Suomen historia - Petri Tamminen

'Sotalapset

Me oltiin siskon kanssa niin pieniä vielä, että suomen kieli unohtui meiltä Ruotsissa nopeasti. Kun palasimme sodan jälkeen kotiin Kajaaniin, äiti ei ymmärtänyt meitä eikä me äitiä. Istuttiin siskon kanssa kammarin pöydän alla ja itkettiin. Lopulta äiti keksi, että mennään apteekkiin. Apteekkari osasi ruotsia. Ne ensimmäiset kuukaudet käytiinkin sitten melkein joka päivä apteekissa. Hymyiltiin jo ovelta, kun nähtiin apteekkari, ja apteekkari hymyili, kun se näki meidät.'

'War Childen

We were still so young with my sister,that we forgot the Finnish language quickly in Sweden. When we came back home to Kajaani after the war, mum didn't understand us and we didn't understand mum. We sat with my sister under the chamber table and cried. Finally mum came up with us going to the pharmacy. The apothecary knew Swedish. Those first months we went to the pharmacy almost every day. We would smile already at the door, when we saw the apothecary, and the apothecary too smiled when they saw us.'

Hello!

Suomen historia ('History of Finland') is a nonfiction book with little every day stories in a chronological order from Finnish people throughout the last 100 years. The timing is natural as it came out to commemorate our 100 years of independence. My brother actually got this book for my mum as a Christmas present, so naturally I picked it up to give it a read as well, and it became the last book I read in 2017. (I bet mum still hasn't read it now!)

The stories are quite short, one or two little pages each, like the one I picked to showcase you at the top. Some of them were really cute and heartfelt, some of them were a little less easy to understand. As a whole, on the other hand... Well, I don't really feel like there was a 'whole' to talk about here. The stories were cute and Finnish and about Finland, but there wasn't really a connecting thread going on.

Something nice about the book was also that it went through so many important Finnish events - the wars, The Unknown Soldiers, the presidents, Nokia and all that. There's so many things in this book that I think any Finn can find something relate to.

That being said, if I had compiled this book, I would have definitely found more stories so that the least strong ones could have been left out. It could also maybe have benefitted from talking to younger people as well, because a lot of the stories felt to me like they were a bit... 'Kekkonen-era'. Regardless, it was a nice little book with some really lovely stories that made me really happy and proud. Happy hundred years and many more hundreds to go, Finland!

Ruskeat Tytöt - Koko Hubara

'Minun tarinani ei ole se, kun ohikulkijat vetelevät minua silmäripsistä, kun ihmiset koskettelevat kyselemättä hiuksiani, ja kertovat minulle kuinka olen manteli ja maitokahvi ja mokkalatte ja vadelmasuklaa ja seepra ja panda ja hevonen ja apina ja kookospähkinä ja Oreo-keksi.'

'My story is not how passersby pull my eyelashes, when people touch my hair without asking and tell me how I'm an almond and coffee with milk and a mocha latte and raspberry chocolate and a zebra and a panda and a horse and a monkey and a coconut and an Oreo.' 

Hello again!

This is the first book I actually reserved from the local library. I queued for it for nearly two months and I was lucky to still get it while I'm here for the summer. That I will allow to speak volumes of how much I wanted to read it. I would have happily queued for this for two years, if I needed to.

I don't know where I should start in talking about this. There's so much I want to say, because everything in this book is important and the only way I'll get through it all is by writing the book again, here. I'll try my best to say what matters the most. Bear with me, please.

Let me just tell you up front that Ruskeat Tytöt ('Brown Girls') is a very personal work, one born out of necessity. The author wrote this book because there wasn't a work like it when she needed one in her life. She wrote it because there's not enough representation of people like her; girls who have lived in Finland her whole life but are the 'wrong' colour and therefore are treated like strangers.

This book talks about both racism and feminism, hence the two parts of the name. More accurately, it's about intersectional feminism; the idea that various aspects of our lives affect us at the same time. As in, the author's is both a girl and brown at all times, and both of these things make her often invisible in the media and affect how other people view her.

The author Koko Hubara is also the founder of Ruskeat Tytöt, the first Finnish 'from us to us' media for brown girls. There's some information about it in English here if you're interested. It matters because the representations given to us in the media are always coloured by whether or not the author understands the implications of race in their work. We white people don't always think about that, because we don't grow up constantly thinking about our own whiteness in a world where we perceive it to be the norm. I get that now, having read this book.

The book is divided into chapters about different subjects; the way girls are (and black girls aren't) portayed in media, 30 facts about Yemen, sexual violence is sexual violence, the way the collection of statistics in Finland makes brown girls seem nonexistent. They're all important things, and I think it's vital that we acknowledge them as problems and maybe even some as solutions. Therefore I'd like to suggest that reading this is almost as important even if you're not a Brown Girl. I say 'almost as' because to a Brown Girl this could be a lifeline, while to me it's something I want to make a change in. 

'Näen itseni näköisiä ihmisiä suomalaisessa mediassa yleensä vain silloin, kun aiheena ovat turvapaikanhakijat, islamisaatio, terrorismi, tyttöjen ympärileikkauset, raiskaukset ja muut suututtavat tragediat, samaan aikaan kun valkoisilla ihmisillä on nähtävänään ja kulutettavanaan esitystapoja enemmän kuin taivaalla on tähtiä.'

'I see people that look like me in Finnish media usually only when the topics are asylum seekers, islamisation, terrorism, the circumcision of girls, rapes and other tragedies to make you angry, meanwhile white people have ways of representation to use and to spend more than there are stars in the sky.'

I also want to tell you that the language of this book is amazing; it's beautiful and thoughtful and deeply touching. It's not amazing 'for a brown person' or anything like that (I feel like mentioning this is important just in case anyone thought anything different); it's absolutely gorgeous for any person and I wish I could formulate my thoughts half as well. It's one of the best-written books I'll read this year.

I decided, after thinking about it for a couple of days, to rate this 4/5. It's because it sometimes jars a bit, which isn't an experience Just because I didn't give this a full 5/5 doesn't mean that I don't think this is one of the most important books I will read this year. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't read it no matter who you are or where you are, regardless of the constraints of your colour or gender or preconceptions. Of course, the language can be a problem, but I'm sure Brown Girls feel these things no matter where they are. And us White Girls and Boys can always be better. Also, this is a book I'll buy for my own shelf without any qualms when I see it. I want to have a copy of it to give to my friends to read.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I put this in category 42: A debut book!

The World According to Bob - James Bowen

'Someone had come up with the rather bright idea of having a paw-shaped stamp so that Bob could also 'sign' each book.'

Heyo!

You might or might not remember when I read A Street Cat Named Bob and really liked it. Well, anyway, because of that I decided that reading the sequel would be smashing. It kind of wasn't. I read this book on our trip to Isle of Skye last week and on the bright side, it was a very easy read and fun to continue every time.

The first book has James meet Bob and the two of them slowly change each other's lives for the better. This being the sequel, I only had one wish: for it to continue from where the previous one ended. It kind of does this, telling random events until ending in March 2012 when A Street Cat Named Bob makes it to the stores. However, these are short stories more than anything, and at times they're not in a chronological order and repeat some things. Additionally, sometimes he comments something like 'it was just like a youtube video', but it's just never as funny when you try to describe it, is it? Because of this, sometimes Bob's cute little shenanigans just didn't do it for me.

Most of all, my problem with this book was that it lacked the heart of the first one. It felt less sincere, in a way, because it was clear that James was observing Bob's fun mannerisms and writing them down as fun little tidbits with no real aim or a story to go through. Could I really judge a book based on a man's life for lacking a story, however? Not really. But that's the reason why I would have preferred this to be a more chronological story without all the disorienting jumps back and forth; I believe it would have made this more grounded.

The book comes with cute illustrations
at chapter breaks that relate to the
chapters! Amazing!

The World According to Bob is feel-good book, perhaps even more so than the first one. James and Bob are in a better place even though they're still selling The Big Issue on the streets, and I'm very happy about that. James' drug-induced past was a harrowing read at best and horrible at worst, and I don't mind that this book has less of returning to that. And I also understand that this had to be written while the craze from the first one was still running high, but in its heart, it was a bit of a disappointment. I'm sorry I don't have more to say about this, really, but there wasn't much that stuck with me. The quote I picked I picked because I was reaching the end with nothing to really say about it.

I'll read the Christmas book for sure as well (but that better be at Christmas!) - while this wasn't what I wanted, I still liked it. And if James and Bob ever write anything else, I'll read that too. I'll give this like... 3 and a half out of 5.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I put this in category 35: There's a proper noun in a book's name!