Customer Reviews

My Name Is Rachel Corrie

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This tiny 52 page book is one of the most important pieces that I have read in my life. Rachel Corrie's writing, backed up by her work as a 5th grader and as an adult, is humbling. Alan Rickman's editing and placement is briliant.

This book should be on every book club's list and on every thearter company's stage.

I think that this book has the ability to capture a person's attention on an emotional level as well as a political one. Rachel Corrie was a very profound writer, even as a teenager. In this book you get to experience her life the way that she did. She was a very special person and you can see that as you read this book. It was a tragedy the way she died, and I think that this book kind of does her memory some justice.

This book. This story. This life. This world-- it's all in there. It should be part of social science curriculum in high schools and colleges. Rachel was a person of conviction. Her life and witness inspire us all.

Ms. Corrie belonged to the ISM (International Solidarity movement), not the PSM. The ISM is an organization dedicated to non-violence.

Rachel Corrie's communications in the weeks preceding her death, herein collected, are among the most elegant of testimonies to what is best in the human spirit. Rachel wrote, as she lived, for what counts, with precision, passion, and single-minded devotion.

Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address succinctly defines sensible foreign policy: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." Obviously the US has violated Jefferson's wisdom and spirit with greater, more intense, more expensive, and more tragic frequency. There is hardly a nation on the planet where the United States has not engaged in overt or covert military action - or taken sides based solely on political considerations.

Nowhere have these violations been more blatant or more bloody than in the Middle East. The US-Israel relationship is not merely an "entangling alliance", it is suffocating double-standard. Israel is the region's only nuclear power, yet it refuses to acknowledge it, imprisons those who talk about it, and shuts its doors to IAEA inspectors. It claims to be a US ally, yet it deliberately attacked the USS Liberty and engaged in multiple spying operations including the Jonathan Pollard and Larry Franklin affairs. And it the only nation receiving US military aid which is not required to spend that aid with American companies.

From Lyndon Johnson through George W. Bush, US presidents have been arrogant enough to believe that they can act as "mediators" in Middle Eastern conflicts, despite the overwhelming pro-Israel bias of American policy in the region. Add to that American ignorance of the local cultures and customs - Arab and Israeli both - and you have a recipe for repeated disaster which culminated in September of 2001. After all, if another nation tried to do to the US what the US is doing to sovereign Arab nations, what would we do? That's right, bomb the snot out of them, with 100% justification.

Meanwhile billions of our dollars flow unabated into Israel's war machine every year, including 300,000 cluster bomblets dumped into Lebanon THE DAY AFTER the August 2006 cease-fire. And the only response ever given when any of these points is brought up? Shrill claims of "anti-Semitism". Well, I for one am GLAD to hear such accusations, because it means that the person engaged in such infantile kneejerk namecalling obviously has no rational position from which to defend Israel's actions.

Radical Israel-firsters pressured American theaters into censoring the production of "My Name Is Rachel Corrie". This is particularly sickening when it was an American-built bulldozer piloted by an American-funded Israeli soldier who brazenly, brutally and deliberately attacked her over and over until she was dead.

Buy Rachel's book now before Amazon again reports that it is suspiciously "unavailable".

Because of the youthful exuberance, which is not naivety, of Rachel Corrie's words, taken from her journals and e-mails to folks "back home," this drama does proceed deeper, and deeper into the mind and actions of a young woman on her personal crusade to do something about the lives of virtual strangers. Dramatists have put together an excellent portrayal of Rachel and some of the conflicts of her life experience.

The ceiling in Rachel Corrie's second grade classroom had rules hanging from it. Years later, the only one she remembered was "Everyone Must Feel Safe." That rule seems a philosophical impetus to joining the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza in 2003.

From a literary perspective, I'm intrigued at how well the play uses non-dialogue devices as tools for characterization. At one point, Corrie reads from her notebook; she recites a list of five people who she'd like to "hang out with" in eternity. These people are Rainer Maria Rilke, Jesus, ee cummings, Gertrude Stein, and Zelda Fitzgerald...and then Corrie adds a sixth: Charlie Chaplin. Very quickly, the audience knows that this is a young woman of imagination with a passion for creative expression and a personal philosophy that espouses turning the other cheek. The sixth addition to the list tells us that she has a great sense of humor and that she's unbound by the world's strictures. After all, given a choice of five, she goes outside the box and picks six.

The overall impression I'm left with after experiencing this play is one of hope, hope that human courage will compel us to stand against and oppose that which we believe is wrong. I have no doubt that had she had the chance, Rachel Corrie would have stood in front of the Gestapo when they came to round up innocent families for the trains. And that, too, would have been the courageous and right thing to do.

She stood with a bullhorn and a bright orange vest in front of a doctor's home protecting the children who lived there, unarmed.

The invader's armoured tank kept on coming, hitting her, and backing up over her to make certain she was dead.

But she wasn't. Her spine snapped, she died painfully hours later as she was stopped at the invader's "security" checkpoint.

As any decent human being she stood unarmed and defenseless to protect children's ancient homes from destruction and land grab, even to the ultimate consequences. Such morality and courage is very rare today and shines in such great fellow American heroes as Jean Donovan, Sister Ita Ford, Sister Maura Clark and Sister Dorothy Kazel.

But they were in the last millenium, raped and murdered by other US allies and organs. Rachel is now, a hero for our new millenium. Our only American hero.

Please read her words and weep, not for her, but for all the children who loses homes and lives to faceless, relentless immoral military aggression.

This young lady brutally murdered by an Israeli soldier, was very aware of what was truly going on in "The Palestinian Holocaust" that still is ongoing today. This book is a book of a true "American Hero." Her heroic death must not be in vain, but give courage to all to stand up to the racist atrocities being perpetrated in the world today. The brutal savagery and humiliation against the women, children and men of Palestine is one such, present day "Holocaust." Rachel Corrie had incredible foresight for someone so young. Her cause is now proven and backed by some of the greatest human beings and scholars on this earth: Former President Jimmy Carter has gotten the same message Rachel was getting out to the world in his present best-seller: "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." In another new best-seller "THE ISRAEL LOBBY, AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY," by John J. Mearsheimer (of U. of Chicago) and Stephan M. Walt (Harvard), clearly shared young Rachel's view that the savage and horrific treatment of the Palestinian People and "their" lands, was not good for Palestinians, Israeli's, and Especially for America's Safety and Reputation to the World. The list seems endless, especially today, proving and backing Rachel's heroic mission. May she rest in peace. Her parents must be so proud that Rachel tried to help the oppressed and brutally occupied people of Palestine. Rachel Corrie, be proud as your message of justice is being carried on by the great authors mentioned and many more.

Just something to think about readers: Be careful or take great caution with amateur reviews that try to distort Rachel's pure and humane message. Whose words do you give more weight to, a reckless, insensitive, amateur reviewer, or some of the notable icons and scholars mentioned. Yes, everyone is entitled to an opinion,(that's what makes AMAZON the best) but some spend years researching specialty topics and are more up to speed - weigh everything. Do Former President, and probably todays greatest humanitarian, Jimmy Carter's words have weight and substance? What about other great and acclaimed scholars such as Professor John J. Mearsheimer, who is the Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the Univ. of Chicago. Add, Professor Stephen M. Walt, who is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Who do you believe? I leave that rhetorical question to you.

Rachel Corrie and her beautiful messages in her writings, this book, and her heroic and tragic death keep her lagacy and message of justice alive. Now, more than ever, notable people and scholarly authors are writing an array of necessary books supporting Rachels cause and, important message. A message that, finally, is getting to Americans,i.e., The horrific plight of the Palestinian peoples. Rachel, the world will not forget that you died for the justice of the Palestinians. Rachel's life should be a academic course in and of itself. Rachel was a true martyr. Read Rachel and be inspired and moved forever....