Book Review: Stories of a Traveling Belly Dancer

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Non-fiction/Memoir/Travel

Stories of a Traveling Belly Dancer

Zaina Brown

2012

Ebook

Zaina Brown is a professional belly dancer who has worked in the United States and in several countries abroad. In her new book, Stories of a Traveling Belly Dancer, Brown shares a collection of emails she sent to friends during her nearly four years of travel in Africa and the Middle East. The book documents the dancer's adventures in the twelve countries that she visited as a student and working dancer. Brown's descriptions of her dancing experiences are dramatic and exciting. Her encounters with the local residents of each country are as entertaining as the dances she performs.

Brown opens the book with a brief history of belly dancing, which originated in North Africa and the Middle East. The author describes the changes in the art of belly dancing as it became popular in India, Asia and Western countries. Brown discovered belly dancing as a teenager growing up in Finland. She quickly decided that she would pursue a career in the field. In her early twenties, after taking classes and working as a dancer in New York City, Brown embarked on what was supposed to be a two month trip to Cairo, Egypt. She left New York in 2007 and returned in 2011.

As a young, single woman traveling alone, Brown provides the reader with a unique perspective regarding the treatment of women in the Middle East and the beauty of many of the people, often poor and struggling themselves, who assisted her as in each country she visited. Brown's writing is personal, informative and funny. She includes history about each country and the specific sites that she visited, which makes the places come to life for the reader. The same is true of her accounts of the people she befriended. The stories are also revealing of Brown as a person. She comes across as brave, a little impulsive, compassionate, inquisitive, and open-hearted. Even though most of the jobs Brown worked during her travels included accommodations that many of her fellow performers stayed close to for security, Brown (who learned some Arabic in Egypt) made a point of reaching out to the local community at every stop. Even though the story is primarily about Brown's work as a professional belly dancer, what will keep the reader engaged is the spirit of this adventurous woman who seems to have few fears and sees even fewer limitations in life. From Egypt to the United Arab Emirates to Ethiopia, Brown's courage helped her navigate many interesting situations. And her love for her work never faltered.

Stories of a Traveling Belly Dancer is a colorful, entertaining story of a young dancer with a passion for her work and an absolute love for adventure. It is an inspiring tale for the young and old who are interested in travel and living an unrestricted life. I highly recommend it.

Melissa Brown Levine for Independent Professional Book Reviewers

Melissa Brown Levine is a writer, book reviewer and manuscript consultant. She is the author of "I Need to Make Promises: A Novella and Stories." Read an excerpt at http://www.melissabrownlevine.com/.

Incognito: The Secret Lives Of The Brain - Book Review

After reading David Eagleman;s Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, it's easy to see the future of writing is in good hands. Even better, the future of writing about a subject that would have most readers snoring by Page 3. Or, if they were eReading the work on a Nook, Kindle Fire or iPad, one might think the readers would be wandering off to apps that let them check their email or move to eBay, but it won't happen.

Eagleman is a deceptively cagey writer, who actually knows how to put together a sentence of more than three emoticons and four XOXOs - a tribute to the writing skills of some of his generational colleagues so that you learn something about concepts that you had, perhaps, thought were either boring or had no reach into your daily life.

Laboring under this premise is false because you soon learn the Eagleman is a man who knows his subject thoroughly as he is one of the future's top neuroscientists. Yet, he's more; he is a science writer who, like some of the science reporters that CNN or NBC actually pay, knows his topics and can actually make them interesting.

After reading this work, you have more than a fair to middling idea that there's a lot more going on behind what you see with your eyes and what you hear and that's how we get through our days. Why do you put on your left sock first and then your right? Why do you drive one way on one day to a stop while on another day you take a completely different route. Yes, you have a rational explanation quite ready: it's easier to raise my left leg first and my Mom made me learn to do it that way.

Each of these is plausible and quite likely true but what levels of your mind do you use to make these and other decisions during the course of your day? What would happen if you put on the right sock first? Would your universe turn upside-down? (In the case of clothing, you'd probably have a bad day and be cranky because "I chose the wrong tie;" "This shirt's collar is too tight," or "The sleeves just don't feel right." Yet, if you put your socks on correctly everything would be fine. As to your daily trips, well, we'll leave that one to your imagination.)

It's Eagleman, whose light touch with the word and excellent use of the proper examples at the right points, who shines here and strips away our preconceptions about how or why we do things. At some times, certain areas of your mind work with your eyes, ears and even your own body chemistry to produce your actions. All of these pieces are working together or forming new alliances - albeit temporary ones - with other areas of your mind and the layers that Eagleman exposes to produce how you handle a situation or how it handles you.

The brain is a fascinating topic that requires a deft touch or the book will be left on the shelf or unread on the eReader, but not David Eagleman's "Incognito." In fact, after reading it you'll find there's nothing incognito about your brain anymore. It's out there for you to see and it can't just hide behind the old "because I've always done it this way" because Eagleman shows that while you think that's the way your brain works, it may end up with "I've always done it..." thinking but you used a whole different set of your brain to get you there.

Roberto Sedycias works as an IT consultant for ecommUS-Books

Book Review: Behind the Iron Curtain: Tears in the Perfect Hockey "GULAG"

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Non-fiction/Memoir
Behind the Iron Curtain: Tears in the Perfect Hockey 'GULAG'
Maxim Starchenko
2011
RoseDog Books
144 pages

Maxim Starchenko was an eight-year-old living in Kharkiv, Ukraine when he was recruited by hockey coach, Ivan Pravilov. His memoir, "Behind the Iron Curtain: Tears in the Perfect Hockey 'GULAG,' recounts the horrible physical and psychological abuse he and the other members of his team endured while playing for Pravilov. This is a difficult book with vivid descriptions of the abuse that occurred throughout Starchenko's ten years with the team. The author courageously shares his story to unburden himself and to encourage his former teammates to speak out about the abuse they suffered at Pravilov's hand.

The Hockey team Starchenko joined as a second grader in 1986 was called Druzhba-78. "Druzhba" means friendship and "78" refers to the year the boys were born. Throughout the book, the author makes note of the "unfriendly" atmosphere that Pravilov created among the teammates as he used violence and brainwashing techniques to pit the boys against each other. The author compares Pravilov to Stalin. Starchenko further compares the GUGLAG (Soviet concentration camps) system of slave labor that thrived on a culture of informants and spies to Pravilov's coaching style which pitted the players against each other. No one wanted to be Pravilov's "focus" and each child would do anything to avoid the abuse.

Starchenko describes several episodes of abuse committed against him by Coach Pravilov including being struck on the back of the knees and on the buttocks with a hockey stick. One particularly disturbing episode the author describes involved Pravilov repeatedly hitting him in the head with a hockey stick. There is also a story in the book that suggests Pravilov sodomized another player with a hockey stick. The hockey stick was often Pravilov's weapon of choice. The violence and humiliation escalated during the teams international travels in the nineties. According to Starchenko, Pravilov frequently demanded that the boys fight each other during these trips. Eventually, the "punishments" took on a sexual tone.

Even though there were laws against child abuse in the Soviet Union during Starchenko's time on the team, Pravilov was rarely confronted by adults who observed the children's injuries. Starchenko's own parents believed remaining on the hockey team was important for their son's future. While Starchenko does not hold back when recounting his parents' behavior during his time playing under Pravilov, he states that he bears no hard feeling towards them. Starchenko's his own loyalty to the coach resulted in Pravilov making him his recruiting assistant after Starchenko's team dissolved.

On February 10, 2012, Ivan Pravilov was found dead while in custody in Philadelphia on charges of child-molestation. Suicide is the suspected cause of death. This new development adds credibility to the accusations Starchenko makes in his book. It also assures that no other child will ever endure the abuse Starchenko and his teammates lived through.

"Behind the Iron Curtain" is not simply another story of childhood abuse. It is a clarion call to parents, educators, coaches and others involved in organized sports to make it their duty to become aware of abuse and to speak out against it.

Melissa Brown Levine for Independent Professional Book Reviewers

Melissa Brown Levine is the author of "I Need to Make Promises: A Novella and Stories"

http://www.melissabrownlevine.com/