Nonfiction Monday Review: Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and its Legacy by Albert Marrin

My fascination with the tragedy at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911 has been well documented on this blog, but one thing I've been looking for since reading my first book on the fire is a great, YA-focused nonfiction account of the fire. I love historical fiction as a way to introduce readers in a compelling, creative way to historical events, but eventually I start to hunger for some cold, hard facts. Finally, 100 years after the disaster, Albert Marrin provides me with the book I've been looking for.

Marrin gives a detailed account of late 19th-early 20th century immigrant life, focusing on the Southern Italians and Russian Jews who dominated the workforce in factories like Triangle. Marrin goes back to Italy and Russia to look at the "pushes" that started the huge waves of immigration that brought these people to New York City.

From there we see life in New York's poor immigrant neighborhoods, how the livelihoods of the immigrants back in the home country affected what jobs they took in America, how insulated the neighborhoods were, and how textile factory work became the position of choice for young immigrant women.

And then comes the terrors of factory life, and the nightmare that was March 25th, when the fire broke out just before closing time. Marrin provides plenty of contemporary accounts, from brief quotations from witnesses to longer excerpts of written accounts. When I told my husband I was reading a book about the Triangle Fire his response was "Another one? Don't you know everything?" But there was a lot here I didn't know. For example, I knew the fire escape quickly proved to be useless, tearing away from the building under the weight of the terrified workers. What I didn't know was the fire escape was never truly designed to be useful - it ended directly over a skylight in the roof of the next building, and was surrounded with a fence topped with four-inch spikes. If falling from the fire escape didn't kill someone, landing on those spikes did.

Marrin ties the story of the Triangle factory into today, looking at the governmental corruption that was overcome in order to ensure some basic workplace safety and the right for workers to unionize (a right that is, of course, under attack again today). Marrin also looks overseas to modern sweatshops in Asia, looking at the ethical implications of boycotting sweatshop labor, since the women who work in these factories have so few other options. (For an alternative view, that I don't think will be presented in YA lit anytime soon, no matter how "dark" we're getting, check out this recent Slate article)

I appreciate that Marrin hasn't white-washed history. When explaining the ethnic makeup of the workers at the Triangle factory, he notes right away that African-American women were absent due to racism. And then during the Uprising of 20,000, he brings up the important decisions African American women had to make regarding their own opportunities for job advancement.

The Triangle Factory Fire was such a pivotal moment in American history, it's a shame it isn't taught about more often, and that the names of those associated with it have been generally lost. I'm so thankful that Marrin introduced me to Clara Lemlich through this book - she was a tireless labor organizer during the Uprising of 20,000 (a massive garment worker strike that ended a few months prior to the Triangle Fire), she was blackballed from the industry afterwards, but continued to dedicate her life towards social welfare and became what we now call a community organizer. She was so bad ass, that even when she was in a nursing home in her 80s, she encouraged the orderlies to organize and form a union! What an amazing person.



This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Chapter Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Review: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

I know it's only March, but I think we have here our first serious awards contender of 2011. If Between Shades of Gray were a movie, it would be a December-released prestige picture, an obvious ploy for an Oscar win, but one it would surely deserve.

It's 1941, and Lithuanian Lina leads a comfortable life. Her parents dote upon her and her younger brother, she has friends and family and crushes, and amazing skills with pencils and paintbrushes that are opening doors to her future education.

But that idyllic life comes crashing down around Lina late one night, when armed men break into the house and pull Lina, her mother and her brother from their beds without explanation.

And so begins Lina's journey - one that stretches thousands of miles, from the quiet suburbs of Lithuania into the frigid depths north of the Arctic circle, as Lina and her family become victims of Stalin's march in Lithuania and the Baltic states at the outbreak of World War II. Her only comforts are her family, her artwork, and her hope that her furtive sketches and notes will be passed hand to hand until they reach her father and he'll escape from wherever he's being held to come find his family.

Lina's and Lithuania's story was totally new to me. I vaguely knew that Stalin's Soviet Union wasn't a great place to be, but had no real idea about the elimination tactics that he used. It's horrifying to think that in some ways this man was our ally - and yet he was using the same tactics as Hitler. Sepetys does an amazing job portraying the dehumanizing tactics used by the NKVD (the predecessors of the KGB) - it's gut churning and horrifying.

Lina is an amazing artist and Sepetys uses her artistic eye to add some beautiful language to a story of hardship and terror. Lina doesn't draw strictly realistic - she's inspired by Munch - which gives Sepetys many opportunities for perfect metaphors, like the snakes crawling out from the neck of one particularly horrid guard's jacket.

I read this book over the course of just one day - and not even a weekend. Even when I had to take breaks, my mind was still in the book. At one point I paused to eat dinner with my husband, and I felt a bit of guilt sitting down to a full hot meal when part of my brain was still in Altai, the first camp Lina is sentenced to. And then when I could get back to reading and reached the end of the book I was crying - almost sobbing. And I don't easily cry at books.

While on the surface Lina's story isn't terribly different from any other fictional Holocaust account, I still feel it's an important contribution to the genre of WWII titles. The writing alone makes it worth a read, but it's also important to remember that in most any conflict there are indeed shades of gray - that even while we may call someone an ally, that doesn't make them (or even us) perfect examples of our ideals.

Reviewed from an ARC picked up at ALA Annual 2010. Between Shades of Gray is available today!

Nonfiction Monday Review: Sugar Changed the World by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos

Wow, this book has been getting a ton of praise recently - including making the shortlist for the LA Times Book Prize in the YA lit category. So I knew I had to check it out.

Marc Aronson and Maina Budhos both have family connections to the sugar trade - Aronson's family worked with beet sugar in Russia, while Budhos' family, originally from India, worked in Guyana. This personal connection is an early indication that the story of sugar is going to take us around the globe. Aronson and Budhos trace sugar from its probably origins in New Guinea, through the Middle East to Europe, and then spend the bulk of the book looking at how sugar drove the slave trade in South America and the Caribbean. As a USian, for whom the story of slavery was tied to cotton, it was eye opening to see how slavery influenced a different cash crop.

There are also interesting facts about sugar peppered throughout the book. Sugar is the only flavor humans like naturally - we acquire our tastes for salty, bitter, and other flavors. While the story Aronson and Budhos share pretty much ends with slavery in the US (going on just a bit longer to look at the indentured servitude of Indians, as well as the Asians of many countries who were brought in to Hawaii), there are tantalizing hints that the story of sugar isn't over - we've developed high fructose corn syrup as a replacement for cane sugar, and artificial sweeteners like Splenda. I think, rather than spending so much time going over the horrors of slavery again, I would have liked to see more about the modern quest for cheap sweeteners. While slavery is certainly an important part of the story of sugar, since Aronson and Budhos say in their afterword that this is a book intended for high school students I feel like rehashing a lot of the stories of slavery that aren't too different from accounts of life in the United States, with which US students will already be familiar, dragged down parts of the book.

Another small thing that I feel is missing from the book is any account of the Caribbean natives who would have been displaced by these sugar plantations. The way the book is now, it seems like the islands were discovered as empty, pristine places, perfect for growing sugar cane. I know initially native populations were used as slaves for the Europeans - by the time the Europeans got around to growing sugar, had the native populations already been exhausted by other slave work and disease? I certainly don't know - the only mention of natives doesn't even merit a listing in the index, as they are just briefly mentioned as members of the maroon population in Brazil - communities formed outside of the plantations by escaped slaves, natives, and even some white Europeans.

There were also two small passages that dragged down the quality of the book for me, because they are phrased...awkwardly, to put them in the most positive light possible.

First, on page 39:

You might be lucky enough to be trained as a specialist - the person who watched the cane grow and who kept an eye out for when the plants were ripe and ready to be cut. Special knowledge did not make a slave any less a slave - you were neither freed or paid. But perhaps some of the enslaved people had the personal pleasure of realizing that they had knowledge that the plantation owners needed.

I checked to see if there was a note in the back explaining where this notion of pleasure in slavery came from - if there was a slave narrative that had someone taking some form of pleasure in their work, this would be a much more credible statement. But since no such note exists, it seems rather tone deaf to talk about taking pleasure in having knowledge that's going to benefit the person that keeps you as property.

Then again, on page 70:

Africans were at the heart of the great change in the economy, indeed in the lives of people throughout the world. Africans were the true global citizens - adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never have et in their homelands. Their labor made the Age of Sugar - the Industrial Age - possible. We should not see the enslaved people simply as victims, but rather as actors - as the heralds of the interconnected world in which we all live today.

I think this one is worse for me than page 39 was. The slaves in the Caribbean had no choice in their situation - they were kidnapped from Africa, and their ability to act freely was removed. The enslaved Africans rarely got to enjoy the fruits of their labor - working in sugar cane was dangerous and claimed so many lives that once the Atlantic slave trade was abolished slaves weren't reproducing fast enough to maintain or increase the slave population numbers, so the sugar workers weren't usually the ones buying their freedom and then going on to be consumers of sugar (or any other goods harvested by the hands of slaves). Edit 3/14/11 at 11pm: Author Marc Aronson has posted a comment further explaining these passages.

This is a worthwhile book for those interested in another aspect of the dark history of slavery - I just had to point out those two instances because they left me feeling uncomfortable. In both instances I get the points that Aronson and Budhos are trying to make - I just think they end up falling a little short of their goal, as both of these passages almost seem to soften the tragedy that slavery is.





This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Chapter Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Review: Dark Goddess by Sarwat Chadda

Last January I read Devil's Kiss and really liked it - while it glossed over some things I wanted more explanation on, I really enjoyed it as an excellent work of urban fantasy with a kick ass protagonist who just happened to be bi-racial. In Dark Goddess, Billi is back and tougher than ever - this time tackling Amazon werewolves and Baba Yaga.

It's so cool, guys.

While Billi is still mourning the loss of her best friend Kay, the supernatural creatures refuse to take a break to let her properly grieve. Last time Billi faced the Angel of Death - now she's up against the polenitsy, a pack of werewolves descended from the Amazons. They are searching for the Spring Child, an Oracle like Kay was, that they plan to sacrifice to their goddess, the infamous Baba Yaga. It's a mission that will uproot Billi from her familiar home in London and take her and her fellow Templars to Moscow and the wilds of Russia to team up with the Bogatyrs, the Templars' Russian counterparts, led by Ivan, the handsome descendant of the mysterious Anastasia Romanov. As the full moon approaches, Billi and Ivan will have to overcome their instinctive distrust of others to fight together for the common good.

One thing I really like about the supernatural creatures Chadda creates: they are the bad guys. Sure there are some shades of gray, but the polenitsy are not "kissing werewolves." No one is going to fall in love with these creatures because they are lean, mean, fighting machines, who are more likely to eat you than kiss you, if you were dumb enough to get that close. Additionally, Chadda puts some great twists on traditional folklore - there's the Amazon werewolf connection, which is awesome because Amazons are awesome, and then whole mythos of Baba Yaga. This isn't the scary little witch who runs around in a house on chicken legs; she wields unbelievable power as the physical embodiment of Russia herself. Scary. And awesome, like the werewolves that worship her. With a bunch of women in the roles of both adversary and ally, Dark Goddess has no problem passing the Bechdel Test. Yay!

The action is absolutely nonstop, which some can see as a good thing, but actually ended up undermining a bit of Chadda's worldbuilding for me. It's established early on that werewolves are bad news. As in, two fully-trained Templars could take on one werewolf and probably win - but their chances of survival decrease exponentially if a second werewolf is added to the equation. Yet Billi repeatedly tackles the werewolves, almost always with the odds against her, and she rarely even gets a full night's sleep, let alone a chance to really heal. Since she keeps coming out on top, it takes away the feeling that she's ever really in danger, thus dramatically decreasing the tension.

If you haven't read Devil's Kiss yet, I highly recommend you read that before Dark Goddess. Chadda throws us right into the action in chapter one and spends little to no time rehashing people or events from Devil's Kiss - so even if you have read the first book, you might want to re-read it as a refresher. These are the sort of fantasy books I want to see more of - women who know how to handle themselves and know what they want primarily, and the action is more important than the romance. And in the case of Billi SanGreal, you get all that, plus a bi-racial  heroine!

Review: The Dark Game by Paul B. Janeczko

Nominated for the 2011 YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction

I've never been much of a fan of spy/mystery stories. I don't have anything against them, it's just that in the huge number of stories that are published every year, other things pique my interest first. Janeczko says in his introduction that he guesses the reader of the book has an interest in spies that "may run as deeply as [his]." Well that's not the case for me, but I still found this to be an incredibly interesting book.

Janeczko covers spying in America and by Americans from the Revolutionary War through early 2001. He picks out a few individual spies or campaigns for the major wars (plus the cold war) the US has engaged in, as well as highlights some of the evolving technology that's important in spy work (such as cameras, naturally). Some of these stories are absolutely amazing - like the tunnel the US and British dug from West to East Berlin in order to tap into Soviet telegraph cables.

Janeczko definitely has a flair for drama, as often these are tales of agents or governments crossing and double-crossing each other. For example, in the case of the Berlin tunnel, just when you think the story has ended and all is well for the US...Janeczko reveals a major twist in the story, illustrating that even the best laid plans can go awry, and sometimes you won't even know it.

I also have to say I'm really impressed that Janeczko highlights female spies, without ghettoizing them into a "lady spy" section. He covers the glamorous Mata Hari as well as Virginia Hall - a woman with a wooden leg who aided the French Resistance in WWII. Women spies also played important roles in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Janeczko clearly has a deep interest in the technical side of spying. Not only are advances in technology highlighted in each chapter, but he often goes into detail about various codes that spies use. I'll admit a lot of these codes went over my head, but me and numbers just don't get along (and many of these codes rely on number substitutions), so I'm willing to be that's more of a problem on my part. It's still interesting to see the variety of codes used and how they've changed - with a highlight for me being the Choctaw Code Talkers in WWI, who were able to foil the Germans who were evesdropping on US communications by using an utterly foreign language.

This isn't an exhaustive biography of any one spy - rather this is an overview of how spying has affected US policies by looking at a few of the most influential individuals (both those who spied for the US and those who spied against us). I don't know how well known some of the people and events would be to someone who has a hard core interest in spies - I, for example, knew about the women mentioned in the Civil War from my reading on women's roles during that war - but it's certainly an enlightening and entertaining read for someone totally new to the subject.

Review: Anastasia's Secret by Susanne Dunlap

When I added this to my TBR list (my infamous spreadsheet), I was a little hesitant, afraid that it would be a takeoff on the "Anastasia survived" conspiracy theory. Luckily, it's not (so, um, spoiler alert?).

Anastasia's Secret follows the life of the youngest daughter of the last tsar of Russia from ages 12 through 18. When the story begins, Russia is on the cusp of joining what will eventually be known as World War I. While Anastasia lives a sheltered life, she knows she is loved and enjoys the companionship of her older sisters and her little brother. Yet she sometimes craves more, and is thrilled to meet Sasha a young soldier and guard at the palace, and quickly befriends the boy who's only a few years older than she.

But once Russia joins the war, life begins changing quickly. Sasha is sent to the front lines, and when it looks like the war is turning in Germany's favor, the tsar himself takes command of the armies, taking him away from his family. The tsarina and the oldest girls go to work as nurses, leaving Anastasia and the next youngest daughter, Marie, to merely work as assistants in the hospitals.

But once the war ends, all is not peaceful in Russia. The Bolsheviks in the parliament want the tsar out of power, and from the rumors Anastasia hears, they aren't afraid to resort to violence to make it happen.

After the overthrow of the tsar, life is turned upside down for Anastasia and her family. Placed under house arrest, the family is faced with indignity after indignity in the name of the new communist government. Anastasia's only comfort - and protector - is found in Sasha, who survived the war and has returned as a palace guard, though now charged with keeping the family locked inside. As they continue to grow, even under such adverse circumstances, their friendship turns to love.

The historical research for this novel must have been exhausting. The novel is filled with historical details, from the glamorous débutante balls Anastasia's older sisters get to have, to the not-so-glamorous, like how a family of 7 plus a handful of servants live in a small house in Siberia. Lots and lots of details for the history buff to savor here.

The rest of the novel I wasn't quite so enamored with. Anastasia does a lot of growing up over the course of the novel - it spans her entire teenage life. Yet the character's voice never reflects this growing up. On page three hundred she sounds exactly the same as she did on page one. The quick pace and the lack of voice development often made it hard to envision exactly what age Anastasia is (it also doesn't help that everyone in her family continues to treat her like a child, but that's actually important to the character & plot development so it's forgiven and I think would have actually been enhanced if Anastasia acted and sounded appreciably older). This also leads to uncomfortable moments of trying to figure out just how old Anastasia is when she and Sasha start having a physical relationship (don't worry, it's not totally squicky). For those concerned about such things: though Sasha and Anastasia do obviously start having sex and Anastasia does some dwelling on the fact that she's probably lost her virginity long before her sisters ever will, it's never explicit.

As I said at the beginning, this book covers Anastasia's life leading up to the execution. It doesn't, however, actually cover anyone's death, which also means that it doesn't give a definitive answer as to whether Anastasia survived. All signs point to yes, however.

Finally, can I just say that this cover bores me to tears?

For the first time ever I correctly guessed a publisher just by looking at the cover - I remembered Justine Larbalstier mentioning during the Liar cover controversy that Bloomsbury has had good luck with photos of girls on the covers, and sure enough this is a Bloomsbury title. This just seems like such a generic photo - you can't even see enough of the girl to tell if she's in period costume or not. This definitely isn't a book I would have picked up based on just the cover.

This book does have one of the more interesting online components that I've seen thus far. A blog called Anastasia Lives has been set up to supplement the novel. I assume this is Susanne Dunlap's creation, but the blog only identifies its author as Anastasia. Again, this is a must for history buffs as the multi-media aspect of the internet lets us actually see historical photographs - I especially like the current entry that shows a political cartoon from the era! I haven't read every post, but it doesn't look like it's particularly spoiler-y, so it can be enjoyed even if you haven't read Anastasia's Secret yet.

Double Whammy Review: Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix & Ashes of Roses by Mary Jane Auch

These reviews are going up together because they both deal with the same subject: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25th, 1911. When I saw that Margaret Peterson Haddix had a new book out about the fire (and the strike that preceded it), I knew I had to read it, and remembering how much I liked Ashes of Roses when it first came out, I picked that up as well so I could read them together. I blame the former wanna-be English teacher in me.

Uprising focuses on the lives of three young women in New York City, two young immigrant women who work at the Triangle Factory (Yetta, a Jewish immigrant from Russia and Bella, an Italian immigrant fresh off the boat), and a third woman, Jane the disillusioned daughter of a millionaire, who vows to help the Triangle Factory workers in any way possible when they organize a strike against the unfair - and dangerous - labor practices at the factory.

The story is introduced to us by a Mrs. Livingston, who is telling the story to the now-grown daughter of one of the factory's owners and who can somehow reveal the inner lives and knowledge of three different women (while the book is narrated in the third person, the chapters alternate between focusing on Yetta, Bella and Jane). The story starts as Bella arrives in America to begin her new life, working in the Triangle factory so she can send money back to her starving mother and siblings in Italy. Bella doesn't know a word of English, so when a crowd of workers spontaneously get up and leave in the middle of the day, Bella goes out with them, not knowing she is participating in the beginning of The Uprising of 20,000. Yetta, another of our protagonists, is one of the leaders of the strike - she and her sister Rahel are active in the burgeoning union and Yetta is one of the union's most fervent devotees.

As the strike continues, Bella, desperate for money and not understanding the meaning of strikes or unions, continues to work as a scab, while Yetta walks the picket lines daily for months. Jane, who feels useless and adrift in a society that only values her for what assets she could bring her father by marrying a wealthy man, becomes one of many wealthy women who support the poor strikers in any way they can, from standing between the strikers and police (the police won't hesitate to beat poor immigrant women to a pulp, but avoid the society ladies as much as possible) to bringing food to the strikers and posting money to bail them out of prison.

The three women's friendship is cemented when Bella receives a letter from home, which she can't read. Jane, who knows some Italian, reads the letter to Bella and translates it for Yetta, who speaks Yiddish and English. Jane's family recoils at the thought of the well-bred young woman fraternizing with such lowly women, but Jane is determined to stick with the working girls, even after the strike is over and work continues as usual at the Triangle Factory - until the day of the deadly fire.

Ashes of Roses has a much narrower focus. While Uprising follows three women and covers events around the factory from the beginning of the strike in 1909 through the fire in 1911, Ashes of Roses focuses on one Irish immigrant, Rose, and the whole book covers only about a month and a half - Rose's first terrible week or so in America with her mother and sisters, and then another few weeks with just one sister as they live in a room rented to them by a Triangle factory worker and union organizer, Gussie, and her father. After a week of learning how to use a sewing machine under Gussie's tutelage, Gussie brings Rose with her to the factory to begin work. Two weeks later, on pay day, the infamous fire breaks out.

I remember when I first read Ashes of Roses, I found the scene of the fire gripping. This time around, not so much. It's still a compelling account of the tragedy, but for me it no longer seemed quite so action-packed.

Not that Uprising had a fire scene that was any better. Overall I think that Ashes of Roses is the stronger of the two books, especially for older readers, because Uprising had way too many illogical moments for me to palate. The women that have absolutely no language in common seem to have an awfully good idea of what the other is saying (only occasionally does the caveat "She must have been saying something like..." appear), and Mrs. Livingston seems to have a psychic link to the women who died in the fire in order to be able to convey their last moments so vividly. Both books also have some clunky foreshadowing - lots of conversations and observations about fire escapes on buildings and how the newly immigrated women are awestruck by them.

Uprising is more concerned with painting a larger historical picture as Haddix's fictional characters often see real historical figures of the early labor movement. Haddix also includes a very substantial author's note at the end, giving further background into the story and her research process (ironically, she begins her author's note by saying she hates notes in other books that say 'this was real, but this wasn't' as she prefers to do the research herself...but then her note goes on to explain every historical person and event that appears in her book!). Auch's author's note is shorter, but then her book also doesn't cover as wide of a time as Uprising. Both books do cover some of the same experiences however, including both Bella and Rose working in flower-making sweatshops and, of course, the Russian Jewish union leaders that feature prominently in both books.

Sometime soon, when I'm not buried under wedding planning materials, I'm heading down to the building that once housed the factory - as Yetta points out in Uprising, the building was designed to be fireproof and it was. It still stands today and is a National Historic Landmark.