A sweeping family saga of a French Algerian family, who are pied noirs--people of European descent who lived in Algeria during French colonial rule from 1830-1962.
I was swept along by the story of a family torn apart by World War II and then displaced in the diaspora. Although Messud's family isn't Jewish, their story reminded me of my family and our journey in the diaspora.
The sheer scope of the time period covered, the emotional range of the characters and their lives, and the sumptuousness of Messud's language were just glorious. It was a feast of a book.
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state-separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of Francois and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of Francois's union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result…
I've been working on affordable housing issues for my community, and two recent issues have involved zoning for dense housing.
Kahlenberg's interest in affordable housing and zoning began when he was researching school achievement issues and discovered that children from poorer families were more academically successful when they lived in and attended school in economically diverse communities. He then began to look at why so many communities are not economically diverse.
Kahlenberg argues that the availability and affordability of housing is primarily limited by zoning laws, especially in more well-to-do suburbs, that restrict housing density. He uses lots of examples to demonstrate that increasing the housing supply will drive down prices. He further shows that restrictive zoning, which is often put in place by communities that claim the restrictions are intended to protect the environment or maintain the small town character of the community or keep enrollment pressure off the schools or some other social "good," in fact, serves to maintain social class and racial restrictions in the community.
If we eliminate these restrictions, we open the door to denser housing options, greater affordability of housing, and more economically and racially diverse communities, communities that will foster the success of all young people.
The last, acceptable form of prejudice in America is based on class and executed through state-sponsored economic discrimination, which is hard to see because it is much more subtle than raw racism.
While the American meritocracy officially denounces prejudice based on race and gender, it has spawned a new form of bias against those with less education and income. Millions of working-class Americans have their opportunity blocked by exclusionary snob zoning. These government policies make housing unaffordable, frustrate the goals of the civil rights movement, and lock in inequality in our urban and suburban landscapes.
I was an anti-war activist in college in the 1960s. Although I never regretted my anti-was activism, I came to regret my lack of empathy for the men who fought in Vietnam and came home to a country that had forgotten their horrific sacrifice. I never learned, however, about the women who served in Vietnam and their struggles, both while they were serving and when they returned home.
We ignored the men who served when they came home, but few people were even aware that any women were in the U.S. military in Southeast Asia. Although they were not combatants, they experienced the trauma of war as medical personnel who were treating men on the battlefield. Their courage and sacrifice were often ignored by family and friends and their physical and mental trauma often went untreated.
This book added to my knowledge about the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Hannah treats her characters with the love and appreciation they didn't receive from the country they served.
From master storyteller Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds, comes the story of a turbulent, transformative era in America: the 1960s. The Women is that rarest of novels—at once an intimate portrait of a woman coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided by war and broken by politics, of a generation both fueled by dreams and lost on the battlefield.
“Women can be heroes, too.”
When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these unexpected…
A practical guide to having conversations about race written for white people who want to work towards racial justice and equity.
Examines (1) why whites need to have conversations about race with each other and with Blacks, (2) why we are uncomfortable and avoid talking about race, (3) the importance of learning about Black history; racial disparities in education, health, criminal justice, and wealth; and racially-linked cultural differences to have informed conversations about race, and (4) guidelines for our conversations about race.
We do not speak for Blacks but base our ideas on research findings and personal experiences as teachers and workshop facilitators, and as witnesses to the experiences of our two Black sons. Conversation prompts plus do’s and don’ts are included.
