The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 02 Jan 2013 01:30 AM PST US award-winning writer defies conventional wisdom in his latest book Far From The Tree. IN his latest book Far From The Tree: Parents, Children, And The Search For Identity, the US-based National Book Award winner Andrew Solomon turns the conventional wisdom that children are composites of their parents on its head, but says that is not a bad thing. In the 700-page tome that explores the lives of families with children with conditions ranging from autism to deafness, Solomon says having a child is an act of production rather than reproduction that "abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger". Though the book focuses on how families cope with more extreme forms of difference, Solomon, 49, believes that encountering unexpected traits in one's child is a universal part of parenthood. "I have yet to meet anyone as a parent who has not from time to time looked at their child and said, 'Where did you come from?'" the American author said in an interview. The book seems to have struck a chord with readers. Far From The Tree is a top-selling book and has garnered praise from critics. Writing for The New Yorker, Nathan Heller called it "a careful, subtle, and surprising book", while the New York Times Book Review wrote: "This is a book that shoots arrow after arrow into your heart." The book, which includes 10 years' worth of interviews with families and relevant research, is divided into chapters that are devoted to conditions such as dwarfism, transgender and schizophrenia. Solomon said what unites the diverse collection of conditions covered in his book is that each one often results in isolation for the child and confusion and resentment for parents. "Intellectually, the difficult part was trying to understand the ways in which these very differences had something in common, and coming up with the underlying idea of the book, which is that these individual differences are isolating, but taken together they're unifying," he said. Solomon uses his own experience growing up as a dyslexic homosexual, two qualities that set him apart from his parents and were viewed as flaws by most, to frame the travails of the families in his book. He cautioned against viewing the conditions he writes about solely as problems that need to be fixed or eliminated. "We have to recognise that this thing (homosexuality) so universally described as an illness just 50 years ago could now largely be accepted as an identity. ... We should be awake to the idea that what seems obviously to be an illness today may seem very different 50 years from now," he said. Solomon noted the strong deaf culture that has grown among deaf people, and predicted that transgendered people and high-functioning autistic people would both gain increased acceptance over the next several decades. Regardless of whether a trait is viewed as an illness or an identity, he believes that the goal should be to improve the life conditions and minimise suffering for the types of families featured in Far From The Tree. Solomon said the happiest families he interviewed were ones that were able to move past anger and frustration about their child's condition to accept their child and find meaning in challenges. "The families that had looked at these experiences and acknowledged how unbelievably difficult they are and how painful they can be but nonetheless, have found meaning of the experience were the ones that were doing better," he said. "I was amazed that for many of these families, experiencing difficulty had intensified rather than undermined parental love." – Reuters |
| Posted: 01 Jan 2013 02:45 AM PST THE popularity of electronic books is increasing in the United States, with nearly one-quarter of American bibliophiles reading e-books, according to a survey released last Thursday. The number of e-readers aged 16 years and older jumped from 16% in 2011 to 23% in 2012, while print readers fell from 72% to 67% in 2012, in a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. "The move toward e-book reading coincides with an increase in ownership of electronic book reading devices," the organisation said. Its report analysed reading trends among the 75% of Americans who read at least one book in the last year. "In all, the number of owners of either a tablet computer or e-book reading device ... grew from 18% in late 2011 to 33% in 2012." E-book owners increased from 4% in May 2010 to 19% in November 2012, while Americans with tablets jumped from 3% to 25% during the same period, according to the report. People most likely to read e-books are well-educated, 30- to 49-year-olds who live in households earning US$75,000 (RM229,500) or more. More women, 81%, read books, compared to 70% of men, and the number of readers declines as people age. The trend toward e-books impacted libraries, which stocked and loaned more e-books. "The share of recent library users who have borrowed an e-book from a library has increased from 3% last year to 5% this year (2012)," according to Pew. Even awareness that library stock e-books has grown, from 24% late in 2011 to 31% in 2012. The findings were based on a telephone survey in 2012 of 2,252 people, aged 16 years and older, across the United States and a similar poll in 2011. It had a 2.7% margin of error. – Reuters |
| Posted: 01 Jan 2013 02:45 AM PST A local author tells a tale of love set against the tumultuous history of Malaya's rubber estates. LIKE a certain Jack and Rose of the movie world, Nadesan and Janeki are also fictional characters whose love story is set against the backdrop of very real historical events. But, unlike that story about a sinking ship, author Dave Anthony's tale deals with issues that still have repercussions today. Anthony, a former Catholic priest, had lived with the communities on rubber estates and was immersed in the struggles of the estate workers for many years. Though it was part of his work as a priest, he met with not just the Christians but everyone who lived and worked there. It gave Anthony an empathic insight into the lives of the rubber-tappers who earned a meagre existence in their isolated world of rubber trees, squalid living conditions, and the ever watchful eyes of the estate management. He decided to bring their stories to the masses, originally through a screenplay. But the task proved too big, the story too long and epic, spanning generations. In the end, he streamlined it all down to a 400-page historical novel called Love And Struggle Beyond The Rubber Estates. "It took me two years to write," says Anthony, when we meet at his home in Petaling Jaya. "Before that, the idea had been percolating in my mind. For a long time, I had been wanting to write a book because I had been working with the plantation workers for some time. Their plight, until today, hasn't changed very much. So I chose that particular period in history, which I think is almost a forgotten history especially for the Indians." That period, from 1937 to 1948, encompasses British rule, World War II and the Japanese Occupation, and then the return of the British. It was a tumultuous time when kanganies (overseers) recruited workers from India who were promised a better future in Malaya, but who discover later that they were being shortchanged by the British planters. Then came the war during which many estate workers were forced to work on the infamous Death Railway in Burma, dying from exhaustion and starvation, buried in mass graves. When the British came back, the conditions never improved for them, and still they had to fight for justice. In the midst of it all, is the story of two lovers who are separated by the war, then have to find their way back to each other. In the book, protagonist Nadesan, or Desa as he is known to his friends, is the only one on the estate who has had an education and he naturally becomes the leader who unites the workers to fight for their rightful wages. In short, Anthony is emphasising the importance of education, which was largely denied to the workers by plantation owners. Anthony denotes in the book that the denial was a ploy by the estate owners to keep the workers ignorant and exploitable. "If they get a good education, it would be a good stepping stone for them," says Anthony. "So Desa had some education and he took on the leadership of the group. He even dared to challenge some of the practices on the plantation. The way they managed to assess their cost of living, he was able to do that, and none of them on their own would have been able to. "And this kind of gave them a self-awareness, and they began to see how their situation was oppressive. So they wanted justice. He stirred them to action, and they paid the price, getting shot at." Anthony says he researched extensively for the novel, drawing references and information from books and also the Internet. One of his sources was S. Marimuthu, 86, a survivor of the Death Railway. While working on the railway, Marimuthu had taken ill, and the Japanese, thinking that he was dead, threw him onto a pile of dead bodies and buried him alive. Fortunately, some fellow workers saw his hand sticking out of the sand and pulled him out. Anthony recreated that scene for his book, with some creative liberty, of course. "I got to know him through a friend of a friend," says Anthony. "A student from Singapore had come over here and wanted to meet some people who had experienced estate life. So I took her to this particular family, and I met (Marimuthu) there. I started talking to him and he told me his story. I included quite a lot of it, about 80%." Love And Struggle Beyond The Rubber Estates is, of course, more than just a love story. It is at its heart a human rights story, an inspiring tale that includes references to makal sakthi (people power) and also hartal, a general strike action the origin of which goes all the way back to Gandhi and the Indian Independence Movement. "(The estate workers) were illiterate and couldn't get proper birth certificates and papers for their children," says Anthony. "Just imagine, they were isolated, illiterate, under the dominion of the planters. For the planters, these workers were like machines that they operated, and they didn't care for their future. "Also, at the time, citizenship was not an issue. And today, the result of that is there are many stateless Indians in the country." Anthony says that the struggle goes on today, under different circumstances, different living conditions. "Also, the dispersion from the estates have led a lot of the young people into a lot of violence. They are a bit lost and aimless. When they came out of the estates, they had no skills except rubber-tapping. They just fit into whatever they can find. "The situation, in some respects, is even worse now than it was in the estates. Without any other skills, they became involved in driving lorries, roadworks. And even now, those jobs are being taken over by foreign labour. They are losing out even there. And we have political parties who are saying a lot of things but not doing much." As such, the novel fittingly closes with the words "not The End". The struggle against oppression and injustice is a universal one, and Anthony's novel has bigger relevance than even he initially thought. He never set out to write such a book, but only wanted to write an engaging love story that also addresses the issues of the estate workers. "It works on a micro level as well as on a macro level," he says. "Big nations, first world, the US, Europe, the International Monetary Fund and how they oppress the poorer countries. It's the same pattern, and it repeats itself." > Love And Struggle Beyond The Rubber Estates by Dave Anthony is available at major bookstores nationwide. |
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