a determination to fight till winning.

Is This Harassing, Flirting or Joking?

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Thoughts on
“天久鷹央の事件カルテ”, by 知念実希人

破案情节一如既往地有趣，但是里面用职场性骚扰的桥段来搞笑，实在让人受不了。作者以为把骚扰者设定成女，被骚扰者设定成男，就可以消解性骚扰的恶劣性了，其实完全不是这样。不论谁骚扰谁，如果允许毫无顾忌地骚扰别人这种行为存在，整个工作场所的气氛都会变得特别有毒。

之所以女骚扰男能被玩笑化，是由于存在着一种社会观念，认为男性被女性“骚扰”其实是占了便宜，于是骚扰方占了口舌便宜，被骚扰方占了“性”的便宜，谁都没有吃亏。但是职场上女骚扰男的性质和男骚扰女一样恶劣，一样会毒害工作环境。

以开玩笑打掩护侵犯他人边界的行为一但成为常态，会让所有员工内心都感到不安。每个人表面上在别人被侵犯时附和着一起笑，但内心也时刻担忧着自己被侵犯，这样导致的猜疑和恐惧本身就会割裂团队。而且，幻想实际中几乎不存在的，女上司骚扰男下属、女同事骚扰男同事的情节，把性骚扰的行为正常化，扩大化，最后只会侵犯到本就最容易被性骚扰伤害的群体，也就是底层女性员工。

我刚入职时，不懂得工作场合说话做事的边界，也说过类似于“骚扰”的话，后来接受了公司的防止性骚扰课程培训，才意识到自己过去的言行不当，以后也变得注意起来了。规范自己的言行，创造一个清朗的工作环境，最终获益的还是自己。

The crime-solving plot is interesting as always, but it is disturbing to read the author’s frivolous treatment of workplace sexual harassment. Sexual harassment at workplace is a serious issue that should not be taken lightly. It not only violates people’s physical and emotional boundaries and tramples upon the dignity of co-workers, but also poisons the social atmosphere at the workplace and destroys team spirit.

The reason that the author deems it a moral obligation to condemn male-to-female sexual harassment (as he did in the other books of this series and I appreciate that), while finding female-to-male sexual harassment funny enough to joke about, is that he, as many people do, has this intuitive feel that the former is unfair, unjust, an absolute abuse of power by people in advantageous positions, while the latter is much less so. Less so, because in the latter case, the inequality of power in employment, is counter-balanced by the inequality of power by gender.

The gender relationship as we understand it, and our understanding mostly reflects reality, is that any sexual or sexually-alluding interaction between women and men would create an imbalance of power that puts men in dominant positions and women in subordinate positions. This idea leads to another belief that when a man is sexually harassed by a woman, the victim is not a true victim. Although the encroachment on his boundaries makes him feel uncomfortable, he gains from the contact initiated by the harasser, since men could always benefit from sexual contact or contact that suggests the prospect of sex, with women.

The author hints towards a belief in his book that by making the target of harassment a male, workplace sexual harassment can be perceived as less toxic and less harmful, but in fact it is not like that at all. Firstly, every individual has the need to preserve their boundaries and have their feelings recognized and respected. When workplace sexual harassment becomes the norm, it would upset all employees. Although most of them would feel pressured to comply, even trying to force out a laugh at the scene of another co-worker being harassed, deep inside everyone watching harassers go free would inevitably feel the anxiety of being targeted next. This feeling of insecurity and distrust will create fissures in the team and impair the morale and productivity of employees. Secondly, the fantasy of female bosses harassing male subordinates, female colleagues harassing male peers, which almost never exists in reality, while attempting to paint female-to-male sexual harassment as a case of flirting, and thereby justifies normalization, will have the ripple effect of normalizing all cases of sexual harassment. And we all know the victims of real-world sexual harassment are predominantly low-level female workers.

When I started my first job, I tried to leave a good impression on my co-workers and did not quite understand there is a fine line between showing care and respecting boundaries. I committed a number of micro-aggressions without realizing my mistakes. It was only after several company training courses on anti sexual harassment that it was called to my awareness all my micro-aggressions in workplace that would feel improper and unprofessional to other co-workers. Like once I commented on the look of one co-worker in front of several people. Even though that was a praise, I still regretted that as an unprofessional mistake since that comment could be easily misunderstood and mis-received. Now I pay particular attention to make sure I communicate professionally with my colleagues and that has led me to trust my co-workers more, not less. Contributing to a harassment-free working environment eventually benefits myself.

An Honest and Heartbreaking Memoir

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the_kissA Book Review of
The Kiss, by Kathryn Harrison

I’m surprised to see the precision and coolness with which the author recounts her childhood trauma. Usually people do not remember traumatic experiences as clearly as they do good ones, since first, trauma does not make sense and thereby defies logical memory, and second, the brain shuts down when hurt too badly as a form of self-protection. In the archive of subconsciousness traumatic memories are scattered all over the place, in bits and pieces, and when they are recalled into consciousness they are often shrouded in a dreamy fog.

Not in the case of this book.

The author has a style that is literary, but not literary in a distant, unapproachable way, but intimate and human. Her words carry a poetic rhythm, but the picture they draw is never bleary nor drifting. Her language is precise, with the certainty and calmness a surgical knife could use to slice open a festering wound. Her voice is honest and sincere. The words weigh down on readers’ mind with tangible horror.

My appreciation of the style left aside, the book also discusses a very important topic. It tells a child abuse story from the victim’s perspective, and demonstrates how much lasting damage parental abuse can do to a trusting, loving child. The author’s abusive mother uses the unconditional trust of her child to encroach on the child’s mental and bodily boundaries, forces her to ignore her own feelings, to submit and comply. Her mother manipulates her through insults, physical violence and deliberate neglect. The abuse suffocates and poisons a child’s mind. Suffocated, the child turns to self-destructive thoughts and behavior. Poisoned, the child is led to believe the abuse was done because of love. Horror, weariness and humiliation are what love ought to feel like.

Such a child then becomes an easy prey for sexual predators, like an immunosuppressed host for hungry parasites. In this case the author falls into the trap of her perverted biological father, but her falling starts way before the re-union with her estranged father. It starts when she watches her sleeping mom in craving, when she is forced to learn subjects in a way more of torture than education, when she is not able to slap away the hand that shoves a diaphragm into her vagina, during a medical check authorized by her mother. She has been violated, again and again, by her mother, long before her father takes advantage of her wounded state.

The mother is always the first one to cut a hole into a girl’s heart. Easily done when she is too young and too inexperienced to put up any defense, when her body is small, her knowledge is scarce and her strength is undeveloped, when she has no choice but to give out all her trust to people she has no choice but to depend on. Once a hole is left open, anyone with a malicious intent can insert a straw into her heart and party on her blood for food and pleasure.

Gap Between Fiction and Reality of Authoritarian Regimes

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A Book Review of
“The Bone Shard Daughter”, by Andrea Stewart

The story is not without potential, but can use some good editing. In several places where tension needs to be built, the author digresses into too many irrelevant, distracting details. For example, when Lin goes to the locksmith Numeen for the second time, she is in deep fear of being found out by her father and that should be what occupies her thought. That is not a time for her attention to wander to the activities of street vendors. In other places where opportunities are posed for richer plots and characterization, the author just brushes them off. Why is the governor’s heir Phalue so quick to accept her lover Ranami’s involvement in the “Shardless” and agree to watch the subversive activity to overthrow her father? Because Ranami shows her some poor people’s food and housing? Were it in human nature that a wealth gap could so easily vex the rich, any wealth gap would have stopped existing a long time ago.

The story is set in an authoritarian regime where people are forced to surrender their bone shards to the empire, which are necessary to power the magical constructs to guard and rule, but the magic would also drain the donors’ life and cause premature deaths. The regime coerces and coaxes its people into submission. Soldiers and spy constructs watch them and keep them in line, and the empire promulgates the belief that shard donation is essential to protect the people from the external hostile force Alanga.

Despite the fictional setting of an authoritarian regime, it seems to me the author lacks experience or knowledge of what life under an authoritarian regime truly is like, and makes no attempt to mirror the history or the reality of authoritarianism in her plot devising. Generally, two types of things feel very out of context in the storyline: how authoritarian leaders treat plebeians and how plebeians think of themselves under such regimes.

The interaction between aristocrats and commoners is described in a way overly egalitarian. Lin makes a promise to Numeen that would risk her life and feels guilty for not keeping it. The governor’s heir Phalue jumps instantly at the opportunity to join subversive activities. The plot gives me an impression that the aristocrats do not feel entitled to their status and are eager to get rid of any unearned privileges. It is hard to believe any person in power will be so ready to give up power, just to feel “good”. The mindset has many similarities with the shout-outs of college SJWs —— “check your privilege! ”, and seems implausible to be held by real-life political figures. It is not only idealistic but also contemporary, and does not fit in the story background.

The author depicts a life in fear of the people under authoritarian regimes, when in fact it is only the people not living under such regimes who would observe from the outside with fear. The people who actually live in the regime would just have to live with it. As people learn to adapt, they tune out fear. They normalize and rationalize their state of living, no matter how oppressive and suffocating it is, and they stop thinking about their oppression entirely, as a form of self-preservation. In a real authoritarian regime, to feel fear means there is a risk of showing the fear, which means showing dissatisfaction and resentment, and that will warrant severe punishment by the regime. When the emperor’s daughter Lin reveals her identity inadvertently at the dinner with the Numeen’s, the author says the family shows fear and Lin leaves in guilt and shame, while in a real-life context, most commoners’ family under such situations would only show and feel a deep sense of gratitude to the regime and believe it is a rare honor to treat a member of royalty.

The beginning of the book raised much of my hope, but further into reading, I could not help being upset by the inadequate execution. It’s OK to have abnormalities in a story. But they require justification. Justifications of abnormalities give the characters depth and complexity. Sadly, the characters in this book are all behaving out of the norm, without the author giving any proper justification from their experience, backgrounds and internal struggles. It disappoints me more especially because the story is full of creative ideas and has the potential to be great. For a debut novel the author may not be aware of all the holes in her writing but a good editor should step in and offer proper advice.

The Wild Rusalka and the City Priest

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bear_and_nightingaleA Book Review of
“The Bear and the Nightingale“, by Kathrine Arden

In the form of a medieval Russian folklore, the book tells a story about the clash between Christianity from Moscow and idolatry in the woods of northern Russia. Moscow is civilized, political, sublime, and publicly right; the forest of Lesnaya Zemlya is untamed, earthly, natural, and privately wrong.

One place that exemplifies this theme of antagonism is the murderous dynamics between the rusalka (water sprite), a magical creature living in the lake, sustained on the meat of her killing, and the priest Konstantin, who is exiled to the woods from Moscow because his rising influence among the locals has threatened the crown. The rusalka sees through the priest’s masquerading of piety and stoicism, and drools over his power-thirsty soul hidden underneath. For a rusalka, the flesh of men full of desire and fear provides the best nourishment. Without any knowledge of being targeted as a prey, the priest dreams about expanding his fame and glory in front of the village people, by exorcising demons and specters bred by the wild land. Despite their different interests and motivations, death is the wish they make upon each other.

Although animosity is felt by both parties, fear is incurred on only one side. Father Konstantin is scared of the wild, but the wild creatures are not deterred by him and his preach, even after they foresee the disastrous consequences his action is going to bring to the village. Rusalka tries to drown him, but her desire to kill is driven purely by a biological impulse.

The psychology of Father Konstantin is more complicated than simple fear. His attitude towards Vasya is always internally contradictory to the point of self-deception. He is attracted to and frightened by Vasya’s daring and vividness. He vilifies Vasya for her feral energy and defiant manners, calling her a devil, a beast, a witch, but cannot help falling for her charms. He is deeply entrenched in patriarchal beliefs, expecting women to please and breed under male orders, and he, as a member of the male class, feels morally entitled to punish any non-conforming members of the female class. He conspires with Vasya’s stepmother in sending Vasya to a convent, despite knowing being locked up in the convent will kill everything in this girl that intrigues him. He pities Vasya for she must lead a life that men like him force her to lead, and calls that fate the women’s fate. What a hypocrite and a coward of him, hidden under a mask of piety.

A centering theme of the book lies in the three-stage prophecy repeatedly told to Vasya, and to the readers: first comes fear, next fire, next famine. Why is fear the start of a series of disasters? I think this passage reveals some clue.

“God, thought Vasya, when the service haltingly renewed. Here? Chyerti cannot come into churches; they are creatures of this world, and church is for the next.”

What does the notion of “God” represent here? As the passage above suggests, God represents the next world, the life after this life. Fear for God is fear for death. Why is fear for death the beginning of self-destruction? In my opinion, it is because this fear is man-made, its origin illusional. When someone starts to see natural ways as sinful and death as punishment for sinning, she or he holds up illusions over the nature’s law.

The magical creatures do not fear death. They have an innate understanding of mortality, which is developed from living a life in accordance to the natural rhythms of growth and decay. —— Everything dies. Despite all his knowledge in Christianity and icon-creation, the priest is ignorant in critical matters — he does not understand life. He tries to subvert the law of nature and replace it with the authority of a man-made God. The reverence to a man-made God, accompanied by the irreverence to nature’s order, fuel the fear among villagers, empower the bear, and bring on destruction. The bear can only be bound by two things: the frost God Morozko in midwinter, when his power is at the peak, or a brave parent who is willing to sacrifice his life for his children. Only nature’s relentless showing of her power, or human’s brave confrontation can stop the foolish behavior of self-destruction.

The story is a beautiful folklore. It swims through magic waters, breathes the quaint air of a long medieval Russian winter. But it is also relevant to contemporary awarenesses and challenges. I see this story as a warning letter to the men’s insolence engendered by their ignorance, a celebration over the triumph of nature, a love song to the magic and glamor of wilderness, and a philosophical contemplation over the meaning of life and mortality.

Ancient Specters Linger In a Contemporary Archive

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dreamhouseThe Book Review of
“In the Dream House“, by Carmen Maria Machado

In the process of recounting her experience in an abusive lesbian relationship, the author occasionally cites a folklore motif in the footnote, suggesting a particular episode of her story has overlap with a common folkloric paradigm. The book is an authentic account of the author’s real-life experience in a chronological flow, yet from time to time in the margin of the narration it strays into the mystical kingdoms of fairy tales.

The injection of folklore motifs makes the autobiographic story read transpersonal. Folklores are unrealistic, loaded with fantastical elements (fairies, witches, mystic beasts, et al.), yet also hyperrealistic: their allusions to social taboos and moral values are such truthful reflections of real life that they are often used as the first guide into adult society for the young and innocent. The repeated digressions to folkloric references add a surreal feeling to the retelling of a realistic past, and imply this personal story has myriad dimensions of universality.

Dworkin’s Defection From the Liberal Left

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A Book Review of
“Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant” by Andrea Dworkin

Learning about Dworkin’s early political life as an impassioned leftist really surprised me, for she had left an imprint on my mind with her poignant accusation of leftist men using and degrading women in a way no better than their conservative counterparts. In her other works, Dworkin called the whole sexual liberation movement, initiated and propelled by leftist men, another covert attack to violate and abuse female bodies and a blow to women’s autonomy and dignity, no less painful and humiliating than what was imposed by traditional values on right-wing women. The women on the left who had been coaxed into conforming to men’s version of liberation, only later had to swallow the bitter consequences of unwanted pregnancies, abortions and mental trauma, as well as their dismal situation of being used as mere sexual objects to serve and entertain.

Dworkin understands the chaotic nature of political activism. At college she was a student leader. She organized a student protest against the parietal hour rule. Under this rule female students were not allowed to have male visitors (lovers) between 2am and 6am, but it is to everyone’s knowledge that male faculty snuck in and out student dorms at any time, had sex with female students and impregnated several, who had to undergo illegal abortions. Dworkin believed that the parietal hour rule violated students’ personal freedom and was fundamentally unfair and hypocritical. At this time she was not as acutely aware of the sexual exploitation in the name of sexual freedom, which would come as a realization years later in her life.

Her plan of protest had a brief success: out of a whole student body of a few hundred students, only 6 refused. But soon the situation reversed. Some authority figure threatened to expel students if they stuck to the movement. Almost all the participating students, under the pressure of their parents, signed an oath to quit from the movement. Dworkin didn’t sign the oath and left the school. The experience revealed the complexities of mass politics to her. She learned how difficult it is for the powerless to maintain a political advantage over the powerful and how fragile a mass union is when being struck by draconian measures.

One can organize a large number of people to strike once, twice, but it’s hard to maintain the momentum in a longer period. The establishment has a tendency to degenerate into tyranny when feeling threatened, and most of the participating masses are weak-minded under prolonged pressure. When the battle of rebellion requests the individuals to endure more inconvenience, take higher risks and make more sacrifices, people refuse to go on. Yes, real power is with the people and they have the potential to overpower the despot when united, but the power of the masses is often released in the form of explosive passion. After a violent release, people return to their older norms and few have the determination to fight till winning. I think her observation resonates with many of the recent events. I find it hard to rephrase her words into a form of delivery as effective as the original so I just directly cite a paragraph down here.

In order to go back to school, students had to betray themselves and each other, and most did. I learned never to ignore the reality of power pure and simple. I also learned that one could get a bunch of people to do something brave or new or rebellious, but if it didn’t come from their deepest hearts they could not maintain the honor of their commitment. I learned that one does not overwhelm people by persuading them to do something basically antagonistic to their own sense of self; nor can rhetoric create in people a sustained determination to win.

I think Dworkin’s ability to dissect leftist hypocrisy with such precision and depth has a lot to do with the earnest belief she once held in liberal values. The once true believer, who has gone down the path of faith deep, sees the real deal behind propaganda. Underneath the beautiful covers of liberal ideals lies the same old cruelty of men, the same old subjugation of women. During years of fighting a political struggle with leftist men, Anti Vietnam War protests being one part of it, she witnessed first-hand the same men she initially admired as political visionaries and trusted as battle comrades who shared her belief in equality and freedom, reveal themselves as wife-batters, pedophiles and sexual offenders. She had wholeheartedly dedicated her young adult life to the liberation of all men, only to realize later that the liberation of all men didn’t include women. The realization of the ugly sides of left politics transformed her from a zealous disciple into a disillusioned defector, and luckily for the feminist movement, her militancy only increased.

Radical feminists across the world look up to Dworkin, inspired by her unflinching spirit to fight. Dworkin gives a voice to the invisible, the mute, the downtrodden. Her feminist analysis is cold to the heart, realistic to the essence. She understands not only the weaknesses and illusions of traditional women, but also the naive fantasies harbored by the liberal ones. She gained knowledge, experience and wisdom from a shattered dream. Then she stopped pleading for men’s chivalry and sympathy. She knows that women cannot rely on men to fight for women’s rights. She knows that women have to speak the truth for themselves and fight for a revolution by themselves.