"Infidel" Response

For my second memoir, I read Infidel, Ayaan Hirshi Ali's condemnation of faith and lifestyle.

Most memoirs gain their strength through their colorful descriptions of commonalities and common interests with the audience. They create such a strong rapport with their audience that everything becomes acceptable and believable.

What struck me most about Hirshi Ali's work was not her color, nor her rapport. Instead, she captivated me with her unerring, unswerving honesty. This work didn't exist to give color or flair, it wasn't an act of art or artistic license. Instead, this was a confession, a witness' testimony. It was descriptive, it was insightful, and it was honest, but more than anything else, it exists to condemn Islam.

In other works I've seen, an author will be somewhat forgiving of his/her background, will look kindly upon some aspect of it. In Infidel, Hirshi Ali has no such affection:

"Religion gave me a sense of peace only from its assurance of a life after death. It was fairly easy to follow most of the rules: good behavior, politeness, avoiding gossip and pork and usury and alcohol. But I had found that I couldn't follow the deeper rules of Islam that control sexuality and the mind. I didn't want to follow them. I wanted to be someone, to stand on my own.

Islam is submission. You submit on earth in order to earn your place in Heaven (132)."

Ultimately, the primary emotion I felt at Infidel's conclusion was curiosity. I couldn't (and still can't) quite put my finger on exactly why the book was written in the first place. At some points, it seems a rallying point for other ex-Muslims. At others, it seems to be polarizing non-Muslims against the faith. And at still others, it seems to exist to give form to her long-formulating anger. I suppose I understand (on some level) the emotions she's feeling, but I can't quite figure out why she is sharing those emotions so publicly.

This, to me, raises fascinating questions about the overall purpose of memoir. It is difficult to paint memoirists with a broad brush, assuming that they fall into categories of why they wrote, but there must be some common threads between them. Joan Didion wanted to embody her grief, Barack Obama wanted to trace and identify the ghost of his father's heritage, and Hirshi Ali's purpose was...what? To recant her earlier life? To express regret at the state of Islam? To rage against her spiritual, societal and physical captors? The title itself, Infidel, suggests that she is abundantly aware of her own pariah status. But this seems more a badge of pride than a mark of shame.

I don't know the emotion Hirshi Ali would want to convey. I don't know what category such spiritual abandonment falls under. What I do know is that the main emotion I took away from Infidel was a sense of proud infidelity to ones former beliefs. And I suppose, in the long and the short of it, that could have been the point all along.

Love

"I think I'm in love with you."

I blinked.

Love? A few double dates, a basketball game, a box of Goldfish crackers, those were all well and good. But love? I wasn't sure.

We'd held hands, snuggled like so many good Mormons girls want to. We'd even kissed. Not the reckless, feckless high school kisses, but timid, polite kisses. The kinds of kisses that belied uncomfortable romantic history.

But I knew hers and she knew mine. She'd been dating feverishly since she'd been back from her mission, and I'd merely been testing the water since mine.

A week ago, she told me she wanted to "take things slow." But tonight she loved me?

I don't swear. But gosh I really wanted to.

I knew that there was a window in which I needed to respond. Too long in silence and that would be my answer. I wish there had been some kind of violent distraction, but it was just the two of us sitting in my car, quietly idling in her apartment parking lot.

It was cruel, it was cold, but I didn't want our casual relationship to be over. I was having fun. Not love, per se, but I felt like we were in a good place. We laughed a lot, went out to our favorite ice cream parlor, played frisbee with mutual friends, talked about a couples road trip with some old mission companions.

My window had shut. She was looking at me with a slightly concerned affection.

I opened my mouth, still unsure as to what I was going to say. I took her hand. I was trying to buy myself more seconds with body language cues.

"I...think I love you too."

Damn.

"Dreams From My Father" Response

This was a complicated read.

I come from a Democrat family, a house full of liberals. My brother campaigned in Colorado for Obama before the 2012 election. Even my sweet, conservative-ish mother voted for Obama. I'm extremely aware of his speeches, his policies, his campaigning, his staff, the whole business.

As hard as I tried, I couldn't quite separate the voice of the child dealing with racism, acceptance, broken homes, poverty, loneliness and growing up from that voice that speaks about the NSA, foreign policy, and delivers the State of the Union address.

At least at first.

One thing I will say about Dreams From My Father is that it seems consistent. As I read at the beginning, it was a baffling discrepancy to hear that this man, who has become so vocal and defined on so many issues, was so confused by the world growing up. Dreams is certainly a memoir I have a close proximity to, and at first, it really affected my perception of the work. How can a man in charge of United States foreign policy morbidly ask a veteran if killing someone was bloody? How can the first African-American president not understand why black TV characters were never main characters?

As things evolve, however, a better picture of this man starts to appear. As an author, Mr. Obama is guilty of asking outright questions, of none-too-subtly exposing themes and topics. Yet in light of his future and eventual career, it seems almost excusable to spend so much time pondering about whether or not his classroom would accept his Kenyan father.

It almost seems too simplistic, for this "Barry Obama" to wonder and ponder about racism and politics and seizing the day. I was skeptical, too, of the fact that despite the people around him talking like teenagers, but Barry himself remaining somewhat aloof. Maybe he was just that good of a guy, but I feel as though the concessions he does make (such as his descriptions of drugs and alcohol) are calculated to humanize just enough.

That, then, would be my last complaint--that this is a limited-truth memoir. It isn't embarrassing; or if it is, it's just embarrassing enough to be believable. Barry (eventually Barack) is the appropriately fallible youth-turned-adolescent-turned-young man-turned-adult who eventually comes (more or less) to terms with his upbringing. It's not that he disregards his foibles, but instead he downplays them to the point of acceptable growing pains.

His writing style is strong, his memories specific, the characters authentic, and his own observations quiet at first, until culminating into a narrative that reflects his vision of the world and himself. This is not unusual for memoir, but in light of who Barry, then Obamba, then Barack, then Mr. Obama, then Irishman O'Bama, then Professor Obama will become, it seems to have a certain sheen.

It's believable. It's understandable. It's even acceptable. Perhaps my favorite structural device of  Dreams was the way that at the climax of the work, in the final quarter, when Mr. Obama could be at his political preachy best, is where the unpolitical themes of the work come home to roost. As he returns to Kenya, the book is ultimately redeemed as Hawaiian schools and Chicagoan political activism are replaced with African dust and long-lost family members.

To conclude, then, Dreams was imperfect, unrealistically idealistic, with several key details left out, yet charismatic, winning and (as I saw it) inspirational. Exactly as I see its author.