SFBA Book Club

Enia rated A Living Remedy: 4 stars

Nicole Chung: A Living Remedy (Hardcover, Ecco)

A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung

Enia commented on A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung

I’m having trouble focusing on Immortal Longings so I’m going to go read something terribly depressing instead

Enia reviewed Waiting to Be Arrested at Night by Tahir Hamut Izgil

Tahir Hamut Izgil, Joshua L. Freeman: Waiting to Be Arrested at Night (2023, Penguin Publishing Group)

Required reading

5 stars

it isn't often that I say "wow, the Soviet Union [I grew up in] was not as bad as this." The world Tahir tells us about, the world he lived in for many decades, and fled to give his children a better future, is one which combines the worst of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and the Nazi Holocaust, but turned up to 14 with the use of modern surveillance technology.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking stories in Tahir's book are about the choices family members and friends have to make to protect themselves from the consequences of his decision to seek asylum in the United States. Even his father, mother and brother are forced to denounce him after a single phone call from his US phone number.

What the Chinese state is doing to Tahir and his people absolutely meets the definition of genocide.

This book isn't just mandatory …

it isn't often that I say "wow, the Soviet Union [I grew up in] was not as bad as this." The world Tahir tells us about, the world he lived in for many decades, and fled to give his children a better future, is one which combines the worst of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and the Nazi Holocaust, but turned up to 14 with the use of modern surveillance technology.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking stories in Tahir's book are about the choices family members and friends have to make to protect themselves from the consequences of his decision to seek asylum in the United States. Even his father, mother and brother are forced to denounce him after a single phone call from his US phone number.

What the Chinese state is doing to Tahir and his people absolutely meets the definition of genocide.

This book isn't just mandatory to understand the crisis China has created for the Uyghur people, but is also keen commentary on the importance of privacy, the destructive power of corruption in a totalitarian regime, the continued importance that American democracy, flawed as it may be, continues to exist.

Enia commented on Waiting to Be Arrested at Night by Tahir Hamut Izgil

the thing that really struck me so far is his description of an interview with the Public Security Bureau he had in 2009 where at the end, they demanded his credentials for his email and messaging accounts. and he had to write down a password. that's something that not even KGB agents would have the balls to demand in the worst Soviet times. sure, they would read your mail and listen to your phonecalls but they would at least be discrete about it!

Enia rated Goodbye, Eastern Europe!: 5 stars

Jacob Mikanowski: Goodbye, Eastern Europe! (2022, Oneworld Publications)

Goodbye, Eastern Europe! by Jacob Mikanowski

Enia rated Stay True: 5 stars

Hua Hsu: Stay True (2022, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group)

Stay True by Hua Hsu

Enia reviewed Bonzai by Alejandro Zambra

Alejandro Zambra: Bonzai (2008, Melville House Pub., Melville House)

Review of 'Bonzai' on 'Storygraph'

2 stars

This?! This “represents the end of an era, or the beginning of another in [Chile’s] letters”?! this is yet another man masturbating on his own importance while the women in the book are reduced to, at best, set dressing.
I guess it gets a one star for being only 80 pages and another for being kinda writerly in its sentence construction. I would be really mad if I was forced to read a novel-length version of this.