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A multi-perspective narrative that is rich in symbolism. I like Gyasi's very nuanced perspective of the shared responsibility of slavery's origin. While the Asantes, Fa, Ga are complicit in slave tradings beginnings, that may not have been true if they could have understood the full consequences of their participation.
Home Going starts in Africa where slavery begins, and follows its arc of influence over the span of 7 generations through the American South and into modern-day California. Slavery is the seed from which a legacy of injustice sprouts and grows under the provision of patriotism and tradition. At the same time, we witness the slow restoration of justice through each generation. Each subsequent family lifting up the next of kin, in some ways, "bringing them home".
Some of the literary devices in the book were off?
He was like the blind cat that moved through the dark forest solely on instinct, avoiding the logs and rocks that threatened it or had hurt it once before.
His eyes looked like a lot of things. Like the clear puddles that stood over the mud that she and Hazel liked to jump in, or like the shimmering body of a golden ant she had once seen carrying a blade of grass across a hill.
But lots of great moments throughout with a focus on the long tail of evil:
Originally, he’d wanted to focus his work on the convict leasing system that had stolen years off of his great-grandpa H’s life, but the deeper into the research he got, the bigger the project got. How could he talk about Great-Grandpa H’s story without also talking about his grandma Willie and the millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he’d have to talk about the cities that took that flock in. He’d have to talk about Harlem. And how could he talk about Harlem without mentioning his father’s heroin addiction—the stints in prison, the criminal record? And if he was going to talk about heroin in Harlem in the ’60s, wouldn’t he also have to talk about crack everywhere in the ’80s? And if he wrote about crack, he’d inevitably be writing, too, about the “war on drugs.” And if he started talking about the war on drugs, he’d be talking about how nearly half of the black men he grew up with were on their way either into or out of what had become the harshest prison system in the world. And if he talked about why friends from his hood were doing five-year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he’d gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he’d get so angry that he’d slam the research book on the table of the beautiful but deadly silent Lane Reading Room of Green Library of Stanford University. And if he slammed the book down, then everyone in the room would stare and all they would see would be his skin and his anger, and they’d think they knew something about him and it would be the same something that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison, only it would be different too, less obvious than it once was
I surprised myself and I really enjoyed this book. And doubly-great to follow up with a viewing of David Fincher's interpretation. Watching the film I realized that the story really is pretty tightly composed.
I loved the origin story of Lisbeth Salander and the dynamic that evolves between her and Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth's character is deeply motivated and that carried parts of the story, and the story drove parts of her character to create a really neat interplay.
Incredible book! At first I was disengaged with some of the data drawn across the pages – how males and females ranked each others beauty etc. But Rudder teases interesting narratives from the data to underscore trends, and suggest possible futures.
The era of data is here; we are now recorded. That, like all change, is frightening, but between the gunmetal gray of the government and the hot pink of product offers we just can’t refuse, there is an open and ungarish way. To use data to know yet not manipulate, to explore but not to pry, to protect but not to smother, to see yet never expose, and, above all, to repay that priceless gift we bequeath to the world when we share our lives so that other lives might be better—and to fulfill for everyone that oldest of human hopes, from Gilgamesh to Ramses to today: that our names be remembered, not only in stone but as part of memory itself.
People aren’t even that upset about the NSA, as gross as their overreach is. There have been many “Million” marches on Washington. Million Man, Million Mom, and so on. Recently, the hacker collective Anonymous called for a Million Mask March to protest, among other things, the PRISM program and government mass surveillance. The Washington Post captures the shortfall of public interest in just the first word of their coverage: “Hundreds of protesters …”
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