OCT - Oryx and Crake

October review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2016: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, 2003. [Man Booker Prize Shortlist category]

I'm not even sure how to start writing about Oryx and Crake. It is a strange book, not that I expected anything less from Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale has long held a spot atop my list of favorite feminist fiction, and I've been interested to see what else Atwood can do. Oryx and Crake has been described as post-apocalyptic, speculative fiction, adventure romance, and a number of other things, and it is the idea of "speculative fiction" that I think I got hung up on the most. Atwood has a way of resonating even today; I re-read Handmaid's Tale during the Obama-Romney election of 2012 and it was chilling in the context of the reproductive rights fight. Reading Oryx and Crake and then thinking about it in these post-election weeks (yes, super late review) was chilling in a different way. In this dystopia, science is paramount and genetic engineering rules (ruled) the world. The narrator, Snowman, is ostensibly the only human of his kind left as he relates his life and the catastrophe that brought him to this moment, living mostly in a tree and acting as a sort of half-assed prophet to the newly synthesized Children of Crake. He tells of his old friend whom he refers to as Crake, how he climbed the scientific ladder at a genetics corporation and created these new beings devoid of emotion and sexual drive. The possibility of this future is not necessarily what chills, instead it is the possibility of its decline under the next presidency. Science may not be on the top of the agenda in Trump's America and while we may avoid bringing about Oryx and Crake, we may be on the precipice of a dystopia of another kind. 

At any rate, back to the narrative. The most controversial aspect of Snowman's tale is the genetic engineering, the idea of "playing God," and "how much is too much, how far is too far?" (p206).  The truth is that most of today's technology could fall under the scope of "playing God" in some indirect manner or another, from modern medicine to weather apps, and but the "how far is too far" is quite apropos, placing the impetus on the individual. After all, "God is a cluster of neurons, he'd maintained," Snowman says of Crake's philosophy. "The whole world is now one vast uncontrolled experiment." (p228) What is the future without innovation and drive?

Snowman/Jimmy often talks about his love of language, how early on he had collected old words, "He developed a strangely tender feeling towards such words, as if they were children abandoned in the woods and it was his duty to rescue them." (p195) One of my favorite parts of the book, when I felt the most aligned with the narrator, who spent a portion of his post-graduate life as a glorified copywriter for a drug company, fomenting the change in lifestyle brought about with science as paramount. It is a slight nod to the future we find Snowman in, the last of his kind, trying to remember the names of everyday objects to keep himself sane, forcing himself to "Hang on to the words... When they're gone out of his head... they'll be gone, everywhere, for ever. As if they had never existed." I am hoping to collect such words, such books, to keep them for myself and for posterity.

I am unsure how to end this post, or what it was even about in the first place, but that is pretty much how I felt when I finished Oryx and Crake, so I guess it's in keeping with the narrative.

SEPT - The Underground Girls of Kabul

September review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2016: The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg, 2014. [Investigative Journalism category]

Once upon a time, investigative journalism was something that I was very interested in pursuing as a career path. The most salient definition of "investigative journalism" that I could find during my search for a book of this genre delineated it as, "a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest to shed light on a specific issue, such as crime or social justice." For Jenny Nordberg, that specific issue is the bacha posh. Nordberg's book The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan examines the bacha posh, a phrase translated from Dari as "dressed up like a boy" that is used as sort of a blanket term for the phenomenon of girls being disguised as boys in Afghanistan. (I use the passive voice here because it is generally not a decision made by the girls themselves, although there are exceptions. Usually the decision is made by the parents who have not borne a male heir and desire the social stability and visibility granted by having a male child.) Nordberg paints a compelling portrait of a number of these bacha posh who have undergone--and maintained--the disguise for varied reasons, shining a light into a heretofore unexamined corner of Afghan culture. 

I was immediately intrigued by this study, but I couldn't help a niggling discomfort that underscored my intrigue: what rights does Nordberg have to tell this story? This is, ostensibly, a tender subject and practice in a society that is notably difficult for girlhood, and I was uncomfortable with the author's insertion of herself into the issue. But early on, Nordberg establishes that her primary subject, a parliamentarian named Azita who chose the bacha posh life for her daughter, has given permission to tell her story (p25), saying "It could be interesting for people. This is the reality of Afghanistan." Nordberg, a Swedish journalist, broke the story to the New York Times in 2010 and spent years developing personal accounts and researching cultural and historical aspects of this practice. Her book lays out a number of different bacha posh experiences, probing the question of whether bacha posh exists as a kind of third gender or if it challenges the idea of a gender binary altogether--personally I wish more space had been given to this particular discussion, as it stands it is only brought up toward the end of the book through Zahra, a teenage bacha posh who is resistant to returning to her "girl state," but I suppose there is only so much one can ask from a broad investigative text. 

One section that resonated me in particular was Nader's story, a bacha posh who has continued the lifestyle into adulthood, who now runs what amounts to a literal underground meeting of like-minded individuals, practicing tae kwon do and "her own brand of organized resistance" (p217). When asked about the importance of her athletic endeavor, Nader replies about subversion and controversy, but also notes the following: 

"But it is also because when we use our bodies, we do not feel weak anymore. When a girl feels the strength of her body, she knows she can do other things, too." (p217)

Realizing one's own strength is especially poignant for me as a woman who has come into her own through the discovery of roller derby and commitment to a lifting regime, a woman who has learned how to use her body, albeit in a safer space than the tumultuous social landscape that is womanhood in a Middle Eastern society.  I recognize that any attempt I make to identify with this story is paltry in terms of privilege and social histories, but it is a small thing that I can build upon, some small measure of connection that feels important in the current climate.