Reviews for Life and land use on the Bahrain Islands

The average rating for Life and land use on the Bahrain Islands based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-04-06 00:00:00 Dallas Hyatt Full disclosure: I wrote my master's thesis on Ellison's novel because I thought the first time that I read it that it is one of the most significant pieces of literature from the 20th century. Now that I teach it in my AP English class, I've reread it many times, and I'm more convinced than ever that if you are only going to read one book in your life, it should be this one. The unnamed protagonist re-enacts the diaspora of African-Americans from the South to the North--and the surreal experience of racism, rage, and manipulation rarely expressed with such force and eloquence. Ellison follows tried and true patterns from dramatic ritual to spell out his invisible man's journey from cocksure teenager to furious refugee hiding out in a basement in Harlem. The last lines of the book are haunting and almost hopeful through the despair.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-05-04 00:00:00 Randall Becker “I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible because people refuse to see me…When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination- indeed, everything and anything except me.” When I first read the book last year, the above quote really stood out to me. It seemed very Dostevskyan. It has taken a second reading for me to truly process the content of this book, and still I can’t exactly say I understand all the symbolism. I really enjoy coming of age books and this one is no exception. The book starts off with the narrator attending a college in the American South. Due to some events I won’t get into he moves to Harlem to look for work. We see the maturing process of the narrator as he goes from being an innocent boy to one who begins to question his identity but can’t seem to reconcile it with his role as a black man in (racist) 1950s America. And like any coming-of-age story, there is a lot of interior and external conflict. It’s hard to really summarize this book because so much goes on. Of course the main issue is about race and how it was for a person of colour living in a racist society at the time. The book also gets political when it outlines different possible approaches for racial integration, one more radical than the other. All in all a great book, a book which I will probably have to read again (or discuss it with someone!) to understand it better.