The Hungry Season by Lisa M. Hamilton
In 1964 Ia Moua is born in Laos. Her entire life her country has been at war with Vietnam but it didn't directly affect her much as her family lived higher in the mountains where they grew "dry" rice in their small village. When Ia is 13 she finds out that her parents have promised her in marriage to a much older man. Unhappy about this, she decides to marry on her own secretly to Chou Lor a local villager who is 16. This is not a marriage for love but the only way Ia can have any say in her own future. Not long after they are married the conflict comes closer and they are forced to leave their village and attempt to flee to Thailand. Ia tries to get her parents and younger brother to come with them but they are separated - Ia will never see her father again and it will be 20+ years before she sees her mother again. Ia gives birth to 8 children over 15 years in a Thai refugee camp before the family is able to move to the US. Here they have more opportunity but also encounter enormous challenges including racism, language and cultural barriers, poverty, and separation from extended family. With no English and limited skills, Ia finds land and starts cultivating rice - the rice she grew up eating and this becomes what bridges Laos and America for her and the displaced Hmong community living in the US.
I thought this would be a cool story of this immigrant woman who makes it to the US against crazy odds and finds success growing rice that connects her to her Laotian history. But, Ia's story while remarkable is extremely sad and depressing. Her husband was a dick and cheated on her throughout their marriage. Her family back in Laos saw her as "rich" because she was living in the US and constantly asked her for money. When they would go back to Laos and provide a huge feast Ia and the other women would still eat last because women are at the bottom culturally in Laos. Damn if I would come back and feed all these people and still be last to eat! Her younger brother was also a dick who expected her to fund his whole life while he laid around barely doing anything. Her farming in the US was also frustrating because she used SO MANY chemicals because the area was not really suited for farming at all - especially rice. She often would source illegal chemicals because they "worked better." I wouldn't be surprised if the health issues she and her husband both suffered from were 50% from the trauma they endured before coming to the US and 50% the chemicals they were exposing themselves to in their farming.
I think this book does a great job of highlighting just how hard being an immigrant is. Ia and Chou Lor escaped a war zone, lived for 15 years in a refugee camp (they had to wait for his father to die because he didn't want to come to the US where men weren't at the top of the social/cultural hierarchy), and very much struggled to acclimate to living in the US. Ia lives in two worlds - she still believed the Laotian customs and continued to live by those cultural standards in many ways but she was also almost single-handedly pulling her huge family out of poverty in the US by finding ways for all of them to work together and make it. Overall, I do think she is an interesting and inspirational person but this was not a fun read by any stretch.
Some quotes I liked:
"There was a postal service of sorts, but neither Ia nor her mother knew how to read or write. Now, with the purchase of these recorders, there would be a delicate magnetic tape like an umbilical cord pulsing across the Mekong...Her mother was too poor to buy new cassettes; each time, she would record over her daughter's message and send the tape back that way. But Ia bought a new one every time, so that she could keep the recordings her mother had sent. On days when Ia missed her the most, she would play back an old cassette." (p. 94-95)
"In fact, they had received their initial clearance for resettlement as soon as they arrived at Ban Vinai [the Thai refugee camp], in 1979. Because Ia's father-in-law refused to go - and no one dared defy him - they gave their registration materials to a relative...For older men, not the least important of these elements was the accepted hierarchy that placed them at the top of an immovable pyramid...without translatable skills, these men who had always been self-sufficient farmers became financially dependent on government handouts. How without English, they became socially dependent on their grandchildren to communicate with the larger world. Should those men sign the resettlement papers and board a plane, what remained of the traditional power structure would crumble, and they would be lost in the rubble." (p. 105-106)
"After roughly a year [of adult school for refugees], he was deemed work-ready and placed at a McDonald's. He washed dishes, cleaned the deep fryer, scrubbed the bathrooms, and mopped the floors. For the first three months, the state paid his wages. After that, the paychecks stopped, even as Chou Lor continued working five days a week and was transferred to a new location across town. He didn't understand the system well enough to know this was not right, much less to protest or ask for his back pay. Instead, assuming that working for free was the requirement so that his family of eleven could continue to receive public assistance, he just kept showing up. This went on for a year, until one day the manager called him into the office. No one had taught Chou Lor how to use the time clock, and since there was no record of his having punched in and out for his shifts, the manager accused him of having skipped work. He was fired." (p. 115) [Even though Chou Lor was a dick this makes me hate McDonald's even more - he worked for free for a year and you think they didn't know?!]
"The rice was a medium for memory, a spiritual bridge on which her heart could walk across all that longing and return to when she was with them both in person. It happened when the first green shoots poked through the soil, then when the leaves grew thick and the wind rushed through them. When the plants miraculously flowered and then fill out the stomach of each little grain, the past that felt so far away came surging back...At the farm, she could touch them again - almost. And there was the bittersweetness: the rice brought her closer to them, while at the same time clarifying just how far away each of them really was." (p. 130)
Justice is Served: a tale of scallops, the law, and cooking for RBG by Leslie Karst
Leslie Karst is an unhappy lawyer who went to culinary school as a way to bring some creativity into her life. She has the opportunity to cook a dinner for Ruth and Marty Ginsburg because her Dad and Ruth knew each other from both teaching law school before Ruth was a Supreme Court Justice and the "Notorious RBG". When Karst finds out about the opportunity, she spends 9 months planning out every aspect of the dinner. Karst and her wife Robin have the opportunity to take part in a few other events with Ruth and Marty before the dinner so it's a whole weekend filled with unique opportunities to interact with such an influential couple.
I wasn't really sure what to expect with this book. I mainly decided to read it because I LOVE RBG and I also love food and cooking so it sounded like a good combination. I never thought it would literally be 210 pages of prepping for 34 pages of the dinner party. I guess I assumed that she would cook for RBG and then this would bring about a new career path as it was obvious that she didn't enjoy working as a lawyer. And it did. But only after 210 pages of detailed talk about every ingredient, every dish, every piece of cutlery and china, champagne glasses, etc. The writing was engaging but honestly it did get old. I don't know that this needed to be a full book. It could have been a short story/memoir piece of like 50 pages. She does include an "interlude" in each chapter with facts about RBG so that added to the book. She also includes the recipes for each dish she made at the end. Overall, I didn't love it. I almost wish I had read the first 2-3 chapters and the last 2 chapters - that would give you the overall gist of everything without all the details and obsessing over every piece of china and ingredient. I wouldn't recommend this one.
Analog Christian: cultivating contentment, resilience, and wisdom in the digital age by Jay Y. Kim
Pastor Jay Kim explores how the digital age and social media affect the life and discipleship of Christians in Analog Christian. Kim isn't a luddite who thinks we shouldn't use technology, his church is in Silicon Valley and he uses technology like everyone else. But today are we using technology or is it controlling us? Kim uses the Fruit of the Spirit to compare and contrast with technology and social media to highlight the attributes Christians should strive to embody and how easy technology makes it for us to do the opposite. Kim divides the chapters into three section - Cultivating Contentment, Cultivating Resilience, and Cultivating Wisdom. He does a great job in each chapter of giving good, real world examples and ways Christians can combat these temptations. I feel like often Christian books can be too heavy handed or repetitive and often use ridiculous examples that feel like they are for children. Kim's book is not like that. He makes his case well, the writing is good and engaging, and he also includes some discussion questions at the end for each chapter. I think this would be a great small group book because it's so relevant and it's just so easy to get caught up in the current technology and instant gratification culture. Like most things there is a middle ground with technology and as Christians we should look at everything through the lens of the Bible and find ways to use technology without letting it control or use us.
Some quotes I liked:
"For every person killed by another, there are more than two and a half people killed by themselves...Between 2006 and 2016, the suicide rate for those between ages ten and seventeen rose by 70 percent. In that same time, the number of high school students who admitted having suicidal thoughts rose by 25 percent and the number of teens diagnosed with clinical depression rose by nearly 40 percent." (p. 18)
"What we need in the digital age is less food delivery and more farming. This is probably true in a literal sense, but it is undoubtedly true metaphorically. The fact that the Scriptures use agrarian imagery to describe the life of formation into Christ-likeness is not primarily because society was agrarian at the time - it's because farming and gardening are patient works. And so is discipleship to Jesus." (p. 72)
"The theologian Esau McCaulley puts it this way: 'God's vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead, God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united by faith in his Son as a manifestation of the expansive nature of his grace.'" (p. 98-99)
"For most of my life, evangelical Christianity has been the awkward kid lingering on the fringes of the in-crowd, desperate to get into the club. This is why leaders like [Carl] Lentz [of Hillsongs Church] stand out. He'd achieved what we all thought we wanted - cultural relevance. But as Sixsmith writes, 'If they share 90 percent of my lifestyle and values, then there is nothing especially inspiring about them. Instead of making me want to become more like them, it looks very much as if they want to become more like me.' While achieving cultural relevance isn't all bad, when it comes at the cost of faithfulness, it's hollow at best and destructive at worst." (p. 114-15)
"Recent data shows that up to 40 percent of the population qualifies categorically as internet addicts. Another data point reveals that among university students, nearly 90 percent are either addicted or bordering on digital addiction...Adam Alter puts it this way: 'Life is more convenient than ever, but convenience has also weaponized temptation.' Ease of use, accessibility, and speed have overwhelmed our senses with digital temptations." (p. 138)
Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food: recipes and stories from mountain kitchens by Jim Casada and Tipper Pressley
This is a great collection of recipes and stories around Appalachian food. The co-authors are both experts in the field of Appalachian food and both offer several personal stories of how their families used these ingredients and recipes in their lifetimes. There are 27 chapters that each focus on a type of food - sometimes an ingredient and sometimes a meal or preparation method - like Corn and Cornmeal, Root Crops, Wild Fruit, and Pickles for some examples. They also include glossary of Appalachian food terms at the beginning of the book so that some of the recipe titles or ingredients make sense. There were a few recipes I'd like to try and overall this is a well-rounded book that celebrates the food and culture of Appalachia.
The Manicurist's Daughter: a memoir by Susan Lieu
A few things that stood out in this book for me:
1) Susan's family seemed VERY harsh and dysfunctional.
2) Susan's one woman show seemed odd at best and I was surprised to read about how they kept selling out, etc. Maybe that is just not something that appeals to me. I could also understand her family's reluctance - if they wouldn't/couldn't talk about their feeling and grief with each other, putting it out to strangers would be even worse for them.
3) The body shaming was insane. I did love that at the end Susan confronted one of her aunts about body shaming and reminded her that her mother died from botched cosmetic surgery and constantly focusing on weight was not helpful. There was also an added layer of focus on food and being forced to clean your plate but at the same time not be overweight. When food is pushed so hard and being thin equally pushed it just creates eating disorders or body dysmorphia.
4) I alternately felt bad for Susan and didn't like Susan. I felt for her as the 11 year old who lost her mother suddenly and with no explanation. But her fixation on her mother's death and its impact on her did get old and repetitive sometimes.
5) There was a LOT of weird psychic/spirit channeling/medium stuff that seemed weird and mostly unnecessary.
Overall, I didn't like it much. I was expecting more about her immigrant parents/family's journey and less of her one woman show and fixation on her mother's death and dysfunctional family.
