April Topic: Clash of Cultures

For April Reading Through Time, read a book where revolt, war, invasion, or just change, create tension and more when two or more cultures meet.

Ideas: The Vikings, the Roman Empire, Columbus, the Crusades, Native populations vs European settlers, the British Empire's expansion, any other Empire's move into new territories.

As always, enjoy!

Please ignore my error of putting march for this topic.

I am looking forward to this one. I am planning to read Warriors in the Crossfire which is a YA story about the local islanders on the Pacific Island of Saipan caught between the Japanese and American forces. Their culture and lifestyle never recovered from WW II.

I still need to figure this one out...

I'll definitely be doing a reread of The Sparrow (and Children of God). But I've got at least a dozen or more additional possibilities that I've tagged in My Library. Midnight's Children. Death and the King's Horseman. My Fair Lady. The Bluest Eye. The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street. I've got loads, and they'll all qualify for ROOTing. (ETA: And some will qualify for the Big Fat Book challenge too!)

I have so many Holocaust books as well as books about Polish Partisans; I should really read those instead of buying something new!

>5 CurrerBell: Have read The Bluest Eye, very good!

Would this theme include apartheid in South Africa? I'm not sure. I have The Housemaid's Daughter on my wishlist and thought it might be ok. The other book I'm thinking of is Bernard Cornwell's The Flame Bearer, which is about the 10th book in his Saxon series featuring Uhtred of Bebbanburg. He spends a lot of time fighting off the Vikings.

>7 Roro8: Yes!

BUMP

>9 majkia: Thanks for the bump/reminder! Will have to start thinking about this!

It's fiction, but I wonder if China Dolls by Lisa See might fit? It's Asia/US...

I have a lot of books about Vikings. Maybe I should have a look at them or maybe read A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar.

>11 LibraryCin: Sure looks like it fits to me.

I'll be reading the Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell, the second book in his Saxon Chronicles series.

I started early and read The Girl in the Green Sweater by Krystyna Chiger. This was one of the best Holocaust survivor stories that I have read, and I've read hundreds. Is is the story of the Chiger family who is forced to live in the sewers below Lvov for 18 months. This ranks right up there with Wiesel's Night. 272 pages 5 stars

I have completed my read of Warriors In The Crossfire by Nancy Bo Flood, and it was an interesting read but being a YA story just didn't have the depth or detail that I would have liked.

I finished The Sparrow and gave it 4**** – a close call, rather than just 3½***. I read it years ago when it was first published but didn't remember that much about it. I'm going on to a reread of Children of God when I get finished some Rosamond Lehmann for the Virago monthly read.

4**** for its very good plot, but it was a little while getting there with the back-and-forth between (roughly) 2019 and 2060. One jarring note was the world state of affairs in 2019 – dominance by Japan, religious civil war in Ankara. That's one of the dangers a scifi author faces when setting forth a very specific historical future, that the future might not turn out that way by the time the book's reread a quarter century later.

>17 CurrerBell: And now I finished the sequel, Children of God, likewise 4****

I read Das Schwert und der Mond, a novel about El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, son of a Spanish conquistador and a Peruvian princess, who was sent to Spain to go to university and met with much prejudice and misfortune. He also wrote the first history of the Spanish conquests in Florida and Peru. Fascinating.

Family ties and tears in India and America.

Secret daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda.

Alan Jay Lerner, My Fair Lady (the play, in a Penguin edition)

This Penguin text lists the original English cast (Theater Royal, Drury Lane) in 1958, although the play made its Broadway appearance in 1956. Looking back, I'm surprised it took so long to make it to film (1964).

Rex Harrison, of course, played on both stage and screen, and it was his Oscar-winner (though personally I'd give that year's Oscar to Peter O'Toole in Becket).

ETA: My Fair Lady is of course based on Shaw's Pygmalion, which was adapted to the screen in 1938 (with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller), winning Shaw the Oscar for Best Screenplay to make him the only Oscar-winning Nobelist.

Any of Sharon Kay Penman Welsh trilogies Here be Dragons is the first, dealing with the Welsh effort to stop conquest by the English. Its historical fiction at its finest, with lots of historcial accuracy, and a little romance

I finished another one, this time about a Japanese doctor accepting Western medicine in order to introduce smallpox vaccination: Blumen im Schnee. This was another great read, a spare, almost documentary prose, and a glimpse at a very different way of life. I was surprised most by the fact that the doctor had to do his traveling on foot.

>23 MissWatson: Translated, what does the title of the book mean? I'm trying to find this book in English, but no luck so far. I'm reading about Japan this quarter in reading globally......

>24 Tess_W: The literal translation is "Flowers in snow", and the editor explains that the flowers mean the little red pustules that develop after the vaccination has taken in the new host (they're propagating the virus by transferring it from one child to the next). The earlier version's title would be "Doctor Pockmark" in a literal translation. However, when I checked this author on WorldCAT, none of these showed up. I found that there are very few translations into English (or German), the ones available are either about the Second World War or have some connection to the US.

Wole Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman (Norton Critical Edition)

Perhaps the most famous play by the only Black African Nobelist. Based loosely on an historic incident that occurred in 1946, it tells of the "King's Horseman" whose role in life is to self-will his own death and follow the dead King into the otherworld. The King's Horseman, however, is prevented from suicide by an English colonial official (or does the King's Horseman fail for another reason?), following which the King's Horseman's Westernized son takes his place, the King's Horseman finally commits suicide, and two deaths occur instead of just one.

Soyinka himself quarreled with a "clash of cultures" description for his play because such a description placed Western culture on a level of equality with African culture, even in the African homeland itself.

China Dolls / Lisa See
4 stars

It’s 1938. Grace is from small-town Ohio, where she and her parents were the only Orientals, though her parents brought her up to be completely American, and has left her abusive home to go to San Francisco to try out as a dancer at an expo. While trying to find her way around Chinatown, she meets Helen, who was raised in a very traditional Chinese family/home. She convinces Helen to come with her to try out, as well. At the tryouts, they meet Ruby, another dancer, who wants to become famous. They become friends and live through WWII trying to make ends meet as entertainers in the Oriental clubs, and later on, touring the “Chop-Suey Circuit”.

I really liked this! I have to admit, I liked Grace best of the three girls, and I found her story the most interesting. The book is told in alternating chapters from each of the girls’ points of view. Each chapter is titled with the girl’s name, so I was able to follow this quite easily. It was really interesting to learn about the Chinese entertainers from the time period.

>27 LibraryCin: Lisa See is one of my favorite authors. I have this book on my ereader.......need to get around to reading it!

>28 Tess_W: I hope you like it! I see there are a few who didn't as much (and I can understand their reasons).

>29 LibraryCin: I was literally mesmerized by Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (also sobbed). I have the aforementioned as well as well as Shanghai Girls to read.

I have finally started my book for this topic - The Conqueror's Queen by Joanna Courtney (for some reason the touchstone isn't working on the title. It is about the wife of William of Normandy, a definite clash of cultures coming up.

So it turns out that the touchstone on The Conqueror's Queen doesn't work because the book isn't on LT. does anybody know how we get a book on to LT?

I finished The Pale Horseman about a young man, born a Saxon but taken by the Danes and raised as a Viking. He's now torn about whose side he's fighting on, the invading Vikings, or Alfred of Wessex.

Grim, grim, grim horrible time to be alive.

>30 Tess_W: I'm in a huge minority on this, but although I liked "Snow Flower" (3.5 stars good), it has not been my favourite by her. I have it and "Peony in Love" as my lowest rated by her (though I still liked them both), but I've enjoyed "Shanghai Girls", Dreams of Joy" (my favourite by her), and this one better.

ETA: I should also admit that there were a few people who didn't like this one (China Dolls) nearly as much as her others, and I can see why, though it didn't detract from how much I still liked it!

I finished A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar in time for April but I didn't get around to posting about it. Somehow time has gotten away from me.

It was a good read involving three women missionaries with British backgrounds embarking on a mission to the area of the Silk Road in 1923. Not knowing the local customs or behaving like women in the culture were expected to, got them in a lot of trouble. So much so that their survival was in question. Interwoven with the missionary story was one in present day London involving a woman at a crossroads and an illegal male Yemani immigrant who she befriends. The stories converged by the end of the story which was about a clash of cultures in more than one place and time period.

>32 Roro8: : For a book to end up on LT, it has to have been put in someone's catalog. Since it appears that no other LTers have added it yet, you just add it to your library and it should show up.

My reads for April's topic of Culture Clash:

Minuk Ashes in the Pathway, Kirkpatrick Hill
19th century Alaska: Whites v Eskimos, missionaries v native religion,

The Night Birds, Thomas Maltman
1860s Minnesota: Dakota v White settlers (Sioux Uprising)

Run Away Home, Patricia Mckissack
1880s Alabama: Certain whites v Former slaves v Indians

A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea, Eunsun Kim
1990s-2000s Asia: oppression and starvation v freedom

>38 countrylife: Cindy, I am so obsessed with the TIOLI Challenges that when I looked at the cover for The Night Birds all I could think of was - Bird on Cover - check - Beak Pointing Toward the Spine - check! When I actually read a few reviews of the book, I knew I had to add to to my collection. Maybe those challenges will be repeated some day! ;)

>39 DeltaQueen50: : That's funny, Judy. But completely understandable to a fellow TIOLI-obsessive! The Night Birds was a 4.5 star read for me. Hope you like it, too, when you find another TIOLI challenge to use it for.