Don’t Sleep – Stay WOKE!
Sleeping Through War by Jackie Carreira
I can’t remember anything from May 1968 and why should I as I was only 3 months old.
Reading Sleeping Through War by Jackie Carreira has opened my eyes to the many things that were taking place globally – a student march in Paris, growing tensions between Poland and Czechoslovakia, Biafran hostilities in Nigeria and a growing civil rights movement in the US after Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination.
Set just in that one-month Jackie intersperses the stories of 3 ordinary women with news reports from around the world. While the characters may not have been sleeping though war, they were primarily concerned by what was happening that affected them and their families. Each fight their own battles and face their own daily struggles.
At first, I wanted them to somehow meet up and somehow resolve all their issues in a nice tidy ending. That’s not how real life works and it was both geographically and socially impossible. These were three individual stories, tied together not by events but because each one had to make their own sacrifices and experienced some form of grief.
Maybe it was easier in those times to be so unaware of the big picture, although television and radio existed, they didn’t have smartphones or social media with current events immediately in your face.
Maybe, as the blurb on the back of the book says just to survive is an act of courage. I know from experience of losing my husband how sometimes it can be difficult to put one foot in front of the other and carry on, let alone switch on the news and taken on the burdens of everyone else.
I’ve just finished watching Andor on Disney+. It’s the story of the burgeoning Rebellion against the Empire. It’s about secrets, spies, and the sacrifice of ordinary people – albeit in a Galaxy far far away. They search for truth, fight for freedom and what they give up is immense.
Away from fiction we have today’s current affairs, sometimes twisted and manipulated by the media, we must decipher what is real before we even start to wonder what we can do.
Do I sign a petition? Share a post on Facebook? Do I actively speak out? Would good will it do?
I am grateful to those in positions of power who can and do challenge the inequality and hatred in the world.
But even us ordinary “nobodies” can play our part by not sleeping and instead being awake to what is happening.
We can’t know everything but if I’ve learnt anything from Star Wars it’s that tiny acts of Rebellion can bring down an evil Empire! And our shared experiences of survival give us courage.
I would definitely recommend Sleeping Through War by Jackie Carreira and look forward to reading more of her novels. You can find out more through her publisher Troubador. https://troubador.co.uk/bookshop/contemporary/sleeping-through-war