The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy by Michael Lewis-Book

From a Google image Search – Facts.net

Michael Lewis’ book The Fifth Risk is nonfiction. It examines what happened in several government agencies when Trump won the 2016 election. Presidents usually put their own people in as heads of our government agencies, and they tend to do it quickly and strategically. A team is generally sent in to make a smooth transition in services that benefit key groups which in turn benefit American citizens.

When Trump took office several department/agencies saw no transition team arrive and if a new head of agency had been appointed, they tended to arrive alone and late and to ignore the transition materials prepared by outgoing staff.

By now Americans have heard plenty about the Heritage Foundation’s agenda for the RNC if Trump wins in 2024 in the nearly 1000-page Project 2025 pdf. Lewis in his book The Fifth Risk takes a deep dive on a few areas where Republicans already showed us what changes they plan to make in programs that Americans rely on, programs that Republicans want to shut down. Trump, in his first term as President, tended to replace career people who were experts in their fields with loyalists who planned to deconstruct the departments they led.

One of these departments was the Department of Energy. Trump and Republicans are climate deniers. They do not want to implement alternative energies; they would rather rely even more heavily on fossil fuels. Employees in the Department of Energy expected people to be sent by the new administration to the department for the transition. They had all the transition notebooks ready to bring the new staff up to date on things like how to stop a virus, how to take a census, how to tell if a foreign nation has nuclear capability. No one showed. A man named Pyle finally showed up but would not listen to experts in the department. He suggested weekly meetings but never attended them. He sent a list of 24 questions which asked for lists of attendees to energy meetings. All DOE scientific experts were told to leave despite the need for national nuclear security.

Chapter II tells the story of Ali Zaidis whose parents moved him from Karachi to a small American town with no Muslims. Ali became a Republican until he traveled with the America’s Promise Board to help in New Orleans after Katrina. He was shocked by the poverty he saw. He asked himself how anyone could “lift themselves up by their own bootstraps” when there were no bootstraps. This question also came up – “If you’re a store owner after a weather crisis, should you hike up the cost of flashlights.” Members of the Republican Club said yes. Ali said no. So, Ali joined the Obama campaign and took a job at the White House. He was using data from the Department of Agriculture. It was a month before anyone showed up in 2016 from the Trump administration. The appointee was a hunter and gun enthusiast. He wanted a list of employees who worked on climate change. The Trump administration sent in employees with little or no agriculture experience and everyone was instructed not to say “climate change”. Sonny Purdue finally arrived in April.

The USDA had a particularly complicated budget. They oversaw food services and school lunch programs and WIC. Trump cut food stamps over 25%. People are convinced that food stamp recipients buy things that are not acceptable and sell their food stamps for cash. Since the EBT cards were put into use cheating was rare. Hungry people are not always fed. The states get the money, but they don’t have to use it to feed people. “We are proud to do the absolute minimum,” said one state leader. I haven’t told you all the sad anecdotes. It’s the Department of Agriculture after all and we haven’t even talked about farms yet. Changes in ag-science drive changes in society.

The third department discussed by Lewis is the department that keeps track of the weather. Before the technology developed and computers were able to handle complex data, there was very little data available about the weather. After a deadly hurricane hit Joplin, Missouri it was noted that tornado warnings often came too late. We have seen the improvement in weather data since early days. When the Trump team came in to the agency employees were not allowed to say the word “tornado”, because I guess if you don’t say it then it won’t happen? (Ridiculous) Since the arrival of weather channels like AccuWeather people tend to think that their weather reports come from private endeavors, and they don’t realize the role of government and science in supporting the collection of weather data. Republicans want to stop sending out weather data for free and to sell it to private enterprises that will then sell it to us.

Although this book is about the first Trump administration the author warns us of what might happen in a second Trump term. Michael Lewis covers information that many citizens don’t have access to in his book The Fifth Risk. Be informed.

All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby – Book

From a Google Image Search – LitStack

Listening to All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby comes with the bonus of the reader’s accents, all Southern dialects that vary according to which character is speaking. The accents all share similarities since one reader is speaking but it works and adds flavor to the story. I am listening to books again temporarily because I saved up credits from before my cataract surgery when I couldn’t read print books easily. After briefly subscribing to Audible + I ended up with 6 credits to spend – a dream scenario for a reader.

Charon County (Virginia) has been associated for decades with dark deeds and evil events, perhaps a negative karmic gift that resulted from the mythical reference it was saddled with, and because it was founded in bloodshed against indigenous people, “sown with generations of tears.” “The South doesn’t change” says the author.

Titus is, by some miracle, the first black sheriff of Charon County. Dressing for his day is described with ritualistic echoes of warriors preparing for battle. It’s a good thing Titus is prepared because this is no ordinary day in Charon County. Just as he finishes dressing with his bulletproof vest underneath and his gun belt strapped to his waist, his radio squawks and the news is that there is a school shooting in progress at the high school.

Although mass shootings are right out of the headlines of the moment, it turns out that only one person has been killed. This was a targeted hit. The shooter is a local guy, Latrell (hard to get spelling right from listening to a book). He has killed a very popular teacher of 9th grade geography who has a reputation for going out of his way to help needy students, Mr. Spearman. Why? Titus had hoped to find out by questioning Latrell, but Latrell committed suicide.

What follows is an investigation that uncovers some grisly, hateful, and secretive actions that will weigh heavily on this town for many years to come. These activities do not speak kindly of the darkest bits of human nature, but the author addresses legitimate concerns about real world events. However, this is a mystery novel and not a book that attempts to sort out the human dilemma.

While not for the squeamish, readers will read on to find out the identity of a man who wears a wolf mask to commit heinous acts that act out his deep psychological pain. Titus, an ex-FBI agent, has a warm relationship with his father Albert and his brother Marquis. He has a current girlfriend (Darlene) and an ex-girlfriend (Kelly). These are the core characters showing us a sheriff who is well-adjusted, dedicated to justice, and a bit clueless when it comes to women. Good characters make good books better. If you like mysteries this one is well worth reading.

Lucky by Jane Smiley – Book

From a Google Image Search – New York Times

In Lucky, a novel by Jane Smiley, the author gives us a whole life – the life of fictional folk singer Jodie Rattler. Sadly, Smiley, describes what sounds like an exciting life in a rather monotone and unemotional way. Written all in first person, Jodie rattles off what she did first and what she did then, offering up the tick-tock of her life.

She’s an adventurous character who takes money from a successful day at the races and squirrels it away as a good luck talisman. She writes songs, tours with bands, cuts records but never reaches rock star status, seemingly by choice. Jodie lives in New York City, London, in a cabin she buys in the Hudson Valley, and on and off in St. Louis. Her Uncle Drew helps her recording royalties grow from one to 8 million dollars. Lucky. Jodie, like many women who are freed by the pill has sexual adventures. Unlike many a brokenhearted real live girl, she chooses her men wisely. Although left with many fond memories she decides to stay single and not have children. She meets many people at her concerts, at her gigs, and as she travels but does not keep them as close friends, something she comes to regret and works to change.

Smiley also offers us a love story to a city, the city of St. Louis. Jodie loves to walk around the neighborhoods she admires in St. Louis and repeats the names these neighborhoods are known by. She stops her musical travels and comes back to St. Louis to take up parental caregiving duties as many of us have been called on to do. Caregiving teaches many lessons. In the end Jodie weighs in on current political anxieties and her own gratitude and regrets.

It’s a slow book, but Jodie lived through times familiar to many of Jane Smiley’s readers. Jodie’s lyrics did not connect with me, but it seems there could be many worse lives than that of a musician. I liked the novel but didn’t love it. (OK, perhaps spending too much time on Facebook.)

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann – Book

From a Google Image Search – West Vancouver Memorial Library

The movie is streaming online, and I am just getting around to reading Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. This is not a literary book. Indeed, it’s a bit dry in style and involves many names, mostly of men. And not for the most part good men. However, the content is anything but dry; it’s still shocking even if you believe that recent events have made you unshockable.

The story begins with the Osage Indians, continues with oil and gas discoveries, and ends with plots, murders, greed, theft, and the formation of the modern FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. The US government had treaties with indigenous people which they frequently ignored. That’s how the Osage tribe ended up far away from Kansas and found themselves in Oklahoma. (Next stop Pacific Ocean?) Each family was given allotments of land that depended on the size of the family. When oil and gas were discovered, it turned out that the Osage did not own their allotments, but they owned the mineral rights under them. Each member of the family was given a “headright” to profits from any wells on his/her property.

Although the Osage had those headrights, the government (in its infinite wisdom) sought to “protect” the naïve owners of these headrights. They assigned white folks to act as guardians. That, rather than offering protection, opened the door to human predators who had no moral boundaries. The greedy guys did not even stop at killing someone or paying someone to do it for them. To make sure the headrights came to a white person, marriage was required.

The story begins when two members of the tribe have been killed by a bullet in the back of the head. Charles Whithorn had been missing for a while and Annie Brown’s body was found quickly due to pressure from Annie’s sister Molly. Annie and Molly were quite different. Annie liked to party and so she was given short shrift by the authorities, her life undervalued and disrespected. Molly lost her sister Minnie who seemed to get progressively sicker for no discernible reason, as did Mollie’s mother Lizzie. For the time being, Mollie’s married sister Rita seemed fine. Mollie was married to Ernest Burkhart, a white man. He was related to William Hale, a man who seemed overly present in the lives of certain members of the Osage.

The machinations of bad actors are what makes this tale both shocking and engrossing. Can you guess which characters are the slimiest? Remember, these are all real people.

The Armor of Light by Ken Follett-Book

From a Google Image Search – Lit Stack

Ken Follett’s fifth book in the Kingsbridge series is The Armor of Light. The Pillars of Earth is the most famous book in the series covering the era when the cathedral was built in Kingsbridge in fascinating, if fictional, detail. Reading this book enticed me to finish the rest of the books. Although not quite as good as The Pillars of Earth, all the books in this series tackle different eras in British history. The Evening and the Morning tells a story of the Middle Ages. World Without End brings readers to Kingsbridge two centuries after the building of the cathedral. A Column of Fire immerses us in the period of the Reformation. The Armor of Light focuses on the ways progress in the textiles trade affected the residents of Kingsbridge along with the involvement of England in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte.

In each case Follett writes about the injustices that arise from having only two classes, the wealthy who control government, laws, and the courts, and the worker class at the mercy of the rich who show little or no compassion. He uses real historical moments and peoples them with fictional characters we can relate to. In Part I, The Spinning Engine, 1792-1793 we meet Sal Clitheroe, her unfortunate and beloved husband, Harry, and their son Kit. They are picking turnips and loading a cart under the watchful eyes of the Squire’s son Will Riddick, a coldly entitled and incompetent overseer. They are serfs who are paid tiny wages for hard physical labor. The workers can see that the cart is overloaded and not safe, so they are not surprised when a wheel breaks and Harry is trapped underneath. When Harry dies a distraught Sal has to fight for Poor Relief, she has to let her six-year-old son go to work polishing boots at the Manor House. Sal’s challenges are unending because she must stick up for herself and Kit, usually unsuccessfully as employers would rather fire injured workers than pay them, and the courts are manned of the powerful aristocrats or church officials. One church official says, “I’m not in the business of feeding other people’s children.” (An Anglican church leader talking of Methodists) (p. 49)

Here we have the moment when cottage industries must give way to machines, in this case a spinning jenny that spins 8 threads at a time, and right on its heels, a machine that spins 48 threads at a time. Housewives in cottages tend to produce 3 threads per day.

In Part 2, The Revolt of the Housewives, 1705, when inflation arrives because of war with France bread becomes very expensive. Eventually, the housewives who don’t have enough grain to make their own bread become an angry crowd when they find that Kingsbridge has not bid high enough to stop their grain from going to another town. Local bread will be costly, and supplies will run out quickly. The housewives do not want the flour to go to another town when they will be left with no grain. Again, there is Poor Relief, but it is difficult to get enough to live on as Harry’s widowed wife Sal learns. Bread has become unaffordable just as people are losing jobs because of the new machines at the mills, a conjunction of events that can lead to social pandemonium. The militia is called to stop the insurrection of the housewives, but these local boys won’t fire on their neighbors. Steam machines are more reliable than those that run on the water from the river so workers must adjust to new methods and new job insecurities once again.

In Part 3, when workers try to form groups to be able to force owners and gentry to inform workers when more efficient machines continue to replace workers Parliament passes The Combination Act in 1799 which makes it illegal for workers to gather to try to get protections from owners who tend to keep advances in technology secret (to unionize). One owner imported “scab” workers from Ireland when workers tried a strike. In Part 4 we meet The Press Gang, 1804-5. As the war escalates England needs more and more soldiers. “My guess is that about fifty thousand men have been forced into it (the military),” Spade (David Shoveller) said. “According to the Morning Chronicle there are about one hundred thousand men in the Royal Navy and something like half of them were impressed. Part 5 finds Britain at war with the French led by Napoleon Bonaparte and most of the men and older boys from Kingsbridge go off to war. Wars are often social levelers. When the war is won Parliament passes workers’ rights reforms begin to create fairer conditions.

There are plenty of characters whose lives intertwine with the events related to the workers’ rights battles exposed in Follett’s book. Some marry, have affairs, have children, and form same-sex pairs which must be kept secret. Some run afoul of the gentry or the factory owners and suffer out-sized consequences because the same people that own and run the factories also control the courts. If you like to learn history while enjoying the literary presentation of fictional characters affected by that history, Ken Follett is someone who does a great job with both.

Revolution Song: The Story of American Freedom by Russell Shorto – Book

From a Google Image Search –

Some books get under our skin, and we credit the author for being such a spellbinding writer. We become a fan, and we want to read every book that author has written and any future books s/he writes. That is what happened to my friend when he read Revolution Song: The Story of American Freedom by Russell Shorto. He was so excited that I agreed to read Shorto’s book. Not long ago I read George Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow so I expected that I would just find Shorto covering familiar ground. But the Chernow book was published in 2011 and Shorto’s book was published in 2018. The latter book is informed by a whole lot of recent political scrutiny.

Shorto’s history does not just cover the role of George Washington in the American founding. He invites some less well-known Americans into the mix (along with a few Brits and Washington’s great friend, Lafayette, a Frenchman).

We follow a slave stolen from his native land and brought to America, going by his slave’s name, Venture until he finds his way to freedom, the raison d’etre for the Revolutionary War and a common thread among the characters in Shorto’s book. It is a long time before most African Americans achieve freedom.

We follow a Native American, member of the Six Nations, Cornplanter, who treats with leaders who are French, British, and American and who temporarily finds his little piece of freedom.

Margaret Coghlan stands in for all the women whose freedom was ignored in this war for freedom and individual liberty.

“Margaret Coghlan felt this pull of freedom that was in the air in the eighteenth century, but she realized, too late, that it did not apply to half of the human race. History does not record what became of Coghlan’s children, the poor waifs she dragged around with her as her tragic life wound down, but her ideological descendants span the history of the women’s movement, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Gloria Steinem, and for that matter includes people like Amelia Earhart, Ellen DeGeneres and every woman who broke a gender barrier.” (p. 506)

Abraham Yates was a conservative who felt that America should be a loose affiliation of states without a strong federal government. He began with almost nothing and had to work very hard to win whatever personal power he could fight his way in society for. He eventually became a lawyer and then a public servant and he had gathered enough clout to be included in the Constitution Convention to rewrite the Articles of Confederation. He had better reasons to back state’s rights than slave owners had but George Washington and his rival Alexander Hamilton favored a strong central government, taxation, and a federal bank. Yates was able to force the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution

Our founders saw the mismatch between promising to honor the belief that “all men are created equal” and the belief of many slave owners that slavery was necessary for the economy and that black men were savages and therefore not equal to white men. No one even considered for a minute the rights of women. They worried that this philosophical lie that lay at the heart of our government would one day destroy the nation.

“At the outset of the war they had gotten a proper scare when news reached them that hundreds of slaves in Jamaica had attempted an uprising. Even more troubling, the Jamaican slaves had apparently been inspired by the very ideals of freedom that Washington and his fellow rebels proclaimed. The Jamaican rebellion had been crushed, its leaders executed and either burned alive or had their bodies displayed as a public warning. For a man like Washington, the affair underscored the dangerous double-edged nature of the ideology the Americans espoused. Uprisings were a nightmare that all southern slaveholding families lived with. To give weapons to people they had been systematically abusing for generations was beyond his comprehension. Freedom was what Washington was fighting for, but not for them. Not now. It was an irony, an incongruity, a flaw in the American project of bringing true individual liberty into being: he did not deny that. But he couldn’t solve it. He was not a philosopher. (p. 352)

We are still dealing with the aftermath of this founding dilemma, and it seems to be tearing the nation apart even though slavery is no longer legal. Racism, the news shows us, is still alive and well in America to our shame and it may yet end our long flirtation with liberty.

Washington was also conflicted about whether America should have a strong central government or give autonomy to the several states. We are still fighting about which of these governmental designs would offer the most freedom and individual liberty. Washington chose to use his reputation and fame to back a strong central government, but he was not at all sure that it was the correct choice.

“In June, Washington wrote a circular letter “to the army,” but really to the leadership of the state governments. He had spent the entire war enraged at Congress’s mismanagement of finances and the underfunding of the army. There had been a power vacuum in the American government throughout the war; now it threatened to open into a chasm. In the letter, he expressed his happy astonishment that what they had fought for had actually been achieved: that Americans were now “possessed of absolute freedom and Independency.” But he stressed that the structure for maintaining that freedom was lacking. Taking his cues from Madison and Hamilton he suggested that what was needed was “an indissoluble union of states under one Federal Head.” This required that the individual states “suffer Congress” to exercise authority. Without this “everything must rapidly tend to Anarchy and confusion.” (p. 402)

Washington shows his prescience when, as the author reports, he says,

“Sounding much like Yates, Washington said he now saw that periods of turbulence would “gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & repose in the absolute power of an Individual and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of Public Liberty.”

My friend was right. Russell Shorto nonfiction book was a worthwhile addition to books that cover the era of the American Revolution, and it is important because it discusses the challenges we face right now as we decide anew whether to choose freedom, even if it is only relative freedom, over autocratic rule. (Even those unusual characters in Shorto’s book are real people and there were documents telling the stories of their lives, with attributions given in the end notes.)

[John McHenry’s journal echoes Washington’s statement, “A Republic, if they can keep it.”]

2054 by Ackerman and Stavridis-Book

Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis have written a book about the future with the title 2054, a follow-up to their book 2034. The government in America is divided between two dueling parties, the Truthers and the Dreamers, that I had difficulty differentiating. There is also an ancient obstructer in the Senate named Wisecarver, who might remind you of Mitch McConnell. To please both factions the President and Vice President are not from the same party. A Civil War seems to be brewing.

President Castro, a seemingly healthy middle-aged man, dies suddenly of a heart attack. After examining the President’s heart there are indications that it has been genetically edited. This is not the same heart that the doctors have examined in the past. Has someone figured out how to edit genes from a distance? Has someone managed to create the Singularity? Can humans and computers now merge? Why does anyone want to pursue the Singularity when the technology carries with it a strong possibility of human extinction? President Castro was not a popular figure, and he is soon replaced with President Smith, previously Vice President Smith. Divisions escalate.

Besides what is going on in the government of America there is a cast of characters who are involved with gene editing and who are trying to trace down those who were working on this science and on the Singularity. Sarah Hunt who has recently died or disappeared is a key figure although we are left with her daughter Julia Hunt because most people believe that Sarah Hunt is dead. Julia, who has been working in the government is also a marine, who is sent back to her barracks under the new administration. We have BT and Michi in the hunt for Dr. Kurzweil, and we have Lily Bao, involved in a secret relationship with Nick Shriver, the new Vice President, but also pursued by Zhao Jin of China who wants her to come home. We also have Ashni traveling with her dad. She is trying to find Dr. Kurzweil because he is the last hope for keeping her father alive. Several groups set off at the same time to find Dr. Kurzweil who has retreated into isolation and who has been working on both gene editing and the Singularity.

This is a good story, but it is quite complicated and just reading it makes more sense than trying to explain the plot twists. What makes the book interesting is the relevance to currently trending topics and situations. Although I found it to be all plot and little substance some of the characters did connect with me well enough that I was interested in what was happening to them. The ending surprised me and perhaps it will surprise you too. This is a book to entertain you on a quiet Sunday afternoon or a sleepless night. The authors weigh in on whether we should try to create the Singularity.

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange-Book

From a Google Image Search – MPR News

Tommy Orange continues the story of the Red Feather and Bear Shield offspring from his book There There in his new novel Wandering Stars. We have already learned of the Trail of Tears from history class (maybe). We are removed in time from these sorrowful events, but we still bear the shame of our ancestors’ cruelties. Jude Star’s story opens the novel as the most distant traceable ancestor of the children in this story.

We are reminded that wars are always cruel and colonial wars are even crueler because they will always erase or reduce the powers of one party or the other. Jude Star ends up in a prison-castle in Florida from which he eventually escapes. Jude and Hannah Star’s son Charles Star and Opal Bear Shield have a daughter, Victoria Bear Shield. From one partner Victoria gives us Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, and from another partner Victoria gives up Jacquie Red Feather, the grandmother of the four children in the Red Feather clan who are being cared for by Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield who is not their grandmother but who shares a mother with Jacquie.

Orvil, our focal character, has recovered from being shot by a terrorist. This happened the first time he went to a Native American celebration where he danced in public. Of course, even when you physically recover from a near-death experience, your spirit may not heal. It could take time, or it could be psychologically fatal.

Jude Star is the name chosen for Orvil’s ancestor when he is imprisoned in Florida and attempts are made to force former member of tribes to “assimilate” and forget their traditional lifestyles and beliefs. The Star men are wanderers who cannot find their place in an America captured by white folks, white folks who cannot see a way to live beside the people they fought with over this land.

Opal, who now heads Orvil’s family, has changed the fate of the Star offspring. She has purchased a house in Oakdale, California where Orvil, Loother, and Lony can find some stability as a created family. The grandmother Jacquie lives nearby and helps when she can. Opal pays tuition to send Orvil to a good school. The family is about to learn that stability is always in danger from outside forces over which they have little control. Orvil needs pain meds. He is on opioids for pain but when they are no longer prescribed, he must find other sources. He is addicted. This leads the whole fragile little family down a sad path that makes it hard to believe that even the best of intentions can turn some lives around.

Things turn out better than you might ever think, but the family loses its nascent cohesiveness. Colonialism has consequences and Tommy Orange wants us to know that.

Tommy Orange’s books have a historical and cultural significance quite apart from their literary bona fides. They are authentic expressions of a person and a people trying to preserve their culture whose values were expressed by the way they lived lightly on the earth and by rich spiritual traditions. Placed alongside the materialism and power struggles of a culture that is so antithetical to the lived beliefs of America’s indigenous people the contrasts and challenges are clearly exposed in Orange’s novels. Here is a young voice we don’t often hear from illuminating the torn souls of a proud people or set of people with much to offer, especially the way to live lightly on the earth part.

The Fetishist by Katherine Min – Book

From a Google Image Search – Barnes and Nobel

Picking the next book to read is often problematic, a momentary panic sends me back to my book lists scribbled casually in notebooks full of political research, budget info, wordle episodes, drafts of essays, and wish lists. So many tantalizing titles are published each year that my list often leap frogs on to the newest releases without ever finishing with the older lists. There is always guilt and regret. Sometimes I wish I was a Large Language Model filled to the brim with all the world’s great literature and turned into a more well-rounded individual through a corresponding grasp of math and science. I read by instinct and thankfully there are so many excellent choices that I am rarely disappointed.

I stumbled upon Katherine Min’s book The Fetishist and once again I was not mislead by my instincts. This is a book for grownups. The book was published posthumously by Katherine Min’s daughter. The content is sophisticated and serious; fantastical and funny. Alma is sometimes the narrator and always the main character. She was a famous cellist who toured worldwide and sat in the first chair in global orchestras. She started playing at the age of 5 and by 11 she was obsessed with the cello.

“It was very physical, more like dancing than playing an instrument, and all her life Alma had felt this weirdly mystical space, the notes like steps, like gestures, the music like breath, like breeze, and the feeling of wide-ranging freedom, of expanse and embrace, and of always ending up somewhere else.” (p. 38)

Alma has MS and can no longer play the cello. Her body betrays her. Her fame is real, but it is a thing of the past. She has plenty of time to think back over her life. Alma fell in love with Daniel, a charming man, a fellow musician, and a womanizer. Daniel had commitment issues. Daniel also gets to narrate at times. Daniel, on an impulse, bought Alma an engagement ring, proposed, and then got caught by Alma doing the deed with Emi, another musician, another Asian musician. Daniel and Alma were engaged for about 5 minutes just before Alma had a very public medical episode that ended her life as a cellist.

“…and because being in a coma means having a lot of free time on your hands and the vagaries of the human brain are such that you never know what will pop into your head at any given moment. Alma finds herself surveying the fetishists she has known over the years. Ri-i-i-sssss kkk-iii-nggggs, rice chasers, Asiaphiles, victims of that mysterious disease known as Yellow Fever. Every Asian woman knows the generic type, but Alma, classical musician, world traveler, and unconscious taxonomist, breaks them down into three categories. 1) The cultural ambassador, 2) The carnal colonialist, 3) The rational revolutionary. (These are covered in more detail.)

A parade of rice kings wherever she went lecherous, treacherous, beseeching–enfolded like origami, bent like bonsai, draped in silk, and embellished with hanzi–presenting themselves like gifts to a foreign bride.” (pp 77-80)

This is the meat of the matter and there is more. Does Daniel pay for his sins? Revenge for Alma was banishment, cutting Daniel off, but her MS weakened the gesture as she no longer felt desirable. Someone else takes on the revenge of Daniel as his past leads to the most unusual kidnapping and Daniel’s mental reckoning. Kornell and Kyoto have their reasons.

This book is a literary gem, while offering an activist view against “Asiaphiles” who have given us terms like “Tiger Lily, China Doll, Geisha Girl, Baby-san, Miss Saigon, Suzie Wong, Me Love You Long Time, Goddamn Madame Butterfly!” (p 80) How you make a book with an axe to grind into a humorous and classy adventure is by being a talented writer; a writer who will entertain us no longer. This is our loss. Books, like music, take us “somewhere else.”

The Blueprint by Rae Giana Rashad – Book

From a Google Image Search – Paper Literary

Imagine if Martin Luther King never existed, or if the Civil Rights movement came too late to prevent a second Civil War. It’s not hard to imagine if you just find old videos of Strom Thurmond on You Tube. In Rae Giana Rashad’s book The Blueprint, we meet Solenne and Bastien, who sound like characters in a romance book. But this is no ordinary romance. Bastien is a Councilman headed to become President of the new America known as The Order. Solenne is a young Black woman, fifteen years old, headed to become a ‘concubine’. Since this book is written by a Black woman, I will use her words to offer insight into her story. In the Author’s Note, Rashad refers to female slaves in real America as “forgotten handmaids,” so here is another handmaid’s tale, every bit as chilling as the original, except it explains how Atwood’s tale of the handmaids is even more fraught for Black women.

Page 13

“Then he was gone, ballroom lights tunneling the dark, the hush of champagne on my tongue. THE PATH WE WALKED TO BECOME Black women wasn’t straight; it was a loop. Starting from nowhere, it brought you back to nowhere. A man at one end, a man at the other, humming the same song. ‘It’s just a body. Nothing special.’ If that were true, why did they want it? Why couldn’t it belong to me.”

Page 25

“I would never know how it felt to walk boldly because this world wasn’t mine…There was no protection for me, a Black girl, no tender touch, no consideration for a delicate exterior. No space to scream.”

Page 31

“They bragged about their accomplishments in private, boasted about the difference between them and their brother. But skin quality and quantity of sleeve emblems aside, from neck to ankle, the men were identical.”

“Councilmen were the Order’s most decorated men. The talented, skilled, brilliant. Engineers, physicians, cryptographers, developers. But fundamentally they were soldiers. Killers.

Page 104

“And still, this country is better than it was when it was the United States. An economy outpaced by the rest of the world, the racial unrest, the increasing crime and abortion rates, no, we couldn’t go on with so much death.”

Page 133

“From his frame above the fireplace, Thomas Jefferson watched me. What had Sally seen in him? He brought her to France at fourteen, where she worked, lived, and earned money as a freed woman. When he decided to return to America two years later, she didn’t stay like the French urged her. She returned to America, where she remained enslaved, and the babies followed like footsteps.

Page 214

“Seven years of militias, fragmented state governments, and millions of deaths. We’re fortunate the Founders of the Order had a vision for the country. Their sacrifice ended the war.”

(Solenne’s great-grandfather wounded, and in the hospital, talks about that war and the aftermath.)

“In that unseasonably warm January of 1960 in Metairie, Louisiana, he witnessed a military dictatorship seamlessly replace the civil government. Where did these men come from, he asked his nurse. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen. Nobody knows, she said. They came from nowhere. But that wasn’t true, they were military officers police officers, senators, governors, a World War II veteran like Bastien’s grandfather. While my great-grandfather slept, Black and white men stood in offices letting the ink dry on treaties. In those documents women had fewer rights than they did before the war, and Black women caught the worst of it.”

[Black men were given the state of Louisiana as a free state, but they had to relocate by 1962 or accept the new Constitution]

Page 249

“They knew that once you get that taste of freedom nothing will keep you in line. Lucas [Bastien’s rival] knew it. I’d already seen the sunset over Sanibel Island in pink and orange. Seeing something like that makes you feel like somebody created something just for you. It was like unwrapping a present every time I blinked. I wanted to keep it forever. Not a piece of it. All of it.

Page 277

“Pleading. This was the only system designed for us. We were girls, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. We were our ancestors, forbidden to read or write while lying under the arms of men who drafted legislation.”

Page 293 Author’s Note

“It was difficult to read these stories of forgotten handmaids and their forced reproduction. Though the United States outlawed the international slave trade in 1808, slaveholders found a way to increase the slave population by exploiting the domestic slave trade. They forced Black women into men’s beds, punishing those who didn’t have multiple children by their teens and rewarding those who did.”

Who wins, Bastien or Solenne? Find out how they both win, and both lose. Clearly this book connects to the America that we live in now, in 2024. There is talk from time-to-time about the possibility of a second Civil War when discourse heats up or when rights are lost. Women’s rights recently experienced a setback in the Supreme Court, a setback that will figure in the upcoming election and that could escalate depending on the results of the next election. The fears of Black women, that they might become “concubines” if the right-wing wins must be quite real and harrowing. Throughout Rashad’s story of Solenne, she is writing a book about a slave from 100 years ago, Henriette (Kumba) drawing parallels between the two women’s lives, reminding us that Black women are not property or sexual objects and warning us about the dangers of allowing racism to rule ever again.

I feel a kinship to Rae Giana Rashad because I wrote a similar book about losing freedoms if America becomes an authoritarian state. She did a better job than I did since she had to create all her characters from scratch, and I used both real and fictional people. My attempt in this genre is entitled 2028: The Rebellion. Rashad is offering fair warning to everyone. You should read the book.