Hong gaoliang jiazu (Red Sorghum) – Mo Yan

Born in 1955, Mo Yan is a soldier. How many soldiers do you know that are able to tell such stories full of grief and Death and fear and love and mistery and nature? I do not wonder if his government did not allow him to leave his country and travel abroad.
A soldier who thinks by his own? OMG, please, this is too dangerous for chinese public image…

Anyway, the story is sometimes difficult to follow, because the author jumps from one year to another, but this not prevents you from falling in love with the characters; on the contrary: although you already know that someone will die in a certain moment and in a certain way (usually a very bloody way), this lets him be even dearer.

While you read you cannot distinguish anymore if the red of the landscape you see in front of your eyes is the one of the sorghum or the one of the blood.

The story takes place in 20th Century: I do not know if chinese people died more from their inner problems (famine, banditry, internal fights) or from Japanese invasion. The result, anyway, is always the same: sadness and cruel deaths (skinnings, genitals cuttings, rapes and lots more) for men, women and children.

And still, at the end of the novel, when you see that the hybrid sorghum has supplanted the natural red sorghum, and you understand that this is the end of an era, and despite its load of sufference and grief, you feel that you miss something. Life, maybe?

Holocaust – Gerald Green

I usually like reading Holocaust books because I do not understand yet, how a full nation can become so cruel or indifferent to a Whole people group. And book after book… nothing changes. I mean, I do not understand it yet, but maybe I memorize the little symphtoms that a nation show when it is choosing that way. In this period of great immigration, this faculty can become useful.

Anyway, this novel has been born as a script from the same author, and from the script it maintains the same scenes fastness.

The most interesting parts are the ones dedicated to the nazi Erik Dorf, who did not particularly hate the jews at the beginning, but who at the end becomes one of the most fierce defendor of Holocaust. Is the evil really so banal?
Well, the lost of compassion is gradual, and if you do not stop to think, you cannot notice it.

The same thing can happen to each of us. Somethimes we need to stoop and think.

It’s What I Do – Lynsey Addario

I sometimes feel the need to remind me how the Worldwide women situation is much worst than mine. Because I claim that my life is, day by day, always the same: I get up at the usual time, go to the usual job, hear the usual quarrels, do homeworks… The bigger sense of adventure is listening to a friend who tells me how his dog won a prize.

I should’nt claim, I know that I am silly if I do it, but I really realize that only when I read books like the Addario’s one.

She was in Afghanistan first time in 2000, when she could not imagine what would have happened just one year later. And she saw the women, there: separated from male world, covered from top to toetip, without the possibility to work, study, go out without the male relative shadow; with the duty of giving birth to children. Without books.

What strucked me is that Linsey doesn’t tell you about the fear of entering such a country, unless she is under a gun or among a group of sexually excited males who touch her from every side.

The comparison with Obama’s memoir The Audacity Of Hope is due.

My copy of Obama’s book is a used one. Among the pages I found this US metro ticket:

On one side, a lonely woman who travels in Afghanistan and try not to feel fear.

On the other side, a big and powerful country whit the constant fear that some terrorist lets it blast. A fear that cannot be forgotten, because you do one of the most normal things in the world, like taking a bus, and you are immediately reminded that it could be the last thing you do.

A woman who let the fear starve and a country wich feeds it.

Different ways to employ own energy.