Black ButterFly

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Priscilla Morris’ writing is serviceable but the book excels at created an emotive atmosphere. The reader will feel Zora’s pain and pleasure when finding ways to survive and her eventual bid for freedom. I’m surprised the book achieved this acclaim since I found it worthy, heartfelt and uncomplicated. That’s damning the book with faint praise. With clear and succinct writing, buttressed by rigorous research and copious examples, Dr. Brown casts an unflinching light on the problems Baltimore suffers as a hyper segregated city. Only when a critical mass of concerned citizens is made aware of the issues raised in this book, can change begin.

The book provides a helpful tool for public affairs educators seeking to incorporate discussions of race into the classroom and steps to connect public administration theories of performance, budgeting, and management into a hands-on analysis of cities. It details a process to learn both about spatial inequity and to implement the next steps toward the remediation of historical trauma.The book is marked as literary fiction but it is more of a commercial historical fiction. This didn’t make any difference to me this time but to those who expect a book to cater to its advertised genre, this could be a minor problem.

This book will be published on the 30th anniversary of the Siege of Sarajevo. It’s an informative novel allowing readers to develop compassion for refugees and those who seek asylum today. A few years after the event/s I became quite obsessed with the rolling wars that brought about the end of the former Yugoslavia, and read about it voraciously, but it was always the siege of Sarajevo that made my heart hurt the most. It's been a long time since then and I thought I'd had my fill until this novel by Priscilla Morris came along with its enticing cover, for the 30th anniversary of the siege. Morris's story is based upon the real life experience of older members of her own family, and I think it's an essential additional to the canon. It covers the first 10 months, and while it doesn't shy away from the horror and desperation, it also provides an insight to the warmth and humanity of the multicultural populace, trying to go about their ordinary lives under extraordinary circumstances. Rachel Atkins' narration is excellent. I read this as a consequence of the book’s shortlisting for the Women’s Prize for Literature, 2023. The Bosnian conflict of the early to mid 90’s was the first war I was conscious of. There was a lot of graphic media content and there are still images which crop up in my mind now and then. Although I don’t actively seek out literature about this topic, I do like it when i come across one. The author’s note clarifies which two persons' experiences she combined and adapted into this story. That lends a lot of validity to what would otherwise have seemed as fictional events improbable in real life.

This is all pleasant enough but it doesn’t stir the blood. Ironically I rarely felt any visceral sense of the fear that would have been prevalent as the city ran out of supplies. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, The New School, coauthor of From Enforcers to Guardians: A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence

Because I read the audiobook edition I wasn't able to read the Author's Note, but I found this article that explains how the novel relates to the author's family. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo... Told from Zora’s POV, the use of third-person helped remind me that this beautifully written, descriptive, heartbreaking, and reflective story wasn’t a memoir! In a Nutshell: An enlightening and traumatising fictional account of a war I wasn’t much aware of – the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. Well-researched, well-written, bitter-sweet. In her twenties, when she returned home from her six years in Paris and Belgrade, she realised she couldn't live anywhere else. And now, she wants to stay in the city she loves as it's shaken, to see things through. But when the unrest intensifies and all avenues to leave are gradually shut down, she is trapped, alone but for her neighbors and students, deriving comfort and support from one another. Braving the elements and coping with food shortages no electricity, no heat and no water while trying to stay alive amid mortar fire and sniper bullets they also bear witness to the destruction of the city they all love and the lives they built around it.What makes this book a 5 for me is the offering of ideas for solutions. It does more than identify and describe challenges. Brown is creative. We’re all refugees now, Zora writes to Franjo. We spend our days waiting for water, for bread, for humanitarian handouts: beggars in our own city.” However, it was more of the 10,000-foot view of how various systems work together to create the current mess and what it would take to solve it. Content Consideration: If you are negatively affected by the coverage of conditions in Ukraine, you might need to know that some content in this book is similar. This was a wonderful though heart-breaking book which kept me reading all through, and one which I highly recommend.

The Bosnian war of 1992–1995 was something I knew little about, and this book helped me get some context. While the book doesn’t go into the motivations and differences that led to the conflict (indeed, the characters themselves are at a loss to point a finger at why), it goes give one an insight into the kind of multicultural space Sarajevo was. I had no idea that it was part of the Ottoman empire once, and enjoyed getting glimpses of its culture like how festivals were celebrated and some folklore as well as some of its bridges and landmarks. Sarajevo’s people continue to fight against the seeds of division that the conflict tries to sow (there are some of course, who hold radical views, too). A particularly beautiful, yet highly distressing moment is where people get together to save what they can from the library which is on fire:There’s a new category here now: the good Serb, i.e. the Serb who is not a nationalist, who does not want to divide the country, to ethnically cleanse. I’m constantly having to reassure people that I’m a good Serb. It’s driving me insane.” The story starts with an element of denial which is also common in the World War11 stories I’ve read. Citizens can’t imagine circumstances could get worse, that the rumors are true, that the occupying force would really threaten lives or cause destruction or take away freedoms or imprison responsible citizens. I think most of us felt a bit of denial early in the Pandemic. This will be over in two weeks. It couldn’t possibly get worse or last for years. It’s human nature to deny that the worst could happen. We see this situation in Ukraine today. Before the Russian invasion, I saw an interview with some Ukrainian citizens and they reported that they were not concerned and planned to continue on with their normal activities…..they are threats we have heard and lived with for years and we’re not worried they said.