Author: rtrube54

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Penny Candy Stores

/ rtrube54 / 27 Comments
Robert C Trube © 2024.

Remember Bazooka Bobble Gum, with a comic inside the wrapper for each piece? How about Tootsie Pops, with that chocolate center? There were those Red Hots, those big red balls that grew hotter as you sucked them. We loved licorice twists, Milky Ways, Hershey bars, Tootsie Rolls…and maybe Necco wafers. And remember Milk Duds! Of course at this time of the year, there were jelly beans, chocolate eggs, and bunnies. No wonder I had so many cavities as a kid!

Some of these candies are still around fifty years later. And some enterprises are bringing them back–probably for the boomers who loved them as a kid. The picture above was taken at the counter of a local family restaurant.

Many of us bought at least some of our candy at local mom and pop stores, often tucked into our neighborhoods. My wife and her friends would stop at Curry’s Pharmacy. We’d go to Mrs. Borey’s on Oakwood, just up the hill from Washington. Many of us walked past, and some like me, detoured. I can’t recall that Mrs. Borey sold anything other than candy, and maybe popsicles and ice cream bars, It was literally a store front in a residential home, where I presume someone lived. I recall hearing that the apartments next to Washington School had a store on the first floor at one time.

Further up Oakwood, across from Borts Field was Zitello’s. It was on my way home from West Junior High, so I would sometimes stop for chips, or maybe a Slim Jim. But they really did business during baseball games in the summer. Between innings, we’d run across the street and get a pop and your favorite snack.

If I was hanging out with friends during the summer, we’d often run down to “Pop’s” on Mahoning Avenue near Lakeview for our bubblegum and Red Hots or a candy bar. “Pop’s” was actually a grocery, so sometimes, particularly before Sparkle opened up the street, we’d be there to pick up some bread or something else mom needed–and get a snack on the side with the change.

This was a part of a culture of local businesses within walking distance for many of us. This is something I don’t know much about beyond my own part of the West side, and perhaps part of our vanishing local history. I’d love to hear if there were penny candy stores you used to go to at which you got your candy “fix” as a kid? Where were these stores and what happened to them?

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Review: The Limits of My World

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

The Limits of My World, Gregory Coles. Loveland, CO: Walking Carnival Books, 2023.

Summary: A small group of people from two races encounter, and in the process, discover the challenge of communicating across two languages and a larger reality beyond their known universe.

Tei and Kanan are Fledglings hoping to be selected as Finals. Only ten from each class are selected, the rest being archived. Kanan is a runner who can complete a circuit of the Universe they inhabit in 17 minutes. Tei delves deeply into the archives. Both expect Kanan to be selected. Instead, neither are. Then something strange happens. They announce a special Final is to be selected, an Interpreter to learn the language of beings that exist in the world above, called Natchers. Tei, of all people, is selected, for his deep delvings into the archives, from which he will learn the language. Tei and Kanan have made a promise to find each other, but Kanan will be archived. Except she uses her speed to elude capture, finding herself in a meat locker among remains without the protective shell-like skin that has already been partially stripped off her.

Suddenly she finds herself in the world above with the “Natchers” except they don’t call themselves. They speak of themselves as humans, what Kanan’s race calls itself. The people she finds herself among call Kanan’s race the Cyborgs because of the shell-like covering called “skin” worn over what the “Natchers” call skin. She discovers why communication between the two peoples is so impossible–almost everything in one language means something else, sometimes just its opposite. “Sorry,” meant genuinely is considered a word of contempt.

Both Tei and Kanan, unaware of each other, learn that the two races depend on each other. Mahlah, a swimmer, leads a raid to obtain medicine desperately needed from the Cyborgs for an ill child, using re-skinned Kanan to gain access. Eventually Mahlah is captured by the Cyborgs and is “allowed” escape with Tei. Meanwhile, Tei has learned how a single group became two races, and that the Nothing beyond, is not nothing but a larger reality and end of a story they no longer comprehend. The contact Tei and Kanan have with the Natchers, and what they learn implicate them as traitors in the eyes of both races and yet point to truth both races desperately need to understand. As Coles writes, “Truth must be a fragile thing if it only survives in one language.”

Gregory Coles has done both some incredible worldmaking and explored how languages shape societies, and how truth is perceived. And as he puts it toward the conclusion of the work:

“The walls of the human world–the boundaries of their worlds–kept them from seeing the one sight that might have opened their eyes” (p. 322).

This is Gregory Coles first work of science fiction. It is the Foreword INDIES Award Finalist for science fiction in 2023, Kirkus Reviews Starred Pick, and a PW Booklife Editor’s Pick. I thoroughly enjoyed the twisty plot, the development of Tei, the descriptions of the Universe they inhabit, and the rich exploration of how language works. I hope I will see more from this writer.

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Demystifying Evil

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

 

Demystifying Evil, Ingrid Faro (Foreword by Heather Davediuk Gingrich). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023.

Summary: A biblical study of the evil and God’s work in the world illustrated by the author’s own wrestling with evil.

Ingrid Faro tells us at the outset: “The purpose of this book is to demystify evil by taking it out of its dark corners, finding out where it comes from, asking why, and exploring how it operates to disrupt and disable our lives.” Faro does this both through extensive discussion of relevant scripture, but also through personal narratives in each chapter related to the chapter material.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the book is how bluntly, and at points, terrifyingly honest she is in these narratives, justifying the trigger warnings at the beginning of this book. The most memorable example is her description of the evil spirit that inhabited her late husband from his time in Vietnam. “Sergeant Rock” offered him protection as he learned to be a trained assassin, sometimes participating in horrific realities. After his conversion, he recognized Sergeant Rock as a demon, and gained a measure of freedom although the demon sought, and sometimes gained control telling Ingrid Faro, “You’re not welcome here! Get out!” to which she replied, “No! You’re not welcome here! You get out now!” and it did.

The book is organized in five parts. The first, on “wrestling with evil” distinguishes evil, suffering, and pain and discusses the ambiguity of evil–the different things evil can mean to different people. She then focuses on a biblical definition of evil as “the corruption of good, with an emphasis on God’s creational goodness.” Part two begins with natural causes, noting the action-consequence character of reality–“You reap what you sow” This last idea has in it the concept of seed–so much in life emerges from seed–plants, animals, and humans. But also words that produce actions and bear consequences, for good in God’s creation, and ill, when evil enters in at the fall. She turns to nature, whose processes may be both good and evil in their impact on humans but may also be shaped for good and harm by human beings.

Part three considers human causes of evil. Faro begins with human need and desire, made for good by God but capable of working for ill to us and others when inordinately pursued. Then she focuses on self-sufficiency as the root of both our pride and insecurity. She addresses our human responsibility and authority as beings in God’s image. Our call is to reflect God’s character and guard his garden, his temple. When asked why God allows so much evil, her reply is, why do humans in God’s image allow so much evil? She then looks at our role to restore the world under the redemptive work of God in Christ.

Part four challenges the illusions people have about the personal spiritual forces for good and evil in the world–Satan, demons, angels, and other spiritual beings. Another reality little considered is what she calls the divine council and the rules of engagement and the cosmic involvement in human systems. Perhaps Neil Gaiman in American Gods wasn’t entirely out to lunch!

Finally, Part five develops God’s response to evil. Faro begins with the power of mercy and grace and how this triumphs over evil and its judgment ultimately in the cross. She builds on this to explore forgiveness, including sharing a tremendous forgiveness story. Finally, Faro discusses the idea of the beauty that comes from ashes when the followers of Jesus follow the one who absorbed the consequences of the evil we have done and the evil done to us, freeing us to live as his royal family, one that repays evil with good and so heals the fabric of the world.

For all the sobering material and stories about evil, Faro shows us the power of God that overcomes through grace and mercy and the agency we have as God’s redeemed creatures, in resisting evil and evil forces as we guard God’s garden. We are not hapless victims. Even aside from her stories, this is no mere intellectual treatise on evil but actually a field manual for spiritual warfare. Faro shows us how to live both as those liberated from evil and empowered to resist it with gospel authority. What our enemy would shroud in darkness is brought to light. What our enemy would obscure of the works of God are uncovered. This is a book that will teach us to “fear no evil.”

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Women Who Followed Jesus

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Women Who Followed Jesus, Dandi Daley Mackall. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2024.

Summary: 40 reflections through the eyes of women who followed Jesus to the cross and witnessed the resurrection.

Through most of church history, when speaking of the company who followed Jesus, the focus is upon the men, either those who became apostles, or Judas the Betrayer. We hear less often of the women. There was a company of women who traveled with and assisted Jesus, including providing out of their means, showing hospitality, and crucially remaining present until his death, and coming to his tomb on Sunday to finish preparing his body, hastily buried. Notably, women were the first witnesses to the risen Jesus, and condescendingly disbelieved by the men until Jesus himself set the record straight.

In this book of Lenten devotions, Dandi Daley Mackall looks at the final journey, and a few other events through the voices of the women who encountered and accompanied him. We hear from Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, Susanna, Joanna, wife of Chuza, the Samaritan woman, Mary and Martha of Bethany, and Salome (the mother of James and John) Each of the reflections are preceded by scripture related to the reflection, the reflections are two pages long and followed by a few reflection/application questions. The text is also broken up with well-drawn illustrations, mostly floral.

Some of the most moving for me are those of Mary the mother of Jesus, particularly at the cross. Through her, we hear the mockery of her son, and the stunned wonder with which she addresses a young priest, “Do you not yet understand the scriptures or the power of God? The Messiah comes to die for the sins of us all?” Mary thinks of how the Son, her sons provides for all humanity, yet wonders humanly how she will be provided for with him gone. Then Jesus speaks to her, “Woman, behold your son: and to John, “Behold your mother.” And she knows the Lord will provide.

I wish I could have gotten a review out before Lent (sorry Paraclete Press!). I’ve certainly been grateful for these imaginative yet biblically grounded reflections that help me appreciate the role of the women in Jesus’ life. If nothing else, get these for next year!

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Tips For Reading More–If You Want

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I read a lot of books. If you notice, most days on this blog are devoted to book reviews. This happened to be the rare day when I had no finished books waiting for review. Last year, I read 219 books. It’s an occupational hazard of book reviewers! I’m not bragging because I know a number who read more. Equally, I know a number of very happy people who love reading who have read far less. What’s important is that you find enjoyment and enrichment in whatever you read. Here are some things that help me make the most of my reading time.

  1. Eliminate distractions. This is the biggy! When you read, read. I always read better when my smartphone is plugged in somewhere else. Don’t try to multi-task, especially with loved ones.
  2. A good reading location. This means a chair that offers comfort and support and good light (neither to dim nor too glaring. If you are an older reader, you probably need more light, unless you’ve had cataract surgery. I like it when I can rest my book on a table, though the binding on books don’t always lend themselves to that.
  3. Good eyewear. My eye doctor learned I read a lot and gave me a prescription for reading glasses in addition to my regular glasses that include a reading prescription. This has so improved my reading experience.
  4. I always have several books going at a time. Partly this reflects reviewing where this allows me to have a book I’ve finished most days. The other thing is that I tend to want to take a break after reading a stretch in a book, usually about 30 pages of non-fiction and 40 pages of fiction.
  5. Take stretch breaks between books. For me, it’s a way of clearing my mental palate. As readers, we also need to move our bodies. Usually, I don’t read more than 30 to 45 minutes at a stretch without getting up, maybe doing a household chore or two or at least refilling my coffee cup or water bottle.
  6. Read when you are most alert. Sometimes a half hour nap or walk perks me up enough that my mind is refreshed. You don’t read much when you are nodding off–usually the same paragraph ten times.
  7. Reading expands to fill the time you give it. And usually with little difference in comprehension. I can read 30 pages in 30 minutes, or 45, or an hour. I find that if I am determined, I can do it in 30, and sometimes less if I focus. Often we are slowed by distractions or going back over what we’ve read. This will vary, of course with the density of what we are reading–not only the words on the page but the complexity of the ideas. Sometimes a skim to get the outline of a plot or argument followed by slower reading helps with dense material.
  8. Reading with others. Recently, a friend mentioned wanting to read Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age–a significant book coming in at over 900 pages. I have too, and we decided to tackle it together, beginning April 1. I’ll let you know how it goes. Book clubs do the same thing with more people. The ones I’ve appreciated most are those where we get into books we’ve wanted to read, often ones that have sat on the shelves of some of us.
  9. I usually have a series or two and a good one will spur on my reading. Right now, I’m reveling in the Brother Cadfael stories as well as Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion series. These are just great fun! Louise Penney’s Gamache series got me through the years of the pandemic–allowing me to lose myself in her writing during those grim times.
  10. When you find a writer you like, read all you can by them. I find the more I read such writers, the more I get “in sync” with them, whether it is Wendell Berry’s essays, or Willa Cather’s fiction, my discovery of last year. When I discovered David McCullough, I read everything by him. I miss him.

Those are some of the things that have worked for me. If they don’t work for you, we’re just different. I think all of us who love reading live under the awareness of “so many books and so little time.” Some of what I’ve written here falls under making the most of our reading time so that we might read a bit more of those books. But another part of what I’ve written relates to getting the most enjoyment and enrichment out of our time. If that is happening when you read, you are reading enough. And don’t let anyone tell you any different!

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, Laurent Dubois. New York: Picador, 2013.

Summary: A history of Haiti, from colonial rule under France up to the earthquake of 2010.

If you are following world news you will have noticed the descent of Haiti into gang violence and a dissolution of its government with no president since the assassination of President Moise in 2021 and the resignation of acting Prime Minister of Ariel Henry in March 2024. Numerous citizens have been kidnapped, many have fled the country and the country is facing critical levels of food insecurity. With that in view, I picked up this history of the country to see if I might gain some understanding of the current events. Laurent Dubois narrates the history of the country from the colonial period under France up until 2010, although the period after the Duvaliers, father and son, is only briefly covered.

It is a history to make one weep. The country is the only country to gain independence through the revolt of a slave people, in this case against France. Slaves on the profitable sugar plantations rose under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture in a fight running from 1791 to 1804 for independence. Toussaint died as a prisoner of war during an attempt by the French to recapture the former colony. The French were finally defeated in 1804 under a coalition led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines who proclaimed himself emperor, re-established the plantation system rather than the small farms people wanted, and then died.

One element of this story is the instability, authoritarian character and corruption of leaders that goes back to the nation’s origins. Over its history, the country has experienced over 30 coups. Leaders re-wrote constitutions several time to protect their power, in one instance, for life. There was a reliance upon the military, or in the case of the Duvalier dynasty of 30 years, the employment of a private militia, the Tonton Macoutes to ruthlessly stifle opposition.

Another is the pattern of foreign interference throughout the country’s history, beginning with the colonial rule of France. After independence, France held the country in thrall through an onerous indemnity, that took the best part of a century to liquidate, setting up a destructive pattern of borrowing and debt that held a stranglehold on the country. For a period of time, the country’s treasury was a French bank!

The United States did not recognize Haiti for over fifty years, frightened by the idea of a successful slave revolt. Then with the expansion of U.S. Naval power Haiti first became attractive as a site for a coaling station. Later, business interests were interested in what could be extracted from the country. Internal order brought an invasion of U.S. Marines in 1915 to restore order, build roads and infrastructure, and promote agricultural reforms.

It was a high-handed paternalistic effort, with few bothering to learn the language and culture. When resistance was encountered, villages were destroyed and atrocities occurred for which there has never been a reckoning. Our Marines were only withdrawn in the 1930’s but our countries’ interests continue to be intertwined. In the Duvalier era, for example, Nelson Rockefeller can be seen in chummy photos with “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Dubois extends this paternalistic approach to many of the NGOs, aid and mission organizations working in the country, that often competed with local economies, supplanting local trades, draining resources, and often repeating the military’s mistake of not learning French or Creole, nor the indigenous culture.

Dubois presents a picture of a country in which the people often outshine the leaders, pressing to be free from plantation economies and foreign interests, and for government reforms. Sadly, the pattern of people rising to leadership, only to follow the corrupt, authoritarian models of their predecessors, is repeated again and again.

Finally, we see the natural devastation of the country, from monocultures that exhaust the soil, hillside erosions and the loss of topsoils, and deforestation, culminating in the devastating earthquake of 2010 (and another, after publication, in 2020). What is grievous is that this was a country once rich in natural resources that is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

Amid all the devastation, Dubois still holds out hope that the people who rose from slavery can rise to build a new Haiti. I found myself far less certain, wondering how the habits of good civil government, the rule of law, ethical business practice and sustainable agriculture can be established and developed. Given the current descent into gang violence and anarchy, I wonder if we are watching a nation in the throes of self-destruction, one that could precipitate a terrible genocide. Is it not time for the international community to act to prevent great loss of life, provide critical aid, and to offer the breathing space to restore civil order? But only Haiti can do the rest.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Shoe Repair

/ rtrube54 / 12 Comments

My wife and I were driving past a familiar plaza and we noticed that the shoe repair shop was no longer there. This set us wondering how shoe shops make it these days, and we recalled memories of the shoe repair shop I went to as a child.

Growing up, it seems we wore more traditional shoes with leather soles and uppers. I remember our Saturday afternoon ritual of polishing our shoes for church on Sunday. We had a can of Kiwi bootpolish, an old rag we used to apply the polish, and a soft rag to buff it off. I loved how the polish would cover all but the worst of scuffs and make the shoes shine! Of course, then I had to scrub the polish off my hands. And you had to make sure the lid was tight on the polish can or the polish would be all cracked and dry the next time you polished your shoes.

Like all things, those shoes wore out. The heels would wear down on one side. The soles would wear thin or even get a hole in them–no fun in the rain. Women would have the heel on high heels fall off. If you hadn’t grown out of the shoe and the uppers were still good, you took them to a shoe repair shop to get more life out of the shoe and stretch that working class budget.

We used to take our shoes to an old cobbler who had a shop on Steel Street, just north of Mahoning Avenue. The shop was old with all the machines (like the one above) and tools behind the counter. It smelled of shoe leather and polish. There wasn’t much light, maybe one hanging bulb. On shelves on the sides, you saw all kinds of shoes with claim tickets attached. I don’t remember the gentleman’s name and he seemed a man of few words. You gave him the shoes. He usually could see what needed to be done. He told you what it would cost, when they would be ready and filled out the claim ticket. and you were out the door. A few days later, you’d go back and have shoes almost as good as new. Sometimes, you’d get new soles and heels several times, if the shoe was well-made.

It’s been ages since I’ve had shoes repaired. Most of the time, it seems we just discard casual shoes when they wear out. I have a pair of dress shoes I rarely wear, probably 15 years old that I’ve never re-soled. I suspect this is true of many of us. It strikes me as I write that the old way of repairing shoes was often more thrifty and more earth-friendly, even though we didn’t talk about re-using and recycling in those days.

I’d love to hear your memories of going to shoe repair shops in Youngstown!

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Review: Jesus and the Disinherited

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman (Foreword by Vincent Harding. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996 (Originally published 1949, link is to 2022 edition).

Summary: Explores the significance of Jesus for the disenfranchised, the discriminated against, and those marginalized by various forms of injustice and equity.

It is said that this text was an inspiration to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the days leading up to it In just over 100 pages one of the great preachers of the twentieth century lays out the significance of Jesus for the disinherited, those who have suffered disadvantages due to discrimination, injustice, and race hatred. Thurman’s felt this rarely addressed and argues that this is not a flaw in Christianity but rather a failure to understand the person, the mission, and the message of Jesus

Thurman begins with consideration of Jesus as a Jew, shaped by the history of this people, by the poverty of his own background, and subject to the overlordship of Rome. He speaks as part of a disinherited people and addresses the question of how a people survives when resistance is futile, when there is no assurance of protection from authority. His answer is the “kingdom within” and the consequences he frames as follows:

“You must abandon your fear of each other and fear God only. You must not indulge in deception and dishonesty, even to save your lives. your word must be Yea–Nay; anything else is evil. Hatred is destructive to hated and hater alike. Love your enemy, that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven” (pp. 24-25).

This outlines the program for the remainder of the book with successive chapters on fear, deception, hate, and love.

He describes fear as “one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the steps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited”–not the least the fear of violence that could be inflicted at any time. When a traffic stop or even a no-knock home invasion on a sleeping couple can result in death, Thurman’s statement is no exaggeration. He then turns to the teaching of Jesus and how he addresses similar fears of those under Roman occupation. He reminds them of God’s care that stems from their value before God, a powerful word for the downtrodden. When one is free of the fear of human beings that allows a new appraisal of one’s enemies, one that refuses to surrender one’s integrity to their supposed greatness. It all rests on the awareness that, before God, enemies can even take life but they can’t take away God’s eternal care.

Thurman addresses the deceptions the weak use to protect themselves from the strong and how it creates an expectation of honesty corrosive at once of relationships and of one’s personal integrity, where one does not merely tell lies but becomes the lie. Thurman, pointing to examples from Gandhi to Jesus, calls for “devastating sincerity.” Let your “yes” be “yes.” Sincerity destroys hypocrisy but may not defend against the strong. Rather, “in the presence of an overwhelming sincerity on the part of the disinherited, the dominant themselves are caught with no defense, with the edge taken away from their prerogative, and from the status upon which the impregnability of their position rests.”

Hate is also a pervasive reality for the disinherited, both being hated and hating. But hate cannot be engaged without understanding its nature. It is relationships devoid of fellowship. It is understanding without sympathy. It is expressed in ill will, resulting in humans who become “hatred walking on earth.” In the end, hatred destroys the hater. In the end, hate kills and is antithetical to the life Jesus gives. To hate is to deny the life of Jesus in us.

Instead, the call of Jesus is utterly clear–the love of God and neighbor, with no escape clauses. It is loved of groups we are inclined to despise–like Samaritans. It is personal enemies with whom we are even to interrupt the act of worship to reconcile. It is loving those who shame and humiliate us, like the tax collector. It is to love the alien empire. Thurman argues that this cannot occur while segregation remains in force and emphasizes the challenge of segregation in the church that prevents people who believe in the same God from seeing the humanity in each other.

Thurman contends that when the disinherited, as well as those with privilege, turn from fear, deception and hate to love and forgive:

“The disinherited will know for themselves that there is a Spirit at work in life and in the hearts of men which is committed to overcoming the world. It is universal, knowing no age, no race, no culture, and no condition of men. For the privileged and the underprivileged alike, if the individual puts at the disposal of the Spirit the needful dedication and discipline, he can live effectively in the chaos of the presence the high destiny of a son of God” (pp. 98-99).

One sees so many elements of King’s message and practice in this work. But it also calls the question, do we really believe these things of Jesus, a life so counter-cultural? Or in our quest for political power have we forfeited the spiritual power of which Thurman testifies?

Review: Weathering

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society, Arline T. Geronimus. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2023.

Summary: A study of the chronic stress marginalized persons experience and the health impacts resulting in the earlier onset of debilitating diseases and shortened life expectancy.

According to Arline T. Geronimus, many marginalized persons not only weather extraordinary and chronic stress. They are also weathered by them, at a bodily level, resulting in earlier onset of the debilitating diseases of aging and shortened lifespans. One of the things that caught her attention was the discovery of much higher death rates from COVID among people of color in the same age cohorts of majority culture persons. Some may be the kinds of jobs that put people at greater risk. Some is due to less access to timely health care. But a significant factor was that many in their thirties and forties had risk factors one would expect to find in persons two decades older.

This is one instance of what Geronimus calls “age-washing” that ignores the impact of stresses that weather the bodies of those who face the injustices that are a constant threat for people marginalized because of race, cultural, and economic status. She shows how stress affects every system in the body resulting in earlier onset of cardiovascular disease including high cholesterol and hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. It is not unusual to enter one’s forties already suffering debilitating diseases that often lead to an early death. Both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy are shortened.

Her findings challenge our conceptions. We might attribute these problems to diet and lifestyle. Yet she finds similar issues with fit, educated, and successful people of color including athletes like Arthur Ashe and Serena Williams. The chronic stress of threats from a racialized society actually may affect the successful more because they must constantly negotiate these. “John Henry-” like heroic efforts really can kill.

She also challenges our conceptions about teenage moms. For one thing, most are in their late teens, 18 or 19. She raises the issues that if weathering means the earlier death of women, having children early has a kind of logic not only in terms of their own life expectancy but also that of mothers and grandmothers who help with childcare. And in fact pregnancies with complications are higher in incidence from the late twenties on and lowest among those in their late teens and early twenties. This is not to say that delaying childbirth might be done for good reasons but simply to point up the logic of having children while young for stressed populations.

This is further exacerbated by the experience of “giving birth while black” in which expressed concerns are often discounted and symptoms that would raise red flags are ignored with greater frequency. Geronimus argues for the importance of advocates, midwives, and birth doulas who will be attentive to these oversights and support women in getting necessary healthcare. Along with medical practices, she critiques social policies such as “welfare to work” policies and “no child left behind” education policies for increasing stress.

She proposes and unpacks five principles as a way forward, attending to health care, social policy and urban planning, the educational setting, and the family:

  1. Think biopsychosocially: address the stealth inequities that surround us.
  2. Think holistically and ecologically.
  3. Do not erase oppressed stakeholders: do “nothing about us without us.”
  4. Pay attention to the need of working- and reproductive-age adults.
  5. Recognize all our fates are linked.

I’ve written in the past about the necessity of developing a consistent pro-life ethic, concerned not merely with the unborn but the born throughout every stage of life and from every part of society. Taking into account the stresses on the bodies of those who face racial injustice is yet another way to be consistently pro-life. With this path-breaking account by Arline T. Geronimus, we no longer can say, “we didn’t know” but rather “what must be done?”

C. S. Lewis in America

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

C. S. Lewis in America, Mark A. Noll with Karen J. Johnson, Kirk D. Farney, and Amy E. Black. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: An analysis of how C. S. Lewis’s works were received in the United States, considering Catholic, secular, and Protestant/evangelical critics evaluating his work between 1935 and 1947.

Even before the widespread interest in C.S. Lewis due to the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis was being read in both religious and secular circles in the United States from the mid-1930’s and through the 1940’s. In this latest in the Hansen Lectureship Series at the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, American historian Mark A. Noll offers three lectures that analyzed the critical reception and growing interest in Lewis’s works of scholarship, fiction, and theology. Successively, he explores the reception Lewis received among Catholics, in the secular and mainstream media, and among both mainline Protestants and evangelicals, who were late but eventually enthusiastic adopters.

It came as a delightful surprise that Catholics in the U.S. were among his earliest and most appreciative readers. In part, Noll believes that Lewis was a fresh, yet for the most part, orthodox voice that offered a friendly path out of a certain stagnant isolation, reflecting the undercurrent of change developing in the church. Responses ranged from the early and effusive praise of The Pilgrim’s Regress by Fr. Conway, CSP in Catholic World to Philip Donnelly’s criticism of Lewis’s account of “adoptive sonship” in Beyond Personality (later part of Mere Christianity). Other critics had concerns about his doctrine of the church and his ideas about natural law put forth in The Abolition of Man. The high watermark of criticism came from Charles Brady of Canisius College, who read everything Lewis wrote, understood him as well as anyone in this era, and wrote two glowing essays for America that are reprinted at the end of this work.

With regard to secular critics, Noll considers in succession Lewis’s scholarly and imaginative works, and finally his works of Christian exposition. Lewis drew general praise for both The Allegory of Love and for his Preface to Paradise Lost. A number affirmed his argument against E. M. W. Tillyard in The Personal Heresy that in criticism of a poet’s work, the focus should be on the subject matter of the poem and not the poet. Regarding the imaginative works, Noll describes the public as responding “ecstatically.” Noll highlight’s W.H. Auden’s review of The Great Divorce in The Saturday Review combining general praise with fine-grained critique. The widest range of critical opinion was reserved for his works of Christian exposition, from the long-searching response of Charles Hartshorne to a review in the New York Herald Tribune from a young Beloit College professor, Chad Walsh, who would quickly become know as a leading exponent of his work.

Apart from a patronizing review in The Christian Century, Protestants joined their secular counterparts in their warm reception of Lewis. Substantial interest among evangelicals in Lewis first came from conservative Presbyterians in the Westminster seminary circle as well as the first substantive criticism, particularly from a young Edmund Clowney. Wheaton’s Clyde Kilby represented a much more positive response to Lewis as did Wheaton student Elizabeth Howard (Eliot). Kilby’s work led to the donation of Lewis’s letters to Wheaton, forming the core of what would become the Wade Center collection. InterVarsity’s His Magazine also contributed to the growing awareness of Lewis in evangelical circles when it published a lengthy excerpt from The Case For Christianity.

Noll concludes the work in considering Lewis in today’s much more fragmented setting and what might be learned from Lewis’s greater concern for the state of his soul as a writer than the success of his work. The work also includes responses to each lecture. I found most interesting in these Kirk Farney’s discussion of two American contemporaries of Lewis who were also intelligent spokespersons for Christianity: Walter A. Maier of The Lutheran Hour and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen of The Catholic Hour. and the wide interest from people outside the church they enjoyed, as did Lewis. I can’t help wonder if there remains a space for such folk today. I’m thinking for example of the broad impact of the late Timothy Keller and the younger voices like Esau McCaulley and writers like Tish Harrison Warren.

Noll offers an excellent resource (aided by his wife) chronicling the early reviews of Lewis’s work, which I’ve only highlighted here. I’m struck that Catholics were early adopters and evangelicals relative latecomers. I’m impressed with the theological and scholarly sophistication of the writers and the elegant style of reviewers like Brady. How different things are in the BookTok era! This is a great resource for Lewis scholars and fans and a marvelous addition to the Hansen Lectureship series on the seven authors in the Wade Collection.

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.