skygiants | (no subject)

Last night I read Rose Under Fire and then I dreamed about archiving Holocaust film footage all night, so that was fun.

I think there are two ways to talk about Rose Under Fire, which is to praise it for being at the high end of concentration camp novels, or to castigate it for not being as good as Code Name Verity, both of which I think are sort of unfortunate ways to discuss it but can't really be helped. Rose Under Fire was never going to be as good as Code Name Verity. This is sort of like when Conspiracy of Kings came out and everyone was disappointed because it wasn't as good as King of Attolia, which was also never going to happen. Code Name Verity was a very new story and an emotionally wrenching story and a very clever story all at once and that kind of thing just doesn't come together all that often.

Rose Under Fire is a concentration camp novel and a concentration camp novel is sort of fundamentally a concentration camp novel. As concentration camp novels go, it's compelling and harrowing and grants its characters as much agency as it possibly can -- although our protagonist Rose Justice does I think sort of falls into the trap of being the Identifiable Viewpoint Protagonist of a concentration camp novel. Why does she have to be naive and American and a bit literary, instead of one of the Polish girls that the book is really about? So that the presumed naive American reader can imagine themselves in her place. It's like The Devil's Arithmetic, except without having to bother with time travel.

Although of course the protagonist of The Devil's Arithmetic was Jewish, and none of the characters in Rose Under Fire are -- and here I think is where I am going to say something sort of horrible and and I certainly don't expect anybody else reading this to feel the same way, but I hugely appreciate reading World War II Germany novels about how things were also awful for people who are not Jewish.

Because, I mean, like, I know. I know about the Holocaust. I have taken in a staggering amount of knowledge and media about the Holocaust over the course of my life as a Jewish girl, and it was and is incredibly important to take it in, but, like. It's been a lot. And I do think there is a danger in The Jewish Story be the story that everyone always talks about -- not that it wasn't and isn't important to remember, always. But the Holocaust is not the only Jewish story, and the Jewish story is not the only story there is from that time, and these are both things I think are sometimes at risk of being forgotten. Single stories are a problem. We all know that.

So I'm pretty glad that Elizabeth Wein decided to tell the story of the Polish Rabbits in Ravensbruck, rather than the story of Auschwitz or any of the other Jewish concentration camps; I have no background in which to gauge how well she did it, but I'm glad she did.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/353953.html

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

thewickedlady

I do appreciate that you said it! Because it is like you said: it is not the only story from the time. It's like the fight historians had in the 70s and 80s to get the story of the horrible things done to anyone queer and the same for Romani. It's important!

Thank you for reading this! I was trying to decide if I needed to read this one now or wait on it a bit. WAITING A BIT. Since I am actually just now getting back into Code Name Verity. (yes, i have not finished it yet. I know I suck. IT IS VERY GOOD.)

From:

skygiants

I am glad you are getting back into Code Name Verity! (Does this mean you finally cleared out your sample pile? ARE YOU FREE AT LAST?) But yeah I think waiting a bit after CNV for Rose Under Fire is a very good decision.

From:

thewickedlady

>_> mumblemumbledownto15mumble

And then I went crazy with all the book bundling that happened a few weeks ago and and. I HAVE SO MANY BOOKS. SO BOOKS, MANY READS.

From:

skygiants

If you die of books, at least it's a GOOD WAY TO GO.

From:

saramily

I only caught up to the Code Name Verity train last month, so I am NOT READY for Rose Under Fire as Verity basically wrecked me.

I think once I get to it I will probably really like it- or more like, be moved by it? Because I don't think the feelings I have for Verity are "liking" so much as oh my god so good augh why what oh noooo of course but auuuuuuuuuuuuugggggggggghhhhhh *anime tears*.

From:

ashen_key

these are both things I think are sometimes at risk of being forgotten

I think, to be honest, they are ALREADY forgotten. Mostly. Some people are aware, but it's never really taught.

From:

ambyr

I struggled with the book because I don't think the fact that the Holocaust is not only a Jewish story is in danger of being forgotten; what I hear far too often is "it's not like the Jews were the only ones to suffer, lots of other people suffered more, why do Jews have to make it all about themselves?" So Rose Under Fire to me rang alarm bells as identifying with a certain strain of Holocaust denial that I would really prefer not to encounter at all, much less in YA literature.

I am glad it worked for other people, but I don't think I'll be able to read any more of Wein's books.

From:

skygiants

EVERYONE HAS THOSE FEELINGS FOR VERITY, it's some kind of awful magic.

. . . that said, Verity did not give me really intense dreams, unlike Rose Under Fire . . .

From:

skygiants

I think it depends who you are and where you're being taught, too. Like, I am very sure my experience (heavily Jewish area, double-whammy public school and Hebrew school) is very different from many other people's!

From:

skygiants

That's obviously not how I feel, but I definitely understand where you're coming from.

From:

ashen_key

*nodnods* Yeah. I'm Australian, not sure I actually know anyone who is Jewish IRL except for my second cousin's husband, went to an Anglican school...and the Holocaust was it. I can't even remember if anyone else was even MENTIONED. They didn't cover anything else in WWII (which...has it's own issues with cultural imperialism, that lack of even knowing what our own soldiers and nurses were doing, but gosh media and books taught us that the Americans Rescued Everyone In Europe), but we knew about the Holocaust. And then I grew up, hit the internet and other history books, and so many other people died and were tortured. Millions of other people. But unless I went looking, I'd have zero idea.

From:

gramarye1971

With my historian hat on (because that's about all I have going for me in this discussion), your sentiments are interesting and I can see where you're coming from. For all that the Holocaust is a monolithic story, it isn't a monolith, if that makes any sense. The stories that come out of it are going to be different for those who are and aren't Jewish, but they're also going to be different for who are (for example) Hungarian and Jewish or Polish and Jewish, or Hungarian and not Jewish or Polish and not Jewish. Things happened in Ukraine and Latvia that didn't happen in France and Italy, even if everything that happened is part of the Holocaust story as a whole.

I've got a book on my reading list about ethnic cleansing in Nazi-allied Romania during World War II. I know very little about pre-Cold War Romania (and to be honest, little about Romania in general), and I'm interested in learning more about the specific Holocaust experiences of the Romanians compared with what I know about Germans and Poles and Ukrainians, Jewish and non-Jewish, whose examples I've read about in some depth. Basically, I want to hear more stories and voices, not fewer -- especially those that don't denigrate the Jewish experience while still allowing the non-Jewish experience to be heard. (Though I realise that I'm hardly in a position to dictate that much, and my job is generally to shut up and listen and think about what I'm hearing, so I will do that gladly.)

From:

allchildren

I haven't read it, part of which is due to how I felt I when I heard there are no Jewish characters. Maybe it's compounded from my reaction after The Book Thief (another book I haven't read because I've heard enough about it to avoid) got so damn big with so little respect paid to the Jews outside the narrative's frame. It's certainly also contributed to and from the deepening discomfort that's grown out of my initial "hmm" reaction to Maddie's oh-by-the-way Jewishness in CNV. I actually love the idea of a Holocaust story that's not about Jewish suffering. And -- see icon -- I love a Jewish action heroine whose Jewishness does not define or hobble her. But as much as I love fresh takes from out of the shadows of well-trod narratives, I still need to know that what cast that shadow is still standing and is respected, not just swept under the rug. I've encountered too much antisemitism in liberal people under 30 to trust that everyone already gets it; I know they don't; they're bored of the same narrative too; they're past believing in antisemitism as a thing that matters anymore, which is how they neatly perpetuate it. I don't know what an ideal solution to this conflict would be, I just grumble to myself and light cinemas full of Nazis on fire every time tumblr claps its hands. It's some work.

From:

skygiants

Heh, I actually read The Book Thief when it first came out and enjoyed it, and then first couple negative reactions I saw calling it out on its issues were all from non-Jewish people, which made me super irrationally cranky and defensive -- like, "whatever, YOU don't get to be the person making me feel guilty for enjoying a book about sympathetic Germans! DON'T CO-OPT MY ANGER, IF I WANT TO BE ANGRY I'LL BE ANGRY ON MY OWN TIME AND RIGHT NOW I DON'T FEEL LIKE IT."

I actually was quite glad of some of the things Rose Under Fire did to remind the reader that the specifically Jewish Holocaust was also happening at the same time, even though this is not that story -- and one small thing that actually meant a whole lot to me is the fact that when Auschwitz came up in the narrative, it was in terms of the gunpowder smuggling and the women's rebellion, and in terms of fighting back. Because the shadow of the Holocaust narrative -- which has been, like, an obelisk-sized shadow for me, I feel, though I can't speak obviously for anybody else -- often doesn't include that story either, and doesn't include the Warsaw Rebellion, and doesn't include a lot of things, except victimization and suffering by.

Anyway. As you say, I don't know if there's a best way to do it, a narrative that can possibly do all the things I want it to do, and everyone's reaction to what any specific narrative does and does not do is different and is valid. This is probably not a very coherent response. LIGHTING CINEMAS FULL OF NAZIS ON FIRE is always an a+ reaction, anyway.

From:

skygiants

Yes, it's exactly that, though -- more stories and voices, always. And there are so many, is the thing. That really is one of the most awful things about it, and the most important to remember.

From:

sovay

Because the shadow of the Holocaust narrative -- which has been, like, an obelisk-sized shadow for me, I feel, though I can't speak obviously for anybody else -- often doesn't include that story either, and doesn't include the Warsaw Rebellion, and doesn't include a lot of things, except victimization and suffering by.

Have you read A Verse from Babylon (2005)? I am not impartial about the book, since I read it in all its draft stages and contributed a poem as an afterword and its author is the mother of my godchild, but it is a Holocaust novel which was very deliberately written against the story of victimization; it's about the artists of the Vilna Ghetto (one of whom was Hirsh Glik, another of whom was the author's great-aunt Raissa Gellerman) and nobody in it survives, because none of them did, but it is full of sex and theater and queerness and cherries and stupid arguments and banned books and all the different forms of resistance—including just being alive—until then and after. I tend to recommend it on principle as a novel I would have loved if I'd found it cold in the wild and am therefore even happier to have known from the start, but it seems like it might be of particular interest to you.

From:

skygiants

I have not, and that indeed does sound extremely relevant to my interests, as laid out here. Thank you!

From:

elviella

I haven't actually even read Code Name Verity yet (though I do have it in my kindle app and it's turn is coming pretty soon), but basically what I understood from all the other reviews of Rose Under Fire I've seen was...well. Not to read Rose. So it was definitely interesting to read your review and now I do kind of want to read this. I am not sure if I will because growing up in Greece I've already read a ton of stories about WWII and after a while it kind of gets to me (especially since the end of German occupation only meant a civil war here, but anyway this is not the point).

This is also the second thing I wanted to say here, which is that if you're interested in other WWII stories that are not about the Holocaust I would definitely reccommend you some of the greek children's books written about it - at least one of my favourites has been translated into english. It is very different in some ways to a lot of things I've read and very similar in other ways, so if you'd be interested, I'd, uh, be very happy to provide you with more info??

From:

skygiants

It is definitely a book with serious flaws, but I also think it's a book worth reading! I am aware how many people disagree with me though, heh.

Also I am super interested in reading Greek children's books about WWII and would VERY MUCH LIKE more info. :D

From:

elviella

YAY okay so. I started with TWO recs but then I looked it up and found out that sadly one of them has not been translated in English, just French. I am gonna write about both of them though just in case.

Petros' War by Alki Zei is actually named "Petros' long walk" in greek and I have no idea why it was changed - I guess the literal translation sounds a bit off in english. Its protagonist is, predictably, Petros, a boy who is around 10 years old when the world starts. Of course, it is also about his family, and the people of the resistance, and how it feels to be a kid during a war but also about how ordinary people can bring change.

"When the sun" by Georges Sari has a slightly older protagonist, Zoe, who is sixteen when the war starts. She also takes part in the resistance, and the book details her life until the liberation, being about much the same things as Petros' War. I do think it is slightly heavier, and gets a trigger warning for mental illness. (both get trigger warning for things usually seen in war/historical novels)

Fun fact! Alki Zei and Georges Sari were friends since middle school and took part in the resistance together. If you read behind the lines in When the sun, one of Zoe's friend can be identified as Zei, and Zoe's cousin as Zei's eventual husband. Their books are largely autobiographical and Sari even wrote a book about the start of their friendship! They were super rad ladies who did a lot of amazing things and have been super influential to children's lit and I admire them both a lot. Sari passed away last year but Zei is actually presenting her new book in two days and I AM YELLING FROM EXCITEMENT, I am gonna cry when I see her.

Subrecs!! Again by Alki Zei, Wildcat Under Glass and The Purple Ombrella are quite excellent and both set before WWII but heavy with its warnings. Wildcat is set in 1936, and tells the story of two sisters, their life during vacations and their life in school, right at the start of the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas (known as the Dictatorship of the 4th of August). Ombrella (which I could also only find in french) is set in the summer of 1940, and I think illustrates beautifully a lot of the political, economical, and social issues of the time (always through the eyes of a young girl). I REALLY LOVE THEM, they're excellent books and have awesome girl protagonists who are very relatable.

SORRY THIS IS SO LONG and also WHOA what an excellent icon <3____<3

Edited Date: 2013-11-27 09:51 pm (UTC)

From:

elviella

ADDITIONAL COMMENT FOR LINKS:

Petros' War can be found in amazon but I also found it at a random (terribly designed) website: http://www.amazon.com/Petros-War-Alki-Zei/dp/0525369627 and http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/z/alki-zei/petros-war.htm

Wildcat Under Glass is also on amazon http://www.amazon.com/Wildcat-Under-Glass-Alki-Zei/dp/0030680050/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1

I tried the other two in french but somehow I can't find them somewhere where they don't cost, like $30?? T_____T I hate how my recs keep being defied.