nonfiction november!
@abooklive said goodbye to hosting the challenge, but came back this year with some prompts because they missed doing that. I was so damn happy to see it! They are: root, puzzle, sample, and frame. (StoryGraph challenge)
The way I've been reading nonfiction lately is like... a (research) journey, maybe? I pick up a title that addresses/explores something I find interesting and then end up reading another 1-2 books around the same subject or tangentially related. I started that at the beginning of this year with Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilberl > The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf > Girlhood by Melissa Febos. It was really fun! And upsetting.
For Nonfiction November, I thought it'd be cool to keep that in mind while choosing books for each prompt. We'll see where this takes me.
Root
Literal plant roots, family roots, the origins of an idea or movement, root causes, root words or etymology, or roots in mathematics or technology.
Literal plant roots, family roots, the origins of an idea or movement, root causes, root words or etymology, or roots in mathematics or technology.
My pick was Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara. It thought me a lot of things I didn't know about cobalt mining and how deeply that affects Congolese people. It's slavery. That's it. Not a single part of the chain is clean. The fact that I'm writing this from my laptop, with its rechargeable battery that has cobalt as one of its components, is not lost on me.
This led me to reading We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch, about the 1994 genocide. It was mentioned as passing background/historical information in the previous title and I wanted to know more about it. It was an incredible tough read that, during some parts, reminded me a lot of the arguments/reasoning used by some people here when it comes to politics. I wasn't fully aware of just how the international community failed Rwanda; this did a great job at explaining it and naming all players. It's the old "Never Again"... until next time.
Puzzle
Mystery, a crime, a medical or scientific puzzle, a historical question, a literal puzzle or game, or even something you’ve always wanted to understand.
Mystery, a crime, a medical or scientific puzzle, a historical question, a literal puzzle or game, or even something you’ve always wanted to understand.
I have two picks for this and they, in my head, talk to each other. The first one is a Brazilian book, República das Milícias by Bruno Paes Manso. It talks about militias here, which are usually formed by a mix of police officers/politicians/military soldiers, and work as, basically, organized crime. (There's a Wiki page about it here lol) They became a thing during our military dictatorship in the 60s with death squads formed by the military police. This is interesting to me because Flávio Bolsonaro, the former presidential candidate and now fugitive, is directly connected to people involved in that.
The second pick is A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children by Haley Cohen Gilliland. One dictatorship leads to the other. This one is about Argentina's dictatorship in the mid-70's, how the government worked to disappear pregnant women and their newborn babies, and how their mothers refused to let them be forgotten.
Sample
Sampling in music, a scientific or medical sample, a statistical sample, sampling food or drink, product or fabric samples, an anthology or sampling of perspectives (like an essay collection), or sampling a kind of nonfiction you don’t typically read.
Sampling in music, a scientific or medical sample, a statistical sample, sampling food or drink, product or fabric samples, an anthology or sampling of perspectives (like an essay collection), or sampling a kind of nonfiction you don’t typically read.
At the beginning of this year I read Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction by Maia Szalavitz. Throughout the book, it's mentioned that the harm reduction movement walked hand-in-hand with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, so I wanted to read more about that side of it with How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS by David France. In case I don't do well with it due to personal reasons, I also have two other books I might choose from that will be (I hope) lighter reads: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky because it went viral and that video the dude made sounded interesting as hell, and Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008 by Chris Payne because I was there when the deep magic was written.
Frame
Art, photography, film, architecture or construction, but it could also be a frame of reference, a time frame or framework, the way an issue or story is framed, or framing someone for a crime.
Art, photography, film, architecture or construction, but it could also be a frame of reference, a time frame or framework, the way an issue or story is framed, or framing someone for a crime.
Only one pick for this because I want to read it sooooooo baaaaaaad. It's Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy by Julia Ioffe. This also related to my The Beauty Myth read a little bit? In the sense that, at least I think, it will address how society changes when certain expectations are placed on women to the point where they enprison us instead of liberate us.