For August: Watcher in the Pine by Rebecca Pawel

Once again, we are kicking back in August and enjoying a mystery, this time one from Rebecca Pawel's series set in the aftermath of the Spanish civil war, Watcher in the Pine:

Spain, 1940. Potes, a remote northern mountain village, is Carlos Tejada’s first independent Guardia Civil command. He soon discovers that this “promotion” is a mixed blessing. The villagers are unwelcoming. He and his pregnant wife, Elena, have no place to live but the jail, and his own men seem strangely hostile. Is it just their suspicion of his wife’s Republican sympathies? Or is there more going on in the beautiful but bleak area, recently devastated by the civil war? Tejada discovers that there may, indeed, be a new outbreak of that war with Potes as its epicenter. And he must find a way to reconcile his love for his wife with his duty.

Our May Author: David Treuer

Watch Writer David Treuer on PBS. See more from Tavis Smiley.

This month we are reading Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life by David Treuer. You can start to get to know the author at his website davidtreuer.com. Here are a few more tips:

The 12 minute video above serves as a good intro to the book. You can also listen to Treuer discuss the book on Talk of the Nation and while you are on the NPR site follow-up with this 2008 Fresh Air interview with this brother Anton about Ojibwe language preservation, a favorite topic here at Rights Readers.  Slate also has a good audio interview about the book plus  a series he wrote in 2009 about Indian casinos.

In this Los Angeles Review of Books interview, Treuer talks about the book's balance of memoir, journalism and history, and fiction vs. nonfiction,

A lot of my fiction was trying to destabilize our thinking about Native people. The confidence with which people said we meant this or that. I wanted to wreck that confidence (with my novels). But with Rez Life I wanted to see what a good hard look at power would do to our ideas. Why do reservations exist? Why do we have casinos? When exactly did that happen? Why? Where and when did boarding schools exist? Why are there so many Indian kids not living with their parents? What do reservations mean? How did they get to be the way they are? So the nonfictionness of Rez Lifeis meant to help answer those questions. What can we see if we look closely? What can we see if we look carefully? What happens when I strip away all surface style? What happens to our vision then? Ironically — I think we see much more of the plurality, the multiplicity, the fecundity, the sheer range of Indian life. It isn’t one thing. Or two things. Indian life is blessedly diverse and complex and vibrant. That’s what life is after all — multiplying forms. And that, above all, is what I was trying to show: life gets bigger the more you look at it, the more you live it.

Our resident language geeks might want to check out this 2009 On Being story and this essay in the Washington Post. And from the NYT, here are some tips from Treuer on planning your canoe trip in Ojibwe country.

Finally, if you're curious about Treuer's fiction, you can get a taste from this reading. It had me intrigued!

For July: American Gypsy by Oksana Marafioti

For July, we have selected American Gypsy: A Memoir by Oksana Marafioti, 

Fifteen-year-old Oksana Marafioti is a Gypsy. This means touring with the family band from the Mongolian deserts to the Siberian tundra. It means getting your hair cut in “the Lioness.” It also means enduring sneering racism from every segment of Soviet society. Her father is determined that his girls lead a better, freer life. In America! Also, he wants to play guitar with B. B. King. And cure cancer with his personal magnetism. All of this he confides to the woman at the American embassy, who inexplicably allows the family entry. Soon they are living on the sketchier side of Hollywood. 

What little Oksana and her sister, Roxy, know of the United States they’ve learned from MTV, subcategory George Michael. It doesn’t quite prepare them for the challenges of immigration. Why are the glamorous Kraft Singles individually wrapped? Are the little soaps in the motels really free? How do you protect your nice new boyfriend from your opinionated father, who wants you to marry decently, within the clan? 

In this affecting, hilarious memoir, Marafioti cracks open the secretive world of the Roma and brings the absurdities, miscommunications, and unpredictable victories of the immigrant experience to life. With unsentimentally perfect pitch, American Gypsy reveals how Marafioti adjusted to her new life in America, one slice of processed cheese at a time.

For June: A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer DuBois

For June, we have selected A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer DuBois,

In St. Petersburg, Russia, world chess champion Aleksandr Bezetov begins a quixotic quest: He launches a dissident presidential campaign against Vladimir Putin. He knows he will not win—and that he is risking his life in the process—but a deeper conviction propels him forward. 

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, thirty-year-old English lecturer Irina Ellison struggles for a sense of purpose. Irina is certain she has inherited Huntington’s disease—the same cruel illness that ended her father’s life. When Irina finds an old, photocopied letter her father wrote to the young Aleksandr Bezetov, she makes a fateful decision. Her father asked the chess prodigy a profound question—How does one proceed in a lost cause?—but never received an adequate reply. Leaving everything behind, Irina travels to Russia to find Bezetov and get an answer for her father, and for herself.

Our March Author: Mara Hvistendahl

This month we are reading Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men. The author has a personal website where you can learn more about this informative book and also check out some the other writing she has done, much of it for Science. She also lists many of the interviews she's given about the book. Here's one from Shanghaiist and another from Salon for starters. Our Loyal Readers will certainly appreciate this question and response from the Minneapolis Star Tribune,

Q Your subject is so upsetting -- and yet "Unnatural Selection" is surprisingly addictive with its rich characters and scenes. Did any writers inspire your style? 

A I admire the way Philip Gourevitch writes about Rwanda -- you know, the book with the really long title, "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families."

For a nickel summary of the book you could go with this NPR piece, but if you have more time, the video above or the audio (also available via iTunes) on this page, New Books in Gender Studies,  will give you a more thorough overview of the book. Much of the controversy surrounding sex selection centers on abortion. In this Salon article, Hvistendahl focuses on how antiabortion advocates (like NYT columnist Ross Douthat) read her wrong.

A step removed but not completely unrelated, Hvistendahl writes for the Atlantic about the consequences of having a child, including her own, in the Year of the Dragon. Or try this Science podcast about predicting unrest and conflict in countries with a demographic "youth bulge", another interesting convergence of science and human rights. Finally, of concern to our work on behalf of Chinese dissidents, see this article, The Great Forgetting, which mentions another Rights Readers author, Ma Jian.

Egypt Erupts Again: More from Amnesty and Alaa Al Aswany

Amnesty researcher Diana Eltahawy gives an on the ground report on the current unrest in Egypt in the video above, passing on concerns about impunity for police who commit human rights violations. If an action becomes available, we will pass that on.

This brought to mind that Alaa Al Aswany, activist and author of The Yacoubian Building has given a couple of interviews about the progress of the Arab Spring revolution that are worth your time. A short one from BBC Newshour here, and a longer podcast from Radio Open Source here. In a wide-ranging discussion, he talks about his public confrontation with Mubarak-appointed Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik during the uprising and dispenses advice for moving forward.

What we are expecting but never had from the Western governments is just to leave us alone. We are going to do our democracy for ourselves. But do not support the terrible dictators! That’s what happened with Mubarak. He has been supported by the Western governments for decades, right? Everybody knew what kind of dictator he was. But this question of ‘interests’ — he was ‘okay’; he was doing what Israel wanted; and there was another assumption that he was the barrier against Islamism; but he was not the barrier, he was the reason for the fanaticism in Egypt. That’s clear in my novel… The point here is that what we need from the Western governments is not to support Arab dictators any more…

Wikipedia suggests that another novel is forthcoming.

Stephen King on Guns

Stephen King has written an essay, Guns, in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. As master of the horror genre, King has special insight into our deepest psychological fears and the lethal ways they can combust especially in adolescence. The piece deals in part with his early novel Rage, which he had pulled after it was implicated in several shootings,

My book did not break or turn them into killers; they found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken. Yet I did see Rage as a possible accelerant, which is why I pulled it from sale. You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it. 

King asks gun-owners to similarly accept responsibility and work for sensible gun restrictions. A provocative read for those who want to wrestle with First and Second Amendment dilemmas! Download the essay here. You can also learn more about the essay from Brain Pickings.

(Don't forget: take action to stop human rights abusers from getting weapons here)