J. Malcolm Garcia
Teoksen The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul tekijä
Tietoja tekijästä
J. Malcolm Garcia has worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star and is a regular contributor to the Virginia Quarterly Review. His award-winning essays have garnered attention from NPR, the Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, and have appeared in The Best American Travel Writing and The näytä lisää Best American Nonrequired Reading. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri. näytä vähemmän
Tekijän teokset
Kansas City Noir (Akashic Noir) 4 kappaletta
Riding through Katrina with the Red Baron's Ghost: A Memoir of Friendship, Family, and a Life Writing (2018) 3 kappaletta
Now Ye Know Who the Bosses Are Here Now 2 kappaletta
Cuts (in McSweeney's 30 - EGGERS) 1 kappale
Associated Works
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Syntymäaika
- 1957-08-14
- Sukupuoli
- male
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
1 
DavidWineberg | Apr 25, 2021 |
DavidWineberg | Apr 25, 2021 | 
What a series of tragic but beautifully written human stories. Garcia is a master with his descriptions because he does get to know people---beyond their surface appearance--deeply, and then he gives us pictures that there is no way to get except through his journalistic efforts---listening, listening. What does one do with all of this which represents just a tiny portion of what is out there---human beings desperate for some kind of help. Garcia has opened the door but what does society do now?
The Fruit of All My Grief is a collection of 11 stories. They are all people stories, and all the main characters suffer, mostly at the hands of the unseen. It is in not something they can alter or affect. They just have to endure, cope and try to carry on. Mostly unsuccessfully. Malcolm Garcia thrives in this environment, and he does a great job of getting inside victim’s heads, seeing the world as they do. It is not a happy sort of book, but heartfelt, relatable and engaging.
Garcia travelled widely to investigate these people, their families, friends, neighbors, customers and histories. They include a larger than life character whose marina and store were slowly cut off and shut down by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, an undocumented immigrant holed up in a Phoenix church after 26 years of the American Dream, a truck driver in prison for life because he desperately needed money for his baby’s bone marrow operation, an interpreter now Afghan refugee trying to start over in the USA, a man released from prison after 16 years, a family physically destroyed by fracking, a man who gave up everything to rescue orphans in Haiti, an Iraq veteran with brain cancer thanks (admittedly!) to the Marines’ policy of burn pits, two sisters destroyed by false accusations of armed robbery, and the American fate of an entire platoon of Iraq veterans.
My favorite is the story of Ben Kennedy, a mysterious old man who lived on nothing, giving all his social security money to environmental causes. While his efforts were a spit in the ocean, he affected numerous people in a very positive way. His is the least tragic story, which makes it stand out in the book.
Garcia is easy to read, and well organized. The only difficulty is his style of almost never using quotation marks or referencing speech. In dialogue, it is often difficult to know who is talking. Attribution gets lost quickly. Sometimes, it is actually Garcia talking, which you might figure out after the fact. If this were a film, you’d know right away. In a book, it can be confusing. I gave up, and just let it flow, because ultimately, who used what words didn’t change anything.
This is the second Garcia book I have reviewed. The first, Without A Country, dealt with US veterans, deported to Mexico or the Dominican Republic. Their reward for risking their lives for their adopted USA. Garcia does not shy away from the toughness of just plain living, which makes his work most readable and worthwhile.
David Wineberg… (lisätietoja)
Garcia travelled widely to investigate these people, their families, friends, neighbors, customers and histories. They include a larger than life character whose marina and store were slowly cut off and shut down by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, an undocumented immigrant holed up in a Phoenix church after 26 years of the American Dream, a truck driver in prison for life because he desperately needed money for his baby’s bone marrow operation, an interpreter now Afghan refugee trying to start over in the USA, a man released from prison after 16 years, a family physically destroyed by fracking, a man who gave up everything to rescue orphans in Haiti, an Iraq veteran with brain cancer thanks (admittedly!) to the Marines’ policy of burn pits, two sisters destroyed by false accusations of armed robbery, and the American fate of an entire platoon of Iraq veterans.
My favorite is the story of Ben Kennedy, a mysterious old man who lived on nothing, giving all his social security money to environmental causes. While his efforts were a spit in the ocean, he affected numerous people in a very positive way. His is the least tragic story, which makes it stand out in the book.
Garcia is easy to read, and well organized. The only difficulty is his style of almost never using quotation marks or referencing speech. In dialogue, it is often difficult to know who is talking. Attribution gets lost quickly. Sometimes, it is actually Garcia talking, which you might figure out after the fact. If this were a film, you’d know right away. In a book, it can be confusing. I gave up, and just let it flow, because ultimately, who used what words didn’t change anything.
This is the second Garcia book I have reviewed. The first, Without A Country, dealt with US veterans, deported to Mexico or the Dominican Republic. Their reward for risking their lives for their adopted USA. Garcia does not shy away from the toughness of just plain living, which makes his work most readable and worthwhile.
David Wineberg… (lisätietoja)
1 DavidWineberg | 1 muu arvostelu | Jul 19, 2019 |
DavidWineberg | 1 muu arvostelu | Jul 19, 2019 | 
Since 1996, the USA has been deporting armed forces veterans who did not have citizenship, but did have a criminal conviction. Though entitled to Veterans Affairs medical benefits (but unable to take advantage of them), they lost all social security benefits and forfeited their lifetime contributions. Many came to the USA as infants and never knew their green cards did not make them citizens. And the armed forces apparently did nothing to regularize their status when they signed up. Many joined the forces simply for a better education they could not afford on their own. Instead, they found themselves in a foreign country, with a life sentence to stay away from the USA. They are worse than terrorists; they are veterans.
Like hundreds of thousands of other vets, they came back from overseas duty, shaken. They took to drink, drugs and divorce. They couldn’t hold jobs, suffered from PTSD and had money problems. For immigrants however, an aggravated felony could mean deportation to a country they did not know. This followed whatever sentence they got, a nice double jeopardy for wrecking their lives for their country. Without A Country is the story of a number of these men, bored to death in Mexico or the Dominican Republic.
As usual with these laws, no one can see what purpose they serve. They break up families and ruin lives. In the case of veterans, they make a farce of the very principles they fought for. Veterans need help, not expulsion. Deportation is an absurd response to their situations.
For all this drama, the book is remarkably flat. It is simply the individual frustrating stories, tied together in chapters. It is one-sided and incomplete. Garcia never spoke to anyone at Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Justice or even the Marine Corps, where most of his victims served. He gives us no feel for the number of veteran victims, or whether it is rising or falling. He never talked to a congressman or senator who disagreed with the law. Or a crusading lawyer. At the end of the book, the ACLU comes through with an angle that allows some of the men a fast track to citizenship, so it ends on a positive note. But Garcia never spoke to the ACLU, either. So while the issue is in-your-face dramatic and newsworthy, Without A Country doesn’t give it its due.
David Wineberg… (lisätietoja)
Like hundreds of thousands of other vets, they came back from overseas duty, shaken. They took to drink, drugs and divorce. They couldn’t hold jobs, suffered from PTSD and had money problems. For immigrants however, an aggravated felony could mean deportation to a country they did not know. This followed whatever sentence they got, a nice double jeopardy for wrecking their lives for their country. Without A Country is the story of a number of these men, bored to death in Mexico or the Dominican Republic.
As usual with these laws, no one can see what purpose they serve. They break up families and ruin lives. In the case of veterans, they make a farce of the very principles they fought for. Veterans need help, not expulsion. Deportation is an absurd response to their situations.
For all this drama, the book is remarkably flat. It is simply the individual frustrating stories, tied together in chapters. It is one-sided and incomplete. Garcia never spoke to anyone at Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Justice or even the Marine Corps, where most of his victims served. He gives us no feel for the number of veteran victims, or whether it is rising or falling. He never talked to a congressman or senator who disagreed with the law. Or a crusading lawyer. At the end of the book, the ACLU comes through with an angle that allows some of the men a fast track to citizenship, so it ends on a positive note. But Garcia never spoke to the ACLU, either. So while the issue is in-your-face dramatic and newsworthy, Without A Country doesn’t give it its due.
David Wineberg… (lisätietoja)
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In standalone story after story, the dystopian horrors of life in Central America show their endless miserable variety. Parents abandon their babies and children out of impossible poverty. Gangs kill, often just because of “orders” and for reasons no one can even imagine. Unemployment is not much worse than regular employment at $5 a day. Extortion just for living in a house runs $15 a week. For a small business, count on more like $100. Non payment means being beaten to death as well as shot, for the entire family. Maybe the next occupants will cooperate.
Garcia interviews a small business owner hit up both ways:
“‘You have a house,’ one of them said. ‘You want to keep it?’ He demanded an eighty-five-dollar initiation fee followed by weekly payments of fifteen dollars. They were children, Juan Carlos thought of the two gang members. Fourteen, fifteen years old at most and they rode bicycles. Of course, someone older had sent them, but not much older. The principal knew the boys because they had been students but dropped out. The one who did all the talking had asked the principal about Juan Carlos and he
told them when Juan Carlos drove his daughters to school. It was tell them or get shot.“
Gangs are a gigantic problem. They extort everyone and pay off the police, so no one can trust them. Garcia says there are 23,000 members in 2,000 gangs in Honduras alone, mostly from two competing gangs. They have made Teguchigalpa and San Pedro Sula the two highest ranking murder locales in the world outside of actual war zones.
Taxis disappear in the early evening, because drivers have paid off their daily rental and have whatever profits they would accumulate in their wallets. Constant robberies and shootings have led to there simply being no taxis available at all as they day wanes. You wouldn’t want to be a passenger at night, either. Just another bullet is no big deal. Life has zero value throughout the region.
The first few stories in A Different Kind of War have in common nuns and priests. They seem to be the only credible and trustworthy officials in their countries. For a while, it looks like Garcia can’t even write a story unless a nun or a priest gives him his interviewees. They run a variety of orphanages and sanctuaries. Some orphanages only handle higher functioning kids. Others only get the disabled and the very ill. None are equipped to handle the volume. The nuns deal with babies and children continually abandoned there, or brought in when their young parents realize they can’t make it on what little they bring in. And large families are the norm. Five or six children seems average. All the children streaming to the border are stark evidence of it.
Releasing the orphaned to the streets means almost certain death by or within a gang. There is no way to live without them knowing. Young girls can be grabbed for the use of gangs, even if they live in a house among family. As Garcia explains it: ”Gangs often approach families and demand a child, a daughter most often, to use in the induction of new gang members. If a family refuses, they will be killed and their daughter kidnapped.”
The church is an escape for many young women. Garcia interviews nuns who work to instill not so much Catholic as Mayan traditions and sensitivities in the children. The appreciation of history, of colors, of pride in their Mayan heritage seems at least as important as their Catholicity. Just another aspect of the dystopia and how people manage it.
The overwhelming feeling throughout the stories is there is simply no security, safety or future. Everyone seems to have had murdered family members in their immediate past. They have all seen dead, decapitated or dismembered bodies in the streets. This is what awaits them too, much sooner than later.
With no hope of making the extortion payments, or being the only ones left who have not yet been murdered, people take overnight buses out of town without telling anyone, then walk and take available buses north, eventually hitting the US border months later, if they have the stamina. There their lives become single-focused: steal across the border and into a land where death is not a nightly factor actively awaiting them personally.
He follows a reporter on the US border, whose job it is to snap images of bodies on the streets and in the fields every night. The gangs sometimes contact him to make sure they make the paper. It’s a PR game for them. Other times, they threaten his life because he is on the scene so suspiciously early. They watch for him to arrive. He is threatened constantly. But for now, they use him, and his wife is still alive. The fact that nightly murders is an entire career for a photojournalist is sickening all by itself. That the newspaper is the same every day, featuring the latest corpses, means the whole town is inured to it.
Other stories focus on life in the refugee centers, crossing and dying in the Arizona desert on the way somewhere north, fighting and dying to keep their plots of land from corrupt politicians, living the life of a prostitute ($5 a trick), the total innocent naiveté of the would-be refugees facing US border policies, and many other aspects of a life that is essentially impossible to live in Central America. And so they head north, in their thousands.
Garcia’s style is straightforward and easy to read. He reports it all calmly, as a largely detached witness, though occasionally he reaches into his own pockets to help someone he has interviewed. It is a stomach-churning life for a reporter. The whole book is a gripping, visceral dose of enormously harsh reality foisted on an innocent people.
This is not the first book of Garcia’s I have reviewed. The last one was about US military veterans who have been deported, mostly to Mexico, but also the Dominican Republic and elsewhere after a lifetime in the USA and military service. (See my review https://medium.com/the-straight-dope/they-deport-veterans-4a8583bfa110 )They joined the military with the promise of being regularized, ie. given full citizenship upon discharge. Then the military reneged. Once discharged, the first contact with any kind of law enforcement might mean arrest and deportation as thanks for their service. Many were brought to the USA as infants and have no idea how to live in Mexico. Some don’t even speak Spanish. So I have come to think of Garcia as reporting the unusually cruel with a view to having the reader decide its level of evil. A Different Kind of War continues this work.
This betrayal, this kind of absurdity, is American policy. And it is American policy that created this dystopian society throughout Central America. Some of these countries are zombies of failed governments, where the president can be arrested for corruption after serving his term. Law and order is nonexistent for them (See my review of The Hidden History of Central America https://medium.com/the-straight-dope/usa-6-central-america-0-d5ee194a17a6 ). But Garcia does not get into the politics or the history. His passion is the now, the day to day lives of the victims. That the USA is the only place they know of where they might live out their lives in peace is ironic. But there is little irony in the book; it is instead horrifying.
David Wineberg… (lisätietoja)