Nonfiction Monday Review: Sugar Changed the World by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos

Wow, this book has been getting a ton of praise recently - including making the shortlist for the LA Times Book Prize in the YA lit category. So I knew I had to check it out.

Marc Aronson and Maina Budhos both have family connections to the sugar trade - Aronson's family worked with beet sugar in Russia, while Budhos' family, originally from India, worked in Guyana. This personal connection is an early indication that the story of sugar is going to take us around the globe. Aronson and Budhos trace sugar from its probably origins in New Guinea, through the Middle East to Europe, and then spend the bulk of the book looking at how sugar drove the slave trade in South America and the Caribbean. As a USian, for whom the story of slavery was tied to cotton, it was eye opening to see how slavery influenced a different cash crop.

There are also interesting facts about sugar peppered throughout the book. Sugar is the only flavor humans like naturally - we acquire our tastes for salty, bitter, and other flavors. While the story Aronson and Budhos share pretty much ends with slavery in the US (going on just a bit longer to look at the indentured servitude of Indians, as well as the Asians of many countries who were brought in to Hawaii), there are tantalizing hints that the story of sugar isn't over - we've developed high fructose corn syrup as a replacement for cane sugar, and artificial sweeteners like Splenda. I think, rather than spending so much time going over the horrors of slavery again, I would have liked to see more about the modern quest for cheap sweeteners. While slavery is certainly an important part of the story of sugar, since Aronson and Budhos say in their afterword that this is a book intended for high school students I feel like rehashing a lot of the stories of slavery that aren't too different from accounts of life in the United States, with which US students will already be familiar, dragged down parts of the book.

Another small thing that I feel is missing from the book is any account of the Caribbean natives who would have been displaced by these sugar plantations. The way the book is now, it seems like the islands were discovered as empty, pristine places, perfect for growing sugar cane. I know initially native populations were used as slaves for the Europeans - by the time the Europeans got around to growing sugar, had the native populations already been exhausted by other slave work and disease? I certainly don't know - the only mention of natives doesn't even merit a listing in the index, as they are just briefly mentioned as members of the maroon population in Brazil - communities formed outside of the plantations by escaped slaves, natives, and even some white Europeans.

There were also two small passages that dragged down the quality of the book for me, because they are phrased...awkwardly, to put them in the most positive light possible.

First, on page 39:

You might be lucky enough to be trained as a specialist - the person who watched the cane grow and who kept an eye out for when the plants were ripe and ready to be cut. Special knowledge did not make a slave any less a slave - you were neither freed or paid. But perhaps some of the enslaved people had the personal pleasure of realizing that they had knowledge that the plantation owners needed.

I checked to see if there was a note in the back explaining where this notion of pleasure in slavery came from - if there was a slave narrative that had someone taking some form of pleasure in their work, this would be a much more credible statement. But since no such note exists, it seems rather tone deaf to talk about taking pleasure in having knowledge that's going to benefit the person that keeps you as property.

Then again, on page 70:

Africans were at the heart of the great change in the economy, indeed in the lives of people throughout the world. Africans were the true global citizens - adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never have et in their homelands. Their labor made the Age of Sugar - the Industrial Age - possible. We should not see the enslaved people simply as victims, but rather as actors - as the heralds of the interconnected world in which we all live today.

I think this one is worse for me than page 39 was. The slaves in the Caribbean had no choice in their situation - they were kidnapped from Africa, and their ability to act freely was removed. The enslaved Africans rarely got to enjoy the fruits of their labor - working in sugar cane was dangerous and claimed so many lives that once the Atlantic slave trade was abolished slaves weren't reproducing fast enough to maintain or increase the slave population numbers, so the sugar workers weren't usually the ones buying their freedom and then going on to be consumers of sugar (or any other goods harvested by the hands of slaves). Edit 3/14/11 at 11pm: Author Marc Aronson has posted a comment further explaining these passages.

This is a worthwhile book for those interested in another aspect of the dark history of slavery - I just had to point out those two instances because they left me feeling uncomfortable. In both instances I get the points that Aronson and Budhos are trying to make - I just think they end up falling a little short of their goal, as both of these passages almost seem to soften the tragedy that slavery is.





This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Chapter Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Nonfiction Monday Review: Five Thousand Years of Slavery by Marjorie Gann and Janet Willen

So in the rest of the world, it's an exciting day. Clearly it's Valentine's Day, and also the Cybil Award winners are announced today. And what am I posting about? A slavery book. My timing, it's not excellent. Sorry for being a downer!

This is a much more in-depth look at slavery than the books I'm used to. For one, it has a much wider focus - most accounts of slavery I see are focused on the African slave trade and how it relates to US  history - so a relatively short period of time and a geographically focused story. This one, as the title says, covers five thousand years of history, from the ancient Egyptians and the pyramids, to 21st century textile factories in Asia.

This is a heavy book, not just because of the subject matter, but because of the detail as well. This is 160 pages of dense text all about one of the worst aspects of humanity that has followed us across cultures. And even in those 160 pages, stuff gets left out; the examples of slavery are very Western-oriented (accounts of slavery in Asia aren't picked up until European colonization in the 18th and 19th centuries), and some types of abuse are glossed over (not only was rape a constant threat for female slaves, but sex trafficking, a common form of modern slavery even in the United States, is never mentioned). You'd probably need a set of encyclopedias to fully examine the horrific history of slavery, but these two omissions stood out for me. It doesn't detract from the value of what is there, but especially where oppressed groups are concerned we need to keep in mind which stories we aren't reading.

Because of the Western-bias, some of the book starts to feel a little repetitive. British slave traders didn't vary their tactics much, whether the slaves were being transported to the US or Southeast Asia. I can see this being more useful in spurts than as a book to just sit down and read.

I also have to critique one design element. I can't stand sidebars and other pull-outs from the narrative that span multiple pages - in order to get the full anecdote I need to stop reading the main text, flip forward a page to finish reading the sidebar, and then go back to the main text again. This book is filled with sidebars of specific examples of slaves' lives, and that's awesome - except when I have to flip the page to get the rest of the story. And then in the final chapter there's a sidebar that takes up the margins from page 153 until 156. It's an important story (of Iqbal Masih and Craig Kielburger), but the formatting of it was irritating. If your "sidebar" is going to take up four pages, maybe you need to figure out a different format for the story.

I know that seems like a lot of critiques, but I really did find the book worthwhile. I only critique it because it's so good at so much, that I can only wish it went further! Slavery is truly horrifying, and I think it's so important to hit home the point that just because the US had the Emancipation Proclamation doesn't mean the peculiar institution has ever left us, in the US or abroad. Five Thousand Years of Slavery does an excellent job of introducing this fact, but clearly the emphasis on slavery in the past (or away from the US), shielding readers from the uncomfortable knowledge of what often goes on here, right under our noses.



This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Wrapped in Foil. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Sci Fi Friday Review: Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

It's no secret to long-time readers of this blog that I have a thing for Scott Westerfeld's writing. I wrote my senior thesis on the Uglies series, for goodness' sake! So it's probably no surprise, given my history with Westerfeld's work and my feelings about last year's Leviathan, that I enjoyed Behemoth. Just wanted to get that out of the way in case the curiosity was killing you.

When we last left the crew of the British airship Leviathan, they had just picked up several Austrian passengers, including the son of the recently-assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Alek - not that any of the British crew know that. Alek's lone friend among the crew is a young airman Dylan, who is actually a young woman, Deryn, disguising herself so she can serve in the air force - not that anyone knows about that. The airship is carrying some precious cargo and distinguished guests, including the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, who has some very special eggs she wants delivered to the ruler of the Ottoman Empire before a great war can break out among the European nations in response to the murder of Alek's parents.

The Ottoman Empire is at a crossroads when the Leviathan docks. They are technically neutral in the burgeoning conflict, but are being courted by both German and British forces for an alliance. And all is not well within the Empire, as the current sultan has only been in power for a few years and already militants are planning a coup to replace the monarchy with a democratic government. Alek and Deryn know that technically they are on opposite sides in this war - Clanker and Darwinist, royalty and commoner - but discover they will have to work together, along with an eclectic mix of allies, if they ever hope to achieve their mutual goal: stop a world war from beginning.

If you haven't read Leviathan yet, you absolutely need to read it before reading Behemoth. The story picks up mere days after the end of Leviathan, and the action starts within just a few pages, leaving precious little time to catch the reader up on what happened in the last book. I really liked the fact that Westerfeld just goes with the assumption that the reader already knows the back story, because that means each and every page can be devoted to developing what happens next.

This is one wild ride both similar to and very different from Leviathan. In the last book, we followed Alek wandering in the wilderness towards safety with his body guards, and Deryn spent much of her story alone among the crew out of need to protect her secret. In Behemoth, less physical ground is covered, as the story stays focused on Istanbul, and the story becomes more of a political thriller as Alek and Deryn become involved in the resistance movement - which introduces my favorite character, the feisty revolutionary Lilit, who has dreams of bringing women's liberation to Istanbul. She also has a huge crush on one of our dashing heroes. Lilit is a young woman destined for greatness and could probably support a whole novel of her own!

As expected, there are more great beasties and machines this time around. The Ottoman Empire is a Clanker nation, but they're more in touch with nature than the Germans or Austrians, as their mechanics are based on animals. My favorite was probably the spider-like machine that worked the great library. On the Darwinist side, we finally get to see what was in those eggs that were so carefully guarded in Leviathan and, of course, there's the title beastie, the Behemoth. It's awesome, in every sense of the word.

Because I feel like it's becoming my trademark, I do have to comment for a moment on the romance element of the book. Deryn is beginning to develop "feelings" for Alek. Maybe this just annoyed me because I read it shortly after The Education of Bet and A Golden Web, two other novels about young women dressing up as men, but I'm getting quite tired of girls putting all of their other goals at risk because of some boy that literally thinks they're just one of the guys. Deryn keeps a handle on herself better than the protagonists of the other two books, and it's really just a small bit of this otherwise giant story, but it still rankled me a bit. I am certain Goliath won't go the way of Mockingjay in terms of focus on relationships, but I can't deny there's a little bit of worry in the back of my head. Hopefully, averting World War I will remain the focus.

Rot & Ruin Giveaway Reminder: I'm going to draw the winner for the Rot & Ruin giveaway at 12 pm Eastern time today! If you still want a chance to win, enter here!

Reviewed from ARC picked up at ALA 2010.

Review: Poisoned Honey by Patricia Gormley

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 2/22



I'm almost as interested in new spins on religious stories as I am in new spins on old fairy tales. I blame a childhood spent in the Christian Reformed Church. And being introduced to Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal at an impressionable age. Lamb may actually have been the first time I read a book that took on Mary Magdalene - that version of the character certainly left an impression on me, anyway, so I was interested in seeing how Gormley's version compared.

Mariamne (the Greek version of Miryam, called Mari by her family) of Magdala is the middle child and eldest daughter of a prosperous sardine merchant. While she often disagrees with her brother, she considers her father wise and fair - when an elderly member of the community asked to marry Mari, her father listened to her plea to reject the proposal and instead arranged a marriage with a handsome young man. Unlike many other girls in arranged marriages, Mari is gleefully anticipating her wedding day - until a plague befalls Magdala, cause Mari to fall ill and taking the lives of her beloved father and fiancé.

With the family business in peril and her older brother now in charge of the family, Mari must accept the proposal of the older man who first asked for her, all in the hopes of preserving the family's business and honor. As the new wife and youngest woman in a new household, Mari is berated, humiliated and ignored by her husband's daughter-in-law. Her only escape is in the simple spells an Egyptian mystic woman teaches her - first a way to escape the mundane world into a peaceful spirit garden, then a spell for healing, which all too easily is turned into a spell for doing harm.

In the spirit garden, Mari begins to hear voices - and soon they are coming to her even outside of the spirit realm, encouraging her to use the magic she knows to escape her unbearable life as the wife of a much older and unsympathetic man. As the voices become harder to ignore, Mari begins to wonder who is truly wielding the power; is she in control of the voices? Or are the voices in control of her? As her behavior grows more erratic, it becomes clear there's only one person who can save Mari - a young traveling rabbi known for his miracle and humble ways, who invites even tax collectors and the demon-possessed to travel with him and spread the word of the Lord.

I thought Mari's story was well done, even if it didn't have the humor and spunk of Moore's Lamb. However, this isn't just Mari's story. Shoehorned in somewhat awkwardly are also occasional chapters about Matthew, the son of Magdala's tax collector who goes on to be a tax collector himself. Mari and Matthew cross paths early on in the novel, and again later as they seek Rabbi Yeshua (the man who we know today as Jesus). Matthew's chapters really stick out for a couple of reasons. First, none of the summaries, either that I've seen online or on the book itself, mention Matthew's existence. Second, his chapters are told from a third person omniscient perspective, compared to Mari's first person chapters. Third, his chapters come about completely randomly. There's no discernible rhyme or reason for why a Matthew chapter appears, nor did his contributions really seem to contribute that much to the overall story, except as further illustration for how good Yeshua is, as he'll allow even a tax collector and a formerly possessed woman to join as followers. And really, I'm pretty sure even non-Christians have heard by now that Jesus was a pretty open and accepting guy.

The front jacket copy brings up lots of ideas that just don't pan out in the final novel. "Who is Mary Magdalene? A prostitute? A saint? A madwoman? A goddess?" Only one of these tantalizing possibilities is addressed in the text - that of being a madwoman. The extensive author's note addresses the prostitution allegation, but nothing about being a saint or even a goddess. I was also hoping more time would have been spent looking at Mary as a follower of Jesus - instead, joining up with Jesus is essentially the end of the novel.

If you're a hardcore fan of fiction about Biblical figures, then I would recommend this one, otherwise consider this a title you can skip.

Nonfiction Monday Review: I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali and Delphine Minoui

Found via: Amelia Bloomer Project nomination
Welcome back from the big weekend of ALA! I'm actually writing this post on Saturday night, since I'm not getting back to New York until late tomorrow - and I know there are plenty of librarians still in DC. Hopefully we'll still get a good Non-Fiction Monday turn out!

In 2008, Nujood Ali's story was all over the blogs. The 10 year old Yemeni girl had summoned the courage and strength to seek a divorce from her husband, who was 3 times her age. Here, with the help of a reporter, Nujood gives the first hand account of that experience, describing in child-like terms growing up in poverty, one child among many between her father's two brides. Despite the obvious difficulties, Nujood is generally a happy child.

And then the terrifying news comes - that she is to be married, to a man significantly older than she is. Nujood isn't entirely sure how old she is, but she knows she doesn't want to marry and leave her family. Her father has made her future husband promise not to "touch her" until she has reached puberty, but at 10 Nujood doesn't really even know what that means, let alone what sex is and what it means when her husband demands that she act like his wife.

It is on one of her brief trips to visit her family that Nujood plans her escape, taking a taxi to the court house and making history by announcing to a judge that she wants a divorce.

Nujood's story is absolutely heartbreaking. The trauma she experienced is unimaginable for us in the West, with firmly established age of consent laws and lack of arranged marriages. The child-like prose doubles the horror for an adult reader, for while Nujood's descriptions of her relationship with her husband are never described in graphic detail, it's painfully obvious that she is raped and abused by her new husband and his family.

As an adult reader, I often craved more details - many people in the courthouse tell Nujood that granting her divorce will be nearly impossible, thanks to centuries of tradition, and yet we never see any of that struggle. A couple of meetings with a lawyer, her husband and father are temporarily sent to jail, and then a hearing - suddenly Nujood is free! However, I think for young readers the descriptions and details will be more than enough.

Nonfiction Monday is a weekly event across the kidlitosphere, highlighting and celebrating nonfiction published for children and young adults. Started by Picture Book of the Day, I'm excited to be this week's host! Participants, please leave links to your reviews in the comments, and I'll add them to this post periodically throughout the day!






Other Nonfiction Monday posts:

• Wild About Nature blog: a review of Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea by Steve Jenkins.
• The Book Nosher: a review about Bill Peet, An Autobiography
• Another Steve Jenkins book, How to Clean a Hippopotamus, at Jean Little Library
• Anastasia Suen is in today with a fun book about ...Dinosaurs?! at Picture Book of the Day 
• Mary Ann Fraser brings us a guest post today by Vicki Leon on The Publishing Road Less Traveled
• SimplyScience looks at More Life Size Zoo
• The Fourth Musketeer joins us for her first Nonfiction Monday with a review of All Star, about baseball player Honus Wagner.
• Maggy at Red Ted Art reviews three books for little gardeners
• Maclibrary reviews the young reader's version of The Omnivore's Dilemma
• Shelf Employed reviews Happy Birthday The Story of the World's Most Popular Song
• Roberta introduces us to Super Women in Science at Growing With Science
• Mary Ann Dames is preparing for the fourth of July with America: A Patriotic Primer
• A Patchwork of Books comes in with two reviews of the popular Scientists in the Field series, Project Seahorse and Kakapo Rescue
• A late entry! Abby (the) Librarian finishes us off today with Lincoln Tells a Joke

What a day. Thanks to all of the Nonfiction Monday participants!

Review: IraqiGirl ed. by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field

Found via: Galleycat Blog

In elementary school, I loved reading diaries from girls in war-torn areas; I had a strange preoccupation with war, actually. I read Anne Frank's diary, of course, and I actually bought Zlata's Diary at a book fair (I didn't, and still don't, actually buy many books, thanks to finite shelf space). So even though it's been a long time since I read either of those books, I figured I'd devour IraqiGirl with the same enthusiasm.

Not quite true.

IraqiGirl is a compendium of the blog kept by a girl called Hadiya (a pseudonym) from mid-2004 through the end of 2007. She lives in Mosul, Iraq, which of course has been a hotbed of violence since the beginning of the war in Iraq. Hadiya writes often of the effect the war is having on her life - car bombs blowing out the windows of her house and curfews cancelling exams - as well as her attempts to pursue a normal life: babysitting her niece, studying for exams, worrying about her grades as she nears the end of high school and must choose where to study in college.

While an on-the-ground perspective is always interesting, there is so much that is foreign about life in Iraq that goes unexplained in the book that I quickly grew tired of trying to keep track. It seems like Hadiya is constantly taking exams, and then there are idiosyncrasies like every student in the country taking their Islam exam on the same day. In the US we all take the SAT exam around the same time, but that of course is a multi-subject exam. It's also difficult to follow how much time has passed, as Hadiya isn't a consistent blogger (for multiple reasons - after all, it's hard to blog if your neighborhood doesn't have any electricity).

Occasionally there are notes in the text about events Hadiya references, explaining about the rash of doctors being kidnapped or a prominent blogger who was punished. There are also a few excerpts from the comments in Haidya's blog and chat transcripts with the people who eventually arrange for her blog to be published. Haidya's whole family actually blogs, so there's even a blog post from her father. I actually think it would have been most interesting to compile the blogs of the whole family into one book (Hadiya's mother, father and one of her sisters all blog, as well as various extended family members) since Hadiya will sometimes say something like "you can read this on my sister's blog"...but since books don't have hyperlinks and the editors didn't choose to add the pertinent entry from her sister, we don't get any further information.

Current fans of the diary format might find more to enjoy in this one than I did. And anyone who's interested in more of Hadiya's story can continue to follow her blog here.

Thanks to Great Kids Books for hosting Nonfiction Monday this week!