Book Review: Gone with the Wind, Wild Swans, & the Chinese Revolution

By -
When I was fourteen, I told Mom that I admired Scarlett O'Hara because as an anti-belle, she rejected conformity and succeeded by being selfish, opportunistic, and trigger-happy. Driving like a banshee, my red-haired mother slammed on her brakes and fiercely condemned Scarlett O'Hara for her lack of morals.

Mom also questioned my taste in literature and suggested I read about the Chinese revolution. My sister who was reading Wild Swans, a book about three generations of Chinese women, took the opportunity to ridicule my ignorance regarding Deng Xiaoping. I replied, "I'm a 4.0 student. If that guy is so important, why didn't I learn about him in school?" 

As a teenager, the lesson I gleamed from Gone with the Wind was -- you can live in the past and romanticize a time now "gone with the wind," or you can live in the present, collaborate with your enemies, and move on. I frequently applied this analogy to Asia where southerners frequently expressed anxiety about the north. 

Now that I'm older, I think --  the American civil war didn't need to happen. The south could have freed its slaves if the Union had subsidized southern plantation owners who were often close to bankruptcy.


#GoneWithTheWind #WildSwans #Revolution #CivilWar #Libertarianism #Satire #South #North #UnitedStates #America #Slavery #Cotton #Restoration #Romanticism #Realism #Individualism #Libertarianism #RonPaul #RandPaul #OldSouth #Romanticism 





  






Location: Mountain View, CA, USA

Popular posts from this blog

The Space Where You Were by Nina Denison

By -
Image
       The Space Where You Were  begins sharply with a vivid depiction of edgy encounters at a college party, causing the reader to wonder what transpired between Diana, a college sophomore, and her ex-boyfriend Leo, whom she began seeing in high school.     Diana is hit with heavy nostalgia while returning to Leo's grandmother's home, a place that once made her feel safe.  Tension flares while she observes her so-called friends betraying her trust. They do this by invading Leo's grandmother's home and disregarding her treasured belongings: dusty mahogany, crystal ashtrays, and formal living room. Diana's friends also betray her trust by ignoring unspoken boundaries created by former couples.      Overall, The Space Where You Were is a taut, haunting short-story that eloquently depicts the loss one feels while transitioning from youth into adulthood. Very often it's not the individuals one misses, but a time, place, and sl...
Read more

Guard Thy Heart by Siwar Al Assad

By -
Image
Last year, I wrote a review for Guard Thy Heart by Siwar Al Assad. However, the review focused on relationships. Thus, I wanted to write another review focusing on healthcare issues. Guard Thy Heart becomes especially gripping when Assad describes Paul's horror at the practice of extracting organs from living donors, who sold them under appalling conditions: "Immigrants lacking documents or money, poverty-stricken Indian farmers, and other vulnerable people were surgically divested of a kidney or cornea, and then left without medical care and frequently unable to work. For their trouble, they received a meager sum, allowing the traffickers, doctors, and lawyers to recoup a profit ten times what they paid for that precious resource. The height of the monstrous practice was the kidnapping of human beings to be killed and cut into pieces to fill special requests."   - Assad, Guard Thy Heart Assad then concisely illustrates the politics behind such crimes by exposing ...
Read more

Special Thanks to my editor, Nina Denison for her work on Lucifina: The Belle of Hell

By -
Image
Having written two other books and worked with over three professional editors, I knew exactly what I wanted in a proofer for my third novel ---   Lucifina: The Belle of Hell . Nina Denison was my ideal candidate because of her impressive undergraduate degree in English literature and years of professional publishing experience. However, I was most intrigued by her background in poetry, experience editing cookbooks, and understanding of the YA market. Of everyone I contacted, Nina wrote back with the most enthusiasm and undertook her task of proofing with the utmost care. I was very impressed with her work. She was extremely methodical. In fact, I suspect she may have read my book twice. I've read Lucifina twice after receiving her edits and found no errors. This is rare. Nina was also extremely generous. She gave me a line --- the rain continued its drumbeats on the roof. She also offered developmental guidance, which ultimately changed the ending of my book. Nina's encouragem...
Read more