“Why are Kazakhstan and Montana the same place?” asks one chapter of Kate Brown’s surprising and unusual journey into the histories of places on the margins, overlooked or erased. It turns out that a ruined mining town in Kazakhstan and Butte, Montana—America’s largest environmental Superfund site—have much more in common than one would think thanks to similarities in climate, hucksterism, and the perseverance of their few hardy inhabitants. Taking readers to these and other unlikely locales, Dispatches from Dystopia delves into the very human and sometimes very fraught ways we come to understand a particular place, its people, and its history.
In Dispatches from Dystopia, Brown wanders the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation, first on the Internet and then in person, to figure out which version—the real or the virtual—is the actual forgery. She also takes us to the basement of a hotel in Seattle to examine the personal possessions left in storage by Japanese-Americans on their way to internment camps in 1942. In Uman, Ukraine, we hide with Brown in a tree in order to witness the annual male-only Rosh Hashanah celebration of Hasidic Jews. In the Russian southern Urals, she speaks with the citizens of the small city of Kyshtym, where invisible radioactive pollutants have mysteriously blighted lives. Finally, Brown returns home to Elgin, Illinois, in the midwestern industrial rust belt to investigate the rise of “rustalgia” and the ways her formative experiences have inspired her obsession with modernist wastelands.
Dispatches from Dystopia powerfully and movingly narrates the histories of locales that have been silenced, broken, or contaminated. In telling these previously unknown stories, Brown examines the making and unmaking of place, and the lives of the people who remain in the fragile landscapes that are left behind.
2 有用 米花 2022-02-08 11:03:23
作者将田野调查、报导、回忆录、传记、学术论文、文学批评全部运用在一起,有别于一般历史书的角度,所以读起来非常奇妙,很有画面感,一些看似已经没有生命力的地方,作者却巧妙地赋予微微闪烁的希望,作者把这种地方称为Rustalgia (rust+nostalgia),所以文字中充滿了一种有历史轨迹的怀旧感。
1 有用 一丘一壑也风流 2021-12-12 12:14:13
6/7. Why are Kazakhstan and Montana the same place? 看到介绍的第一句就决定要读这本了。在作者看来,苏联在中亚草原和美国在狂野西部的殖民扩张有很多相似的地方,20世纪的工业竞速在不同的意识形态包裹下呈现出类似的手段和策略,又在此后留下了类似的孤独和绝望感。结尾对她自己在rust belt成长经历的反思很动人。
0 有用 蕺水 2020-08-10 07:39:30
寫得太棒了! 看似是作者研究和田野的邊角料,但是賦予特別多的關懷和感情. 行文太像外科醫生了,誠實,坦白,冷酷,一針見血。
0 有用 Simplicio 2020-02-27 05:31:53
探访被遗忘的角落,充满了对历史的深层思考、对个体被时代辗轧的无奈与浓浓的人文关怀,第2章(西雅图某宾馆地下室日裔美国人珍珠港后被关押前存放的私人物品)、第6章(苏联某古拉格城镇与美国某西部小镇的惊人相似)可读性最强,其余章节词藻较华丽,过于文艺,有些沉闷。
1 有用 makzhou 2021-08-14 23:03:50
在有点沉闷的晚餐后翻开这本书,一扫之前的昏昏欲睡。既是历史也是民族志,是关于被遗忘城市、人民和生活的共性:I am interested in how spatial practices work to snare people into silence, invisibility, and diagnoses of menance and madness. ...I also want to k... 在有点沉闷的晚餐后翻开这本书,一扫之前的昏昏欲睡。既是历史也是民族志,是关于被遗忘城市、人民和生活的共性:I am interested in how spatial practices work to snare people into silence, invisibility, and diagnoses of menance and madness. ...I also want to know, by means of spatial arrangements, humans assemble knowledge and possibility, credibility, visibility, and sanity p.17. 简单的比喻:纽约客非虚构的学术化版本。文字技巧高超。 (展开)
2 有用 米花 2022-02-08 11:03:23
作者将田野调查、报导、回忆录、传记、学术论文、文学批评全部运用在一起,有别于一般历史书的角度,所以读起来非常奇妙,很有画面感,一些看似已经没有生命力的地方,作者却巧妙地赋予微微闪烁的希望,作者把这种地方称为Rustalgia (rust+nostalgia),所以文字中充滿了一种有历史轨迹的怀旧感。
1 有用 一丘一壑也风流 2021-12-12 12:14:13
6/7. Why are Kazakhstan and Montana the same place? 看到介绍的第一句就决定要读这本了。在作者看来,苏联在中亚草原和美国在狂野西部的殖民扩张有很多相似的地方,20世纪的工业竞速在不同的意识形态包裹下呈现出类似的手段和策略,又在此后留下了类似的孤独和绝望感。结尾对她自己在rust belt成长经历的反思很动人。
1 有用 makzhou 2021-08-14 23:03:50
在有点沉闷的晚餐后翻开这本书,一扫之前的昏昏欲睡。既是历史也是民族志,是关于被遗忘城市、人民和生活的共性:I am interested in how spatial practices work to snare people into silence, invisibility, and diagnoses of menance and madness. ...I also want to k... 在有点沉闷的晚餐后翻开这本书,一扫之前的昏昏欲睡。既是历史也是民族志,是关于被遗忘城市、人民和生活的共性:I am interested in how spatial practices work to snare people into silence, invisibility, and diagnoses of menance and madness. ...I also want to know, by means of spatial arrangements, humans assemble knowledge and possibility, credibility, visibility, and sanity p.17. 简单的比喻:纽约客非虚构的学术化版本。文字技巧高超。 (展开)
0 有用 CX 2021-08-12 11:34:19
可能因为作者长期为杂志供稿的原因,文字有很强的感染力。每一章都能留下一个画面:放满小家电的地下室、作者带着学生在禁区行走然后被学生投诉、在切尔诺贝利驰骋的摩托车少女...难得的是其中还能无缝衔接她作为历史学家对学科的反思。
0 有用 蕺水 2020-08-10 07:39:30
寫得太棒了! 看似是作者研究和田野的邊角料,但是賦予特別多的關懷和感情. 行文太像外科醫生了,誠實,坦白,冷酷,一針見血。