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calarco's Reviews (760)
I will admit, I am not by any means the rabid Halsey fan that is perhaps most likely to pick up this book. Her work is hard to miss and I think she's very talented, but mostly I arrived here after I saw her Daily Show interview with Trevor Noah. I really appreciated her poise and openness, and I think that these qualities shine through in this collection.
Considering that I simply am not familiar with work conveyed from the perspective of someone with bipolar disorder, I found there to be a great deal of artistic value here. Halsey is talented at lyricism. Where the collection lost me at times, was with dips in quality. Some verses were incredibly polished, while others could have been better developed.
Overall, I think this is a solid debut. I do wonder if maybe I'm too old to understand or relate to some of these passages, but overall I think it is expressive and worth checking out.
Considering that I simply am not familiar with work conveyed from the perspective of someone with bipolar disorder, I found there to be a great deal of artistic value here. Halsey is talented at lyricism. Where the collection lost me at times, was with dips in quality. Some verses were incredibly polished, while others could have been better developed.
Overall, I think this is a solid debut. I do wonder if maybe I'm too old to understand or relate to some of these passages, but overall I think it is expressive and worth checking out.
Everyday, there seems to be a new memorial that pops up somewhere in the United States. Some commemorate notable figures, some mourn lost victims, some give homage to mass-movements, but all occupy physical and social space within a given community.
Erika Doss accomplishes something truly intriguing with this volume, assessing memorials thematically as they pertain to grief (e.g., mass loss), fear (e.g., terrorism), gratitude (e.g., World War II troops), shame (e.g., hate crimes, genocide, etc.), and anger (e.g., retribution). While individual memorials do need to be assessed in context, this thematic approach does get to the heart of the intentionality behind a memorial’s creation. At the end of the day, a memorial says a lot more about the people who build it, than the people they are build for.
Overall, this was a good book and I recommend it to anyone wanting to learning more about the subject matter. Perhaps a topic for future reading, but something I am eager to learn more about are memorials on the web and social media. This book was published in 2010 and does a good job of detailing different physical memorials, but if anyone has a good reference for online ones, please let me know!
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The following are some highlights from [b:Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America|9297910|Memorial Mania Public Feeling in America|Erika Doss|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349013000l/9297910._SY75_.jpg|14180513]:
“Apologies do not, however, entitle forgiveness. An apology is not a pardon, a reprieve, or a form of amnesty. Rather, apologies follow from acknowledgements of complicity and decisions to take responsibility, while forgiveness is the discretionary option of those who have been harmed.” (p. 290-291)
“However much the nation may now want to apologize for its shameful history of chattel slavery, slavery’s representation itself remains limited and highly contested. White supremacy, by contrast, is highly visible in America’s memorial cultures.” (p. 292)
“Redemption is not, then, a limiting form of progressive history focused on ‘healing’ history’s wounds and coming to some sort of closure, but a critically and affectively engaged narrative that acknowledges failure, defeat, and damage as it simultaneously aims to bear witness, right wrongs, and imagine a better future. Such empathic response is ongoing and never complete, and centers on critically reckoning with the past on particularly unsettling affective terms, like shame.” (p. 308-309)
“Today, however, tropes of Native American victimization, and notions of an Indian subjectivity defined in terms of pain, suffering, loss, and defeat, are perceived as insults, especially among Indians and especially when pitted against tropes of national authority and masculine influence.” (p. 342)
Erika Doss accomplishes something truly intriguing with this volume, assessing memorials thematically as they pertain to grief (e.g., mass loss), fear (e.g., terrorism), gratitude (e.g., World War II troops), shame (e.g., hate crimes, genocide, etc.), and anger (e.g., retribution). While individual memorials do need to be assessed in context, this thematic approach does get to the heart of the intentionality behind a memorial’s creation. At the end of the day, a memorial says a lot more about the people who build it, than the people they are build for.
Overall, this was a good book and I recommend it to anyone wanting to learning more about the subject matter. Perhaps a topic for future reading, but something I am eager to learn more about are memorials on the web and social media. This book was published in 2010 and does a good job of detailing different physical memorials, but if anyone has a good reference for online ones, please let me know!
---
The following are some highlights from [b:Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America|9297910|Memorial Mania Public Feeling in America|Erika Doss|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349013000l/9297910._SY75_.jpg|14180513]:
“Apologies do not, however, entitle forgiveness. An apology is not a pardon, a reprieve, or a form of amnesty. Rather, apologies follow from acknowledgements of complicity and decisions to take responsibility, while forgiveness is the discretionary option of those who have been harmed.” (p. 290-291)
“However much the nation may now want to apologize for its shameful history of chattel slavery, slavery’s representation itself remains limited and highly contested. White supremacy, by contrast, is highly visible in America’s memorial cultures.” (p. 292)
“Redemption is not, then, a limiting form of progressive history focused on ‘healing’ history’s wounds and coming to some sort of closure, but a critically and affectively engaged narrative that acknowledges failure, defeat, and damage as it simultaneously aims to bear witness, right wrongs, and imagine a better future. Such empathic response is ongoing and never complete, and centers on critically reckoning with the past on particularly unsettling affective terms, like shame.” (p. 308-309)
“Today, however, tropes of Native American victimization, and notions of an Indian subjectivity defined in terms of pain, suffering, loss, and defeat, are perceived as insults, especially among Indians and especially when pitted against tropes of national authority and masculine influence.” (p. 342)
