One of the biggest ones? I haven’t been able to enjoy a movie in theaters since February of 2010.

Granted, there are a lot bigger issues going on in the world right now, and not being able to go to the movies seems kinda trivial. But haven’t you ever thought, “Oh, what should I do today?” and decided to go to a movie theater where you could eat some popcorn, drink soft beverages, and admire Hollywood’s (dubious) finest?

Yeah. I can’t do that.

What I can do is wait for said movie to show up as a DVD on Netflix somewhere down the road, four or five months later, well after the hype has died down. Pop the movie into a DVD player, watch it with my Orville Redenbacher popcorn, and at the end of it, keep my thoughts to myself because the conversation died when the film left theaters.

Movie theaters, for whatever reason, all too often neglect their hearing impaired and deaf customers. Many people are also afraid to advocate for themselves, to push the status quo, which is something that I’ve been guilty of from time to time as well. But it was today when I finally got fed up and said, “This is ridiculous.” Baltimore, the city where I currently live, has no accessible theaters for hard of hearing and deaf individuals less than 30 miles away. A CITY. Where my parents live in New Jersey? There are very few theaters with accessibility there either – the local movie theater I went to all throughout high school once had captioning and now doesn’t anymore.

Many theaters promise accessibility and deliver refunds or ticket vouchers. Many theaters offer a device that promises assistive listening and delivers maybe 10-15% more understanding than the original 30%. Compared to watching a DVD with closed captioning or seeing a film with open captioning (where text appears on the screen) or rear window captioning (where text is reflected onto a small adjustable window from a scrolling marquee), it is not acceptable. I can hardly justify the cost of going to a film when I know my experience most likely is going to be a poor one.

Never mind that theaters that DO have captioning options for the deaf and hard of hearing typically only have one theater with that feature, and typically play a movie weeks after it first came out, closer to its closing date than its opening date. Or that the showtimes are limited and the popular movies are often shown during the week rather than on the weekend. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?

So here’s when I call in a favor or an act of kindness or goodwill or good thought or advocacy or whatever you want to call it. The movie theater that I would like to attend and see films at is in White Marsh, about 20 minutes outside of Baltimore, but they have no plans to install any captioning systems, because I am the only complainant they have received in months. Surely, I am not the only person in Baltimore to wear a hearing aid; but maybe I am one of the few who is relatively comfortable speaking on the phone or advocating for myself.

I need advocates. I need people to pick up the phone, request to speak to the general manager, and say, “Are there any plans to provide captioning in your movie theater?” I’d like to be able to go see a movie relatively soon after it opened with my friends and be part of the conversation, not behind the conversation. I would hope that you, as my friend or acquaintance or coworker would want me and others like me to make going to the movies a viable social option.

So please. Pick up the phone and call. Or e-mail if you can’t call. Share this with your friends and family, post this on your Facebook page, share it on Twitter or via e-mail and blog, even if you’ve never met a deaf or hard of hearing person in your life. There’s a lot of us out there, and not all of us have voices. Call White Marsh theater for me (410-933-9428 for the theater, 877-262-4450 for the parent company) and call a theater near you for those around you who you don’t know. I will appreciate it. WE will appreciate it. Let’s making going to the movies an option for everyone.

I can’t remember the last time I read a book that made me feel so conflicted. “The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East” was a challenging read, to say the least. Most of the challenge was in putting aside my preconceptions as a first generation Israeli-American whose own personal narrative is tied into family history and beliefs. As a child who grew up being told the story of Israel and Palestine in black and white terms, I had always wondered if there was any gray area – it was disconcerting to find out just how much.

The premise of the book is essentially the struggle between the Palestinians and the Israelis, posed in a way that showcases both of the beliefs and thoughts behind their individual movements: the PLO for Palestine, among others, and the Zionist movement for Israel. It was hard at times for me to put aside my personal history and recognize the truth put forward by the author, Sandy Tolan: that Israel is not always a victim, tested by the Arab countries. In fact, Israel is quite the military superpower in its own right, yet it too lacks the humility and humanity that are expected with conquering countries.

Never is it made more clear than by Bashir Khairi’s hesitant but honest recollections of his time in jail. Bashir, a man linked to the PFLP (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and several of its terrorist acts, has spent more than a quarter of his life in and out of jails. While he is never directly connected to terrorist activities, he associates with men who are considered terrorists – and as such, has been jailed, deported, and exiled from Israel. Khairi’s story is one that I had never really considered prior to reading “The Lemon Tree,” simply because I only considered the Jewish narrative. It never occurred to me that there might be a Palestinian narrative.

As a child, Bashir and his family are forcibly expelled from their homes, their lands, and their country. They are left in the hands of the UN, King Abdullah of Jordan, and the developing state of Israel. His entire life becomes centered around the concept of “Right of Return,” a goal mirrored in the desires of the Zionist movement. Like the Jews hoping to return to the land of milk and honey, Bashir and his Palestinian countrymen hope to return to a Palestine like the one they lived in before. From an American perspective, it was impossible not to compare the plight of the Palestinians to the plight of the Native Americans.

Tied into the story of Israel and Palestine is also the story of the Jews, especially after the Holocaust. Dalia Eshkanazi’s extraordinary story begins in Bulgaria, where the government and the church collaborated to keep Bulgarian Jews safe from concentration camps. Yet, when not one of the 47,000 Jews in Bulgaria were deported during the war, 42,000 moved to Israel after the war. A recurring theme throughout the book was this sense of betrayal: to a country, by a country, by each other.

The two stories weave together when Dalia opens her door to Bashir and two of his cousins one day in the 1960s. In that initial conversation, the two of them forge an unlikely and uncomfortable friendship when Dalia learns that her house was built by Bashir’s father and lived in by Bashir’s family. Dalia realizes early on that the premise of the Arabs fleeing to make room for the Jews is false – that her home is also someone else’s home. But for the first time, she is not one of the conquered, as so many Jews were in Europe – she is one of the conquering.

Both Bashir and Dalia return to the question of how can Israelis and Palestinians live peaceably? Tolan presents this question against the backdrop of UN resolutions, peace talks, and the political climate of Israel and Palestine, enriching my own knowledge of the conflict compared to what I had always been told by my family. It was uncomfortable at times to think that Israel, a land that brought so much promise to the Jewish people, is also a land that brings so much pain to the Palestinians. For one thing, “The Lemon Tree” seeks to humanize both Israelis and Palestinians, people who had been painted in very different lights depending on who the audience was. For another, it successfully compares the aims of the political movements against the agenda of two individuals with tremendously different backgrounds, yet who share the same history.

There’s no suggestion to the solution put forward by either Bashir or Dalia. Their own stories are conflicted when Dalia wonders how Bashir could be her friend, yet still be linked to crimes against civilian Jews like her. Many of my own prior prejudices, as open-minded as I may try to be, are challenged throughout the book, and especially when reading Bashir’s narrative and implications. Yet my feeling upon completing the book is that now I have a better idea of what truly lays at the conflict: a sense of ownership, a sense of country and identity, and home. The dilemma is that both sides are right. And when there are two rights, almost everything can be construed as wrong.

It feels exciting for that first moment or two – like you’re a kid again, the person you used to be. You can draw a letter! Or a heart! Or even a horse!

But then, the nostalgia overpowers, the feelings that were once there aren’t and you can’t find what it was anymore that made you want to revisit that little patch of glass.

So you slip away while the blown breath fades, straggling in the corners until there’s no more air at all.

We wandered the streets of Tel Aviv, left to our own devices. All I knew was this was the city where my father had been born, my grandmother had been born, and my great-grandfather built the first Temple from sand. The stories of their one-room apartment was myth, as I meandered along the boardwalk and took in the fiber optic lights as they danced from color to color. The Tel Aviv I saw that night was the one advertised in travel guides, of hotels along the Mediterranean and beach chairs and a boardwalk that spanned miles. We drank beer at a beachfront bar, content to be Americans in Israel.

2009 – Homecoming

This time, we started in Yafo. We meandered over the Rainbow Bridge, past the Clock Tower, as my father wished my grandparents had been able to come along with us to share their own memories of the Tower. We had left them behind with promises of pictures and videos, as though that would allow them to recapture fifty years past when all they knew and cared about was Israel. And suddenly, that one-room apartment was in front of us, the door held open wide by a great-uncle I had never met. The room in which my great grandparents raised their seven children now stood across from a hotel tower, three blocks from the Mediterranean. I was beginning to see my Israeli roots.

2006 – Birthright

My group was introduced to Israel by way of history and war. We spoke of Israel in the biblical sense, in the mythical sense, with politics and culture governing our cause. Some of us were there to explore, others were there to explore each other. I wanted to know the country of my father’s childhood. But without him, I could only layer his stories over the city around me as though his life were a transparent drawing board for me to shade in.

2009 – Homecoming

His excitement was palpable. The once dirt streets were now paved with cobblestone, as he remembered how he and other local children used to play four square, running whenever a car came. He remembered the roof he climbed, the groups he led to the beach for a day of soccer and tag, and this time, the past was right in front of me. Not only could I see it – I could touch it. I could touch the four walls of the synagogue my great-grandfather built, now held as a historic landmark. I could reach the backyard in which my grandmother and her mother before her hung up the wash, while children chased each other around. For the first time, I could reach out and touch my own history.

2006 – Birthright

He showed up in the lobby of the hotel our group was staying at. I had met him once before, when I was thirteen or fourteen and he came to America with his daughter and youngest son. “He looks so much like Safvta,” I thought, even though I knew they were five children apart. The mannerisms were the same, the constant concern for my welfare recognizable, and my relaxation in being with one of my family, my great-uncle, in a country that should be mine was immediate. Thousands of miles away and the same bonds that connected me to my grandmother connected me to him.

2009 – Homecoming

We stayed with him this time. There were no hotels – instead, there were family photos, homemade cooking, stories of growing up with my father who was only ten years younger than him. There was laughter as we saw this whole other side to my family and we learned how some of my grandmother’s habits are genetic to him and his brother. The uncle I had met for the first time, I learned, was my great-grandfather’s son. Whereas my two other uncles and my grandmother belonged to my great-grandmother. Those seven children I had always heard about had grown into men and women with their own families, and I was beginning to see just how it all tied back to me.

2006 – Birthright

Our last day there was a challenge to see how long we could withstand Israel. We woke at 3 in the morning inside our Bedouin shell to climb Masada in time for the sunrise. We swam in the Dead Sea, we hiked Ein Gedi, we ran ourselves into the ground so that our flight home would be comparable bliss despite many of us having to make do with limited shower resources and having covered ourselves in sand and dust and dirt and camels and food and hookah and sunrise. That last morning there, as the sun welcomed us, invited us to stay even though we were about to leave, I recognized why this land called out to so many.

2009 – Homecoming

Our last night there was a celebration of Tel Aviv, of the city that had finally reconciled itself in my mind as the land of my family. We walked past street performers, danced to their exuberant music, laughed at the story of my grandmother feeding my aunt bread just to get her to walk around the city. My father posed by a statue he used to climb as a child as we snapped pictures, all the while murmuring about how we wished my grandparents had been able to withstand the twelve hour flight back to their homeland. I was changed this time. My pores breathed the country, breathed its humanity and culture and happiness and all of its turmoil and history. I breathed the story of my father’s family as they built their way up from immigrants to commanders in the Israeli military, the sadness and the triumphs and the jobs my grandfather worked to support his wife and three children while he waited for an American visa, so that we might create our own history, one that is weightless and ecstatic and spans continents so that we might continue telling our story, so that I might one day be able to sit here, and write here, and see the story of my life etched in walls and cobblestone and the wide shimmering Mediterranean Sea.

Juliet Ashton is spunky, delightful, humorous, and kind-hearted. She’s also approximately 17 million other things, but those are the words that stand out when I think of her.

In a series of correspondence with her best friend, Sophie, her publisher and long time friend (and Sophie’s brother) Sidney, and a colorful cast of characters from one of the Channel Islands between England and France, the story of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society comes to fruition.

Juliet’s exchanges with the people of Guernsey Island begins when she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams. He has recently begun reading a book by Charles Lamb that once belonged to Juliet, and wants to know if Charles Lamb has written anything more. A correspondence begins between Juliet and Dawsey, where Juliet begins to learn more about the people of Guernsey and particularly, a young woman named Elizabeth McKenna who is responsible for the spark of energy and humor that generates the Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Used as a device to escape the oppression of the Occupation, the Society met at least once a month to discuss books. Because the news was forbidden from coming in and radio had been banned in Guernsey, the members of the Society only had their resources – namely, the books they had laying around.

As the story develops in letters and telegrams, the members of Guernsey (namely Isola, Amelia, Eben, and Dawsey) are encouraged to get in touch with Juliet and tell her their stories about being under German rule during the second World War. Through their letters, the reader begins to understand more about what the Occupation did to them, and ultimately, about Elizabeth, who leaves behind a daughter named Kit. Juliet (and the reader!) becomes more and more engrossed in learning about how they made the best of the Occupation, and sets to work on writing a new book about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Inevitably, Juliet makes the move to Guernsey and the story, which started at a slow burn begins to simmer and boil as it picks up intensity and depth. Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows let the characters reveal the details of life on Guernsey without ever telling the reader what to think or believe. Similarly, because of the strength of their writing, the reader is able to pick up on the underlying romantic tensions between Dawsey and Juliet without the two characters ever realizing it themselves until later in the book.

It’s hard not to fall in love with these characters; it’s even less so to not fall in love with the writing. Shaffer and Barrows do a phenomenal job of making a reader feel as though they are in these moments, transcending every anecdote to real life. I never once felt as though there was a sense of inauthenticity about the characters, as quirky as they might be, and the stories they share with Juliet, first in letters, later in person revealed through letters to Sidney. Similarly, Juliet as the primary narrator has a way of coming across as earnest and humorous – at one point, she tells of a story playing “Dead Bride” with Kit. While questioning if it’s healthy to play such a game with a four year old girl, she bemoans that she never wants to stop.

I can’t even begin to guess how many times I laughed out loud while reading at a bus stop while strangers looked at me strangely.

One thing I absolutely loved about this book though is how it manages to talk about the effects of the War without really ever delving into it. Guernsey’s isolation from the world meant that they only knew what was happening on Guernsey. It’s not until Juliet brings up her own memories of the bombings in London (one of which crushed her flat) and the last person to see Elizabeth alive becomes a part of the Guernsey community that the War becomes an actual character in the book. It brings a new sort of perspective to what happened during World War II and how people lived on a day to day basis, without knowing what was happening. In some ways, the atmosphere of Guernsey can be compared to one of a concentration camp, held alone in its isolation and without word from the outside world. Yet, with the bright spark of Elizabeth’s invention of the Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, the society members are given the opportunity to recapture their former lives and a chance to make the most of their occupation.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society has this way of making a reader feel tangled up in its magic, like one never wants to leave this world where the ocean crashes against the cliff and neighbors are full of goodwill and kindness (for the most part). The story of Elizabeth lays the groundwork for Juliet to begin her next book, while bits and bobs of English culture are infused into the present day story. It’s the kind of book that when you put it down, you want to pick it right back up and start reading it all over again, to see what you missed the first time around.

This isn’t a book to read. This is a book to buy and read and cherish until it’s been read so many times, its cover is dog eared and the pages are yellow. And then you go out and buy another copy, just so you can read it again at any time you like.

His hands were warm on my skin, Wesley offering “As you wish” in the background while I watched his eyes. I couldn’t see my reflection there, in the dim light of a television, but I wondered what he saw. Did he see the unexpected pleasure as he touched me? Did he see the jagged wall, spiked from my most recent entanglements with the past? Or did he simply see iris and pupil, gazing at his own?

What is he doing? I wondered. Earlier, he had stretched out, the mock-arm-around-the-shoulders move, before pulling back in and laughing. I had shaken my head at him, grinning all the while. He had tickled me, till we were both breathless and flushed of face, traces of laughter gurgling out. We sat on the futon in his living room, facing each other, as his hands grazed my skin, declaring a tickle truce.

I marked my own words into his skin, asking how I could feel so fundamentally me with someone I had only met twelve hours before. I asked do you like me? before deciding I like you. Not the kind of like that would collapse me into bed with a friend, lazy kisses and fumbled fingers. Not the kind of like that would result in denied chemistry and repeated frustrations. This was me, implicitly, wholeheartedly, convincingly in like. Had I ever experienced this before?

My fingers skimmed over his skin, almost as white as my own, but more carved and sculpted, as I kneaded, pressed, pulled. I wrote the stories of everything and nothing at once, of how I was so utterly in the moment, of how there was no aha moment, he’s going to kiss me realization. I wrote how spontaneity can get lost in the face of basic lust. I told him it didn’t matter if he didn’t kiss me; it was enough to meet someone I felt so utterly comfortable with. I etched lines of my contentment, too cautious to look into his eyes anymore because I was afraid of what I would see. I scribbled and doodled the longitude and latitude of my heart, giving directions the only way I knew how.

He didn’t need them. Without warning his hands wrapped my face, his eyes met mine, and his lips crushed mine; wrenchingly beautiful, soul shattering, and utterly different from anything I had experienced before. I didn’t know then like would become love. I didn’t know then the roads we’d take, full of shortcuts that led to the same place. I didn’t know then how much I’d want him every time I saw him, spoke to him, thought of him, in every possible way and even some impossible. I didn’t know.

I suppose that was one of the things I loved about D. No matter where we were, what we did, he would always make me feel part of it, even when he was teasing me about my fake deafness. If there was something going on and I couldn’t understand, he wouldn’t tell me never mind, or brush it off. He’d just enunciate carefully, having learned at the stern hand of my need to make it easier on me. We could be at a loud concert, and he’d text me instead of trying to scream at me across the crowd. Or he’d stand on the opposite side of a crowded room, lip reading to me and telling me jokes to make me laugh, to the point where I didn’t care for anyone’s attention. There was a sense of a secret world that only we shared, and that might be part of why it took me so long to give up on the hope that it would be us.

On post secret the other day, someone wrote, I’m scared that because I’m minoring in American Sign Language in college my kids will be deaf one day. Immediately, I wanted to find the person who wrote that, shake them up, tell them that deafness is not the end of the world. That I think it’s made me work harder to prove that not only was I as good as everyone else, but I could be better. That I could be the best dancer, the best writer, the best basketball player, the best student, etc. I don’t doubt there’s a modicum of overachievement drizzled through my blood, but I think the disability forces me to push myself even harder to be someone. I don’t want to be the deaf girl. I want to be the girl who gets up at graduation and gives a speech, her slight lisp the only indication that she might be something out of the ordinary.

I should perhaps clarify. I wasn’t born deaf. Deaf is something that came to me shortly before my eighteenth birthday. For the fifteen or so years prior to that, I was simply hearing impaired. A beige compact device snug against my ear, the mold often a clear color, shielded by long hair and extravagant earrings. I’ve never learned to sign more than the alphabet and a few words, and that was my decision. I chose to be part of the oral world, knowing full well that my role in the oral world would be a much different one than most. For starters, the mouth would be accompanied by the body language and the most minute gestures others easily miss. When I say fake deaf, it’s because I don’t exist on the realm of true deaf individuals, fingers flashing and lips moving in a mimicry of what sound must look like. But I don’t entirely fall easily onto the hearing realm either – when my boss pronounces a name I’m unfamiliar with, I must ask her to write it down because certain letters get lost between the vowels and consonants I do recognize. Instead, I float somewhere in between, where I dictate the rules of how my language both communicates and interprets.

I’ve never wanted to be the stereotype, something a boss of mine once ascribed to me when I worked at Nordstrom for three summers. She would repeat things over and over, slowly, as though my brain were at fault, and not just the nerves inside my cochlear. I secretly relished all the times she would get flustered and annoyed at my ability to pick up on things quickly, because I was supposed to be the dumb deaf girl. In a way, the hearing, processing, and translating functions of my false ears only serve to speed the efficiency at which my mind works. It flows from subject to thought without a single glance, only to return back to the same subject hours later, having traveled to Jupiter and back in the same time it takes to twist off a bottle cap.

Granted, there are just some things I can’t do. I can’t play team sports that involve coordination and collaboration, because I won’t ever hear someone call my name. I can’t follow in my parents’ footsteps and be a lifeguard. I can’t go whitewater rafting and actively participate because my movements won’t be in sync with the others. But when there’s a can’t, I make a can. My grand jete is always going to be more graceful and to the leap of the bass, and I am one heck of a ping pong player, if I do say so myself.

If I weren’t deaf, I might just be average. And then I’d be boring. Instead, I get to watch the way words spark off someone’s tongue, how their lip rolls give their emotions away before they even say their thoughts. I can play voyeur to an unwitting conversation on the bus or train. I can think more about the words and their meaning, see through the false layers and to the flickering jumps from their vocal chords to the outward world. It may not be something I’d necessarily wish on someone else, but it seems to me I’m doing just fine with it. We cope. We learn. We live. There are always sidesteps. But my deafness doesn’t need to be mine.

Aside from reading books, one of my favorite things to do is travel. I could spend most of my time jumping on planes and border hopping, and I would be perfectly content with that. To be honest, I would absolutely love to take a few months and just travel around, go and see the world, and do everything I haven’t had the chance to yet do.

Susie Jane Gilman does just that, and in 1986, when most borders were closed to the U.S. during the Cold War. Information was scarce and travel was truly an adventure, without the same luxuries we’re exposed to today.

Susie and her friend Claire, freshly minted graduates of Brown University, decide to embark on a world-wide tour, starting with the People’s Republic of China. As the book unfolds, it becomes clear just how little Claire and Susie really do know each other: Claire is a tall blonde from New England with a family that sails and has money. Susie is a Jewish girl from Manhattan who works hard for her money and is used to noise, verbosity, and tall buildings. However, when they both disembark the plane in Hong Kong, they realize they are both strangers in a strange land. While Susie struggles to adapt to a culture that is both welcoming and alienating, Claire becomes more and more unhinged.

When the trip moves almost overnight from seeing the Great Wall of China for Susie’s 22nd birthday to Claire’s emergency trip to a rural Chinese hospital, it is then that the reader begins to suspect something darker happening, guised in the form of physical illness. As Gilman writes about trying to take care of a friend who hears voices and is convinced she is being followed, the reader’s sympathy is engaged by the details she provides about her own struggles to adapt. One almost wants to shout at Claire to stop doing whatever she’s doing and let Susie enjoy herself. It is only until later that it becomes remarkably clear how mentally ill Claire has become.

One admirable effort on Gilman’s part is her accommodation to try to understand Claire’s point of view. Whenever Gilman writes about her anger with Claire’s mood swings, she pauses to consider what Claire might have been thinking at the same time. There is a sense of witsfulness there, almost guilt, as though Gilman wishes she could have done something that would have made it all better. By the end of the story, it’s clear there is nothing anyone could have done, but one still feel Gilman’s sense of regret. Yet she still somehow manages to incorporate a sense of confusion, frustration, and anger with Claire and with China throughout the book, subtly reminding the reader of how great the language and cultural barriers were in 1986.

Ironically, though I was anticipating a book that would detail all of Claire and Susie’s excellent adventures, it wasn’t until Claire began acting out that I really became absorbed with Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven. Juxtaposed with the culture shock both girls experience, it is hard to distinguish how much of it is stems from Claire’s frustration with the lack of access she was used to as a privileged upper class white female and how much was her descent into illness. The scene that stands out and will continue to stand out for me is when Claire disappears in China for a day and completely breaks down.

When it is finally revealed what Claire had done and where she had gone, Gilman writes with so much passion and empathy and confusion and concern that it is impossible for all those feelings to not transfer to the reader as well. I felt as though I was in the valley with Claire, watching her wade into the river, less and less coherent and more and more paranoid, and my senses were completely engaged. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Claire, if she was purposely trying to kill herself or if she had become so unhinged that she didn’t even know what she was doing anymore. Claire in her own right becomes a compelling character, almost as though she were a work of fiction rather than flesh and blood. Finding out how Susie reacts and what happens to Claire became imperative and I simply could not put the book down.

When I picked up Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, I anticipated a book that would provide much of the same wit and humor that Gilman’s other books do, Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, and Kiss My Tiara. What I didn’t expect was the note of seriousness her book would take on and how entrancing her writing would be. Granted, there were some moments that aspired to be more literary and failed, but there were so many others that so firmly entrenched me in the fields and mountains of China, that it far outweighed the few overwritten sentences.

I put the book down, feeling as though I too needed to travel to China, to work in the fields along rice workers, and befriend people I would never speak to normally, except having the commonality of being an explorer is what links us. Needless to say, this work of nonfiction more than holds its own in the canon of travel literature. It simultaneously managed to remind me of all the uncertainty of travel while rekindling all the adventure and wonder and magic.

It’s not that you willingly wake up then. It’s just that something happens; your subconscious fades into your conscious. Restful becomes restless. A cat waits outside the door to play, her light eyes barely visible in the dark.

We once drove through the night from New Jersey to Toronto. We were the night shift then, a lone car on a road full of trucks and night shift drivers. We took turns sleeping, waking only for a rest stop and fitfulness. Signs blurred; Harrisburg. Binghamton. Rochester. We made conversation with the rest stop workers, as they made coffee and breakfast for the early-bird drivers.

Have you ever noticed how there’s nothing on during the night shift? You look and search in vain for the tv show or movie that might put you to sleep and instead only find paid programming and porn. You finish the book you had been reading, and feel disappointed that there’s not more.

We stopped when we reached early light, at Niagara Falls. We parked illegally in a hotel lot that had signs proclaiming it was not to be used for Niagara Falls. We jumped fences, meandered, looked for signs to lead the way. When the sun finally appeared, the sky was clear and we were drenched from the mist.

So you lay there. You lay and wait and in those hours, you think of all those things you try not to think about during the day. You think about how you go in circles. You think about how things have changed so drastically in only a month. You think of what it would be like to sleep in someone else’s arms; would you still wake up at 5 AM then?

We climbed back over the fence, just before we got yelled at to move our car. We drove again, the sun rising higher into the sky. It was a new day, and we were ready to meet it, to greet it, to make it ours.

The 5 AM shift is one that blurs consciousness and subconsciousness. It’s one that makes the computer desk look like a polar bear, and you suspicious of a loved one. It’s where questions and fears spill out, dancing over the tangled sheets and blankets until you only want to hide.

Until with another twitch, the 5 AM shift is over.

I’ll be honest. When I first picked this up, I was intrigued but not overwhelmingly excited about reading it.

And then I started. Within seconds, I was hooked. The protagonist’s name is Thomas Thomson, which immediately sets up a tone of whimsy and sort of naivety, which is exactly how the protagonist portrays himself. All one needs to know is Mr. Thomson was the ghostwriter of a ghostwriter of a ghostwriter and that leads him to a position working for a barrister writing the story of a prisoner awaiting trial.

Throughout the course of the story, the reader begins to wonder who is telling the truth and questioning just how preposterously outrageous the story is that the prisoner tells and Mr. Thomson relays. By the time I reached the middle of the book, I was completely absorbed in the stories taking place in the Congo and England.

Strangely enough, Mr. Thomson’s story evokes a bit of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – whether or not that was intentional, I do not know, but I certainly saw some parallels. I also saw some similarities between Pandora in the Congo and Life of Pi, another favorite of mine because of how it makes the reader wonder what on earth just happened at the end of the book and which story is the truth and where is this really going!

All in all, I was completely absorbed by this book. Upon completion, I put it down and simply sat there, digesting everything I had read. It’s rare that I experience that sort of “Wow” moment, but Pandora in the Congo certainly does that and much more.

Random fact: I’ve read Heart of Darkness several times and I’m still not sure I have any idea of what really goes on in there besides the obvious ramifications of 19th century imperialism.