Author (or Editor): Bazhe |
Title: Damages |
Fiction? Anthology? Autobiography/memoir |
Publisher: Writer’s Showcase/iUniverse.com |
Date: 2002 |
ISBN: 0-595-23764-9 |
Series Name: |
Physical description: softcover, 402 pgs |
Relevance to doaskdotell: personal issues tracking with political change |
Review: Bahze is a writer, poet and artist who
immigrated into the Art, of course, has one advantage, of being ambiguous. The artist can
suggest the most contentious and dangerous ideas and remain non-specific and
not face the full implications of what he said. Not always, perhaps. In the Okay, I am getting off track. The point is, this is a book about Freedom,
and one which recognizes the faults, flaws, responsibilities, and mess that
can come in a political and social system where individuals and communities
can express themselves competitively. After visiting The book is laid out in thirty-five fairly short chapters, each with a one-word title. So here, I note an underlying similarity with what I did in my 1997 DADT book., where I also weaved personal narrative with politics and social commentary. I had six big chapters (rather like symphonic movements) that broke down into fifty subchapters, each of which is topical and more or less like a Bazhe chapter. Further, though a work of non-fiction, the true story has a complexity and forward-moving logic that one normally expects to find in a well-plotted historical novel. Bazhe’s intensely personal story provides, of
course, the energy to keep the story moving. The most intense passages are
graphically descriptive accounts of his caring for his adoptive mother, after
she had a colostomy for terminal rectal cancer, in the most intimate way
imaginable, dealing with bodily functions.
At one point, he comments about the belief of some that an adoptive
son is not as “valid” as a biological one, but he proves otherwise by the
sacrifices he makes—at one point nearly jeopardizing his emigration and US
citizenship application—to care for his adoptive mother. This stings me
personally, as I did not rise to a possibly comparable challenge to make
personal sacrifices and care for my own mother in 1999 after coronary bypass
surgery. I my family’s case, the care was hired; but in our developing
eldercare crisis one cannot always count on finding that. At tone point, Bazhe finally hires a nurse for his mother before going
to But there is much more. When his
father, a Communist official, dies and his mother takes ill, he does return
to The issue of “who are the real parents” reminds me of the WB Smallville
show, where Of course, this all sounds like movie material (and as I say this, I have
no idea whether there have been discussions, although I met the author at a
book signing in |
Related: The Tragedy of Miss Geneva Flowers |
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