rameau's ramblings
A reader who’ll try anything once, including bad books in search of good ones. Eclectic as her tastes are, she tends to gravitate to historical romances, realistic contemporaries, and some fantasy novels.
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank — 60th anniversary edition
I remember searching for this book at the library in my early teens. What I found instead was a diary written by a young Bosnian girl during the Bosnian war — Zlata's Diary. That made an impact because the war was still fresh on my mind and she was so close to my age.
I imagine that's how people felt reading Anne Frank's diary when it was first published. The connection between their own experiences, even from afar, and the daily life of girl who lost her life, made the book so powerful. But now, for me, Anne Frank's story is just that, a story from my grandparent's age and a tragic reminder how people are wolves to one another.
The diary does accomplish something great even today: it embodies the plight of the Jews in the Second World War. And if you can learn to see humanity in one oppressed group, you can learn to see it in others too.
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