Jeoung Eun Shin Eun Shin itibaren Manaskent, Dagestan Republits, Rusija, 368540
Hrm. On the plus side: I liked both Rikki and Amiri; Amiri is a black African man who is the hero but not exoticised by his ethnicity; there is an acknowledgement of the fact that Africa is a very diverse continent of many different peoples and countries. On the negative side: the book kind of fizzled to a close rather than ended; there's some rather squirm-inducing gendered violence; Liu nods to the fact that there's more to Africa than exotic diseases and war and violence, but doesn't really show it; and there's an astonishing lack of female black characters considering that this book is set in the Congo. (There is one fairly significant black female character, but she's also problematic.) Great as it is to see interracial PoC/white relationships in romance novels, I wish that Liu would also write some PoC/PoC romances, whether interracial or not.
Average Americans have added 200 hours of work per year compared to the late 1970s - that's roughly 5 more weeks of work a year. Few Americans understand the implications of this finding. The amount of work required, often just to get by, is hurting our families (and children), our health, and our communities. When we take people and our social institutions to task for failing we need to calculate in the damages that come about from too little time spent on just about everything but work. Raise the minimum wage and millions of workers would not have to work 2 or three part time jobs and would have more time for raising healthy families, contributing to their communities and becoming better informed about the real issues facing Americans.