megtalksaboutbooks

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Because I Was a Girl: True Stories for Girls of All Ages

Because I Was a Girl: True Stories for Girls of All Ages  by Melissa de la Cruz  

This is the sort of book that seems like it would be a good choice for a mother to read to a young daughter before bedtime. Each chapter is a separate story, and most are empowering and relatively clean. Save for some cursing and non-graphic references to sexual abuse, the book reminded me of the sort of story collection that my elementary school teachers might choose for read-aloud time. Furthermore, these stories are more appropriate for the modern girl than are the fairytales born of a patriarchal society. There are politicians and doctors, but there are also beauticians and those in other “feminine” positions. The variety is such that a young listener has access to a world of opportunity and promise for the future. These women were told “you can’t”, and so they responded by turning to the next generation and telling today’s girls “you can”.  

The book is divided into decades, beginning with the 1920′s and 1930′s grouped into one section. The beginning of each section has a spread with the decade on the left page, and a list of key historic events on the right page. After the initial page spread, each chapter begins with its own spread: a black-and-white picture of the creator on the left, and the creator’s name on the right, followed by the beginning of her piece. The pieces are punctuated by black pages with graphics of quotes from the writing.  

A stand-out chapter is that by Tillie Walden, a cartoonist. The final chapter in the 1990′s section, Walden’s piece is not solely written, but instead takes the form of a miniature graphic novel. Walden discusses her experience with figure skating, which she started because she wanted to look like her older brother. Upon receiving, instead of black skates and black clothing, a dress and a pair of white skates, she began to realize that “being a ‘proper’ girl was about not being at all”, as “being meant questioning, desiring, leading”, and that was not within a girl’s role (Walden 223).  

Author Victoria Aveyard’s chapter, among others, discusses the 2016 election, referring to it as an instance “[w]hen the smart, determined girl in class lost to the loudmouthed bully” (Aveyard 207). She expresses grief over the outcome of the election, not only for herself, but for “[t]he little girls who exist right now, in every classroom, in every home, studying, creating, playing, dreaming” (207). I remember going to bed the night before, giddy with the thought that we’d soon have our first female president. I was so sure that Hillary Clinton would win. She had to win.  

And then she didn’t.  

After the election, there have been incredible surges of women’s activism. Women have run for office and won, they have marched, and they have worked to be heard. We have not laid down. And yet, the current administration threatens to smother any hope that tries to blossom. We cannot let this be the new normal. We cannot lose the progress that the women in this book, and so many other women, have made.  

It is on this note that I mention what has to be my favorite chapter: Libba Bray’s. Bray’s chapter is a harsh and beautiful story of anger. She recounts how she “held the leash of [her] anger and plucked the teeth from its mouth as it looked at [her] with sorrowful, betrayed eyes” (Bray 109).  After going through an accident and being faced with the subsequent gruesomely painful recovery, Bray realized that those who told her to curb her anger “did not care if [she] choked to death on [her] razor-blade feelings as long as [she] did not make them uncomfortable” (111). There is power in anger. When a woman’s anger is suppressed and dismissed as hormonal or irrational, her feelings are invalidated. It is so important, today as ever, to let ourselves be angry. It is crucial that we refuse to settle for anything less than equality. 

This book is harsh and true and inspirational. It is something that every girl should be able to read.

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American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men

Content warning: discussion of murder, suicide (graphic), hate crimes. American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men by David McConnell

Before I elaborate further on the content of this book, it is necessary to mention that the murders indicated in the title are very real, gruesome, and tragic. There is explicit language, and, as is to be expected with cases involving questions about sexuality, some content that may be disturbing to an unsuspecting reader.

In this book, David McConnell examines five different cases in varying depth, depending on the amount of information available, the complexity of the sequence of events, and McConnell’s own familiarity with the case. His research is extensive; he mentions in the Author’s Note that he has traveled to every place mentioned in his retellings, save for a few involved with the second case. Furthermore, he has made some of his research and additional resources available at americanhonorkillings.com, which redirects to his website, davidmcconnell.com. I suggest keeping the website open on a nearby laptop or smartphone as you read the book; the supplementary material is quite interesting. 

What stood out to me most about this book is McConnell’s incredible sense of empathy. It is present in each and every case-- with the victims, with the perpetrators, with all those involved, and even with the reader. In the introduction, McConnell makes it clear that “gay men are part of the story of masculinity” and that “there are different--many--kinds of men, but none belongs to a separate species” (12). This statement, in itself, summarizes his view of humanity in general: that, despite the differences upon which we fixate, we are all humans, and, as such, cannot be whittled down to one stereotype or another. 

The first case, examined in relatively little depth, is that of the 1995 murder of Scott Amedure. Briefly summarized, Amedure on multiple occasions professed attraction to Jonathan Schmitz. Amedure, despite denying this to Schmitz when Schmitz inquired, secured a spot on a “secret admirers” edition of the Jenny Jones Show. Schmitz, hoping the secret admirer would be his ex-girlfriend, was dismayed to see Amedure sitting there, waiting for him, on national television. Schmitz managed to keep it together for a short time, but a note that Amedure left on his apartment door was the final straw. McConnell muses that Schmitz “probably felt exposed and embarrassed as if the Jenny Jones millions were watching” despite the relative isolation of the building (26). Schmitz proceeded to purchase a shotgun, drive to Amedure’s residence, and fire two rounds into his chest before fleeing. Shortly afterwards, Schmitz used a pay phone to call 911 and effectively confessed to the murder he had just committed. 

Despite Schmitz’s lack of response to McConnell’s requests for correspondence, McConnell puts himself in Schmitz’s shoes, noting that, on the show, in reaction to Amedure’s presence, “he grins the way we do when we’ve been had” (22). This sense of perspective, the feeling that McConnell has tried to relate with each of the players in each story, endures throughout the book.

The second case is more detailed; McConnell has gone through years of material and sources to try to put together a comprehensive account of the eccentric figure that was Benjamin Matthew Williams. Determined not to dismiss Williams as simply the perpetrator of a series of hate crimes, McConnell introduces him as “a deluded kind of savior” (29). Williams and his younger brother, James Tyler Williams, firebombed two synagogues on June 18, 1999, and shot a gay couple, Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder, as they slept in their house on July 1, 1999. Police arrested the Williams brothers as they attempted to firebomb an abortion clinic. Ben Williams, however, did not stop there. While in prison, he attacked a security guard with a makeshift weapon, nearly succeeding in killing him by bashing his head in. Williams’s last murder attempt, however, was successful. He used a blade pried from a plastic razor to cut himself over and over again, some seventy-five times, until he finally bled out in the corner behind the toilet in his tiny prison cell. The murders, however, are only a small part of Ben Williams’s life. McConnell begins with Williams’s childhood, following him as he is homeschooled and sheltered, then has a difficult time coping with the outside world, resorting to clinging to conspiracies and cultish movements. It is in this stage of Williams’s life that McConnell’s ability to see the world from a multitude of perspectives becomes extremely noticeable. He acknowledges that anti-Semitism seems ridiculous and old-fashioned to many a modern reader, but argues that “[t]o a believer in Christian Identity things look different” (46). He presents a hypothetical situation, a different worldview, that aligns the reader with the reasoning behind white supremacists like Williams. It is so easy to dismiss hate groups as just that: hate groups, but doing so only divides us further. When we simplify beliefs into “ours vs. theirs”, we limit our own abilities to discuss, share, and learn, and thereby lessen the hatred in our society. 

Between each case is a discussion on the philosophical implications of each murder. McConnell mulls over the idea of true remorse and its origins, violence and its masculine appeal, and our need to have a black-and-white scenario in which the victim is innocent and the killer is evil. He argues that “we like our victims to be as pure as new-fallen snow” and that this combined with  “Americans’ fond indulgence for the bullying and cruelty of boys” creates situations in which we find ourselves justifying murders based on our perception of a killer as not entirely bad. In the 2009 case of Katehis and Weber, John Katehis, despite having stabbed George Weber repeatedly with no discernible motive, was the object of some pity because he was 16 and because Weber had a fetish for being smothered. When the victim is not a perfect angel, we find ourselves wondering if they deserved what became of them. This is dangerous. It is important that we separate preexisting notions of who is good and who is bad when we face these sorts of situations, lest we blame the victims.

I wholly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in true crime, especially in its implications in regards to human nature and society. Much of the material is dark and saddening, but that is because murder is dark and saddening. A good true crime book about murder will not be happy and light. David McConnell’s American Honor Killings discusses powerful sentiments that continue to hold influence on us and on our society today.

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A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald

A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald by Errol Morris

Some two or three years ago, I jumped on the Serial train. Initially created as an investigation of the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, Serial is a podcast by Sarah Koenig that discusses issues with the legal system and the possibility of Adnan Syed, the victim’s ex-boyfriend, having been wrongfully convicted. After Serial brought the case again to the public eye, Rabia Chaudry, a lawyer and family friend of the Syeds, published the book Adnan’s Story. Adnan’s Story summarized the murder, the trial, and the subsequent actions taken in the ongoing fight for Syed’s freedom. I found it convincing, final, and satisfying. Adnan Syed is still in prison, but I firmly believe that he is innocent and that there is a wealth of evidence supporting my opinion. I was hoping to draw the same conclusion about Jeffrey MacDonald after reading Errol Morris’s A Wilderness of Error.

I did not.

The MacDonald case, with which I was unfamiliar until I came across this book, is tortuous and off-puttingly complex. It is tempting to turn to a simple explanation of the events that transpired and to join an angry horde of either “guilty” or “not guilty”. I was, for a while, convinced that MacDonald was and is serving time for a triple-murder that he could not have committed. I am now unconvinced of either MacDonald’s narrative or the common narrative against him.

A Wilderness of Error is less the story of the MacDonald case than it is the story of Errol Morris’s immersion in the MacDonald case and of his informed opinion on the facts of the matter. Furthermore, it is difficult to obtain an unbiased account of the evidence and trials, in large part due to the initial bungling of the investigation and to the sheer number of individuals involved who formed and retained strong opinions about the outcome.

The exact truth of what happened on 17 February, 1970, is still unclear. Military police arrived at the scene at around 4:00 AM, as written in a report by investigator William Ivory. MacDonald, the only surviving member of his three-person family, “was loaded into an ambulance and taken to Womack Army Hospital, where he was treated for multiple bruises, an abrasion, small punctures, two stab wounds (one in his stomach and one in his chest), and a collapsed lung” (Morris 14). Investigators and emergency workers moved through the house, permanently upsetting crucial pieces of evidence. Ivory, who arrived shortly after the initial responders, based his opinion that MacDonald had staged the scene on inconsistencies like a flower pot remaining upright while the plant lay nearby, its roots holding a mass of soil. Morris follows this up with further statements by investigators revealing that one had righted the plant pot when he arrived-- behavior that crippled the integrity of the crime scene. Because the case is based almost entirely on physical evidence, it is difficult to know what to believe. For instance, MacDonald’s account of the attack involves a struggle with four intruders in his living room. His pajama top was somehow pulled over his head, and he recalls having it tangled around his fists and using it as a sort of shield to fend off blows. The pajama top became a critical piece of evidence in MacDonald’s conviction. The prosecution argued that the amount of Colette MacDonald’s blood on the top indicated that MacDonald had placed the top on his wife and stabbed her through the rumpled fabric. Photos of the crime scene seemed to support this conclusion, at least, until testimony from Specialist Fourth Class Kenneth Mica, who was at the scene before the photographs were taken, contradicts them. Mica says he does not “remember this piece of blue cloth here”, referring to the pajama top (Morris 53). Morris argues that the top had been moved to cover Colette MacDonald’s exposed chest.

The entire book examines only a fraction of “the wealth of information, the thousands of documents and tens of thousands of pages of transcripts, reports, affidavits, notes, and so on” available regarding the MacDonald case (Morris 494). This sheer amount of information is made more daunting by the looming possibility that it is largely useless, having been contaminated through carelessness, or withheld from the defense until it was too late to be examined effectively. Morris’s book selects information, but, like any other judgement of the case, is forced to select a standard of credibility. The argument’s integrity depends on the reader’s faith in the source. It is because of this that I remain undecided. I do not think that it is Morris’s fault that the book is unsatisfying. He thoroughly reviews available information and arranges it in a series of seven “books”, each with an underlying focus. His research is exhaustive, with death seeming to be the only obstacle to his conduction of interviews. However, I did not find in this book the overwhelming argument from Adnan’s Story. I did not find an easy or obvious conclusion. I was expecting at least some form of resolution, and it did not come. It may never. The truth is not always within reach, and the Jeffrey MacDonald case is a saddening and maddening example of the nature of reality.

TL;DR- If you’re skipping to the TL;DR, you probably don’t want to read this book. 

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Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History-

Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson (I’ve linked to the Kindle version because it has the cover that my paperback copy sports)

Isaac’s Storm: The Perfect Storm This essay is an analysis of a few key figures and the role of hubris in the devastation of Galveston in 1900. Constructive criticism would be much appreciated!

A “perfect storm” may figuratively refer to a number of factors that conjunctively exacerbate a situation. It may also refer to a literal storm, one that has formed in ideal conditions to become unusually powerful and menacing. In the case of the Great Hurricane of 1900, the perfect storm took on both of these definitions, its severity owing not only to the favorable climate and geography that amplified its destructive abilities, but also to the hubris of the age and the according conceit of several key figures in the National Weather Bureau. One such figure, the title character, Isaac Monroe Cline, played a special role in rendering his town of Galveston exceptionally vulnerable, and he paid the price with grave and permanent loss. In his nonfiction novel, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, author Erik Larson recounts the parabolic chain of events that led to the disaster on September eighth, 1900, from the butterfly flap of a mild sibling rivalry to the monstrous storm surge of bitter regrets and devastation of human life.

The nineteenth century provided mankind with a better understanding of countless aspects of science, among them, of meteorology. The United States Weather Bureau, however, faced intense skepticism about its effectiveness and usefulness. Although weather predictions were becoming more accurate, incorrect predictions did occur, and any blunder quickly eroded the public’s trust. On top of this, the Bureau had, in its short history, already incurred an enormous scandal. A Bureau official had been caught embezzling funds, and, to add insult to injury, had escaped from prison a year after being sentenced. This shaky public image served to shape the attitude of the Bureau towards forecasting drastic events such as hurricanes. The Bureau even went so far as to restrict hurricane predictions in Cuba, prohibiting telegraphs about weather, save those sent by U.S. officials, from traveling over U.S.-owned wires. This hampered the Bureau’s ability to forecast cyclones, as hurricanes generally reached the U.S. by way of the West Indies. Furthermore, despite Bureau Chief Willis L. Moore’s insistence to the contrary, Cuban meteorologists were significantly better-versed in the conditions that indicated a hurricane’s approach. In a sad twist of fate, the Cuban predictions that the ban suppressed proved to be entirely correct. Cuban meteorologist Julio Jover “actually called it a hurricane” as early as September fifth, while the majority of Cubans “had called the storm a cyclone ever since the first sighting in the final days of August” (133). As the storm progressed, and the U.S. announced that it would pass Florida and fizzle out in the Atlantic, a Cuban weather station called “the Belen Observatory said.... that it would undoubtedly reach Texas” (253). Because of the telegraph ban, Galveston had little warning of what was to come. Another factor in unpreparedness for the hurricane was Galveston, Texas’s geographic vulnerability. Galveston had a shallow bay, as well as access to the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, the storm surge, an influx of flooding comparable to a tsunami, hit from both bodies of water, wreaking havoc upon entire wards of the city. Some of this flooding may have been deterred had Galveston had a seawall, but its plans to erect such a structure were neglected some years prior, partially as a result of Isaac Cline’s publishing of an article that “belittled hurricane fears” and stated with unwarranted certainty that Galveston was essentially immune to severe inundation (84). This article took fuel both from Isaac’s personal conceit and from economic pressure on Galveston to beat Houston in becoming the major port city in Texas. In its rush to gain prominence, Galveston became the perfect target for the perfect storm.

In its essence, Isaac’s Storm is a cautionary tale that warns against hubris. In this way it is similar to many folk tales, with disaster striking as a result of blinding conceit. Bureau Chief Willis L. Moore exemplified the fatal flaw when he placed the telegraph ban against Cuban forecasts. His pride led to paranoia that the Cubans were trying to upstage him, and he lost sight of what should have been his top priority: advancing the field of meteorology in order to prepare for disasters and thereby save lives. Galveston itself was also a victim of its own self-importance. The citizens of Galveston felt superior to nature, as did many sea captains of the time. They believed that modern technology had triumphed over any disaster that could occur, and placed economic gain ahead of the construction of a much-needed seawall. Led along in their ignorance by sentiments like those expressed in Isaac’s article, sentiments of invincibility, the people of Galveston found their houses collapsing around them as the “sustained winds... reached 150 miles an hour” and “Galveston became Atlantis” (198). Isaac himself resolved for his family to stay in their house, as he had had it built upon stilts, and believed it “impervious to the worst storms the Gulf could deliver” (7). The house was a Titanic before the Titanic ever set sail: its inhabitant’s faith in it inevitably led to most of their untimely deaths as it broke apart and sank beneath the water. Some fifty people took to the Cline house; eighteen made it out alive. They had faith in Isaac, Isaac had faith in his house, and the Titanic was unsinkable. The stories of those who fell victim to the Great Hurricane of 1900 are familiar to the point of being repetitive. In the words of Aesop: self conceit may lead to self destruction.

Although Erik Larson follows many individuals and their experiences throughout the book, there are characters that lend more to the account, including Isaac Monroe Cline, Joseph Leander Cline, and Willis Luther Moore, the three of which embody the key factors that led to the increased devastation caused by the storm. Isaac Monroe Cline, as can be inferred, is the title character. He was, at the time of the hurricane, the chief meteorologist in the Galveston Weather Bureau. Isaac had a “hardness and confidence that verged on conceit”, and held “a great pride in making his station one of the best and most important in the country” (4). His great faith in his own judgement was such that one might draw a moral from it, as with a fable. There is always more to know about the world, and he who does not keep an open mind turns a blind eye to whatever may befall him. Isaac “believed deeply that he understood it all”, and was thereby oblivious to the signs of impending danger (5). He closed his mind, and in that way relinquished his chance of preventing his own personal loss. Isaac lived with his family: his wife, Cora, and his daughters, Rosemary, Allie May, and Esther Bellew. His brother, Joseph, also lived with the family. Joseph, twenty-nine to Isaac’s thirty-eight, had a mild rivalry with his brother. They clashed frequently, each one trying to outdo the other, with Isaac generally coming out on top. Joseph had lived and worked with Isaac for eight years, and was always “eager to prove himself”, a habit that, the morning before the storm, surfaced again as Joseph “made the case too strongly that something peculiar was happening and that Washington must be informed” (10). As the storm came, and Galveston blew to pieces, Isaac and Joseph fought again and again. At 5:30 PM, Joseph had reported that the water was up to his waist. Isaac noted that the water was up to one’s neck. As conditions began to worsen, Joseph felt that “the storm was worse than anything Galveston had ever experienced”, and he begged Isaac to evacuate (172). When the house collapsed, Joseph rescued two of his nieces, then pulled them, as well as Isaac and his third daughter, onto a piece of debris that served as a makeshift raft. Despite all this, Chief Moore’s official account of the storm pronounced Isaac “one of the heroic spirits of that awful hour” and claimed that he had been a key factor in saving thousands of lives (250). After the hurricane, Joseph and Isaac separated, and each tried to erase the other from his life. Joseph’s experience reflects the idea of the misery induced by comparing oneself to others. He spent eight years in Isaac’s shadow, trying desperately to win an unspoken competition with his brother. In the end, he was “right about urging everyone to evacuate” (270). However, being right did not get him anywhere. Isaac still held the power, and for years afterward seemed to fare better. The Weather Bureau, having failed Galveston, as Isaac had, proceeded to bury its failure in false accounts and self-praise. Chief Willis L. Moore, despite having severely handicapped the Bureau’s ability to predict hurricanes, continued his upward climb. When “the War Department… revoked the ban on Cuban weather cables”, Moore remained insistent that the Cubans were irresponsible and wished to bring about the downfall of the Bureau (253-4). He did not seem to have learned from the Great Hurricane that image is based upon performance, and a false image will fall, sooner or later. Instead of bettering the Bureau to make it worthy of the faith it needed, Moore undermined the purpose of the Bureau by hindering it in its capabilities. He was mostly able to cover up his part in the destruction of Galveston, but continued to “let the expected obscure the real” (263). He endeavored to become Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of agriculture, using “bureau officials and bureau time to promote his ambitions”, and “became so convinced Wilson would choose him” that he picked a successor (269). Moore was not chosen, and was instead investigated in relation to his campaign. The Great Hurricane finally came back to bite him; Isaac was still hurt at Moore’s false accounts and readily relinquished all of his and Moore’s correspondence to the investigators.

Erik Larson’s story-like method of recounting a historical event is effective in that it not only reveals the facts and figures, but also in that it builds characters and emotion through first-hand accounts and inferences made based on similar happenstances. In his “Notes” chapter, Larson describes his research as “detective work and deduction to try to convey a vivid sense of what Isaac Cline saw, heard, smelled, and experienced in his journey toward and through the great hurricane of 1900” (275). However, Isaac Cline is not the only figure that Larson examines. He recounts the frustration of Louisa Rollfing as her husband refused to leave his work early, the horror and confusion that Ruby Credo felt as she watched her parents hacking through the floor of their coveted parlor, and Mollie Cohen’s trembling hands as she played the piano to calm her children. In contrast, Larson also examines the scientific aspects of the story. The storm underwent a change after it passed Cuba, a change such that it transformed from a tropical storm into a goliath hurricane. Although nobody at the time understood what had happened, there are more recent theories, and Larson details them to the reader in a way that is understandable to even those who know little about meteorology. He explains that there is a current in the Gulf called the Loop Current, which “brought a deep channel of warmth that the wind and seas could not have cooled”, giving the hurricane nigh-unlimited fuel (119). This combination of science and raw human emotion is the best and most thorough way to tell the story of Isaac’s storm because it takes into account the mixture of human and climatic factors that went into brewing the perfect storm.