A colorful portrait of the rhythms and textures of Zonian life, with little investigation of the underlying politics.
An evocative account of growing up in the Panama Canal Zone during the last years of U.S. control over the key waterway.
Deep in the Panamanian jungle, the Panama Canal Zone was a small slice of America, where U.S. workers employed in operating and maintaining the key isthmian waterway lived with their families. In 1970, about 45,000 “Zonians” lived amid a total Panamanian population of 1.5 million. Judy Haisten’s poignant memoir describes her experience growing up a Zonian between 1964 and 1977—the year President Jimmy Carter signed the treaty ending U.S. control over the canal. For Haisten, the Zone was a tropical paradise in which “[l]ife patterns...were planned, organized, and structured, while the jungle promised chaos, confusion, spontaneity.” With wry humor and vivid detail, she presents a series of Zonian-life vignettes, from dodging bats in the only movie theater in her town to chasing a stray parrot, staring down a crocodile and running away from a boa constrictor. Her prose is as steamy as the humid Panama climate: “Mealy water bugs” skim the surface of a pond where alligators breed, and “[f]oamy masses of frog eggs [float] close to the bank.” There are also visits to the primitive settlements of two indigenous tribes, including the half-naked Choco Indians. “I felt as if I had stepped into the pages of the National Geographic magazines we received at home in the mail,” Haisten recalls. The idyll ends abruptly with the canal treaty, under which the Zone, as a political entity, ceased to exist on Oct. 1, 1979. “America had lost a piece of herself,” Haisten laments, her dreams of raising her own children in the Zone dashed. But like the water bugs, the author skims the surface: Her focus on Zonian life is so tight that she doesn’t explore the palpable tension of the U.S. presence in Panama, which was established under a 1903 treaty that many Panamanians viewed as imperialistic. The host country is just “a welcome part of our lives,” while her encounters with Panamanians are limited to her family’s housekeeper, bus drivers and salesmen at an auto dealership she visits with her mother. She chastises President Carter for going back on his word to protect Zonians, but she fails to acknowledge that they always lived in Panama on borrowed time.
A colorful portrait of the rhythms and textures of Zonian life, with little investigation of the underlying politics.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1614930853
Page Count: 290
Publisher: The Peppertree Press
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An impressively thoughtful expression of spirituality.
Two men discover God on two different paths in Malby’s curiously titled first novel.
In some unspecified part of Middle America, two boys bond as toddlers in their rural hometown during an era in the 20th century when outhouses were the norm and child mortality rates were high. The boys grow apart and reconnect during manhood, finishing their long lives together. As youths, they become alienated by Windknocker, another name for God, which is further explained about halfway into the novel. Yet the titular Windknocker ultimately unites them and gives purpose to their lives. To cover the decades of their friendship, the narrative zips along like a skipped rock over water, pausing only to focus on key events in the characters’ lives. Often, these moments are what the two men look back to later in life as they attempt to resolve their differences regarding the meaning and practice of faith. Mew, the main character, takes the formal route through the Catholic priesthood during the tumult of Vatican II. His best friend, Leezie, lives in an informal street ministry as a laborer and soldier in World War II. As boys and men, they live on opposite sides of the tracks—literally at first, and figuratively later, with personalities as different as their origins, lifestyles and faith. Mew’s faith is intellectual (“religion wasn’t about experience but working toward perfection”); whereas Leezie’s faith is intuitive, particularly after he’s “borned again” during a revival meeting. Malby tells their story in memoir format through Mew’s voice, diverting occasionally into an omniscient observer—sometimes transitioning like an emcee—to cover episodes in Leezie’s life. The switches in point of view aren’t disruptive, although they give the narrative an uneven flow. Malby’s straightforward prose contains short, evocative descriptions—“I was sure her eyes sparkled even when she was asleep”—which will comfortably take readers into intimate discussions of faith that are thought-provoking independent of religious perspective.
An impressively thoughtful expression of spirituality.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-1608622320
Page Count: 306
Publisher: E-Book Time, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sturdy, exuberant verse.
Like the demigod from which it takes its name, Defining Atlas is a durable, uplifting volume.
A strong current of self-affirmation, self-love, and self-confidence runs through this work, and readers will come away feeling their spirits improved. We feel some of this current in the clever “Limited”; Michaels takes the titular subject and turns it on its head: “I’m new, but I’m old / Not limited beyond my means and methods / But limited because I’m special / Special beyond the heavens and everything that surrounds me / That I’m among…limited.” Elsewhere in “From the ashes…I am,” he sings a hard-won song of renewal and rebirth: “I am victory in its rawest form / I am hope that never conform / I am the will, the drive, and the truth / I am like everyone, like you.” But Michaels does not hoard specialness or victory for himself; he wants it for his reader too, and in “Wake Up!” he urges us on toward a bright future: “There’s something good here for you / Your purpose can never be defined by just one blue / Your destiny awaits you.” Underpinning Michaels’ stirring message is a strong faith in God, whose presence infuses many of the poems here: “But I always thank God for the latter / For the strength and will it takes / Shines so bright / Shines so right.” Michaels often adopts a loose scheme of rhyming couplets, and this decision leads to one of the book’s few weaknesses. Too often, the poet picks awkward or odd pairings; e.g., “And if I could become a perfect saint / I would make believers out of the ones who say they ain’t” and the “you/blue” couplet mentioned above. But such missteps are infrequent, and they don’t dim the warm light that emanates from Michaels’ fine volume.
Sturdy, exuberant verse.Pub Date: March 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5035-4785-8
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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