Current Communism and Book Reviews

I don't blog often, but when I get something to say it usually comes all at once. Thus, I post two times in a row and then leave it alone for a few weeks. This one might be a bit boring but you can skip it if you want.

Anyway, I recently begged my mother to suggest some good books to read. It has been so long since I was engrossed in a good book that I felt the strong need for escape. Luckily, my mother is in a very involved book group that has been meeting for years and is so elite that it is not accepting any more members. Between them, they can come up with some good reads most of the time.

I found two of the books to be quite compelling because they both relate to current events dealing with communism today. The first one I read is called "Bittersweet" by Leslie Li.


The author is the granddaughter of the only Vice President of China before communism took over. She writes a fictional story of her grandmother, the wife of the vice president. Of course, the women in the story are in general oppressed or victims of some kind, as is the case with the large feminist genre very popular today. In spite of this, I found the heroine to be very inspirational. I also learned a lot about the history and culture of China in the early 20th century that helps explain quite a bit about how the current China came to be. Seeing as America is so tightly connected with China, especially in international worry and job outsourcing, I felt more informed after reading this book. It was also very entertaining. I kept thinking about the millions of people there, making things work in their own current conditions and how the gospel can and will eventually be preached there. Quite a few Chinese citizens were baptized in my mission and then returned to China where they do have freedom to worship, missionaries just can't proselyte under their laws. I'm interested to see how the opening of China to missionary work with come about.


The second book is "Cuba Diaries" by Isadora Tattlin. The author uses a pen name because I don't think she wants Cuba officials nor her husbands superior's to know who wrote the book. She is an American housewife, married to a European (she never specifies his nationality, again I think for anonymity). Her husband works with a company that helps countries become more energy efficient. She and her family have lived all over the world and eventually get transfered to Cuba for four years in the mid '90's. It is written as a diary from her point of view. She details the struggles that even rich foreigners have of surviving in a somewhat backwards paradise. I never imagined Cuba as a paradise, but her descriptions of the countryside and even of the nature growing up around their large but very old home are amazing. Because I lived in a former communist country for quite a while, I imagined the structures, survival techniques of the locals, and other communist details from Ukraine to be mixed in with tropical beaches and gorgeous scenery. The author meets Fidel Castro (recently in the news for finally stepping down from his dictatorship) and is able to be quite current on the details of the Cuban government. She also tries to go to as many cultural sites and events as she can and describes them in detail. Anyway, I really enjoyed seeing Cuba in a different light from Fidel with his beard and army fatigues and the Cuban missile crises that my parents lived through.

So there you go. If you get a second and want a good read, both of these are excellent choices.