Provides the type of engrossing hodgepodge of memoir, philosophy, literary theory and metaphysics growing more...
What if reams of our conventional knowledge are just flat-out wrong—what if, for instance, the division between “perceiver” and “perceived” is erroneous?
Peace theorizes about the nature of human existence and how we interact with our environment. Offering argument as well as description, Peace posits that the prevailing mode of seeing the self as “separate” from what it seen, as well as from others, is unproductive and wrongheaded. Touching on his work with the disabled, he recounts his own life experience, mixing personal anecdotes with excerpts from the writings of American poets Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, e. e. cummings and Emily Dickinson, as well as the British poets T. S. Eliot and John Keats. The poets serve as de facto guides through this book, as Peace looks to them to provide examples of the kind of consciousness he means to exalt: one where a sense of the self as an entity divorced from the rest of reality is overcome. The effects of this practice, Peace states, will benefit not just humankind, but the entire earth. His scope ranges from the perspective of the individual to the universe itself. At points, his reasoning becomes lost in insufficiently defined terminology or in the abstract nature of its own ideas. Sometimes, it’s unclear whose ideas are whose: “Without consciousness, there is no ‘time’ ” is essentially a paraphrase of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Likewise, Peace’s discussions of perception in relation to the self might have benefited from an examination of the philosophical literature around that topic. There are platitudes, but there are also real insights, as well as a tone that indicates a passionate but tempered candidness. Though the collection as a whole seems elliptical, and at times repetitive, it’s by and large an intelligent project that aims to explore its subject matter outside of the confines of genre boundaries. It is at once an original statement and a bibliography of sources for further reading. Peace’s treatise, with its aggressive tone and pace, will not be for everyone. But this may be a strength, not a limitation.
Provides the type of engrossing hodgepodge of memoir, philosophy, literary theory and metaphysics growing more endangered—and perhaps more valuable—in book culture every day.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 391
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A simple but effective teaching tool that may help spark youngsters’ love of nature.
A rabbit appreciates friends and flowers in this children’s picture book.
As a little brown bunny sits in the grass by a garden, various birds ask what he’s doing. In every case, he answers with a formulaic phrase containing the name of a particular flower. For example, he tells a goldfinch, “I am eating this delicious green grass and looking at the purple petunias.” The flowers are quite varied, and each bird engages in a typical activity, such as singing sweet bird song (the chickadee) or flying from blossom to blossom (the hummingbird), with matching illustrations. After seven such encounters, the bunny raises his head to the blue sky and says, “I thank you, God, for the birds, the flowers, and my animal friends.” In her debut, Barbara Mancine tells a simple story, full of the repetition that small children love. Many other picture books teach colors, but this one goes further than most to supply the names and appearances of common blooms and avian friends. It’s a good read-aloud choice that allows listeners to anticipate the bunny’s answers. Amie Mancine’s realistic, well-composed, and attractive debut illustrations are charming and, of course, colorful. The religious message is subtle and nondenominational, allowing for a fairly wide audience.
A simple but effective teaching tool that may help spark youngsters’ love of nature.Pub Date: March 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4808-5877-0
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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