OYENTE

Benjamin McIntyre-Coble

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  • 5
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Worth a read but had some challenges

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-24-24

I’ve read both of Ramona Everson’s novels. She’s a great writer and an incredibly talented native female voice.

The good-I really understood the psychosphere of Gallup-the weather, the hopelessness, the mix of people, the ugly colonial past, et cetera.

Here’s what didn’t work for me:
Having a single narrator read the female protagonist and the male antagonist didn’t work. You didn’t need a Navajo speaker to do the male voice, so just get a second actor…

Rushed conclusion-the two central elements of the story collided in the last two hours of the book. And it happened entirely by accident before launching into what felt like a Hollywood chase sequence. Felt perfunctory.

Plot lines that went nowhere-the initial murder involving the corrupt Albuquerque detective….why? What did that catalyze and where did it go? And what about the random love interest that shows up in the last hour of narration?

It’s a good read. Definetly worth a credit, but I wasn’t blown away.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Thought provoking read, but not without flaw

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 08-02-15

It is a powerful narrative and extremely thought provoking, but I had some issues. The first is that it danced around for an hour before the author got into the meat of what he was trying to convey. Pretty much the first hour I found myself constantly asking where he was taking me. Then the book moved into talking about Coates experience in 'the mecca' of Howard University and his own process of maturation before ultimately culminating in his reaction of (not close) classmate at the hands of a black cop. The writing was powerful, but I'm still left asking why. He kept saying saying the black cop that killed Prince Jones was acting as an arm of the society that "thought itself white" but I never really grasped how that happened. Maybe that's my own lack of understanding on the subject.

Secondly, I saw Ta-Nehisi Coates on the daily show write before I purchased the book. He said that using the format of a letter to his son wasn't real, just a 'literary convention'. To me, that took away down degree of sincerity that was forever lost.

Thirdly, Coates frequently says "axe" rather than "ask". Perhaps this too was a literary convention, but for someone with such beautiful command of the English language to so brutally mispronounce a word was distressing. Every time he said it, and there were many times, it was like nails on a chalkboard derailing the otherwise lyrical content.

In the end it was a good listen guaranteed to make you think. But some of those thoughts are guaranteed to be "huh?".

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esto le resultó útil a 12 personas

Short and powerful

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-23-15

This is a quick read, but packs a big message. It's multi generational, spanning the Armenian genocide to the early 1990s. It conveys a lot of themes-war, love, fathers/sons, family, and the notion of the oft mentioned 'past'. While it sometimes gets a little preachy and self righteous, it's an important book that captures a period of history that is often forgotten as part of the larger narrative of World War One. The narration was pretty good, but the cheesy Turkish accents were laughable.

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esto le resultó útil a 23 personas

Cliched

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-23-15

I get what Phillip Meyer was trying to do-capture American economic angst by using the rust belt as a motif. But the metaphor was too simple and too overdone. The story was good. Think Jack Kerouac mixed with the TV prison drama Oz mixed with Jerry Springer white trash love. It's compelling enough, but I went into this after reading on Wikipedia (of all places)
that this was considered a 'great American novel'. I came away 12 hours later entertained, but by no means blown away.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas

Funny but bizarre story read by a fantastic narrat

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 03-19-15

The narrator is excellent! One of the best I have ever heard. The story is unique-multiple narratives coming together fluidly in the conclusion. Tons of colorful characters. The hilarious dialogue effectively captures adolescent boys at summer camp. The only thing I didn't like was a bizarre boy on boy rape scene (think Kite Runner but way more graphic) that, to me, seemed gratuitous and was absolutely unneeded for the sake of the plot.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

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