Ashby Malinda Lo. OH. MY. GOD. It’s Cinderella, but a little different. Rest assured, just because this is an LGBTQ book, it does not dwell on it. Whoever the characters fall in love with is not so important in the magical kingdom the main character, Ash lives. Or is it magical? In the West Wood, people still believe in fairies and brownies and elves. But some believe these are just stories. Ash’s mother believed in magic, and when odd things happen to Ash after her mother’s death, she begins to question just who her mother was. One thing that’s good about this book is that it opens with so many questions. Like, what do Ash’s dreams mean? Are they dreams? Who the person with the gleaming, beautiful face that watches her, and why is there glittering dust in her window sill? As the questions slowly get answered, then the story begins to go in the direction of a Cinderella tale. There are also a number of fairytales that different characters tell as Ash goes about her life. Stories that serve to warn her, foreshadow the future, or reveal the past. So this book is a fairytale filled with other little fairytales.
When both of Ash’s parents die she has to live with her mean stepmother and stepsisters and cook and clean for them because blah, blah you know the drill. But all Ash wants is to be taken away from her horrible life to be with the fairies, who have watched over her through her life, but they won’t tell her why.
Ash’s life gets even more complicated when she meets the prince and the royal huntress. Also, instead of the fairy godmother just lavishing beautiful gifts onto her, what Ash wants comes with a price that has been entangled in curses and negotiations between witches, fairies, and humans before she was born. But don’t worry, all the plot thingies tie back up together nicely. I was hooked reading this, and I hope you will be too.
If you like Young Adult fiction, Ash is exactly like those books. If you like fairy tales, then you’ll like this. If you want some light summer reading, you’ll like this. I really enjoyed this book, and I think you will too.
6: Unto you your religion, and unto me my Religion
Are you a history buff interested in accounts of War—specifically moments like Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, or the Gulf of Tonkin incident? If you are, you must know the potent, practical knowledge of studying instances in which the USA has been forced to abandon ideals of isolation to wage war in foreign lands.
I have met professional and amateur historians that rattle off facts and stories about D-Day, Pearl Harbor, or the A-bombing of Japan as if they stood there with omniscience on each of those days—but I have met very few people that are receptive to the same, vivid discussion concerning what happened on 9/11.
This is understandable; the wounds of 9/11 have hardly scabbed over. We still feel an emotional connection to the event and there is a collective seething just beneath the surface of our skins that makes objectivity an arduous pursuit. Alas, in order to channel our emotions toward greater resolution we must ready ourselves to have discussions with our peers without the fear of sounding “Un-American” or resorting to branded key words that numb our tongues and blind our vision.
As for many of the most difficult dilemmas, the Shelves of Lemuria may hold the answer.
I had only begun to realize what happened on 9/11, and so six years after the towers fell I decided to buy a first edition copy of The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright from Lemuria. Previously, it had been impressed upon me that the reason we were attacked was the product of an animosity driven by jealousy, silently brooding over seas, seething in envy of American ideals and freedoms.
The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright exposed frailty and incongruence in my own perception of what happened on 9/11, 2001. The pages of this work armed me with a powerful weapon—understanding. Besides my own heartfelt praise, The Looming Tower has been internationally lauded as a must read by a myriad of authorities, and won the Pulitzer Prize. After finishing The Looming Tower I feel it is my civic duty to encourage you to read this book.
Within the book, Wright makes poignant elaborations concerning the atmosphere that propelled the atrocities of 9/11. Much of The Looming Tower is spent analyzing Osama Bin Laden’s complex relationship with the West and with Saudi Arabia. An effort is spent to humanize Bin Laden and understand the importance of his exile from Saudi Arabia and the dual issuance of Fatwas against Saudi Arabia and the United States concerning the presence of an American military base on Islamic ground.
The Looming Tower makes the claim that Bin Laden’s expulsion from Saudi Arabia, where he was gaining traction as a populist mobilizer, led to his formation as an internationally sought financier and organizer of several grass roots extremist organizations. Bin Laden allowed the hunger for retribution corrupt his high levels of education and pervert his ideology towards gruesome ends. His thirst for vengeance upon the religious and political elites of Saudi Arabia catalyzed his momentum towards the violent culmination of 9/11.
Bin Laden’s motive as shown in The Looming Tower for organizing the hijackings of 9/11 was a strategic maneuver of wicked guile. He wished to strike the Saudi government, but found his organizations’ numbers too small to carry out such an audacious move—so he did the one thing that would become the legacy of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: improvisation.
The lesson applied to The Looming Tower explains to me why Bin Laden attacked America in the first place. The thousands in the Towers, on the planes, and working in the pentagon were doves—completely innocent to motives and intentions of Bin Laden. The American Air Force, being the metaphoric red-tailed hawks theoretically would have become hungry for large meals of the religious and political elite of Saudi Arabia (being the metaphoric timber rattlers).
The stratagem was quite simple: attack Saudi Arabia by proxy. Al-Qaeda casted the 9/11 hijackers nearly exclusively from Saudi Arabia in order to illicit a violent response toward Saudi Arabia from the US. The intent of this design was to make it appear that the attack originated from Salafist and Wahhabi communities within Saudi Arabia, which (in thought) would propel America to employ their tools of war upon the political and religious infrastructure of Saudi Arabia. Perhaps, this could’ve happened if it weren’t for the hard work of our intelligence officers, who understood that the Taliban was housing Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
If you haven’t read a well researched, objective account on Al-Qaeda or extremism in general, The Looming Tower is the best place to start. Come to Lemuria, put the book in your hands and feel the historical proximity of yourself to Wright’s work. Open it, let your emotions flow as the pages turn and you will connect to this book immediately. Then the next step should come naturally: tell others how you feel and what you think should be the next step in “The War on Terror.”
Pictured: Osama Bin Laden on family vacation in German (Second from right).
To most of us, college is a time to broaden horizons, mentally stretch, and to find out where to draw our lines. For Tara Shultz, the line was immovable from the beginning with no hope of being re-drawn. The problem of her protest is twofold: trying to force the books out of curriculum for all students instead of personally removing herself from the class is ultimately a selfish and bullying tactic; and by claiming that she was “expecting batman and robin, not pornography” is patronizing and belittles an entire genre of literature (and its authors) that can have the emotional depth and breadth of the written novel.
We at Lemuria have been striving to carve room in the store to build up our stock of graphic novels that we believe are fulfilling, fun, and thought-provoking. We encourage all of our readers, young and old, to explore this medium of literature and remain open-minded as they read. Ultimately, a graphic novel on any subject can be challenging because instead of being the monarch of your imagination and creating your own version of the world being described to you, an illustrator takes that power away from the reader. It can be hard to un-clench our fists and relinquish that control. However, handing over the power of imagination to the artist does not make this mode of literature any less powerful or interactive. I believe that reading a graphic novel is in no way a passive act like watching television, but that it works different muscles in your brain, much like switching from jogging to swimming. Both are cardio, both are effective exercises, but you get sore in different places.
On several occasions when reading a graphic novel that was particularly weighty in its subject matter, having the wheel of imagination taken out of my hands was a relief. I can’t speak for all readers, but being able to take my mind off of the architecture of the world in the story and focus my attention on the characters themselves- it was transformative. So many brilliant artists use the of illustrations a graphic novel like a highlighter, underlining important ideas or phrases. In David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp, as the protagonist ages and changes, so does the style of art on the pages; and, peeling back even more layers of the title character, the style evolves even more as his opinions of the people around him change. It’s like looking through a pair of binoculars into a microscope; ultimately tricky and hard to wrap your mind around at times, but as the images come sharply into focus, the headache goes away and the wonder begins.
In a turn of events that would probably surprise one miss Tara Schultz, the first time I experienced the moment when the rug of low expectations was pulled from beneath me was- you guessed it- when I picked upBatman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. Poetic justice is a glittering and sharp sword. Miller weaves a story of regret and a scabby old identity crisis instead of simple vigilante justice and a good old fashioned political spanking for the corrupt. The Bruce Wayne of Miller’s Gotham City is older, more tired, and angrier than we are used to, and his self-conscious antics are equally compelling and embarrassing to see. The feeling of intense, growling reality that came from watching a man transform in such raw and painful way was shocking. I went in expecting witty one-liners and came out at the end shocked and emotional; feeling as if I had had a cold bucket of water sloshed over my head.
This new age of literature isn’t so new- Miller’s Dark Knight was released in 1986- but it feels as if it’s just had a fresh bath. More literary readers are turning to the medium for consumption, and authors are skillfully doing away with the “Batman and Robin” stereotype that people like Tara Shultz are trying to paste over the whole genre. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home waltzed into the spotlight when it was rewritten for the stage and recently won a Tony for Best Musical. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (one of the books that Shultz is protesting) became so widely known and influential that it has become required reading for many high school social studies classes. We are lucky enough to be living in a time where art, literature, and music are being appreciated and consumed in ways we never could have foreseen, but that won’t stop naysayers from trying to do away with anything they deem inappropriate or different. Educate yourselves. Read new things, stretch those unused muscles, and help us to encourage the growth of a generation of forward-thinking, open minded individuals.
In my opinion, just because someone can compare a cup of sugar to the idea of love does not mean they are a clever writer. I prefer poetry that can make me think, and I only came across this poem for my British Literature class in college. But it really resonated with me, because it was one of those few times I read something and felt relief because someone addressed a really specific feeling I’ve had.
Hap is basically about how Thomas Hardy wishes that some god or higher being would tell him that the hardships he’s had to endure in his life have some meaning, even if it is only for the entertainment of the god. But Hardy knows that most likely there is no meaning to his life at all, everything that has happened to him is simply chance, thus the title of the poem, Hap, is short for the “happenstance” of his life’s events.
Yay existential crisis! So it’s pretty sad, but just the idea that a famous poet has felt something that I have makes me feel a bit better. It’s a pretty cool poem, and is worth reading and researching the words that Hardy uses to describe his feelings because they have specific definitions that help with understanding the poem. Also, if you feel depressed after reading the poem, just imagine reading it out loud in the middle of the rain while sad music plays like in a movie, while you, I don’t know, shake your fist at the heavens. Then it’s hilarious. So I hope you read this poem, and I hope you feel oddly comforted by it like I did.
Hap By Thomas Hardy
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
First off, introductions: Hello all, there’s a new Maggie of Lemuria in town!
Well, not really. You might recognize my face. I’ve been in and out of the Lemuria rotating staff since the summer of 2013 before my senior year of high school. After a summer internship in Oz, I worked part-time as a senior, learned enough to provide an extra hand to wrap or work Oz during the holidays, and here we are. I just keep coming back, even after my freshman year at Ole Miss. I’m working on an English degree my parents still disapprove of.
Okay, glad we got that out of the way.
Recently, I’ve become acquainted with the genre of “environmental creative nonfiction”. Bear with me- it’s a fascinating niche of literature despite its horrendous umbrella term.
When I say environmental creative nonfiction, I’m talking about adventure pieces by John Krakauer, Cheryl Strayed’s wilderness memoir Wild, and Rick Bass’s diary-style Winter: Notes from Montana. What these pieces have in common are their personal narratives of growth and experience as influenced by their environment. The environment becomes a character within the work because it plays such a crucial role in where the piece goes.
One of my favorite pieces within this highly specific genre is David George Haskell’s The Forest Unseen. I was first introduced to this work in Nature Writing, an English course I was lucky enough to weasel my way into during my second semester. I was mostly in it for the chance to get some real writing critique and a trip to Costa Rica (lemme tell you friends, it was awesome), but I was lucky enough to also be exposed to some really phenomenal works of nonfiction.
David George Haskell is a professor of biology at Sewanee, and The Forest Unseen follows what he refers to as “A Year’s Watch in Nature”. Haskell observes a one-square-meter patch of old-growth forest, referred to as the mandala, for an entire year. The work is divided into chapters concerning specific anecdotes and aspects of life in the mandala, from fungi to insects to plant and animal interaction, touching on how all are linked together in a complex web. Everything is intensely researched and backed up with scientific fact. There are detailed descriptions of life cycles, bizarre adaptations, histories of scientific discovery. But what makes The Forest Unseen such a phenomenal book is Haskell’s skilled weaving of the scientific and the spiritual.
It begins with Haskell’s use of the term “mandala”. Mandalas are small circular sand drawings that are representative of the entirety of the universe and are in the tradition of Tibetan monks. From this one concept, Haskell brings into his book a complex layer of spirituality. He alludes to many different branches of faith and their relationship to the environment, discusses the nature of souls within the concept of the natural world, and draws parallels between his observations and religious concepts. By discussing spirituality in relation to science within the concept of the mandala, Haskell connects humanity to the environment, something we so often tend to view as some inconceivable other.
I want to put this book into everyone’s hands. I look for any excuse to recommend it to someone, but it is such a hard book to quickly summarize. It is about so much. It is about humanity and the environment and religion and science and the relationship between it all. It is about the past and the future. It has the power to speak to you if you let it.
In short, Haskell transforms a potentially dry, textbook subject into an ethereal reading experience (okay, maybe it’s a bit dry at the beginning but you can’t have everything). He creates intoxicating yet informative prose that reads like a poetry collection and a textbook. He brings the environment he observes to life, lets it breathe on the page and gives it a voice. Haskell has me head-over-heels in love with environmental creative nonfiction, and I have a feeling this is going to be a rather drawn-out love affair.
When both of Ash’s parents die she has to live with her mean stepmother and stepsisters and cook and clean for them because blah, blah you know the drill. But all Ash wants is to be taken away from her horrible life to be with the fairies, who have watched over her through her life, but they won’t tell her why.
One of my favorite pieces within this highly specific genre is David George Haskell’s