The Jive Talker or How To Get a British Passport: LOVED IT BECAUSE Kambalu is a gifted and funny writer who presents his life (and that of his father--the Jive Talker) as an open book (literally) (Malawi, 2008)

The Jive Talker or How to Get A British Passport (Malawi, 2008)

 (LOVED IT BECAUSE Kambalu is a gifted and funny writer who presents his life (and that of his father--the Jive Talker) as an open book (literally).  Technically, this isn't fiction but this Malawian Banda-era coming-of-age tale sure reads like it.  The book recounts the author's up and down journey toward adulthood and some semblance of success (although I doubt he would qualify it in that manner) and love.  In the tale, the 'jive talker' is the author's hustling alcoholic father who was known to riff bombastically on an encyclopedic range of subjects--a trait that obviously wore off on his son.

The book is at its best when the author is in the jive talking zone--whether that be on the former President Banda, American Rock n Roll, or bush wisdom regarding safari animals...or the efficacy of urine in dental hygiene.  Ultimately, there's not a lot written out there on Malawi, fiction or otherwise, count yourself lucky that you have this 'laugh out loud' gem to enrich yourself!

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
My 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

My notes:
p. 52     Jive on Bruce Lee and American Culture
p. 67-8  Jive on Malawi life president Hastings Kamuzu Banda
p.68-9   Jive on safari animals and bush wisdom
p. 73     Background on Tonga ethnic group
p. 74     Background on Yao Ethnic group
p. 112-16 Jive bio of Banda
p. 125   funny bit about washing teeth with urine to keep them healthy
p. 140   funny bit about language and accents
p. 144   "Holyballism is a state of mind" 
p. 146   When Malawians hear classical music they think of a funeral
p. 185   Kamuzu Academy  http://kamuzuacademy.com/
p. 215   crush on the daughter of Tanzanian president--named Salama 
p. 218-27   Jive on the history of rock n roll
p. 221    Bo Diddley's Who Do You Love as the precursor to rap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAGoqMZRLB4
p. 246   Banda's fall begins when his human rights record is denounced by visiting Pope John Paul II

Parenting with Love and Logic: Read it Because You Want To Try a Systematic Approach that Builds Self-Esteem and Teaches Good Decision-Making

Parenting with Love and Logic


READ IT BECAUSE: You want to come up with a systematic approach to raise your kids into adults with healthy self-esteem who have the skills to make wise decisions for themselves.  I will caveat this review by saying that I acknowledge that there's no perfect way to parent and that every child is different.  I haven't tried this method but I have friends who recommend it so I decided to give it a read.  Please note that this is the 2006 updated version of the book.

The fundamental goal of this method is to develop children into adults who have understand consequences and have the skills to make wise decisions.  A secondary goal is to develop parents who can maintain their own sanity/happiness, keep their cool, and model wise behavior for their children.  But who really cares about all that right--what you want to know is the 'how.'

The authors divide your conflict interactions with kids into two broad categories--ones that affect you in some way and those that affect your kids.  Conflict that affects you requires more intervention and that firmer limits be set.  Conflict that affects your children only--that requires a more deft touch where you allow your kids to experience the consequences of a poor decision--WITH EMPATHY.  Those last words are capitalized for a reason--letting a child work through the consequences does not mean that you don't come along side your child in their misery or their discomfort.  Ultimately, these consequences develop an ability in your children to pause and better think through decisions.  As they grow older, the limits that you set for them grow wider and wider.

I am working on a Love and Logic Cheat Sheet but I think what most parents of young toddlers want to know is: how do I deal with temper tantrums?  The author's central thesis is that you can't really control something like a temper tantrum (after all kids are illogical balls of insanity n'est-ce pas) but you can control WHERE they throw a temper tantrum.  They recommend an 'uh-oh song' that is sung in a nice and sincere way as you give your toddler a choice to either walk to their room or be carried.  Then they stay there (with the door opened or closed--their choice) for five minutes (or an age appropriate amount of time) until they can emerge and 'be sweet.'  They note that a child should never be locked or shut in their room unless you are right outside the room listening to them (and there shouldn't be anything they can hurt themselves with in their room).  Anyway, there's  a lot more nuance to this within the wider context of the book

One note that really struck me personally was getting away from being a "drill sergeant parent"--that's a parent that tells and orders instead of modeling and teaching one's kids to make good choices.  Regardless of what I end of thinking of this approach at large, this is a point on which I can work.  Especially as a military service member, my default approach is too often an order: i.e., clean your room, don't touch that, eat your food etc.  Instead of orders, Love and Logic advocate giving child choices that you both can handle and asking them questions instead of orders.  I do this sometimes but not as often as I should/could.

I may write an update in the future on our experience with this method.  There's no one method that's perfect or the total package of course...

My 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

My notes:
p. 23 parenting can manifest itself with the 'wrong' kind of love
p. 23-25 there are 4 types of parenting that can prove problematic for your kids:

1. Helicopter parents--I hurt so I bail you out
2. Turbo helicopter parents--I sweep your mistakes under the rug so you can succeed
3. Drill Sergeant--kids are told everything and never learn to make decisions
4. Laissez-faire--hands-off parenting

p. 27 L and L strives to develop 'consultant parents' who ask questions, offer choices--options with limits
p. 28 without failure there can be no success
p. 30 enforceable choices
p. 31 Book forcuses on SLOs: Significant Learning Opportunities
p. 32 protection does not always equal caring
p. 33 Let SLOs build your childnre
p. 37 Drill Sgt orders erode a child's self-worth
p. 39 Self-concept (esteem)

1. I am loved without condition
2. I have the skills to make decisions
3. I can take control and be the master of my own destiny

p. 41 Make learning skills fun by focusing on the process--not the end result
p. 45-6 dangers of false praise: instead ask self-evaluation questions
p. 47 Process of building self-esteem
p. 49 Parenting modeling: i.e., The parent must value their own happiness and demonstrate that to the child--the child should not believe they are the center of the universe--this is especially dangerous as they get older
p. 52 You want to develop a child who asks: Can I fix this myself?
p. 54 20% rule for when to let kids try to solve their own problem
p. 54-55 There's a difference problems that just affect the child and those that affect parents
p. 56 The 'uh-oh song' technique for bad behavior/tantrums
p. 57 The 2 central rules of the book:

1. Set firm limits using enforceable standards without anger, lecturing or threats
2. when child causes problems, respond with empathy through sadness/sorrow--then hand problem and consequences back to child

p. 58-9 Examples of enforceable standards
p. 60 Delayed consequences are better than arguing: "I love you too much to argue with you about this."
p. 65 Be slow to lecture, don't tell kids what they just learned--let them learn their lesson through the consequences
p. 68 Firm limits build self-esteem
p. 69 Limits are established by the choices offered
p. 74 "fighting" words tell, whereas 'thinking' words do:

1. what we will allow
2. what we will do
3. what we will provide

p. 76 It's important for your kids to test limits because by doing so they can discover that they limits are indeed firm
p. 80 Give away as much control as you can
p. 81 The "V" of love--the base of the V is childhood and the top is adulthood.  The sides of represents the limits which gradually widen with age
p. 83 learning, thinking, eating, bedtime--with these things we can win by giving commands--we do it by modeling
p. 84 There are three rules of control battles
p. 86-7 how to create a 'no-lose' battle
p. 91 once a time limit is established, don't remind them
p. 91-2 don't get/show frustration--kids crave this emotion--immediate reaction phrase is "no problem"
p. 94 no lessons should be given during the child's experiencing of consequences
p. 96 the rule for giving choices
p. 99 you must show empathy when they make the bad choices
p. 103 Imposed consequences must:

1. enforceable
2. fit the crime
3. be laid down firmly in love

p. 110 how to practice love and logic
p. 111 the three E's

1. Empathy
2. Experience
3. Example

p. 112 7 common mistakes
p. 116 If we want kids to have self-control we must model it for them first
p. 123 situations when anger is ok
p. 125-7 Bedtimes
p. 131 Teasing
p. 134 Solving backseat fights
p. 141 Encourage creativity in 2 to 6 year olds--focus more on doing things than watching things
p. 147 only try to control what you can control: for example, you can't make them stop crying, but you can control WHERE they are crying
p. 148-9 9 Discipline rules
p. 170 don't get involved in the kids' fights
p. 179 guidelines for gifts
p. 198 dealing with lies
p. 211 until kindergarter do family cleanups--helping them
p. 221-2 no longer recommend spankings
p. 242 let tantrums happen...control where they happen

The Sympathizer: Loved It Because You Get to See the Vietnam War From a Totally Different Perspective--that of a North Vietnamese Spy

The Sympathizer

LOVED IT BECAUSE: You get to view the Vietnam War from a totally different perspective--in this case, that of a South Vietnamese officer who is actually an American educated spy for the communist North. And that's just one view--other themes addressed against the backdrop of the war include: poverty, Hollywood "yellow-washing", torture (it's hard work!), love-making and billiards, confession, forgetting and happiness as a zero-sum game in war.

Nguyen is at his most thrilling amidst his astute observations of the culture clashes and melanges between Vietnamese refugees (he draws a sharp distinction that they are NOT immigrants) and American culture. This struggle to not even assimilate--but merely survive--is deftly describe in a page long diatribe in which the author rattles off a laundry lists of  rumor mill failures swirling through their community to include "the politician's wife demoted to cleaning bedpans in a nursing home who one day snapped, attacked her husband with a kitchen knife, then was committed to a mental war," or "the devout Buddhist who spanked his son and was arrested for child abuse in Houston."    But we also she the way the community's triumphs are cherished: "the girl elected President of her high school class in Baton Rouge", or "the boy accepted into Harvard from Fond du Lac."

The Sympathizer is, however, a book about war and loss and forgetting and remembering.  Nguyen wryly notes that, thanks to the Hollywood industrial global superstructure, Vietnam was the first war where the losers got to write the history.  As he notes in his interview (linked below), the average American's impression and views on war are largely influenced by cinema--in this novel we see the particular influence of Apocalypse Now--a movie that the author recalls with marked unease as he transitioned from initially cheering the US soldiers to disheartened silence as his own countrymen were mowed down.  Ultimately, he makes a strong case that Hollywood doesn't make art--it makes propaganda.  Its films are "America's way of softening up the rest of the world, Hollywood relentlessly assaulting the mental defense of the audience with the hit, the smash, the spectacle, the blockbuster, and yes, even the box office bomb."

One of my favorite lines from the book is Nguyen's observation that "men will die for someone who remembers their name"--it is this love, this relationship that drives men in war and in this story's case that drives group of refugee soldiers to return to Vietnam in an attempt to take back their country from the communist victors.  This little known historical foray is the focus of the last third of the book takes the reader full loop as we discover why the entire book is written as a confession.  It is in the meat of this last section that the protagonist grapples with the larger philosophical questions surrounding his role as a spy--particularly the idea of sins of omission--those in which the soldier watched and did nothing.  While the main character doesn't realize it, while his inaction is significant, it's minuscule judged against the backdrop of a life filled with deliberate actions.  As the nameless narrator contemplates death and his desire for even "seven more seconds of obscene bliss" he ultimately come to the conclusion that all humans are driven by a desire for some type of revolution, even a cause as simple as the desire to live.  It's with that sentiment that the author's closes the novel: "We will live!"  The story's potency comes from the fact that the idea of who "we" actually is (i.e., the protagonist's divided identity, the Vietnamese people at large, all people etc.) has become a larger question that must be considered when thinking about this war.

These paragraphs are just one way that novel could be addressed, in my notes below you will see about a dozen other themes that the novel addresses.  Were I teaching a college course on the literature of the Vietnamese war, I would pair this novel with the masterful Matterhorn (my review of it is here) which also delves in the nature of war on a microcosmic level from the view of one educated American soldier.  Then, I would bookend both novels with O'Brien's The Things They Carried--in particular "Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong."  

LOOK OUT: Whenever I read a great book, I instantly yearn for a movie version.  In this case, however, I am not sure that Vietnam is a war that Hollywood's interested in portraying anymore .  But I could see an adaption of this novel that's set in Iraq instead.

For further reading: Check out the transcript from a great interview of the author on NPR's Fresh Air right here.

My 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

NOTES from 2016 paperback version (ISBN: 978-1-4721-5136-0):
p.3 the poor and war
p. 12 "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" emerson
p. 15 south vietnamese are the italians of asia
p. 31 vietnamese and lines
p. 37"ready to treat any unmentionables with the pencilin of American goodness"
p. 66 how vietnamese pronounce us cities
p. 67 the lifeblood of vietnam--fish sauce
p. 68-69 culture clashes
p. 74 asian communism and sex
p. 112 the twist as the favorite S. Vietnamese dance song
p. 116 the best kind of truth
p. 120 white as the color of death
p. 129 In vietnam losers write the history
p. 128-9 Hollywood yellow washing
p. 146 boat people
p. 161 torture is hard work
p. 166 Hollywood propaganda and art
p. 180 Vietnamese HATE country music
p. 182-3 American tension between guilt and innocence
p. 194 Asian family trees
p. 202 Vodka and russian novels
p. 214 Men will die for someone who remembers their names
p. 226 sadness, camus and cognac
p. 229 Vietnamese life soundtrack
p. 232 the West invented cleavage
p. 246 Happiness is a zero sum game
p. 230 On never forgetting Saigon
p. 256 billiards and lovemaking
p. 251 Life and losing the war
p. 269 American things he will miss
p. 280 similarities between remaining S. Vietnamese fighters the VC
p. 294 Fearing death and loving life
p. 323 We can never stop confessing
p. 348 He watched and did nothing
p. 359 In communism money trumps all
"We" will live

Superforecasting: My Notes. READ IT BECAUSE

My 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

READ IT BECAUSE:
Review is forthcoming when I get my act together.

They Are Coming (Zimbabwe): Read it Because You Will Learn About Family in Zimbabwe

Our full 2016 Reading List is here.




They Are Coming (Zimbabwe)

READ IT BECAUSE: You are wanting to read something from Zimbabwe.  But really if you are just going to read one thing from Zimbabwe, I would recommend We Need New Names--my review of it is here (LINK COMING SOON).

Look, this wasn't the best thing I've ever read but it was an important read because it forced me to think of the idea of family outside the normal western version.  In this story's case, a township family struggles as a rebellious daughter joins a local militia before the approaching 2005 parliamentary elections.  So in this case, They are Coming is about the locality of all politics but moreso it's about what it means to grow up amidst uncertainty and violence.

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
My 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

KIndle Notes

They are Coming by Chris Mlalazi

You have 6 highlighted passages

Last annotated on April 30, 2016

With the red band around his forehead, and without a shirt, Ambition feels like a WWF champion. He kneels on the slab of rock, the white cloth draped over his small shoulders, its ends in his hands. He has not yet covered his head to pray. The scene before him is too interesting. His mind wanders.

‘When we’re very frightened we can do the impossible.’

In 1977 the war of liberation was escalating. Firefights between the Rhodesian army and the defiant guerrillas became a regular feature of life in rural Zimbabwe.

A warm feeling settled on Thenjwe’s heart when Solomon called her by her totem, but

For the umpteenth time, Ngwenya wonders how so many vendors selling the same produce can make any money.

‘Who is Doctor Martin?’ Ntando whispers. ‘Maybe he’s a doctor in town that Mrs Gumbo visits when she’s not feeling well. He’s probably a white person, because his name is “King”.’ ‘Now I’m going to read an excerpt from Dr Martin Luther King’s speech. “I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice …”’ ‘Her doctor is very good in English,’ Ntando comments. ‘What’s Mississippi?’ ‘Maybe it’s an injection for mararia, but shhh, let’s listen.’