Book Reviews

It's been a while since I finished them, but I'm just now getting around to publishing my thoughts on two books I've recently read.

Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, is an honest look into the harsh world of black culture in 1941. Morrison is a gifted poet to state it blithly. Her affinity for carefuly placed language which intentionally discomforts her readers gives the book a somber yet highly intriguing aromoa. The texture of her words is so rich they quickly become pictures which then become songs gritty with reality so much so that I could taste the ice cream which two the of young girls were too poor to purchase.

Don't look for a feel good or happily ending story. The Bluest Eye is about the harsh reality of young Pecola's life which changed forever when attacked unthinkably as a young girl. Accepted into a better off family, which is also dirt poor, Pecola deals with the reailty of being a poor, ugly, pregnant, black girl in Ohio.

Sure to change your understanding of the black perspective, this book is a gem needed in any respectable home library. It is one that has stuck with me in a bothersome way that will continue to inform my compassion for all people and to illustrate the potential of human wickedness.

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Enrique's Journey is a powerful documentary which chronicles the plight of one Honduran traveling to the United States in order to re-unite with his mother who left him for better paying work when he was five.

Nazario is a journalist, a brave one at that, who after conducting countless interviews traveled herself and retraced the same steps and train rides of Enrique. Written by a journalist, the writing style is dry and clunky. Yet the accuracy and detail with which she describes the conditions and dangers through which migrants must travel will challenge anyone's view toward immigrants no matter what your politics.

Migrants, many of them not Mexicans, travel through most of Mexico on the tops of dangerous trains. Having to run alongside after the train has left the station they run the risk of being sucked under the wheels and losing limbs or being killed. "El tren de la muerte," the train of death, it is often called. Once upon the chugging beast they must avoid local ganges which frequently rob, beat and rape migrants. Also, Mexican immigration officers (La Migra) are after them, and if caught migrants are shipped over the boarder of the nearest country, Guatemala, after having been robbed by The Migra as well. Enrique, carrying only his mother's phone number makes no less than eight attempts to get to the USA. Many attempt more times than that.

Reading Nazario's accounts of people and places that helped or hindered Enrique on his quest leaves readers wondering how many more calamities can come his way, as well it showcases some of the deepest most Christ-like compassion of which humans are capable.

Enrique's Journey will no doubt take you on a journey which will challenge your compassion to be deaper, your hate to be more forgiving, and your attitude toward those illegally among us to be more hospitable.