Ethan asked me
recently why I choose to read the fiction books I do. Crunching my
"read" list, I discovered that I mostly choose to "read"
fiction when it's less than five hours or seven discs long and
available on audio. How's that for literary discretion? There is
good stuff out on YA audio nowadays. Incredible stuff.
Specifically, listen to The
Vine Basket by Josanne La
Valley. Seriously. It's good. It has a Uyghur narrator. You'll
spend five hours in your car listening to words like Uyghur
(wee-gher; you've heard them say it on the BBC) pronounced correctly.
Uyghur is a language with uvular vowels. As an English language
speaker who didn't know that humans could gain control of their own
uvulas until last year, listening to this lightly-accented audiobook
was a pleasure and an education about the sounds of language from the
region of the world where people do throat singing. And the story is
fantastic. The Vine Basket
is a modern day book about a Mehrigul, who's been pulled out of
school to work on the family farm. (That was another tangentially
important thing about this book: it is still really hard for me to
conceptualize pulling a child out of school for the family's economic
gain. A realistic presentation of the effects of global economic
circumstances in northern China underlay this book.) Mehrigul's
brother ran away for political reasons and Mehrigul, as the next
oldest, needed to help on the farm and bring the family's produce to
market, because Mehrigul's family is poor. (The snobby girl in her
class with the pretty red shoes has borrowed some learning English
CD's from the teacher because her family has electricity and some
disposable income.) Mehrigul is minding her family's market stall
when an American lady asks, through her Uyghur translator, about the
pretty but non-functional vine basket Mehrigul made last year and
stuck for decoration on the market cart. The lady is a buyer for an
ethnic handicraft store in San Francisco and she offers Mehrigul one
hundred yuan for the basket and another hundred yuan each for any
more she can make in three weeks time.
When
Mehrigul gives her father the hundred yuan and explains what happens,
he is drunk and he thinks it's ridiculous and the lady can't be
trusted and she's a woman anyway and Mehrigul is better off helping
on the farm, but she'd earn more if he sent her south to work in a
Chinese factory, which he might do. Mehrigul negotiates between a
strong sense of filial piety and a trust that her potential
basket-making earnings will benefit her family and her future more
than any of the other options available to her in constrained
circumstances. She makes baskets secretly in her sparse free time,
between farm work and caring for her happy little sister Lyali, who
just doesn't get it.
I
liked that this book reflected a nuanced understanding of global and
local economics. The Uyghur people used to be economic players on
the Silk Road, until a combination of Mongols and improved sailboat
technology, and later, Communists, ruined that for them. Lately,
they are governed by the Chinese, who seem bent on destroying them.
Mehrigul is a fiercely proud Uyghur and you should learn about
Uyghurs by reading this book.
Speaking
of poverty and the vicissitudes of economic privation, being poor in
medieval France would be even worse than being rich in medieval
France, although both would be terrible by modern American or Uyghur
standards. Mehrigul at least, is literate and began the book with an
eighth grade education, and if she had spinal tuberculosis, would
receive passable care at a Chinese medical facility, whereas Amelot
de Chambly went out begging literally bent double with her face about
eight inches from the ground every day for two years until she was
miraculously cured at the tomb of Saint Louis at St.-Denis outside of
Paris. Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender,
Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor
by Sharon Farmer is an academic book, and as such it's part of a long
conversation between academics and loaded with footnotes that look
kinda interesting. Surviving Poverty
compares the surviving accounts of miracles done by Saint Louis,
formerly King Louis IX, after his death in 1270. Louis the deaf-mute
was sent or left on a country estate when he was eight years old. He
learned how to do a number of tasks and to clasp his hands in prayer,
although he did not know what it meant. At twenty, he was sent to a
different, less amiable, estate. When the procession carrying King
Louis IX's remains back from the Holy Land went by, he decided to
follow it. He walked over a hundred miles to Paris, living on alms,
then stayed outside the chapel at St.-Denis until he was miraculously
cured of his deafness. Sharon Farmer says this is an example of
boys, even disabled boys, being sent out to make their own way at
earlier ages than girls. Many of the people cured by Saint Louis are
migrants to Paris, and the migration patterns show more men and
younger men than women, some from as far away as England but most
within one hundred miles of Paris, most migrants settling in the same
neighborhoods as others from their rural districts. Sharon Farmer
doesn't go into the details of surviving poverty in medieval Paris,
one assumes that it was a constant battle to stay warm, but she does
explain the general economics of the situation. A man with no
property working with his hands did not make enough to support a
family, consequently a wife would also be engaged in productive
labor. A disabled wife of an employed husband would go out begging
if she could do nothing else. A single woman or widow doing a
woman's job like seamstress or laundress would not make enough money
to support herself, but Nicole of Rubercy relied on her friends
Contesse and Petronelle when she was taken with a paralysis for two
months, and there are other traces of women's mutual support. The
poor are always with us, and they are always being judged by the
affluent. Sermons and other surviving writings from the 1200s
describe them as lazy, dirty, and unworthy, although there were alms
and charitable pushes, including hosting of meals at funerals and the
delivery of money and clothing, a tradition carried on centuries
later by pious maiden aunts:
Aunt
Clotilde, in Frances Hodgson Burnett's Little Saint
Elizabeth and Other Stories,
lived a secluded life of prayer, fasting, and charity, at her chateau
in France and she brought up her orphaned niece Elizabeth in the same
holy seclusion until she died and Elizabeth went to live with her gay
uncle in New York City. "As Bertrand
de Rochemont was a gay bachelor, fond of pleasure" busy with his
affairs, he thought Elizabeth queer, but he let her be until his
very good friend came to stay. The friend, a doctor, described his
charity work in the poorest slums while Elizabeth was at the dinner
table. Elizabeth prayed all night, and in the morning, snuck out to
do good works, but she wandered far afield, into the notorious Five
Points. She bestows a bit of charity on a deserving poor mother, has
her cloak stolen by an undeserving poor, and collapses from
exhaustion (she was up all night praying, remember?) just as her
uncle, who has been convinced by his friend to come and look at the
people he could be charitablizing, walks down the street and sees her
swoon. She is taken home and, in proper FHB fashion, everyone learns
Moderation. Uncle Bertrand learns to help the meek when he is not
busy being fancy free, and Elizabeth learns to romp and play like
other children and not stay up all night in prayer and fasting quite
so often. The other stories in the collection, The
Story of Prince Fairyfoot
(the small-footed heir to a crappy monarchy where merit is based on
foot size), The
Proud Little Grain of Wheat
(arrogant carb) and Behind
the White Brick (a
girl meets the main character in the book she is reading, Santa
Claus, and her a talking version of her pre-verbal baby sister)
aren't worth mentioning beyond what I just did.
In
a brutally honest and less twee novella, Mrs. Burnett tells of a man
about to shoot himself in the face in such a way that his features
will be unrecognizable so that none of his servants or colleagues (he
has no family or friends) will identify him, and he will be buried in
a pauper's grave and erased from this earth. In his crippling
depression, he has seen doctors and been prescribed 1880s
antidepressants, and tried, but nothing has helped, and he is going
to buy a pistol from a pawn shop and end it all. He stumbles out
into the London fog, that choking yellow stuff that makes finding
one's way impossible, and ends up taking a wrong turning and finding
a river to jump into, when a bundle of rags at his feet reveals
itself to be a cheerful beggaress who says, "Are you going to do
it, mister?" The man has some money to give away so that he can
be buried a pauper without the things being investigated too closely,
and his new friend Glad tells him that she would like some money to
help Polly, a country girl cum fallen woman cum prostitute who was at
home crying because a john knocked her about last night. Mr.
Suicidal says he would like to meet this Polly and, in this weird
Edwardian story where depression and sex are treated like they exist
and happen, Polly says, "Are you going to keep company with her,
mister?" and when they are arrive at the rented room, Polly
starts crying the harder, because she assumes Glad has found her a
customer. Bread, cheese, soup, coffee, and coal later, Glad starts
to tell a story about Mrs. Montaubyn, who professes a mystic brand of
Protestantism. Suddenly there's a commotion, Drunken Bess has been
knocked down by a cab!, and Mrs. Montaubyn herself holds her hand
through her death throes. The curate is summoned and a whispered
conversation with the only gentleman in the room tells our hero that
Mrs. Montaubyn has a faith the curate cannot rival with his learned
insecurities and doubts, and that these are good people in need. The
curate is quietly passed a pistol, with instruction to take it away
and drop it in the river. Back in the sad little lodging room, with
Glad, Polly, Drunken Bess' newly orphaned baby, Mrs. Montaubyn, and
the curate, the depressed man reveals himself to be Bill Gates! (or
the fictional, Edwardian equivalent) and helps everyone because he is
wealthy enough to do so. This is a surprising good story in its
predictability and uncanny honesty. The women get pregnant, the
beggars smell awful, and depression wipes out everything good. Even
the London fog is a terrible choking cloud and not a romantic
inconvenience. Well done again, FHB.
And,
hiking, I read Monstrous
Regiment
by Terry Pratchett, because you can't bring a book that might not be
good into the forest, as you would then be stuck with nothing to
read. Monstrous
Regiment is
naturally good. There's a little Joan of Arc flair, some gender
politics, and a little bit of Sam Vimes.
Last
blog, I promised you a theme of the letter C. That didn't happen. C
books are long and boring, but I will keep you updated.
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