Media from Africa 2015

I read things from only two countries in Africa.

Congo, Democratic Republic of (previously Belgian; also previous Zaire)

This is the huge subSaharan country surrounding most of the Congo River.

Nonfiction

* van Reybrouck, David. Congo: The Epic History of a People (2010) (tr. from Dutch by Sam Garrett) - This was the first book I read about this country and it inspired me to pick up more. It's a good book and accessible, but definitely an epic history. It's pretty interesting for what it is, but gets less fun and more just about politics for the last part of the book. Even though the average lifespan is low, the author was still able to find some very old people to tell him stories. The leaders all seem to mean well at first but then get sucked into doing whatever it takes to keep power. I highly recommend it if you want to see more about both sides of colonialism than you already probably know from the history of the US, India, and South Africa. You may have already read my longer review.

* Woods, Vanessa. Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo (2010) - This is about the Congo, bonobo chimpanzees, and social psychology; what's not to like? Well, there's even more violence than in the epic history book (involving chimpanzees as well as the Congolese and Ruwandans). And I don't like the author; she's self-centered and throws fits all the time.

Fiction

* Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (1998) - Read-aloud writing. Big story about a family brought to a small town by the missionary father. I love everyone in the family at first, though later I start hating one of them. I have a longer review of this book as well.

(I decided I wanted to read more by this author. And so I read her Flight Behavior: A Novel (2012) about a gal who almost has an affair but is stopped when monarch butterflies winter at her ranch. Another book with interesting characters; this time the theme is climate change. I enjoyed it, though not as much, and would happily read more.)

Congo, Republic of (previously French)

The mouth of the Congo is extremely wide, so it's no surprise that two countries could straddle it here. This country is much smaller, and I don't think I even knew it existed before.

Fiction

* Boyd, William. Brazzaville Beach (1990) - Two stories--one about a lady and her first husband who slowly goes crazy and another about her later life in an ape research area where her boss is self aggrandizing and destroys data he doesn't understand. Throw in a mild kidnapping. It seems to be more about the men around her than about her. It's about math and life and so should be cool, but I didn't really like the main character much.

Media from the Americas 2015

(I'm not including books I've read that are about the US.)

Argentina

So Argentina turns out to be less alien to me than I expected.

Movies

* “Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down” - Young man (Antonio Banderas) escapes mental hospital with help of nurse lover to seek gal he really loves. She barely remembers him, so he kidnaps her with the plan to teach her to love him. Probably supposed to be funny. But he does have his charming and caring moments.

* “Valentín” - A boy who lives with his grandmother has to deal with his parents not visiting much and then with his grandmother dying. Argentina of the 1960s looks pretty western. And I did occasionally hear an Italian accent, like I'd heard about (many immigrants came from Italy). I really liked this movie and have done a longer review.

Other

My Spanish text had an article on “Joaquín Salvador Lavado” (aka Quino) which included one of his "Mafalda" comic strips about an intelligent 6-year-old girl.

Also, one of the characters of our book's fotonovela (Juan Carlos) is from Buenos Aires.

Brazil

What I already knew about Brazil is that it's gigantic, they speak Portuguese, and they celebrate Carnival with samba dancing. I'd also heard that it's one of the few places where racism is even worse than the US.

Fiction

* Johnson, Alaya Dawn. The Summer Prince (2013) (recommended by someone) - sci fi teen book set in a pyramid city in Brazil 400 years in the future. The new summer king is an artist like our heroine--they both get in plenty of trouble and possibly threaten the city in consequence. Kind of a fascinating society, might have sucked me in more as a kid or if I were into art and originality.

* Garcia-Rosa, Luiz Alfredo. A Window in Copacabana: A Novel (tr. by Benjamin Moser) (2001) - Police are getting killed, then their mistresses (but not their wives) - the detectives in charge are getting no help from their colleagues who feel they are being investigated--they are suspects, and they are all on the take just like the victims. The main detective has three women on his mind--his long-time non-serious girlfriend, one of the mistresses smart enough to escape the killer, and a gal across the park who witnessed parts of one of the murders. Fun. Brazil feels very first-world.

Chile

Fiction

* Allende, Isabel. The House of the Spirits. (1985) - This is a famous book and had many fun parts in it, but I actually skipped a chapter that I could tell would be gruesome. It's the story of several generations of people including a gal who can float and contact spirits. You get a view of Salvador Allende's election and Pinochet's military coup. Also, of architecture: “He wanted [his new house] to be as far removed as possible from the native architecture. He would hear nothing of three courtyards, corridors, rusty fountains, dark rooms, walls of whitewashed adobe, or dusty tiles on the roof…”

Other

* Vistas (my Spanish Text), Mas Cultura, "El rodeo chileno" - The national sport requires to horseback riders to pin a steer against a padded wall in a medialuna (half-moon-shaped corral). This tradition evolved from rounding up cattle to be branded and re-located back to their owners.

Colombia

Fiction

* Restrepo, Laura. The Dark Bride (1999) - Researcher learns about gal who comes to town determined to become a prostitute and succeeds fabulously. But then she falls in love. The book is also about the relationship between oil workers (los petroleros) and the prostitutes (las mujeres, las putas) in the fictional town of Tora near the Magdalena River in the past (1960s?). Interesting, but not a favorite.

Equador

Other

* Vistas, Panorama, "Ecuador" - I learned that the US dollar is their money, the Andes goes through them, they have some ancient Incan villages (Cuenca) and colonial cities (Ibarra is the “white city” with white buildings; also Cuenca), and they own the Gallapagos Islands. They do have a monument on the equator called la Mitad del Mundo. A little south of Quito is the tallest active volcano, which looks like a snow-capped mountain.

Mexico

Nonfiction

* Adams, Alice. Mexico: Some travels and some travelers there (1990) - a gal talks about her trips to different parts of Mexico over thirty years. Very nice map. She says people's stories about Mexico are so different it must be like a psychology test--I feel the same way about Bhutan and, to some degree, the Congo. She does actually talk to some locals but mostly to other foreigners. She's starting to make me think that maybe I don't like travelogues as ways to find out about other countries. The Mexico of the tourist is such a small part of Mexico as a whole.

Fiction

* Brackmann, Lisa. Getaway. (2012) - Set in Puerta Vallarta, gal whose husband just died leaving her in debt and with a foreclosed house but also with a vacation to Puerta Vallarta. She takes the vacation and meets a guy who turns out to be in more trouble than he knows and she gets dragged into it. All about the horrible crime in Mexico--which usually doesn't end up in Puerta Vallarta. I read this because I enjoyed the author's books set in China, but I didn't like it quite as well. As with those other books, I don't really know what's going on, though I do have a feeling of who the good guys are (though I was definitely wrong about one).

Movies

* "Club Eutanasia" (2008) - (Found this at the library.) When the benefactrix of the old folk's home dies, food and other amenities get scarce. To improve the math, one guy talks three of his friends into helping him kill off other residents. (Sadly, they aren't the problem, and their random method led to choosing someone they liked first.) They had troubles at first, then successes. The movie never shows if they start getting enough food--they seem to have plenty of energy the whole time. In the end, they stop trusting each other and kill each other off--the last one standing gets the police to pick off the penultimate one. In the end, another home closes down and all their residents move in. The characters are all, well, characters, but I don't feel the charm at all like I did with "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."

* "Macario" (1960) (black and white) (recommended by our Spanish III teacher.) - Folk tale about a poor man who just wants to eat a whole turkey by himself but first the devil, then God, then Death ask him to share. We see how Day of the Dead is celebrated in a small town--people make offerings to their dead and also ask for discounts for purchases for their dead. And they eat candy skulls.

Other

* Vistas, Fotonovela. This is mostly set in Mexico City--we see how the upper class can live (big van, apartment with a porter, no sign of air pollution!). We get to see Chapultapec Park with the castle with the stained glass. And Xochimilco Park with the guys poling boats (trajilera, carriers, from traer, to carry). And there are cenotes in the Yucatan such as the one near Merida.

* Vistas, Flash Cultura, “Los Estudios” - Universidad Nacional Autonómica de México (UNAM) is huge and has a main campus just south of Mexico City that’s like a small town itself, plus branches in other parts of town, other parts of the country, plus in US and Canada. Like most universities in Spanish-speaking countries, tuition is very low and most students live at home with their parents--the others live in apartments, not dorms. And maybe I want to read Octavio Paz’s El laberinto de la soledad, “a fundamental study of Mexican identity.”

* Vistas, En Pantalla, “Down Taxco” - About a bike race from the top of Taxco to the square at the bottom, down steps, around sharp corners, even through stores and houses. Wikipedia agrees that Taxco (pronounced TAS-ko) is hilly and old, once a colonial center for silver, now a tourism center.

Peru

I already knew that a big part of the Incan civilization including Macchu Picchu is in Pero. Also, the second half of "Vibes" is set in Peru, so you can see the mountains and llamas and hear pan flutes.

Fiction

* Vargas Llosa, Mario. Death in the Andes: A Novel (1993) - I learned that modern Peru is torn by terrorist guerillas and western exploitation and probably rural ignorance not to mention landslides. The author describes this as "a novel, something between a detective story and a fictional fantasy, about cataclysms, human sacrifices, and political crimes in a village in the Andes." He says of Peru, "Two cultures, one Western and modern, the other aboriginal and archaic, badly coexist, separated from each other because of the exploitation and discrimination that the former exercises over the latter." Not real fun.

Other

* Vistas, Flash Cultura, “¡Vacaciones en Peru’!” - I learned that Machu Picchu was discovered only in 1911 and there is a train to it.