Carolyn Wilhelm reviews Carnival Lights

Title: Carnival Lights
By: Chris Stark
 Publisher: Modern History Press
Author Website: https://www.christinestark.com/
ISBN-10: 1615995781
ISBN-13: 978-1615995783
 Price: Hardcover $37.95, Paperback $24.95, Kindle $6.95
 Page Count: 268
 Formats (HC, PB, Kindle)
 
With good reason, two teens run away from a reservation and get jobs at the Minnesota State Fair. Although the book has a linear story within the pages, it also has a spiraling story going back generations explaining how families pass down their problems. Society also hands down its ills, of course.

“The grief of her people lived within her and was a way of knowing, with or without her conscious understanding.”
Stark, Chris. Carnival Lights (p. 221). Modern History Press. Kindle Edition.

What a read! Oh, my. This book hit me especially hard being a resident of northern Minnesota as well as Minneapolis. I walked exactly where the girls walked, went to the fair, and understand 1969 – the setting of the book. I was about their age in 1969. Of course, I was aware of the poverty in the Native American reservations. However, we attended Pow Wows and visited some people, so that I was unaware of the danger to women and children. I have been to Duluth dozens of times and cannot again pass through there looking at the ships with ignorance. We lived in Grand Marais on Lake Superior and I knew there was trafficking, but thought it was all at the border for some reason. 

10 Discussion Questions for Carnival Lights

 
1. How does Stark set up the first chapters so we are convinced Sher and Kris had no choice but to run away? What are several of the convincing reasons provided? 
 
2. Did you expect the girls would get to the fair rather quickly and experience problems there? What surprised you about the book with generational stories interwoven with the experience of the girls’ bus trip and arrival in Minneapolis?
 
3. Why did the girls spend several days in downtown Minneapolis? Who did Sher call, thinking they might find help? How did they get food? The Vietnam war protest added drama as well as helped explain the times. How was Kris always going ahead and doing things while Sher wanted to hold back?
 
4. How do they meet Tricia? Why does she say the following:

“Get this,” the woman said, “a couple of farm girls showing me the city.”
Stark, Chris. Carnival Lights (p. 118). Modern History Press. Kindle Edition.

5. Why do they decide or were told to leave several of the places they briefly stayed? What was the one place they wanted to stay? Why?

6. When in Minneapolis, Stark again sets up the reasons why the girls do not try to find help. Why would they not reach out to a social worker? Why do you think the church where they sat on the steps asked them to leave, probably knowing they were in trouble? 

7. How does the author explain most of Sher’s family acceptance and knowledge of her as contrasted with what her mother thought:

“Sher’s mother had admonished Sher for her broad shoulders, her narrow hips, and wearing her brother’s hand-me-downs, as if these oddities sprang from Sher alone, and did not come from the loins of her parents, from her family, from the Creator.”
Stark, Chris. Carnival Lights (p. 195). Modern History Press. Kindle Edition.

8. Were you expecting Sher and Kris would meet different people and find different problems than they did? How were the things that happened to them in Minneapolis worse or better than what you thought? 

9. Why do you think they didn’t go home but remembered the good people and things that happened? Their memories helped them cope. Could they have gone home? 

10. The foreshadowing of the ending strongly suggested something terrible would happen. Did you expect what happened or not? How did close calls to people who seemed to think about helping them add to the plot’s tension? How was the ending both happy and sad? 

Why do you think Stark wrote this book? What was the overall message? 

Carolyn Wilhelm, Reviewer
BS Elementary Education, MS Gifted Education, MA K-12 Curriculum and Instruction
Wise Owl Factory LLC

Mental Health Survival Kit and Withdrawal from Psychiatric Drugs
+3

Mental Health Survival Kit and Withdrawal from Psychiatric Drugs

978-1-61599-619-3
$22.95
A User's Guide
In stock
1
Product Details
UPC: 978-1615996193
Brand: Institute for Scientific Freedom
Binding: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Author: Peter C Gøtzsche
Pages: 222
Publication Date: 12/01/2021

This book can help people with mental health issues to survive and return to a normal life. Citizens believe, and the science shows, that medications for depression and psychosis and admission to a psychiatric ward are more often harmful than beneficial. Yet most patients take psychiatric drugs for years. Doctors have made hundreds of millions of patients dependent on psychiatric drugs without knowing how to help them taper off the drugs safely, which can be very difficult. The book explains in detail how harmful psychiatric drugs are and gives detailed advice about how to come off them.

You will learn:

  • why you should not see a psychiatrist if you have a mental health issue
  • that psychiatric drugs are addictive
  • that the biggest lie in psychiatry is the one about a chemical imbalance being the cause of psychiatric disorders
  • that psychiatric diagnoses are unscientific and that doctors disagree widely when making diagnoses
  • that psychiatric drugs can lead to permanent brain damage
  • that psychiatric drugs should never be stopped abruptly because withdrawal reactions can be dangerous
  • why psychotherapy and other psychosocial interventions should be preferred over drugs
  • why you should generally not believe what doctors tell you about psychiatric disorders and their treatment
  • why volunteers have found the book so important that they have translated it into French, Portuguese and Spanish

"Peter Gøtzsche's new book meets patients' need to get tools on how to deal with psychoactive drugs and, above all, not to start them. Gøtzsche is very clear about the role of GPs in medicalizing grief, misfortune, opposition, and bad luck." -- Dick Bijl, former GP, epidemiologist, and current president of the International Society of Drug Bulletins.

"Peter Gøtzsche has written a very personal account of his battle to get the institution of psychiatry to accept that its drugs are not the 'magic pills' they are made out to be. Every medical practitioner who prescribes them, and every person who takes them, should read this book and be warned." -- Niall McLaren, author of Anxiety: The Inside Story

"Peter Gøtzsche wrote this book to help people with mental health problems survive and return to a normal life. His book explains in detail how psychiatric drugs are harmful and people are told how they can safely withdraw from them." -- Fernando Freitas, PhD, Psychologist, National School of Public Health (ENSP/FIOCRUZ). Co-editor of Mad in Brazil

Learn more at www.scientificfreedom.dk

From the Institute for Scientific Freedom

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