This book is recommended for twelve-year-olds and up. The white grandmother in me screams, “No..wait until they’re a little older, maybe sixteen or seventeen, Safiya’s age?” This is hard stuff. The reality is that Indigenous peoples, brown and black people, immigrants, migrants -live with the reality of this story from the time of conception. Maybe even in the lives of the grandmothers who bore their mothers. We, who do not experience this, need to know and feel this book.
I speak from experience. I am mom to one Metis-Cree daughter and Oma to her five beautiful children. I am white. They are brown. Mine is the privilege of being white. Theirs is not. So I read. And so I share.
The first thing you read is a section of A. E. Houseman’s A Shropshire Lad. Two lines stand out to me.
“In all the endless road you tread, There’s nothing but the night”
I hear the news – Indigenous reserves with undrinkable water, starving children in Gaza, migrant workers in the US and Canada (we are not off the hook here). Government cuts are being made that hurt the people on the margins – the disabled, the poor, the unhoused, the elderly.
I also value “The Glossary of Intangible Things”. Not The Catalog of Truths and not Taxonomy of Lies. They are worth quoting here since they introduce many of Safiya’s journal entries.
- Fact: Something that has a concrete, provable existence; an actual occurance, an objective reality
- Alternative Fact: A disguised falsehood presented as true. See Orwell, George, doublethink: the simultaneous acceptance of two mutually contradictory “facts” without a sense of conflict or cognitive dissonance
- Truth: A quality or state in accordance with reality; the actual or true state or nature of a person, place, thing, or event Fidelity, Honesty
- Lie: A false or misleading imipression. A deception you tell yourself so you can sleep at night.
Hollow Fires is two stories. Safiya’s story begins in 2023 (a year after the book was published) She is remembering the events of her last year at a private highschool. She is seeking the truth. She is also a student – brown in a school oozing with white privilege for those that can afford it. She has a scholarship. Her references using the Glossary of Intangible Things provide insight into what is coming. They are not to be ignored. She hears a voice.
Jawal is several years younger and attends a public school. He and his parents are refugees from Iraq, where his father helped the Americans. Iraq was no longer safe for them. As it turns out, neither was the US.
The story unfolds as Jawal (missing for most of the story) connects with Samira as she and her friends search for the truth. They fight to keep the story of his abduction alive. They keep looking for him and the truth.
Reading this book will give you a deeper awareness of racism, Islamaphobia, and white nationalsim. Because of that, people of colour may be triggered by events in the story. They know the truth better than white people. We need to know more.
I hope you read or listen to this book. Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Thanks for popping by!
Marcia
And if you’d like to help me pay the bills in September, feel free to buy me a coffee or two.
A Journey of Ten Years 