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Marge’s Book Reviews
Many Friends Seminary alumni and faculty have published books over the years, and Margaret Gonzalez intends to read them all. In 2017, Marge, a former Friends French teacher, parent of an alumna, and a former Trustee, set out on a journey to read all the literature she could find from Friends alumni, faculty and staff. Below she reviews three recent works by Friends alumni. Follow her literary adventures online at margegonzalez.net.
Courageous Calla & The Clinical Trial by Arya Singh ’18
Still in college, Arya already has a book to her name and one that will be reassuring to children who find themselves participants in clinical trials. The only way we can move forward with treatments and medications is through clinical trials. Adult volunteers can weigh the risks and benefits before joining a test group.
But for those conditions that emerge at birth or during early childhood, very young participants, many of whom have seen more than their fair share of doctors and hospitals, are badly needed. Courageous Calla is just what kids need to allay their fears and show them that they are helping not only themselves but many other children. In the book, Calla is a superhero and truly, all the children who take part can hold claim to that title.
Arya takes the ethical principles advanced in the Belmont Report and outlined by Warren T. Jahn and puts them in language easily understood by the very young. Calla’s father explains that there are “four promises doctors all around the world make to always try to do what is best for patients like you.” The first promise, respect for autonomy, is translated as “you’re the boss of your own body.”
This book should be sitting in every pediatrician’s office. No one who understands picture books is too young to understand how medical science moves forward and to admire the superheroes who make it happen.
The Last Kings of Shanghai, The Rival Jewish Dynasties that Helped Create Modern China by Jonathan Kaufman ’74
The Last Kings of Shanghai sweeps through the 19th and 20th centuries, telling the story of two families of the Jewish diaspora, originally based in Baghdad, the Sassoons and the Kadoories, who end up accumulating astounding wealth through trade. For decades they rule the elegant waterfront of Shanghai, living in the opulent splendor of their own grand hotels and mansions, while the Chinese, whom they barely notice, struggle to survive. Through the improbable lens of these families we glimpse the tumult of the great transitions that ended the centuries of dynastic empires in China —from the collapse of the Qing dynasty to Sun Yat-sen to Chaing Kai-Shek to Mao—all of which led to today’s People’s Republic.
Jonathan offers an absorbing and innovative angle on the story of east meets west. An educational precept suggests that we learn by beginning with the familiar and gradually edging into the unfamiliar. For me nothing could seem more exotically enigmatic than the history of China. This book is an exciting read because, in addition to depicting fascinating characters, it lifts a curtain and makes intelligible what had previously been opaque.
The Sassoon family tree is firmly rooted in Baghdad when David, in his thirties, finds that times have changed (1829) and after escaping incarceration makes his way to Bombay. Partly through acumen and partly through propitious circumstances, such as the First Opium War (1839), which opens legal opium trade with China, he amasses a fortune of unimaginable magnitude. The family thrives and produces an array of fascinating characters, the most striking of whom is Victor Sassoon, a playboy with a knack for making money and a passion for spending it on splendid buildings, most notably the Cathay Hotel, which looks out on the waterfront of Shanghai. Victor is buffeted by upheavals of the 20th century, but it is no stretch to call him one of the last kings of Shanghai. Though somewhat less flamboyant, the Kadoories nonetheless do their fair share of ruling Shanghai. Elly Kadoorie, who began as an employee of the Sassoons, amasses his own wealth and thrives despite the tragic death of his wife Laura. His sons, Lawrence and Horace, find a source of wealth in the prod uction of electricity. Jonathan takes a journalistic stance on the behavior of these tycoons and lets the reader do most of the moral judging (if there be any). Certainly visà-vis the Chinese, the Kadoories and the Sassoons exhibit little generosity or even curiosity. But there is a moment of true redemption for both families during World War II. While the US turns away refugees from the Holocaust, Shanghai embraces them in droves. The Sassoons and the Kadoories participate in welcoming 18,000 Jews. Horace Kadoorie, perhaps the most empathetic member of these clans, sets up a school for the children.
I hope many people will read this book. Surely you want to know what happens to Lawrence and Horace when the Communists take over and where all those Jewish refugees finally land when the war finally ends. And what about Victor? He is the hero and anti-hero of the book. You really want to know how his life takes a turn.
The Crazy Bunch by Willie Perdomo ’85
If you’d like to take an anthropological trip to a different culture right within the confines of Manhattan island, this book is for you. These poems take you into a classically compressed weekend during which a group of young men in Spanish Harlem come of age (or are tragically thwarted from coming of age) while hanging out (“lamping”) on the street corners and littered playgrounds of their neighborhood to the sound track of 80’s-90’s hip hop. An aura of myth envelopes the events as they occur through the filter of memory in a space now altered by time. Apparently, you can’t go home again. I count among these poems about 11 dialogs between an entity called The Poetry Cops and Papo aka Skinecky (the dominant voice of the work) and his friends. Since several begin with Papo showing the poetry cops a photograph where we meet the Crazy Bunch and other members of the community, my read is that these cops act as liaison between the hood and the surrounding culture. Sometimes they raise questions which guide the non-Puerto Rican reader and sometimes the cops themselves struggle to understand.
The events of the weekend are numerous, probably too numerous to be possible. There’s the hanging out, which seems unrushed, almost outside of time, the preparación, an occasion where la Bruja, the Cassandra of the piece, makes predictions, the crashing of Josephine’s Sweet Sixteen Party, the trip downtown to break into a shoe store, various battles, and the deaths by gunshot and suicide. As always in poetry, the words count for more than the events. So here are a few lines to ponder. From “Drug War Confidential”:
False claims, fake news, old blues, blood & feathers, gold & water, bad weather, black bodies, brown detentions, low retentions, you know, same ole same ole.
And from “They Won’t Find Us in Books,” lyrical heartbreaking nostalgia. You have to read the whole poem, but here are a couple of lines which mark loss through the passage of time:
Gone are the old spots near the takeout, old flames where we used to make out, the spots where the light used to fade out, and the letters we wrote from burning buildings.
There is so much in this work that is astonishing and, even with the poetry cops help, hard to access. I am astonished by the burlesque note that jumps in smack in the middle of tragedy. The fabled story of Don Julio, who in stormy weather “cartwheeled to the light post, but he never let go of his porkpie hat” is echoed in the tragic moment of Dre’s suicide when “his white yarmulke gyrated like a dizzy UFO” as he fell to his death. Or Petey’s jet-propelled trip to triage.
The cast of characters pulls you in. The girls, though kept in their place, respond with spunky swagger. The people of the block, always watching, provide a Greek chorus. The rap vibe pulses with muscular spondees. The Crazy Bunch was the band of brothers who shared a time and space, offering each other comfort when crime, drugs and danger surrounded them. Here is their farewell to adolescence, the last time “The corner was between us & the world.”
Searching for Home, the Impact of WWII on a Hidden Child by Joseph Gosler, Friends Seminary Business Manager Emeritus
For about 20 years Joe and I both worked at Friends, and though I knew that he had been a Jewish baby hidden from harm with a Christian family in Holland during World War II, through this book I learned that harm came anyway, despite the best intentions of his parents and the warmth of the caring family that took him in. When his biological parents left him, he may not have experienced much trauma since was so young; having his needs met was paramount. But the separation at age three from the only family he knew was deeply distressing and colored his entire life. Because I raised a child from the foster care system, of all social issues, the one I feel most passionately about is this one – innocent children tossed about by circumstance, snatched from a loving environment and cast into the unknown. Given the horror of World War II, it is hard to think of any way Joe could have been better protected, but his experience should wake us up to how critical it is to assure a loving home to all children—children at the border, children in our foster care system, children of wars, abuse, and extreme poverty.
Joe’s story is not all those stories, of course, and shows how one resilient individual found ways to cope with lingering anger and anxiety. “Searching for Home” is an autobiography that goes all the way up to Joe’s retirement. It shows him finding his way, after being reunited with his biological family, first in Israel and then in New York. It shows him struggling with relationships, wrestling with confusing feelings toward his parents, and abiding feelings of affection toward the family in Holland. He was helped at multiple times along the way by a succession of canine “therapists.” By dint of his own efforts he finds a career path that suits him, a marriage partnership, and fatherhood. In the end, this story is one of valiance. We root for him and he comes through. This book is a gift because it shows us from the inside the serious and long-lasting turmoil this kind of experience produces.
