An important ongoing venture in the West’s attempts to understand the conflicts of this region.
Stories of strife and self-identity around the beltway just north of the Equator, from Africa to Indonesia, where Christianity and Islam have shared an uneasy 1,500-year history.
Journalist and poet Griswold (Wideawake Field, 2007) traveled to Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia, on the African latitude, and Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, on the Asian, to get at the root of the deep-seated conflicts between adherents of Islam and Christianity. She helpfully begins with geography, history and demographics lessons for each country, patiently explaining the Tenth Parallel’s delineation in Sudan between the arid Arab north and the tribal, intermittently Christian swampy south, both vying for land, oil and water possession and manipulated by autocratic governments. Nigeria, a major petroleum producer and enormously corrupt, is fairly evenly split between Christians and Muslims, who regard each other as “objects of competition and obstacles of survival,” mostly in terms of economic resources. British and American evangelicals have been building a following in Africa since the 19th century, and Griswold examines the legacy of various missionaries, many of whom still enjoy vital offshoots. In their modern manifestations, both Islam and Christianity have “reawakened” in the forms of “ecstatic experience”—Islam as fundamentalism, Christianity as evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, both casting backward for their authenticity and power, and both contentious. Though home to the world’s largest Muslim population, Indonesia has a vocal Christian minority, as does its neighbor Malaysia, while the Philippines is predominately Catholic. Griswold keenly investigates how the global clash of religions especially takes its toll on women and children. She visits religious leaders on both sides and debates finer points of their arguments.
An important ongoing venture in the West’s attempts to understand the conflicts of this region.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-27318-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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