Back to Lists - June

The Longest Date: life as a wife by Cindy Chupack, 2014
- Sex & the City writer; I could hear Carrie Bradshaw while reading this collection of essays
- A mix between Amy Poehler, who phoned it in and re-published previous material, and Tiny Fey, who wrote original material, The Longest Date is a collection of stories that covers Chupack meeting her husband to trying to start a family to meeting their adopted daughter Olivia
- Reading this so soon after Sarah Colonna's Has Anyone Seen My Pants? made me realize I need a respite from funny female writings writing about their lives
- There's only so much laughter one can take about the mundane things in life



Not Working by Lisa Owens, 2016
- English author born in the 1980s, 30 years young!
- Written in stream of consciousness with short snippets and jokes taking advantage of using # hashtags to convey meaning; the millennial way of communicating
- Claire Flannery quits her job to figure out what she wants to do with her life; she falls into a rut, directionless
- Her relationship with her friends, parents and boyfriend Luke become strained as she spends her days not working and not doing much of anything
- When did coming of age stories become so foreign?  When so much has changed in just one generation that I barely recognize the voice of someone a decade younger
- I did learn that the English call zucchini 'courgette', while Americans use the Italian word; while they call arugula 'rocket'
- This is confirmed by my English husband who also notes that he refers to cilantro as 'coriander' and multi grain as 'granary'

City of Thorns by Ben Rawlence, 2016
City of Thorns is an emotionally tough book to read.  Depicting life in the refugee camp built in the Kenyan dessert, Rawlence tells the sad story of a handful of refugees of the hundreds of thousands who have been forced to flee to Dadaab.

The conditions are horrendous where malnutrition and mud homes are prevalent to this camp that has become a large city.  When the UN attempted to build nicer homes for the refugees, the Kenyan government objected since the homes were nicer than what Kenyans live in.

The generation growing up in Dadaab grow up in dirt roads, no electricity and sleep in puddles during the rainy, but are familiar with idealist western values of gender equality and democratic society that UN and NGOs espouse.


A town of 400,00 at last "official" count, Dadaab is built up from raw materials with the majority of the people living in fear and off of handouts controlled by western relief agencies.

The only jobs for the refugees are as incentive workers so as not take jobs away from Kenyans.  Incentive works make 1/10th of what their Kenyans counterparts make.

Lives depicted in this novel include:

- Guled.  Kidnapped as a boy while in school and forced to join al-Shabaab, Guled makes a daring escape and fears returning to Somalia or having his former affiliation with al-Shabaab discovered.  His young wife Maryam joins him and is appalled by the conditions of the camp.

- Nisho.  Born en route to the camp, Nisho has lived in the camp his entire life and supplements his World Food Program rations with work as a porter, offloading and delivering goods.  Somalians, even in refugee camp, manage their affairs based on family and tribe.  Without a connected family and not belonging to a powerful clan, Nisho is forced to take on the labor intensive work of a porter.

- Isha.  A wealthy, educated woman, Isha flees her Somalian town to the camp when al-Shabaab has taken all the animals from her farm.  Making the trek with thousands of women and children over many miles, Isha benefits from a relatively smooth journey with no one stealing from her or raping her.  Unlike many children who perish along the long walk to the camp in the dessert, Isha's children all survive the journey to Dadaab.

- Monday.  A Sudanese refugee, Monday was part of the Lost Boys and is a plumber with a German NGO.  He falls in love and marries a Somalian woman named Muna, leading to death threats and beatings for their intra-tribe union.  The threats and beatings come predominately from Muna's family.

- Tawane.  Having spent his entire life in Dadaab, Tawane is a youth leader and risks his life after funding from the UN dries up and al-Shabaab infiltrates the camp, murdering community leaders who advocate for peace.

- Kheyro.  A bright girl, Kheryo dreams of going to university, but finds employment to support her family.  Through her job of under a hundred dollars a month as an incentive worker (while her Kenyan counterparts are paid just under $500 a month), she is able to provide for her family and elevate her family status in the camp.  Most proudly, her family is able to provide a feast with meat for Ramadan.

- Fish. Daring to dream of a better life outside of Dadaab, Fish makes the bold step of leaving the camp for Nairobi.  He settles into Eastleigh, the rough part of Nairobi filled with Somalians.  He endures crack downs and beatings, where police look for payments for those without identity cards. 

The dire conditions in the camp, death march of those attempting to reach the camp and rampant corruption are appalling.  City of Thorns is a powerful book that opened my eyes to how fortunate so many of us are and how corruption, prejudice, and lack of respect can result in such a place like Dadaab.