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Jobs, Journalism, Justice

Contributing Writer

Articles by Joe Martin

World of wonders

By Joe Martin | April 22, 2015

Book Review - Rumours of Glory, a Memoir by Bruce Cockburn and Greg King

“I honour nonviolence as a way of being, and as a political tactic, but I am not a pacifist. As we continue to watch the world’s greatest military powers plunder weaker states and people as an integral, almost pro forma method of planetary domination, it’s clear that a violent response to such injustice, and carnage, would be useless and ever more destructive. But that’s easy for me to say as I sit on my peaceful deck in my peaceful city in my relatively peaceful country.” ...

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

All the world’s a stage

By Joe Martin | April 1, 2015

Book Review - The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

Tooly Zylberberg is an enigma to herself and others. “Even when alone, she wasn’t sure what she was like.” As long as she can remember she has been adrift on a continuous journey — a “never-ending voyage” — that has taken her to a multitude of places around the globe. Residence was always transitory. ...

Friend Request

By Joe Martin | March 18, 2015

Book Review - Loving Our Enemies: Reflections on the Hardest Commandment by Jim Forest

State-sponsored violence, racist violence, domestic, gang and police violence, violence in the name of religious fundamentalism, violence in the name of politics, violence in the name of corporate greed, psychotic explosions of violence in the name of nothing: There is much in our world that generates hurt, resentment, injustice and hatred. ...

The write stuff

By Joe Martin | February 4, 2015

Book Review - Vernon Downs: A Novel by Jaime Clarke

Charlie Martens is a little kid when his parents are killed in an accidental explosion. The sudden loss throws his young life on a pinball trajectory. He stays with a variety of far-flung relatives for limited periods of time until he is finally emancipated at age 17. Now in his late 20s, Charlie is back for a second stab at Glendale Community College near Phoenix, Ariz. There he has fallen in love with Olivia Simmons, a younger pretty woman he met in a creative writing class. She is from London, and her student visa is soon to expire. ...

Death-defying acts

By Joe Martin | December 17, 2014

Book Review - Just Mercy by Dorothy Van Soest

“Good lord, I’m not ready for this.” The words are uttered by Bernadette Baker, a loyal wife and loving mother who has just entered the prison where she expects to witness the execution of the woman who murdered her beloved daughter, Veronica. Bernadette is accompanied by a former minister named Regis Dorfman, who oversees a program that brings together accused perpetrators and their victims and victims’ relatives for what might be a healing dialogue. ...

Illuminating the darkness

By Joe Martin | December 17, 2014

Peter Maurin co-founded the Catholic Worker with Dorothy Day. He wrote “Easy Essays” in which he expressed, in a straightforward manner, thoughts on social justice, simple living and solidarity with the poor and common workers. In “Social Workers and Workers” Maurin asserts:

The training of social workers Does not enable them To help people To change the environment. Social workers Must become social-minded Before they can be critics Of the existing environment And free creative agents Of the new environment. ...

Paradise Lost

By Joe Martin | October 29, 2014

Book Review - Before, During and After by Richard Bausch

In the novel “Before, During and After,” Natasha Barrett is a lovely young woman who aspires to be an artist. She dreams of one day returning to France to pursue her creative passion for the play of paint and canvas. Such hopes have been set aside as she works a job on the staff of a United States senator. Not a bad life, but she is unfulfilled. Her amorous relationships have gone nowhere. ...

Dangerous Beauty

By Joe Martin | September 17, 2014

Book Review - The Other Side: A Memoir by Lacy M. Johnson

Early in her life, author Lacy M. Johnson was made aware of her good looks. When she was only seven years old, her mother entered her lovely blonde daughter into a beauty pageant: “In the pictures, I don’t look like a child of seven. ...

Passage from India

By Joe Martin | August 27, 2014

Book Review - Gandhi Before India by Ramachandra Guha

The death of Karamchand Gandhi in 1884 would have momentous consequences. At the time, his son Mohandas was in his teens and already married. In the wake of his father’s death his mother Putlibai became the family’s matriarch. She must have been remarkable. Indian society was caste-ridden, and the roles of women were strictly determined. Putlibai was “devout, but not dogmatic” and belonged to a Hindu sect that had Islamic influences. Austere Jain monks sometimes visited her home. A Brahmin friend urged her to send young Mohandas to London to obtain a law degree. ...