Actually, to call this the voiceless weekend is not accurate. The airwaves of my apartment have been trafficked almost constantly by voices but not mine. I lost mine on Thursday evening and it has not approached home since. I just got back from the boys basketball game where I was the meekest cheerleader in the bleachers.
My apartment smells strongly of turmeric. After I tried Golden Milk Tea on Wednesday at Sugarhouse Coffee, I was so intrigued with this warming drink I looked up homemade mixes for it. It has ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, and black pepper, all of which are supposed to boost the immune system. But I fear the recipe I used called for too much turmeric in proportion to the other ingredients - we'll see if it seems like tasting chalk when I mix it with regular milk for a warm drink. It is a beautiful color.
The foreign voices in my apartment have been three - two audible, one inside my head. One has been the voice of Khaled Hosseini reading his 2003 novel The Kite Runner. I've been hearing for years not only of friends reading this book, but of high school English classes reading it. I think it's too long to do with a class, unless significant reading can be assigned outside of class. Aside from that I'm not sure I'd choose it - it's too bound in historical context. Yes, there are themes of guilt, friendship, cowardice. But they are not universally relatable, certainly not in the terms in which they are described.
The main character, Amir, fails to stand up for a loyal friend of his when he's about 12, and he never gets over it. It is a life-defining moment for him, as he realizes what stuff he's really made of, and feels ashamed but powerless to change. His failure as a friend is quite specific to him though - while I'm sure others have failed to stand up for friends, this is not a feeling I can imagine animating a class conversation where everyone has equal access. And the nature of the book is so intimate - I think few kids would be willing to share the thoughts or experiences it brings to mind. I don't think I would want to share in a class half the things which the book brought to my mind...
I had very little knowledge (ha, still have very little knowledge) of the historical context of the novel, which takes place in Afghanistan during the period between the coup in 1973 and 2001 when the Taliban were forced into hiding. Since finishing the book last night I've engaged in a little bit of study about the author and his context. He grew up at the same time as Amir (though he says in this interview that only parts of the book are autobiographical. The interview contains significant spoilers - this is why I never listen to these things before I finish the book!).
When the coup happens, Amir and his father move to the Bay Area (as did Hosseini). In the 1990's he is called back to Kabul, the city of his childhood. It is nigh unrecognizable. The descriptions of how bad things are after the disastrous rule of the Taliban recalled the horrors of New Orleans after Katrina in Zeitoun, but five steps worse.
Reading about the dysfunction of institutions in Kabul made me wonder, "Who on earth would want to be in leadership in a place like this?" When I looked up Afghanistan in the New Yorker archives, this article came up, which answers my question by describing the past and present of Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. It's funny, and a bit disheartening, that I read this article with interest when it came out, and had remembered nothing about it when I reread it this morning.
Part of the appeal of working in Afghanistan, for Ghani, is working with a tabula rasa. I remember in 11th grade my history teacher, Dr. Naeher, told us that during the Great Depression Franklin D. Roosevelt had a unique opportunity to try new tricks with the economy. "What was the worst thing that was going to happen?" asked Dr. Naeher, rhetorically. "We fall into a depression?" I remember thinking, "Wow, what an opportunity." It wasn't until I studied that period of American economic history more closely that I realized how hard FDR worked to maintain capitalism, and wouldn't have considered what he was doing to be experimenting with new possible pathways through history.
Afghanistan is at a much more profound bottom than the US was during the Depression, alors perhaps the idea of tabula rasa works better there. In this TED talk, Ghani points out that economics as it is taught in most universities cannot help Afghanistan:
Economics taught in most of the elite universities are practically useless in my context. My country is dominated by drug economy and a mafia. Textbook economics does not work in my context, and I have very few recommendations from anybody as to how to put together a legal economy. The poverty of our knowledge must become the first basis of moving forward, and not imposition of the framework that works on the basis of mathematical modeling...
Afghanistan The NYer article implies that Ghani is not necessarily the right person for this job, though it also implies that no one can accomplish what needs to be accomplished in order for Afghanistan to stand on its feet proudly again. I guess that is the saddest aspect of Afghanistan, which is poignantly captured in The Kite Runner: the irrevocability of history in some places, our inability to bring back any semblance of what has been lost.
This unrecoverable loss is seen in the book through the destruction of Kabul, the loss of a friendship with Hassan, and, perhaps most painfully, through the loss of childhood, innocence, and a happy and healthy environment for Hassan's son, Sohrob. At one point Sohrob, maybe 8, says "I want my old life back." That life involved living with his parents, playing with his godfather in the garden, going to school. All these things are impossible now, and as a reader I felt that keenly.
In the TED talk Ghani points to Germany as a remarkable example of improbably history - unified and democratic after having come so close to annihilation after the second World War. So in some instances, the gashes left by history do heal. But they do not heal through bandaids. Ghani rails against international aid and says that investment in Afghanistan, especially the textile industry, is the best way to help it further. This was in 2005 - I don't know if he's saying something else now.
Sometimes I feel like the questions I try to answer in the classroom are so, so hard - there is nothing harder than asking what will help kids learn, and how I can best engage them in their own learning. But then I read about people and places like this, and thank Allah that my work doesn't involve questions of this complexity!
My new book is All the Things I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng, which has started dramatically with the disappearance of a teenage girl. This is why I don't read back covers! I'll probably find out if I read it whether and in what condition she is found, and right now I'm relishing the ignorance. In the olden days there were no back cover summaries, no GoodReads.com to tell you what happens in the book. And better that way!
The voice inside my head has been that of the narrator in Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, which is "eerie and fascinating" just like the quote says on the front. I'm glad I promote independent reading, because none of these books would I do in class, but I can recommend them to some of the more advanced readers in the class.
My apartment smells strongly of turmeric. After I tried Golden Milk Tea on Wednesday at Sugarhouse Coffee, I was so intrigued with this warming drink I looked up homemade mixes for it. It has ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, and black pepper, all of which are supposed to boost the immune system. But I fear the recipe I used called for too much turmeric in proportion to the other ingredients - we'll see if it seems like tasting chalk when I mix it with regular milk for a warm drink. It is a beautiful color. The foreign voices in my apartment have been three - two audible, one inside my head. One has been the voice of Khaled Hosseini reading his 2003 novel The Kite Runner. I've been hearing for years not only of friends reading this book, but of high school English classes reading it. I think it's too long to do with a class, unless significant reading can be assigned outside of class. Aside from that I'm not sure I'd choose it - it's too bound in historical context. Yes, there are themes of guilt, friendship, cowardice. But they are not universally relatable, certainly not in the terms in which they are described.
The main character, Amir, fails to stand up for a loyal friend of his when he's about 12, and he never gets over it. It is a life-defining moment for him, as he realizes what stuff he's really made of, and feels ashamed but powerless to change. His failure as a friend is quite specific to him though - while I'm sure others have failed to stand up for friends, this is not a feeling I can imagine animating a class conversation where everyone has equal access. And the nature of the book is so intimate - I think few kids would be willing to share the thoughts or experiences it brings to mind. I don't think I would want to share in a class half the things which the book brought to my mind...
I had very little knowledge (ha, still have very little knowledge) of the historical context of the novel, which takes place in Afghanistan during the period between the coup in 1973 and 2001 when the Taliban were forced into hiding. Since finishing the book last night I've engaged in a little bit of study about the author and his context. He grew up at the same time as Amir (though he says in this interview that only parts of the book are autobiographical. The interview contains significant spoilers - this is why I never listen to these things before I finish the book!). When the coup happens, Amir and his father move to the Bay Area (as did Hosseini). In the 1990's he is called back to Kabul, the city of his childhood. It is nigh unrecognizable. The descriptions of how bad things are after the disastrous rule of the Taliban recalled the horrors of New Orleans after Katrina in Zeitoun, but five steps worse.
Reading about the dysfunction of institutions in Kabul made me wonder, "Who on earth would want to be in leadership in a place like this?" When I looked up Afghanistan in the New Yorker archives, this article came up, which answers my question by describing the past and present of Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. It's funny, and a bit disheartening, that I read this article with interest when it came out, and had remembered nothing about it when I reread it this morning.
Part of the appeal of working in Afghanistan, for Ghani, is working with a tabula rasa. I remember in 11th grade my history teacher, Dr. Naeher, told us that during the Great Depression Franklin D. Roosevelt had a unique opportunity to try new tricks with the economy. "What was the worst thing that was going to happen?" asked Dr. Naeher, rhetorically. "We fall into a depression?" I remember thinking, "Wow, what an opportunity." It wasn't until I studied that period of American economic history more closely that I realized how hard FDR worked to maintain capitalism, and wouldn't have considered what he was doing to be experimenting with new possible pathways through history.
Afghanistan is at a much more profound bottom than the US was during the Depression, alors perhaps the idea of tabula rasa works better there. In this TED talk, Ghani points out that economics as it is taught in most universities cannot help Afghanistan:
Economics taught in most of the elite universities are practically useless in my context. My country is dominated by drug economy and a mafia. Textbook economics does not work in my context, and I have very few recommendations from anybody as to how to put together a legal economy. The poverty of our knowledge must become the first basis of moving forward, and not imposition of the framework that works on the basis of mathematical modeling...
Afghanistan The NYer article implies that Ghani is not necessarily the right person for this job, though it also implies that no one can accomplish what needs to be accomplished in order for Afghanistan to stand on its feet proudly again. I guess that is the saddest aspect of Afghanistan, which is poignantly captured in The Kite Runner: the irrevocability of history in some places, our inability to bring back any semblance of what has been lost. This unrecoverable loss is seen in the book through the destruction of Kabul, the loss of a friendship with Hassan, and, perhaps most painfully, through the loss of childhood, innocence, and a happy and healthy environment for Hassan's son, Sohrob. At one point Sohrob, maybe 8, says "I want my old life back." That life involved living with his parents, playing with his godfather in the garden, going to school. All these things are impossible now, and as a reader I felt that keenly.
In the TED talk Ghani points to Germany as a remarkable example of improbably history - unified and democratic after having come so close to annihilation after the second World War. So in some instances, the gashes left by history do heal. But they do not heal through bandaids. Ghani rails against international aid and says that investment in Afghanistan, especially the textile industry, is the best way to help it further. This was in 2005 - I don't know if he's saying something else now.
Sometimes I feel like the questions I try to answer in the classroom are so, so hard - there is nothing harder than asking what will help kids learn, and how I can best engage them in their own learning. But then I read about people and places like this, and thank Allah that my work doesn't involve questions of this complexity!
My new book is All the Things I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng, which has started dramatically with the disappearance of a teenage girl. This is why I don't read back covers! I'll probably find out if I read it whether and in what condition she is found, and right now I'm relishing the ignorance. In the olden days there were no back cover summaries, no GoodReads.com to tell you what happens in the book. And better that way!
The voice inside my head has been that of the narrator in Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, which is "eerie and fascinating" just like the quote says on the front. I'm glad I promote independent reading, because none of these books would I do in class, but I can recommend them to some of the more advanced readers in the class. 
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