Welcome to Litsy!

Recent acquisitions:

📖 Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug
📖 Bridgerland: Your Land and Mine by J. Arbon Chrustensen

#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans

📕 Belonging by Nora Krug
✍️ Berry, Wendell
📺 Broadchurch
🎙 Bon Iver
📻 Be Sweet - Japanese Breakfast

#ManicMonday #LetterB
@CBee

Wow- a person trying to learn about her family‘s German history during WWII. Powerful and so very human.

#bookspin : A graphic novel.

A gripping personal story about a German emigre trying to discover the degree of guilt of her relatives who were Nazis. Illustrated with drawings and collage art of historical documents. I found it hard to follow at times, and had mixed feelings about discussions of how the German people suffered after the war. Her encounters with people who are basically Holocaust fans are also very unnerving.

Nora Krug dives into her family history to uncover the degree of her family's involvement while Hitler was ruling Germany. It definitely offers food for thought.

This book is more like a scrapbook, with Nora Krug writing about her research, her feelings, her childhood, and adding illustrations and photographs of her family. I really liked this format, I felt it made it more personal, like having access to her feelings, thoughts, interrogations.

I just couldn't connect to this story. It was supposed to be a story of personal reckoning, but it was a little too methodical to connect to emotionally. There were insert pages placed right in the middle of a story instead of bookending chapters. Not for me 🤷

It takes bravery to complete this book!! Enjoy this book very much and glad I read it after several books related to WWII!

I wish I knew half this much about my ancestors... #endpapers #newyearwhodis @megnews @monalyisha

Good progress on February #bookspin selection, even though I won‘t finish it by Saturday; not much progress on anything else! Started Interesting Times for #OokBOokClub; Irretrievable for #nyrbbookclub. Still working on my poor #chunksters.
From the library list, Belonging. Sort of a graphic, illustrated, scrapbook design. Nonfiction. German American dealing with her possible Nazi ancestors. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#BookReport #WeeklyForecast
@Cinfhen

Deeply moving and heartfelt memoir about the author's search for her German family's involvement in WW II. The scrapbook-like format keeps it personal and easy to read. Powerful book. "Even inherited memory hurts."

I found this graphic memoir about facing one‘s problematic history fascinating. Nora Krug is a German woman who over time gathers the courage to interrogate her simultaneous love of and anxiety about her country and investigate her family‘s involvement with the Nazi Party in World War II. This is a visually beautiful and incredibly nuanced examination of one woman‘s reckoning with history and her homeland.

Do you dig into your family history when there might be something dark lurking? For those of German ancestry, WWII can be tricky. Told in art journal form, this was an interesting read. I loved the journey Nora took, not only within her history but within what it means to be German with the stain of the Nazi party casting a shadow over the entirety of your heritage. Can she be a proud German citizen with that darkness in her country's history?

So good! Nostalgia and truth together

A super interesting graphic novel about a German woman who looks into the past of her family. She does research, meets people, and learns about her country.

In Belonging, Krug prods her relatives‘ stories from the time of Nazi Germany to better understand her own sense of self and responsibility to history.Her longing to know the truth, and to understand how it shapes her and her relationship to Germany, is searingly honest and poignant.Told in a scrapbook format, this visual memoir puts readers into the heart of the difficulties one encounters when facing historical, political,and personal histories.

A German emigre reconciles with her family‘s past in this tender graphic-novel style autobiography. The author confronts her grandparents‘ involvement in WWII. She unflinchingly asks “were my family members Nazis?” This is a bold and beautiful book. Throughout the author creates a pastiche of things German, Nazi, and personal. It‘s a very moving read, and one I highly recommend!

How did I miss #WondrousWednesday? @Eggs
1. 🍓 has always been but 🥭 is making its way in
2. The Gilded Hour
3. Favorite #graphicnovel tagged. Hard choice but it‘s an important read and beautifully done.
4. Hmmmm....

“How do you know who you are if you don‘t understand where you came from?”
“Belonging” is an incredible journey with the author to finally know and find a way to come to terms with whatever role she finds her grandparents had in Nazi Germany.
It got a little long at the end but all in all a page-turner. This would be a fine addition to a middle school or high school curriculum.

Book 70/90 1/20/19

“This is the original form, the exact piece of paper my grandfather once held in his hands.”

As an amateur genealogist, I know the emotion experienced when you hold in your hands something an ancestor has held. I can‘t imagine her emotion and trepidation as she finally prepares to learn the truth about her grandfather‘s participation in the Nazi party. You can‘t un -know something once you know it.

In 1993, my family hosted a German foreign exchange student who became like a sister to me. In May 2014, shortly before the World Cup, we visited her for the first time. At Brandenburg Gate, we saw the German flag flying and thought nothing of it, considering the prevalence of the American flag everywhere at home. My “sister” explained it was only recently being flown and there was a big debate about it. She seemed uncomfortable. (Cont below)

This gorgeous visual memoir tells how an American woman looks back into her German ancestry and tries to understand the question “how do you live with the weight of history ?” She visits her ‘Heimat‘ and meets family for the first time. She hopes to find the smallest trace of resistance in her relatives so she herself won‘t be ‘bad‘. It‘s eye opening and amazing.

This is the most beautiful book to look at

Belonging by Nora Krug is a fantastic graphic memoir. It‘s a personal story, one about her family, about Germany‘s ugly Nazi history, and what it means to be German today. #nonfiction #graphicmemoir

Great graphic memoir look at growing up German a generation after the war.

This was an awesome non-fiction graphic memoir about finding your history to understand yourself.

Full review on my blog: https://deannareadsbooks.blogspot.com/2018/08/arc-review-belonging-german-reckon...