Reviews with TLC

A Land With a People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism: A collection of personal stories, history, poetry, and art  edited by Esther Farmer, Rosalind Petchesky, and Sarah Sills offers insight into the experiences of myriad people on their journey to understand zionism and confront it in their own ways. A Land With a People seeks to explain the history of Palestine and to remind the world there were people living in Palestine before Israel was created. Several of the essays also explore the difference in antisemitism and antizionism. The photographs and the artwork included in A Land With a People enhance the writings .  A Land With a People is an intense collection of beautiful writings that can be heart-wrenching at times and heart-warming at others and sometimes both at the same time. The vision of the myriad artists who contributed to A Land With a People gives me hope that people can find a way to create a better world.  Currently Reading: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestin

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. felt like being in therapy and studying the therapy technique at the same time. At about the 20% mark, I think, I texted a psychologist friend and arranged a book discussion for when I finished it.  The research Van De Kolk has participated in over his career is fascinating as is the other research he gathered in this book. I repeatedly wished I'd found this research twenty or thirty years ago. That said, there were several times word choices that made me feel uncomfortable and earlier in my life likely would have been triggering for me. I'm certain the research has continued to evolve as research tends to do, but The Body Keeps the Score made me finally realize that all those times I felt like my body was betraying me was it having a normal reaction to trauma. Several of the life techniques discussed in the book, I discovered through a more painstaking and lonely process of

Let's take a slight detour from my usual reviews.  Recently, I was compiling a list of books I've read about Palestine and Jerusalem to possibly share for the Corvallis Palestine Solidarity resource guide and realized I haven't reviewed most of those books or otherwise shared them. I decided to share a list of these books I've previously read complete with a few of my thoughts on each one. Future books will receive their own reviews like all the other books I read. In the meantime, if you're looking for more information on Palestine, Israel, and Jerusalem as well as the intersection of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the discussion, here are a few books to get you started. Nonfiction: The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi – A very informative and well-written book. See my full thoughts in my earlier review . The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilian Pappe - I just started this one, s