The Empathy Exams in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Feb 14, 2015 Audacia Ray rated it did not like it

Shelves: read-in-2015

The capacity for empathy is a major thing in my life and work, so I was really interested in this book's premise and ideas, but HELL NO. The writer tangles with empathy in both concrete and abstract ways, but the classism and racism of her perspective and insights run deep.

There is, in fact, only one essay that explicitly includes people of color, and it is an essay about the author taking a Gang Tour of LA in an air conditioned bus - which she identifies as a thing that has an uncomfortable dyn The capacity for empathy is a major thing in my life and work, so I was really interested in this book's premise and ideas, but HELL NO. The writer tangles with empathy in both concrete and abstract ways, but the classism and racism of her perspective and insights run deep.

There is, in fact, only one essay that explicitly includes people of color, and it is an essay about the author taking a Gang Tour of LA in an air conditioned bus - which she identifies as a thing that has an uncomfortable dynamic (!!!!) but doesn't take it farther than that.

In two other essays, she writes about men in prison and they are all white men who are in exceptional circumstances - a rich white collar criminal in prison for fraud and the West Memphis Three. Why explore empathy for uncommon incarcerated people instead of digging into what it means and looks like to have empathy for the millions of men of color who are incarcerated in the US? Another essay is about empathy for the pain that (mostly) men experience when running the Barkley Marathons, an ultramarathon in the wilds of Tennessee, a race *inspired by the prison break of Martin Luther King, Jr's assassin.* So, she writes about empathy for the pain experienced by white men running an ultramarathon in the terrain around a prison, no comment about the literary implications of running near a prison or the racist inspiration of the thing.

Oh, but the book is not all about men and feeling for them! The writer feels for herself and (her definition of) women a lot. The first essay, about medical acting and also having an abortion, is actually quite good. But the final essay in the collection is called "Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain." The examples of female pain are, unsurprisingly, white and cisgender.

So, fuck this book and fuck the New York Times Best Seller label on it. Empathy for middle class white people in extreme situations is not a thing that "will make you a better human" as Mary Karr's blurb on the cover says. It will make you a worse human. ...more

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Aug 19, 2014 Jess rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, audible, 2015-audio

I do not recommend the audio version of this book. The narrator sounded like a robot. I wish I had done this one in print.

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Jul 13, 2014 Alissa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: female-writers, essays

What to say? The eponymous essay is absolutely beautiful and heart-rending, as is "The Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain". Jamison is the strongest when she manages to simultaneously find the micro and macro and connection in all things. This is the kind of book that inspires me to write and reminds me (with some relief) that essays are a really beautiful format for exploring ideas and themes. I want to read this over and over again and I suspect that she is on track to be one of the better wr ...more

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Sep 06, 2014 Tiffany rated it it was ok

My misgivings about these essays stem from the feeling I got that the author was using people and their stories for her own gain. One essay even exploited a story she learned of simply through a documentary.. Her best essays were ones in which she wrote from her own experiences, voluntarily giving up her privacy instead if exposing that of others.

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