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| 1944934987
| 9781944934989
| 4.59
| 279
| Oct 23, 2020
| Oct 23, 2020
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it was amazing
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The non-monormative attachment book I have desired for so many years! As someone who is monogamous (and begrudgingly attracted to men), works with pol
The non-monormative attachment book I have desired for so many years! As someone who is monogamous (and begrudgingly attracted to men), works with poly clients, and has a few close friendships, I felt like I could trust this book’s wisdom without any heteronormative, monogamy-centric brainwashing. Jessica Fern draws upon her experience as someone who is polyamorous, as well as through her therapy experience with polyamorous clients, to deliver a book I honestly think we could all benefit from reading. If you are someone interested in relationships I would highly recommend Polyplatonic. Fern first starts by providing an overview of attachment theory and how trauma affects our relationships. She does a great job of conveying the science surrounding attachment theory while still making the content readable and relatable, such as by avoiding unnecessary jargon. I felt like I could see my own relational patterns reflected in her descriptions, and I think she writes so well about how our past experiences can influence us to pull away or grasp firmly onto people we have relationships with, without judging people for their trauma or their general relational tendencies. After describing attachment theory and how it relates to trauma, Fern writes about consensual nonmonogamy and how it relates to our attachment styles. I so enjoyed this section because I feel like Fern destigmatizes consensual nonmonogamy and writes about it in such a clear, accessible way. I feel like whether you are polyamorous, monogamous, neither or a combination of both, you could benefit from this book just to deepen your own understanding of how nonmonogamous relationships work, in particular if you are unfamiliar or still hold onto some stigma. Even though I identify as monogamous romantically (though idk if I’ll ever find a man I want to date, lol) I do have three closest friends I care about a lot, friends who I care about just as much as and probably more than I would any male romantic partner, and this book helped me reflect on my secure attachments with them as well as past attachments that were not as healthy. I most loved how Fern dedicates space to discussing the importance of developing a secure attachment with ourselves. She writes about having a healthy relationship with oneself in a way that emphasizes how we can act as our own warm shelters to weather the storms of life, without framing this self-love in a trite or formulaic way. Fern offers specific strategies and actions we can take to tune into ourselves and enhance our relationships with ourselves, just as she provides tangible steps to strengthen the quality of our relationships with others. Overall, would highly recommend this one! I am glad she acknowledges the role of various forms of systemic oppression on relationships too. Yay for deconstructing monogamy and creating a society where healthy consensual relationships of all kinds thrive. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jan 16, 2021
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Jan 21, 2021
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Dec 30, 2020
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Paperback
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| 198482578X
| 9781984825780
| 4.62
| 1,784
| Sep 08, 2020
| Sep 08, 2020
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it was amazing
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A powerful memoir about a young Black lawyer who dedicates herself to fighting the criminal justice system, in particular the inhumane and racist life
A powerful memoir about a young Black lawyer who dedicates herself to fighting the criminal justice system, in particular the inhumane and racist life without parole sentences for first time drug offenses. I loved how Brittany Barnett shared her own story about her mom’s incarceration and how that experience, intertwined with an assignment she conducted in law school, motivated her to fight so tirelessly for Black folx who had their lives unjustly cut short by these draconian life sentences. Barnett centers her clients’ life experiences and humanizes their struggles as well as emphasizes their creativity, intelligence, and compassion. While she does not center herself in these stories, I still found myself moved by her dedication to the cause and her focus on making a difference with her skills as a lawyer. Totally recommend for those who enjoyed Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy or Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Ugh, we have so much work to do to dismantle systemic racism and anti-Blackness in the United States. I felt curious about Barnett’s thoughts on prison abolition as the long-term goal. Though, I recognize she has her hands full with her important and necessary work of freeing people who our currently imprisoned and have been failed by the system. ...more |
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none
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1
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Jan 29, 2021
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Feb 03, 2021
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Nov 19, 2020
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Hardcover
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| 1988449448
| 9781988449449
| 4.09
| 118
| Aug 23, 2018
| Aug 24, 2018
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it was amazing
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This book tore my sensitive gay heart to shreds and I loved every freaking second of it. Such a Lonely, Lovely Road follows Kabelo Mosala, a young Bla
This book tore my sensitive gay heart to shreds and I loved every freaking second of it. Such a Lonely, Lovely Road follows Kabelo Mosala, a young Black man living in South Africa whose parents aspire for him to go to medical school and then marry a woman. A few weeks before heading to medical school, however, Kabelo forms an intense connection with Sediba, a childhood friend Kabelo had always avoided, despite his interest in Sediba’s uniqueness. Their relationship confirms Kabelo’s queer sexual orientation, which he struggles to hide from his parent sand his community. We follow Kabelo throughout his life as he tries to make sense of and fully inhabit his relationship with Sediba, a relationship that brings him joy in a society that disparages same-sex love. Okay y’all, I have to say that I literally screamed in my apartment while reading this book because of how invested I felt in Kabelo and Sediba’s relationship. Kagiso Lesego Molope writes with such straightforward poignancy and captured their bond as well as Kabelo’s emotional experience with well-paced scenes and sharp dialogue. The curiosity and tension between Kabelo and Sediba leading up to their first kiss? I screamed. When Kabelo and Sediba reconnect after their first period of spending several years apart? I screamed. Later on in the book when the angst between them gets real and intersects with Kabelo’s emotions of loneliness and grief and confusion about he wants in life? I screamed while lying on my couch and blasting BlackPink’s “Don’t Know What to Do,” making sure to hydrate to replenish the fluids in my body even as Molope’s beautiful writing drained my soul and lifted it into the literary heavens. The romance between Kabelo and Sediba takes up most of the novel, and a lot of people know I’m not a huge fan of romance-centric stories. However, Molope constructs the connection between Kabelo and Sediba with such tender care, I had no choice but to pause my cynicism toward romance and fanboy. I also loved Kabelo’s character. Molope did such a fantastic job writing compelling scenes and dialogue while giving us perspective into Kabelo’s emotions, like what made him happy and what fueled his worries and insecurities. I think literally all of the characters in this novel, ranging from Sediba as a more central character to Kabelo’s parents as more on the periphery, received such distinct and consistent characterization. I feel like one sign of a truly talented writer is a writer who can make you empathize and care for a character while simultaneously acknowledging that character’s limitations and flaws. That’s how I felt about Kabelo – even when I wanted him to process his emotions about his parents or Sediba with more clarity, even when I wanted him to explore his past loneliness instead of avoiding it, I felt so compelled to root for him and to show compassion for him and his struggles. Goodreads friends, I ask you to please read this novel so I have people to scream and freak about it with. I so appreciate Molope’s voice and this deep, stirring portrayal of love between two Black men from South Africa. As a queer Asian American I recognize I am definitely removed from these characters’ experiences and at the same time it’s so rejuvenating to witness a queer love story outside of whiteness and a more western context in general. On a more political level some of my takeaways from this book include that we should all take action to eradicate homophobia, dismantle heteronormativity, and end patriarchy so queer folks everywhere can be happy and men can experience the full range of their emotions. Those are my takeaways and Molope doesn’t really directly say any of that in her novel. Instead, she creates a beautiful love story, one that centers a relationship with struggles yet an ultimately healthy and restorative relationship nonetheless. As someone who hasn’t given a book five stars in about two months, as someone who hasn’t had a crush on a guy for awhile (aside from an odd maybe crush on a straight guy which you can read about on my blog, lol), and as someone who values empathy and compassion and connection and novels that promote those things, I’m so grateful for Such A Lonely, Lovely Road. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 07, 2020
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Aug 09, 2020
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Aug 05, 2020
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Paperback
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| 1936932954
| 9781936932955
| 3.86
| 280
| Sep 15, 2020
| Sep 15, 2020
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it was amazing
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Oh my freaking goodness, this book felt like
Normal People
except with two queer women of color who both grow and change in meaningful, beautiful
Oh my freaking goodness, this book felt like
Normal People
except with two queer women of color who both grow and change in meaningful, beautiful ways. A World Between has that same slice of life relatability mixed with dialogue that feels both everyday and addictive, made mesmerizing due to the strength of our two protagonists, Eleanor Suzuki and Leena Shah. In 2004, Eleanor and Leena meet in college, in an elevator, in an exchange that involves Leena studying for an exam and Eleanor entranced by Leena’s presence. This encounter sets the stage for an intense, passionate romance: Eleanor more the enthused pursuer and Leena returning her affection, steadfast and rational. They encounter each other again in the streets of San Francisco in 2010, and they cross paths once more in 2017, after gay marriage’s legalization and amidst 45’s presidency. As a 25-year-old myself, I so loved how this novel captured these two women from their tempestuous early 20s to their 30s, how they fall into and out of each other’s orbit, how they mature in both messy and triumphant ways. I loved the relationship between Eleanor and Leena because Emily Hashimoto developed them both as full, three-dimensional characters in and of themselves. I’m going to reference Normal People again, not to put down Normal People but just because I find the similarities between these two novels striking. Both novels feature intense, somewhat all-consuming romantic bonds between two people that feel magnetizing to read. However, Eleanor and Leena felt more fully-developed as individual characters in addition to their romance, whereas Connell and Marianne struck me as flatter on their own and that their romance carried their story man than they did. When I write that Eleanor and Leena both feel developed, I mean that in the sense that they each have goals for their lives beyond one another, as well as separate growth trajectories as characters even if their relationship with each other influences those trajectories. Eleanor is a biracial woman who comes out relatively early in life, is a bit obsessed with romantic love, and wants to make a difference in the lives of marginalized people (e.g., queer folx, girls and women, those at the intersections of those identities). Leena is a South Asian woman who wants to help people through medicine and public health, who is afraid of coming out because of her family, and who leans away from romance with women because it stirs up wild, intense feelings within her. These queer women of color felt developed with such care and intelligence, with distinct voices and personalities, whose characterizations are in no way in service to the male gaze or to be digestible to heterosexual readers. I so appreciated how Hashimoto incorporated their racial identities, sexual orientations, and more in a way that elevated them as people I grew fond of, not just to make A Point (you will, thankfully, not find the bury your gays tropes here either.) I felt intoxicated by Eleanor and Leena’s relationship and all the drama within it to the point where this book would have gotten a 4-star rating with ease. What really made me fall in love with A World Between is how Hashimoto shows how they both grow as people. Their growth felt so painfully human, full of missteps and hesitations, regrettable starts and frustrating stops. At times I wanted to say to Eleanor, “omg, you really need to learn how to love yourself without a romantic relationship with a woman.” At other times I wanted to tell Leena, “omg, your refusal to confront and accept your sexual orientation is actively hurting Eleanor to the point where I’m screaming on my couch in my living room waiting for you to own your gayness as much as I and she do.” This journey is what makes the payoff toward the end of the novel all the more fulfilling, when both characters finally grow and change in small yet oh-so-significant ways. By the end of this book, I trusted Hashimoto with my heart, fully, because I could see how much love and tenderness she invested in these characters. Definitely one of my top 2020 reads and top fiction novels ever! On a personal note, A World Between is another one of those right book, right time reads for me. As a gay man of color in my mid-20s, there’s a lot I don’t share in common with Eleanor and Leena, though their journeys did make me feel wistful for the romance I have yet to encounter in my life. Yet, I feel grateful to Hashimoto for gently reminding me of a powerful truth, that regardless of which guys I thirst for and which guys thirst for me, there’s one thing that will always fill my cup up first: my love and acceptance of myself. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Oct 11, 2020
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Oct 13, 2020
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Jul 18, 2020
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1607329654
| 9781607329657
| 4.12
| 8
| unknown
| Apr 15, 2020
|
it was amazing
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An amazing essay collection about the oppression women of color face in academia. I wish every graduate program would make this book required reading,
An amazing essay collection about the oppression women of color face in academia. I wish every graduate program would make this book required reading, both for faculty and for graduate students. The women in these essays write about so many pressing and pertinent topics, such as how higher education brands itself as caring about “diversity” and “inclusion” while perpetuating racism and sexism against its own members, the importance of not becoming the institution and embodying its oppressive norms, and the psychological and physical toll of experiencing gendered racism on a daily basis as a woman of color in academia. I loved the rawness of these narratives and how the editors included perspectives that span different racial/ethnic groups, gender identities, and class statuses The women in this essay collection provide tangible strategies to combat racism and sexism, ranging from individual-level solutions like self-affirmation to more systems-oriented approaches like challenging the administration to rally around supporting women of color and eradicating racism and implicit bias. I appreciate the courage of these women for sharing their stories, especially because academia often thrives on oppressed people staying silent so that these injustices can continue. I feel more empowered to serve as an ally and to use my male and cis privilege to support women of color, as well as more aware of challenges I may face as a queer Asian American who at this point wants to pursue a career within academia. Again, totally recommended to anyone at any stage within academia, to demystify and name the oppression that occurs behind closed doors. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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May 27, 2020
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Jun 2020
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May 23, 2020
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| unknown
| 4.18
| 52,995
| Aug 31, 2020
| Sep 08, 2020
|
it was amazing
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4.5 stars Ugh yes Yaa Gyasi has the range and I love that for her! While her debut novel Homegoing followed seven generations, in Transcendent Kingdom 4.5 stars Ugh yes Yaa Gyasi has the range and I love that for her! While her debut novel Homegoing followed seven generations, in Transcendent Kingdom we delve deep into one immigrant Ghanaian family living in Alabama, in the United States. The story focuses on Gifty, a fifth-year doctoral candidate in neuroscience at Stanford whose brother died of a heroin overdose after sustaining a knee injury playing high school basketball. Soon after, Gifty’s mother tries to die by suicide, before settling into a severe depression. We follow Gifty as she tries to figure out what to do when her mother comes back to live with her in California after a long stay in Ghana. Gyasi uses flashbacks to give us a closer look into Gifty’s past experiences with her family and how they have affected her in the present. I so appreciated how Gyasi tackles so many freaking important topics yet somehow managed to do them all justice: science, religion and faith, addiction, racism, grief, and more. All of these topics bled into each other in such beautiful and painful ways and elevated my investment in the novel. I will highlight two of the most standout features of this novel that motivated me to round up to five stars. First, I felt that Gyasi did a fantastic job exploring the tension between religion and science from within Gifty’s perspective. Even as an agnostic atheist, my heart clenched reading some of the passages about Gifty’s relationship with faith and how much it both meant to her and let her down sometimes. Her wrestling with religion felt so nuanced and so grounded within her own life unique experiences; Gyasi highlights how faith and science can co-exist in a way that honors people of color’s worldviews while also acknowledging the benefits and applications of science. I also loved, loved, loved how Gyasi portrayed how Gifty’s grief and trauma affected her intimate relationships. The way she used flashbacks to show how Gifty shut herself off from Anne and Raymond because she had not processed at all her brother’s death – wow, truly an insert chef’s kiss meme/emoji level of skill. I think I literally sighed in pleasure (yes, I derive that much enjoyment from characters’ emotional healing/growth processes) reading Gifty’s gradual and powerful opening up to her friend Katherine and her lab mate Han. There was one scene in particular where Gifty speaks to Han and within that same scene flashes back to an earlier interaction with Raymond and my goodness, I had to put my Nook down for a second just to let myself fully appreciate Gyasi’s quality of writing. The only reason I lean toward 4.5 stars is because for the beginning and some of the middle of the book I felt a bit of a distance from Gifty. Yes, I think the distance makes sense given that, especially in the beginning of the book, Gifty puts distance between herself and everyone. However, I felt remember feeling similarly reading Gyasi’s Homegoing . At times I almost felt like I was reading a more intellectual script of a character than actually feeling immersed in the character’s lived experience, like a sense of “ah, so in this passage Gyasi is showing Gifty coming to terms with how she shouldn’t have judged her brother’s addiction or “ah, this passage depicts how Gifty always recognized her second-place spot next to her brother.” However, I do think this worked out more in Gyasi’s favor with this novel given Gifty’s coping strategy of distancing herself and compartmentalizing. Toward the latter half of the novel I felt much more pulled into her life and her emotional experience. Overall, another amazing novel by Yaa Gyasi and I’m looking forward to reading what she writes next. I didn’t touch on these components as much in this review, but I also felt impressed by how she depicted the role of racism in making the Black men in Gifty’s life so insecure and damaged. I’m teaching a course (my first course as instructor of record, wowow) that’s gonna focus on addiction starting next week and thus also appreciated how Gyasi wrote about the feelings of stigma and shame that accompany having a loved one with a substance use disorder. Ugh, again, such a great book and would totally recommend to those who enjoy fiction at all. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 25, 2020
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Dec 28, 2020
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May 19, 2020
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1856496244
| 9781856496247
| 4.42
| 1,259
| 1999
| Feb 22, 1999
|
it was amazing
|
Okay such an amazing and powerful book about decolonizing research that I would recommend to anyone in academia or anyone who feels interested about r
Okay such an amazing and powerful book about decolonizing research that I would recommend to anyone in academia or anyone who feels interested about research, with the caveat that the book is written with an indigenous audience in mind. Linda Tuhiwai Smith writes with firm strength and intelligence about the history of imperialism and colonization and how indigenous communities have been exploited by researchers for a long time. She makes several well-reasoned points about the importance of actually giving research back to communities, as well as how the intention of the researcher doesn’t really matter when considering the impact of research on communities. She provides hope too such as by highlighting examples of indigenous scholarship and how indigenous researchers have formed deep bonds with their communities. As someone in academia considering an academic career long-term, I definitely want to internalize this book’s messages and act on them. From what I’ve observed and experienced, so much of academia is built on gatekeeping, ego-building (e.g., getting pubs for the sake of lengthening one’s CV and the system rewarding that), and competition and prestige, instead of centering actual community members. Thank you to Tuhiwai Smith for her wisdom and for the indigenous scholars and activists contributing to this movement to center community needs. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Feb 10, 2021
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Feb 16, 2021
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May 06, 2020
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1250200865
| 9781250200860
| 4.03
| 657
| Dec 10, 2019
| Dec 10, 2019
|
it was amazing
|
A helpful and accessible guide to socialism that I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about class, labor, and socioeconomic systems. I
A helpful and accessible guide to socialism that I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about class, labor, and socioeconomic systems. I come from the field of Psychology and grew up in a relatively wealthy area and family, so while I’ve grown to endorse things like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, I struggled to really understand the specific definitions of terms like neoliberalism, socialism, democratic socialism, etc. Why You Should Be a Socialist is a friendly and intelligent primer on these topics, such that Nathan Robinson writes in a welcoming way while still making passionate and convincing arguments for socialism. He writes about envisioning a more socialist world in which the class people are born into would not have such a bearing on their lives, medical care is provided to all regardless of people's ability to pay, and workers are no longer taken advantage of and abused by their bosses. He incorporates the concept of intersectionality and how class intersects with race so that his book does not just appeal to poor white people. Though I still have a lot to learn about labor justice, after reading this book I do identify as a democratic socialist. As at least one other Goodreads reviewer noted, perhaps there is more Robinson could have included about proletariat revolutions, as well as voices of people of color, trans people, immigrants, and more who have been affected by capitalist accumulation and exploitation. Still, a great introduction to socialism for a novice like me. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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May 15, 2020
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May 19, 2020
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May 03, 2020
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1573227161
| 9781573227162
| 4.05
| 7,222
| Feb 02, 1998
| Feb 01, 1999
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it was amazing
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It is an injustice that this book is not more popular. I so loved the main character’s voice, as well as everything else about Caucasia. The story fol
It is an injustice that this book is not more popular. I so loved the main character’s voice, as well as everything else about Caucasia. The story follows Birdie Lee, a young girl living in 1970s with her white mother, a fiery activist who does her best to renounce her Boston Blue Blood background, her black father, an intellectual who is fervently obsessed about theories of race and racism, and her sister, Cole, who shares her biracial identity as well as a secret language the two of them concocted together. Birdie passes as white while Cole is recognizably black, yet the two possess an unconditional love for one another and an understanding of their parents’ dysfunctional marriage. When their parents split the sisters are then separated, with Cole and their father moving to Brazil while Birdie and their mother run away where no one can find them. As Birdie navigates growing up biracial in a white world without Cole, she comes to understand what she must do to recover the parts of herself that she lost when her sister left. In searching for the missing parts of her family and her identity, Birdie learns to reclaim herself. I absolutely fell in love with Birdie’s voice in a way I have not felt for another character in a long time. Danzy Senna captures her charming innocence, her poignant observations about the world, her struggle for self-discovery, and so much more with such understated yet beautiful writing. By the middle of the book I would often mark passages with just “OMG, I’m SO emo about Birdie’s love for Cole” and “Birdie’s emotion of wanting to fit in, WHEW.” Caucasia contains a lot of important commentary about race and family, yet Birdie’s voice forms the emotional core that really made me feel so darn dedicated to the book. I cared so much about her, because Senna writes her voice in such a believable and raw way, that when she suffered, I felt like I suffered or that I wanted to protect her. When she felt joy or relief, I felt that too, or at least some strong sense of like, thank goodness, I just want the best for this character perhaps even more than I want the best for myself. The strong themes of family and race took this book to even more soaring heights. I loved the earnest emotions Senna managed to capture regarding growing up as biracial, such as the shame of not belonging or fitting in cleanly with one racial group, or the yearning to reclaim a part of your identity that you felt has been stolen from you. Through Birdie’s struggle and persistent desire to own and honor her blackness, Senna shifts the predominant narrative of glorifying whiteness and that whiteness equals ideal. Birdie and Cole’s parents felt so fleshed out and important too. Senna captures a myriad of intricate yet deeply felt emotional dynamics between the four of them: their father favoring Cole because of her black skin and the effect that has on Birdie, the way their mother is unable to style Cole’s hair and how she refuses to own up to it and how that affects their relationship moving forward, the way that both their mother and father love revolutionary politics yet have clear limitations in the way they love or do not love their own children. Several scenes in this novel between these characters, and even in moments of Birdie’s quiet self-reflection, literally made me pause because I felt dizzy in the best possible way about the poignancy of emotions Senna captures: their yearning for love and connection and forgiveness and understanding, across racial boundaries and borders. I loved this book a lot and would highly recommend it to everyone. I hesitated to pick it up because the word Caucasian is racist, but through her characters’ struggles Senna shows the ways in which the social construction of race and as well as the realities of racism can tear us apart from one another. I will cherish Birdie Lee’s voice and character for a long time. Her coming of age, though fictional, felt so real, so visceral in its search for true identity, that I will wonder about her and wish the best for her for years to come. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Mar 28, 2020
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Mar 31, 2020
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Jan 22, 2020
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Paperback
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| 1524715913
| 9781524715915
| 4.16
| 1,653
| Mar 10, 2020
| Mar 10, 2020
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it was amazing
|
My favorite fiction book of 2020 so far, thank goodness for the year of novels that focus on friendship!
We Used to be Friends
validated my heartb
My favorite fiction book of 2020 so far, thank goodness for the year of novels that focus on friendship!
We Used to be Friends
validated my heartbreak over the close friendships I lost in 2019, and When You Were Everything both validated that heartbreak and pushed me to believe in the power of opening my heart again despite past friendship pains. I feel grateful to Ashley Woodfolk for writing such a nuanced and realistic portrayal of friendship. As someone who has had quite a few intense friendships that either still exist today or have ended, I often feel unseen because fiction, including YA, focuses so much on romance. This book, however, gives voice to the type of close relationship that has both sustained me and hurt me throughout my life: best friendship. The novel follows Cleo Imani Baker and Layla Hassan, two best friends who met at age 12 and have prioritized each other over everything ever since. Their friendship starts to shift when Layla begins to spend more time with the “Chorus Girls,” who make an explicit point not to include Cleo in their friend group. Cleo’s initial hurt at Layla valuing her new friends over their friendship triggers a painful cycle of name-calling, misunderstandings, and betrayals that sends their friendship lurching toward the end. Afterward, Cleo is left to pick up the pieces of her broken heart, all while dealing with her parents’ separation too. While a new friend and a potential romantic flame show interest in Cleo, she has to decide whether to trust them with her heart, especially after Layla bruised and battered it in the fallout of their friendship. I loved this book for its complex and relatable portrayal of friendship. Almost everything Cleo experienced, I’ve experienced. Seeing a best friend deprioritize you for someone else yet not having the language to describe it in the moment? Yep. Hurting your friend after your friend hurt you in a way you’re unproud of, yet felt cathartic at the time? Been there. Seeing someone you care about change to the point where you no longer really know or love them, and taking a long time to accept that? So me in 2019 and even now. Through the dissolution of Cleo and Layla’s friendship, Woodfolk creates a narrative that feels so, so validating for me and I’m hoping for others who have lost a best friend or a close friend who they loved. With accessible and clear writing, she highlights how much losing a friend can hurt, especially a friend who you trusted with everything. At the same time, Woodfolk shares the healing process in When You Were Everything. I loved seeing Cleo learn to trust Sydney, another girl she befriends. Woodfolk shows how it takes Cleo time to trust Sydney after Layla broke her heart, and even though it takes time, Cleo learns to open up again and share herself, her joys and her pains. Watching Cleo’s healing process gave me hope for my own healing process and motivated me to celebrate the close friendships I do have right now, despite some of my past ones that have burned me. Woodfolk includes some additional subtle yet brilliant insights throughout the novel too, such as how sometimes you just have to go through your pain instead of trying to erase it, as well as how sometimes you idealize someone and have to learn to see them for who they really are, instead of who you want them to be. Overall, a fantastic novel I’d recommend for all fans of young-adult fiction. While the book’s pacing felt a little slow for the first 50-100 pages, it does pick up, especially for me when I started to get invested in Cleo’s various relationships and her healing process. While there is a romantic relationship in this novel, it never overtakes the importance of friendship, thank goodness. I’m loving all these novels on friendship so please continue to send any friendship-related book recommendations my way. Props for the inclusion of an almost entirely, if not actually entirely cast of characters of color as well as queer representation too. In her author’s note, Woodfolk shares how she wanted to write this book in part because of the close friendships she’s lost in her life – so I’m grateful for her vulnerability and for her creation of this friendship-focused, beautiful, sad, and hopeful piece of art. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Mar 15, 2020
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Mar 17, 2020
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Jan 21, 2020
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1419738666
| 9781419738661
| 3.36
| 1,927
| Jan 07, 2020
| Jan 07, 2020
|
it was amazing
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5 stars because right book, right time. I went through a gradual yet intense friendship breakup over the latter half of 2019 and We Used to Be Friends
5 stars because right book, right time. I went through a gradual yet intense friendship breakup over the latter half of 2019 and We Used to Be Friends got me in all of my feels, like every single one of them. Amy Spalding’s novel follows James and Kat, childhood besties about to start their senior year of high school. They both have life stuff going on: James broke up with her boyfriend and her parents are separating, Kat is dating a girl for the first time and is adjusting to her dad looking for romantic love too, and both are applying to college and waiting to hear back. What I love about this book is that unlike in most stories, James’s and Kat’s other relationships take a backseat to their friendship, which acts as the center of this story. In sections that move both forward and backward in time, we see how their friendship falls apart over the course of a year, the care they both gave and then lost. I’m super emotional both because of my friendship breakup in late 2019 and because friendships have been both the most beautiful relationships in my life and my most devastating breakups, so I’m just gonna write this review in list form, what I loved and how it relates to my late 2019 friendship breakup. Yay for a book review that combines both a review of a book and 1) how friendship can mean so much to someone. At their friendship’s strongest, James and Kat were always there for each other, they texted each other every hour, they told each other everything and they understood one another even with just a look, a glance. There’s an energy to a close or best friendship that is so undervalued, when you find a close or best friend who you feel excited every time you talk or text with them, who you know will consistently have your back. Spalding captures this dynamic even in small phrases, like when James is texting Kat and she thinks to herself, “I realize as I see the three dots on her end how relieved I am that her impending response is almost immediate.” This dynamic reminded me of my of my friendship with the friend I broke up with during our first year of friendship a few years ago, when we would have these text conversations that flowed with energy and vibrancy and how much I enjoyed that. Even though I have another friend who I feel that way about now, I still miss and cherish the time I had with my ex-friend where we once had that same intensity of connection. 2) how the rules of friendship can be hard to figure out. Spalding shows this difficulty in a flashback scene of James meeting up with Kat and Quinn, Kat’s new girlfriend, at a diner. James thinks to herself “… it seems like Quinn is suddenly my best friend’s new best friend. Am I immature for how much dread that possibility fills me with? I know that a best friend isn’t the sort of relationship where you make explicit promises and set expectations, the way you do with a boyfriend.” I related so much to this thought process, because I experienced it too. When my ex-friend started dating her boyfriend, and even before she started dating him, she had a template to follow: find him on a dating app, date him, tell her friends about him, invite him to events with family, post about him on social media, get engaged to him, etc. Yet, for our friendship – a friendship in which I encouraged her to go to therapy for the first time, in which she supported me through my adjustment to graduate school – there was no template, no milestones to achieve. And even though we tried to set expectations, in the end they collapsed, especially in contrast to the resources our society invests in romance. Spalding shows, through James and Kat’s friendship, how friendships would benefit from more thorough communication, expectation-setting, and friendship therapy. 3) how romance is prioritized over friendship. Spalding’s portrayal of this twisted my gut so hard. She shows how, when Kat and Quinn started dating, how that shifted Kat and James’s friendship. It’s not like Kat never asked James to hang out or that she wasn’t there for James, and yet, their dynamic still shifted. I felt so grateful for how Spalding captures James’s disappointment, even the subtle things, like how Kat would want to hang out with Quinn more or obsess about Quinn more to the expense of Kat’s zest in her friendship with James. In the scene where James meets up with Kat and Quinn at the diner, she thinks to herself that “it’s like life sets up boyfriends to be the most important thing in a girl’s life.” While this thought process and the progression of Kat and Quinn’s relationship aligns with the idea of amatonormativity and the patriarchal prioritization of romance overall, I am glad that Spalding highlights how this devaluing of friendship can play out even in nuanced ways. Similar to what happened with me and my ex-friend, it’s not that she just ghosted me or only wanted to talk and hang out with her boyfriend. Yet, her prioritization of him had an effect, and I think we both lacked the language and/or the sheer tenacity to address it. 4) how sometimes things just don’t work out, and it hurts so freaking much, and you survive it. I appreciated how neither James nor Kat were abusive to one another necessarily, rather, a lot of small things built up over time and their friendship didn’t last. Kat could have been a better listener, James could have been more open with her feelings, both could have communicated in more nuanced and emotionally intelligent ways. One of the conversations they had at the end of the book – their last conversation – broke my heart, because it reminded me so much of heated conversations I got into with my ex-friend, when you’ve both been hurt and both of your hurt just spirals into something unsalvageable. And yet, Spalding shows, through the flashbacks of this story in particular, the genuine, deep love James and Kat shared with one another, that that love was real even if it did not last. All of these dynamics reminded me of my own friendship with this ex-friend. Maybe I could have been more understanding of who she was all along, maybe she could have been less defensive, maybe we both could have done things differently. And yet, at least for me, our friendship felt like, in the words of one of my current best friends Bri, a whole world – a world of connection and meaning and beauty incomparable to romantic love and its state-sanctioned popularity. I feel like we so often do not put enough effort into our friendships and a large part of that stems from the lack of media representations of deep, fulfilling friendships. Is We Used to Be Friends one of the most well-written books I’ve read? Honestly, I’m not sure I’d say so, as the prose is relatively straightforward and the characters’ lives feel a bit contained. In some ways I feel like if not for my own experiences with friendship and friendship breakups, I’d give the novel four stars. And yet, this book does such a tender and thoughtful job of portraying a close friendship and its disintegration that I’m confident it will resonate with others who’ve been through what I and others have been through, the breakup of a close or best friendship. After all, I think the best books are the ones that help us feel less alone and more connected in our suffering and our grief. This book accomplishes that in major ways for me, because even though I write about friendship on my blog all the time, it’s so meaningful to see an experience similar to mine portrayed in fiction. Thanks to Amy Spalding for her words and I’d love more books that center friendship in the future. ...more |
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Jan 18, 2020
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Jan 20, 2020
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Jan 18, 2020
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Hardcover
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| 0807013811
| 9780807013816
| 4.23
| 1,164
| Sep 17, 2019
| Sep 17, 2019
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it was amazing
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4.5 stars A brilliant firestorm of a book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls acts as a radical feminist manifesto that transcends the trappi 4.5 stars A brilliant firestorm of a book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls acts as a radical feminist manifesto that transcends the trappings of white, liberal feminism. Mona Eltahawy takes a bold approach and demands that women access their anger, desire for attention, bodily autonomy, and more to destroy the patriarchy, no kiddy gloves necessary. She draws upon contemporary media and political examples from within the United States, as well as references powerful feminist movements occurring across the world. I appreciated how Eltahawy always asked more of feminism than what its most basic definition entails, for example, this quote about what power for women may mean: "What does being powerful mean? It must be more than doing what men do or being what men can be. I don’t want to be something simply because a man can be that thing. Men are not my yardstick. If men themselves are not free of the ravages of racism, capitalism, and other forms of oppression, it is not enough to say I want to be equal to them. Equal to the ways they themselves are victimized by patriarchy? No thanks! I want to be free. As long as patriarchy remains unchallenged, men will continue to be the default and the standard against which everything is measured.” I feel grateful and energized by how Eltahawy maintained a bold, forceful tone throughout this book. Her anger radiates, which makes sense given how she writes about angering topics such as abuse and sexual violence against women, institutional sexism, and more. Her analysis includes an intersectional framework that takes into account the unique experiences of LGBTQIA+ women and women of color. She integrates her commentary about global feminist phenomena with her personal experience of victimization and activism, merging the personal and the political. There were some moments in the book where I felt that bogged down by her transitions or lack thereof between her personal stories and her broader political commentary, such that I felt those moments dry or wanting of a bit more finesse. Still, I’d highly recommend this book to those who want to challenge themselves and confront the patriarchy with rage and ferocity, to those who can handle their feminism with some heat. I’ll end this review with one more quote that dismisses civility in the face of racism: “Racism is not civil. Racism is not polite. And yet here were all those people lined up to insist that we be civil when talking about Trump and his supporters. Those people lined up to insist on civility were, of course, white. For white Americans who have no experience of racism, it is a concept, a theory, an idea to be debated, and not a lived reality to be endured or survived. Fuck that.” ...more |
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1
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Feb 22, 2020
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Feb 28, 2020
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Dec 31, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0674976894
| 9780674976894
| 4.25
| 987
| Mar 01, 2019
| Mar 01, 2019
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it was amazing
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So happy to start off 2020 with this fantastic book. In The Privileged Poor, Anthony Abraham Jack shares the experiences of disadvantaged students att
So happy to start off 2020 with this fantastic book. In The Privileged Poor, Anthony Abraham Jack shares the experiences of disadvantaged students attending an elite private university (referred to as “Renowned” throughout the book). He writes about the privileged poor, low-income students who had the privilege of attending private elite high schools prior to enrolling at Renowned, and the doubly disadvantaged, low-income students who did not attend prestigious preparatory schools before coming to Renowned. While the privileged poor have some advantages compared to the doubly disadvantaged in terms of understanding cultural norms like connecting to faculty, both of these types of students suffer from classist policies – like closing cafeterias over spring break – in relation to upper income students. Jack provides both individual and systemic-level solutions and strategies for advocacy which made reading this book all the more worthwhile, to learn about these students’ struggles and to have an avenue to prevent and address them. I most loved this book for the ways that Jack gave voice to the experiences of these disadvantaged students. I felt so sad and frustrated when he provided a quote from a Latino student who shared his experience cleaning a wealthy white student’s bathroom and how that reminded the student of watching his mom get berated by the child of a wealthy white employee. I have more expertise in psychological research than sociological research, though from my perspective, this book acts as an amazing example of the power of well-written qualitative research – it captures the participants’ unique lived experiences, these experiences are analyzed and described eloquently and intelligently, and the overarching narrative elicits empathy and (hopefully) action from readers. Bravo to Jack for naming class and addressing it head on, given that in our country socioeconomic status is something we are often so reticent to openly talk about. I also want to address a critique/idea I’ve read in reaction to this book. Some people say, well, if poor students are so turned off by flagrant displays of wealth at elite institutions, why don’t they just go somewhere else, like a state school or community college? I want to gently encourage all of us to practice some empathy, as well as to acknowledge there’s not a finite economy of compassion we can provide for the people around us. For example, I was accepted to an Ivy League university and instead chose to attend a medium-sized liberal arts college, because I knew I wanted an environment that felt more nurturing and intimate. At the same time, I don’t blame others who go to Ivy League universities for the adversities they face there. Ideally, they wouldn’t encounter microaggressions and discrimination and feelings of being unwelcome. Ideally they’d have a positive and warm experience, an experience that invites challenge and growth yes, and one that is filled with support too. You can call me an idealist or unrealistic for wanting that for all students but I don’t really care because I think everyone should be nurtured and treated well. I feel this way especially for poor students of color who are often taught from a young age that the path to success in this country includes a degree from a fancy institution. While that idea both has merit because of systemic issues and also is not always true, I feel it important to acknowledge how these students’ experiences can so sharply contrast with their expectations. We should strive to mitigate some of that disparity, especially as a country that is so obsessed with meritocracy and the myth of the American dream. Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox and just say I’m grateful for Jack for writing this book, especially as someone who’s highly considering a career in academia. I had the privilege of attending a pretty great public high school and then a relatively well-known liberal arts college for undergrad, and in both settings I had the privilege of connecting with warm, intelligent, supportive mentors. Reading this book motivates me to be that mentor for students from disadvantaged backgrounds as well as to engage in systems-level advocacy that will reduce barriers to inclusion and equity. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in higher education and/or social justice. ...more |
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Jan 03, 2020
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Jan 05, 2020
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Dec 30, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 1849351341
| 9781849351348
| 4.51
| 337
| Nov 12, 2013
| Nov 12, 2013
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it was amazing
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One of the most revolutionary and powerful nonfiction books about social justice I have ever read. I would without doubt recommend Undoing Border Impe
One of the most revolutionary and powerful nonfiction books about social justice I have ever read. I would without doubt recommend Undoing Border Imperialism to those who want to elevate their views pertaining to immigration justice beyond the liberal notion of immigration reform. Harsha Walia grasps this issue at the root and delves deep into the importance of dismantling both borders and imperialism from existing at all. Here is a quote that I feel like summarizes main concepts within Undoing Border Imperialism: “Border imperialism encapsulates four overlapping and concurrent structurings: first, the mass displacement of impoverished and colonized communities resulting from asymmetrical relations of global power, and the simultaneous securitization of the border against those migrants whom capitalism and empire have displaced; second, the criminalization of migration with severe punishment and discipline of those deemed ‘alien’ or ‘illegal’; third, the entrenchment of a racialized hierarchy of citizenship by arbitrating who legitimately constitutes the nation-state; and fourth, the state-mediated exploitation of migrant labor, akin to conditions of slavery and servitude, by capitalist interests. While borders are understood as lines demarcating territory, an analysis of border imperialism interrogates the modes and networks of governance that determine how bodies will be included within the nation-state, and how territory will be controlled within and in conjunction with the dictates of global empire and transnational capitalism.” Walia includes so many compelling ideas grounded within an intersectional framework, including: the racialization of immigrants and immigrants of color, the weaponization of femininity against male immigrants of color, the recruitment of poor Black, Indigenous, People of Color into the military to further perpetuate imperialism, and more. The format of this book exemplifies its commitment to decolonization, too. Walia incorporates the narratives and the wisdom of various activists and on-the-ground movement organizers, highlighting the necessity of collective action and community care. Again, recommended for those who want to start off their 2021 with some high-quality nonfiction. ...more |
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1
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Jan 2021
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Jan 04, 2021
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Dec 22, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0393337952
| 9780393337952
| 3.93
| 1,180
| Jan 01, 2000
| Sep 08, 2009
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it was amazing
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Hunger consists of one novella (titled “Hunger”) and five short stories. I have to say the title novella blew my mind; I felt so emotional about it I
Hunger consists of one novella (titled “Hunger”) and five short stories. I have to say the title novella blew my mind; I felt so emotional about it I literally wrote an entire blog post so I could process all my feelings. Lan Samantha Chang writes like a dream; instead of reading words on a page, I felt myself with these characters, the colors and scents and spaces of their homes, all the ways they love, lose, and lie to one another. I would give at least 10 stars to the title novella. Though “Hunger” comes out to just a little more than 100 pages, it packs a similar if not even more powerful punch than full-length novels. It follows a woman who marries a passionate, temperamental musician whose suffering seeps into and poisons the lives of their two daughters. Every word felt so necessary and meaningful yet effortlessly placed, every detail about each character felt organic to the characters’ development while keen about the human psyche. As an Asian American myself, I loved how Chang captured the raw emotional complexity that accompanies an immigrant parent’s desperate love for their child when their own self-worth has been compromised, as well as when children of immigrants push their parents away in rebellion or stay with them in solidarity for their solitude. Of the short stories, “The Eve of the Spirit Festival” came to closest to taking my breath away in the same way that “Hunger” did, followed by “The Unknowing.” Again, Chang’s writing is simply superb, and I feel amazed by her ability to write about fraught parent and child dynamics while capturing all the love and nuance accompanying the Chinese immigration and assimilation process. I feel so grateful for Chang because in the process of processing my feelings about the novella and stories within this collection, I reflected a lot on my parents and their own experiences. While I don’t want to go too into it in this review, I’m not really in touch with my parents, and while I feel good about that, Chang brought me a deeper empathy and understanding of the narrative of my own life as the son of immigrants, even though I’m Vietnamese and not Chinese. Through reading this novella and story collection, I saw my own life and my own choices more clearly, which I consider one of the greatest gifts of reading fiction. Recommended to fans of Celeste Ng and Min Jin Lee, though Chang’s stories center more on nuanced emotions and quiet interpersonal dynamics than a sense of adventure or exciting mystery. I skimmed some reviews and appreciated this review for noting that it does seem a bit stereotypical that so many of the children in this book go on to get PhDs from prestigious universities; thus, I’d also highly recommend Jenny Zhang’s iconic, subversive collection Sour Heart to accompany Hunger. Thank you also to Andrew for prompting me again to read Hunger, a book that consumed in the best possible way. ...more |
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1
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Nov 21, 2019
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Nov 23, 2019
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Nov 13, 2019
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Paperback
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| 1433804638
| 9781433804632
| 4.30
| 83
| 2009
| Oct 28, 2009
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it was amazing
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One of the best therapy books I have ever read. As I develop as a therapist, I am starting to honor how much emphasis I place on interpersonal relatio
One of the best therapy books I have ever read. As I develop as a therapist, I am starting to honor how much emphasis I place on interpersonal relationships and interpersonal psychotherapy theory in my work. At the same time, I recognize that a lot of past writing about interpersonal psychotherapy has promoted problematic ideals of ignored the importance of culture and social justice issues (e.g., Irvin Yalom’s work). I love Relational-Cultural Therapy because it both honors the power of relationships in our lives and our clients’ lives. Judith Jordan writes with great intelligence about how emphasizing the power of relationships defies traditionally Western and masculine values of independence and self-ambition. Here’s a couple of paragraphs that captures this (I know it’s a long passage to include in a review but I feel that it’s important info to disseminate): ”The illusion of separation and the celebration of autonomy are part of the denial or denigration of our basic need to participate in growth-fostering relationships. Western culture valorizes these disconnected individualistic qualities. In such a culture, people with privilege can falsely appear more self-sufficient, more mature, more worthy of the privilege. But evidence increasingly suggests that people need to contribute to the growth of others and experience others’ willingness to engage in mutually beneficial interactions. To address these needs effectively, therapists need to ask: How has psychology been complicit in building cultural values that embrace separation and independence? How have psychology and clinical practice been shaped by, but also created and sustained, a culture of disconnection? How has psychology helped to sustain a culture of privilege and prejudice? These questions themselves contribute to the possibility of achieving social justice and dispel the illusion of the objectivity and neutrality of any theoretical position. In addressing them, RCT acknowledges its value biases: the belief that the capacity to build good connection is an essential human skill; the belief that it is valuable, even essential, for our global well-being that human beings develop relational skills and honor our basic need for connection; the belief that people have an essential need to connect with others; the belief that if these core yearnings for connection are supported by the larger context and people learn how to relate in growth-fostering ways with one another, people will experience an increasing sense of well-being at a personal and collective level.” Relational-Cultural Therapy also does an excellent job of addressing the therapeutic relationship as a mechanism for change. It acknowledges the power that we have as therapists and how we should strive to use that power to create a safe, compassionate space so that clients can experience a healing and authentic relationship. Even in my early development as a therapist, I have seen practitioners and theories that assume that the therapist is always right, that any difficulty of the client to trust the therapist is an indication of the client’s neuroses, etc. This approach has always felt so demeaning and distancing to me. Relational-Cultural Therapy, instead of minimizing clients’ emotions or assuming therapists’ superiority, posits that therapists should open themselves up to their own shortcomings for the sake of facilitating a growth-fostering relationship with the client. I feel so much better about this approach as it more explicitly addresses power within the therapy dyad. A quote about how Relational-Cultural Therapy approaches the therapy relationship that I appreciated: ”Therapists must be careful not to force or push connection with clients, however. Instead, we should slowly, deliberately provide experiences of safe connection and of reworking empathic failures. Therapists must demonstrate to clients that the well-being of the relationship and the client is more important than certainty, being right, or maintaining our own self-images as ‘good, empathic therapists.’ Thus, we work actively with disconnections and relational failures. We apologize when we are wrong. We work with our own defensiveness when under attack, not assuming automatically that the entire problem is in the client (e.g., not turning to ‘projective identification’ to explain our own reactions in therapy). We are open to examining our own limitations, as well as the ways our own disconnections injure or affect others. Working with mutual empathy, the therapist allows clients to see their impact on her or him – that they matter to her or him.” I also like how Relational-Cultural Therapy explicitly recognizes how oppression contributes to difficulties in interpersonal relationships. Jordan names racism, heterosexism, and homophobia as factors that therapists must be cognizant of in how they affect clients’ capacity for connection as well as their overall wellbeing. While I have met many therapists and psychologists who do pay attention to how social injustice affects clients’ mental health, I have met many others who ignore this important point. Thus, I feel glad that Relational-Cultural Therapy seeks to understand how issues of oppression and privilege play out in clients’ lives and in the therapeutic relationship. While I appreciate this emphasis on social injustice and mental health, I feel that this theme is where the book could have benefited from more development as well. The book could have incorporated more specific ways that clients can navigate whether to trust therapists’ knowledge of social justice, as well as more case examples of power dynamics related to social identities playing out in therapy (e.g., if a therapist is working with a client with more privilege than the therapist). Still, I appreciated Jordan’s inclusion of this theme overall and would highly recommend this book to therapists and those interested in mental health who are looking for a very readable, relationally-oriented psychotherapy book that takes into account issues of power, privilege, and social justice. I will end this review with a quote related to therapists’ responsibility to address social injustice: ”Relational-Cultural Therapy holds that therapists, as self-defined change agents, have a responsibility to pursue questions about social change as well as personal change. Context is essential to an understanding of suffering and what is called pathology, and thus the need for change in the social milieus within which we function must be addressed. Therapists have a special responsibility to question the part that the larger culture plays in creating disconnections and other suffering that bring people to treatment. They also have a responsibility to facilitate the well-being of the greatest number of people possible.” ...more |
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none
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1
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Sep 28, 2019
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Oct 03, 2019
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Sep 28, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0735223718
| 9780735223714
| 4.71
| 75,403
| Sep 24, 2019
| Sep 24, 2019
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it was amazing
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Stunning. An absolutely stunning memoir, one of the best I have ever read. In Know My Name, Chanel Miller reclaims her identity after the press descri
Stunning. An absolutely stunning memoir, one of the best I have ever read. In Know My Name, Chanel Miller reclaims her identity after the press described her as “unconscious intoxicated woman” in the aftermath of when rapist Brock Turner assaulted her. I remember feeling inspired, impressed, and in awe of Miller’s victim impact statement as Emily Doe when it came out in 2016. Miller brings that same level of strength and eloquence to this memoir. When I read my favorite memoirists, I get this feeling of familiarity, this sense of okay, I know who this person is, I can really see them. That’s how I felt throughout reading Know My Name. Miller takes back her power – after having been reduced to an unconscious victim – by writing beautifully and vulnerably about herself and her life, both before and after the assault. She includes so many heartwarming details that paint a picture of a woman who’s a loving sister, a witty artist and creator, as well as a person who has insecurities like all of us do. When I read details about her family, like how she caught her younger sister’s vomit in her hands to take care of her as a child or how she would listen to her dad sing along to music while cooking, I felt this immense sense of gratitude and closeness, like I wanted to thank her for making us remember that victims of trauma and assault are more than just what happened to them. Miller does a thorough job of detailing the impact of her trial itself, too, like how her sister had to continuously rearrange her school and work schedule because of court dates that kept getting delayed, and how Miller drained her bank account to cover expenses such as buying appropriate clothing for court. Miller’s writing itself is superb. The way she details the moments after she woke up in the hospital, how she describes her panic attacks and emotional outbursts in private and when she testified in court, her narration of the painstaking climb to heal and recover herself in a world with so many people who sought to discredit her – I felt like I was right there with her. Her prose is incisive and gets to the point without embellishment, and yet, she still captures the full emotional rollercoaster of her lived experience. I cried several times reading this memoir, both because of the anguish her rapist and the patriarchal legal system put her through, as well as because of how inspired and moved I felt by Miller’s self-awareness, her fortitude, and her courage in sharing her story. She’s put in hundreds and thousands of hours into processing this trauma and it shows in her insightfulness. I highlighted so many quotes from this book so it feels hard to choose just a couple to show in this review, but here’s one I loved, in which Miller describes her response after receiving kind letters from people who read her victim impact statement: "For the past year I had been raking through comments looking for signs of support. I dug through opinion pieces in local newspapers searching for someone to stand up for me. I locked myself in my car in parking lots crying into hotlines, convinced I was losing my mind. All year the loneliness had followed me, in the stairwell at work, in Philly, in the wooden witness stand, where I looked out at a near-empty audience. Yet all along there had been eyes watching me, rooting for me, from their own bedrooms, cars, stairwells, and apartments, all of us shielded inside our pain, our fear, our anonymity. I was surrounded by survivors, I was part of a we. They had never been tricked into seeing me as a minor character, a mute body; I was the leader on the front line fighting, with an entire infantry behind me. They had been waiting for me to find justice. This victory would be celebrated quietly in rooms in towns in states I had never been to. For so long, I’d imagined myself wandering across a dry, empty plain. This card was the puddle. The realization that just below the surface, more water led to streams to rivers to oceans. That this was only the beginning. I was not alone. They had found me.” Miller gets political in this memoir too, which is unsurprising given how intertwined her individual experience is to the political realities surrounding sexual assault and misogyny in the United States. She calls out the legal system for its awful treatment of survivors, she gently yet firmly describes Stanford’s complicity and refusal to take action on behalf of survivors, and she acknowledges her own Asian American identity that often got erased when the media described her as Emily Doe. Again, Miller’s skill as a memoirist shows, as she incorporates commentary about these broader systemic injustices while still sticking close to her truth and her own story. As the feminist rallying cry goes, the personal is political, and Miller writes with precision and power about how the political landscape surrounding sexual violence affected her, as well as how she herself altered the political landscape through her own perseverance and courage. Overall, I recommend this memoir to literally every human on this planet. Again, I cried several times, mostly in reaction to Miller’s profound pain, perseverance, and power. While Miller does not go into the details of her assault, some parts of this book may be triggering for those with similar trauma and assault-related experiences. Though I was not sexually assaulted, I found Miller’s voice and experiences a healing salve in my own journey with PTSD. I can only hope that this book goes down as a classic. Thank you to Chanel Miller for your voice and your courage. I’ll end the review with the last passage in the memoir, a testament to Miller’s beautiful heart: “I survived because I remained soft, because I listened, because I wrote. Because I huddled close to my truth, protected it like a tiny flame in a terrible storm. Hold up your head when the tears come, when you are mocked, insulted, questioned, threatened, when they tell you you are nothing, when your body is reduced to openings. The journey will be longer than you imagined, trauma will find you again and again. Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom. Fight because it is your life. Not anyone else’s. I did it, I am here. Looking back, all the ones who doubted or hurt or nearly conquered me faded away, and I am the only one standing. So now, the time has come. I dust myself off, and go on.” ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Nov 07, 2019
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Nov 10, 2019
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Sep 04, 2019
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ebook
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| 1984820362
| 9781984820365
| 4.33
| 9,918
| Feb 25, 2020
| Feb 25, 2020
|
it was amazing
|
This book blew me the heck away, definitely one of the top five essay collections I have ever read. In Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, Ca
This book blew me the heck away, definitely one of the top five essay collections I have ever read. In Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong delves into Asian American identity through the lens of history, psychology, and her own lived experience as a Korean American daughter of immigrants. This collection feels so necessary because Asian Americans receive such one-dimensional characterization in the United States: we’re math whizzes, we have wild tiger parents, we’re crazy rich, or now, we’re the ones who started Coronavirus. Hong eviscerates these reductionist stereotypes and explores Asian American complexity by sharing our history rife with colonization, the intergenerational trauma faced by our parents and passed down to us, and the ways in which we either resist whiteness or get subsumed by it. The most powerful part of this collection revolves around Hong’s capacity to connect the historical to the personal, such as this reflection on United Airline’s brutal treatment of David Dao Duy Anh, a Vietnamese American passenger: “In 1975, Saigon had fallen. His home was no longer his home. Dao was forced to flee as a refugee, and he and his wife raised their family of five kids in Kentucky, a new home that… had its own share of absurd hardships. Dao was caught trafficking prescription drugs for sex and lost his medical license, after which he earned his income as a poker player. While I agree with his defenders that his rap sheet is irrelevant to the United Airlines incident, it’s relevant to me, since it helps us see Dao in a more complex, realistic light. Dao is not a criminal nor is he some industrious automaton who could escape the devastation of his homeland and, through a miraculous arc of resilience, become an upstanding doctor whose kids are also doctors. For many immigrants, if you move here with trauma, you’re going to do what it takes to get by. You cheat. You beat your wife. You gamble. You’re a survivor and, like most survivors, you’re a god-awful parent. Watching Dao, I thought of my father watching his own father being dragged out of his own home. I thought of Asians throughout history being dragged against their will, driven or chased out of their native homes, out of their adopted homes, out of their native country, out of their adopted country: ejected, evicted, exiled.” Though some of Hong’s commentary and analyses may tread familiar ground for those already immersed in Asian American issues, I felt that she injected new depth to the conversation about Asian Americans in the United States. For example, I saw the publishing industry more clearly through Hong’s analysis of Jhumpa Lahiri’s work and how Lahiri’s preeminence in the literary sphere has forced the Asian American narrative to assimilate to a standard, comforting trope for the white gaze. Toward the end of the book, Hong drops – in the middle of a stunning self-analysis – a piercing truth about how Koreans’ fixation with double eyelid surgery stems from Dr. Ralph Millard, an American surgeon who tested the surgery on Korean sex workers to make them more appealing to GIs during the Korean War. As a somewhat big K-Pop fan (love me some Itzy and BlackPink) I have always found the Korean obsession with plastic surgery odd and superficial; Hong’s ability to link that obsession back to colonization and the imperialism of whiteness helped me see the truth, just like how many truths about Asian American identity and history have been erased or hidden from our view. The personal components of this essay collection shine as well. Hong’s background as a poet comes as no surprise given how the scenes from her personal life felt so well-written, like you could imagine yourself experiencing her past with her. I literally cringed when she described a moment from her childhood when she watched a group of white kids make fun of her grandmother’s English, kick her onto the ground, and then laugh at her – it reminded me of my own grandmother and I just pulsated with hurt and anger reading that scene. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I felt such a sense of pride and camaraderie when Hong detailed her intense, magnetic friendship during her undergraduate years with Erin and Helen, two other Asian women artists, and how their friendship with one another both hurt at times while also pushed them all to a place of artistic self-confidence that transcended white male expectations. Hong invests her whole heart and mind into Minor Feelings, which shows through the major connections she makes between Asian Americans’ political placement in the United States and her personal experience as an artist, daughter, friend, and more. Here’s another passage that stood out to me, about Asian Americans needing to reckon with whiteness: “I have to address whiteness because Asian Americans have yet to truly reckon with where we stand in the capitalist white supremacist hierarchy of this country. We are so far from reckoning with it that some Asians think that race has no bearing on their lives, that it doesn’t’ “come up,” which is as misguided as white people saying the same thing about themselves, not only because of discrimination we have faced but because of the entitlements we’ve been granted due to our racial identity. These Asians are my cousins; my ex-boyfriend; these Asians are myself, cocooned in Brooklyn, caught unawares on a nice warm day, thinking I don’t have to be affected by race; I only choose to think about it. I could live only for myself, for my immediate family, following the expectations of my parents, whose survivor instincts align with this country’s neoliberal ethos, which is to get ahead at the expense of anyone else while burying the shame that binds us. To varying degrees, all Asians who have grown up in the United States know intimately the same I have described; have felt its oily flame.” Overall, I would highly recommend this book to everyone, though it may resonate most personally with East Asians who are 1.5 or 2nd generation living in the United States. I reflected a lot on my own parents and Asian American identity while reading Minor Feelings, and I feel more motivated to honor my parents’ complex experiences despite the difficulties in our relationship. I also feel, as I’ve shared about in several of my recent blog posts, more determined to dismantle white supremacy through being a loud and proud Vietnamese American who protests racism even when it makes white people uncomfortable. Hong acknowledges that this collection does not encompass the enormity or entirety of the Asian American experience, which I agree with. I hope this book can act as another launching point for further reflection and activism that includes and centers South Asians, queer Asian Americans, and more. For now, I feel grateful for this book’s existence and hope that it gains great traction in 2020 and beyond. ...more |
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Mar 14, 2020
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Mar 14, 2020
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Aug 25, 2019
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| 1568585233
| 9781568585239
| 4.08
| 1,973
| Mar 07, 2017
| Mar 07, 2017
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it was amazing
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I loved this book and learned so much from it. Activist P.E. Moskowitz explores the gentrification of urban neighborhoods across the country with chap
I loved this book and learned so much from it. Activist P.E. Moskowitz explores the gentrification of urban neighborhoods across the country with chapters dedicated to New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York. They write about the people of color, particularly black and Latinx folks who can no longer afford to live in cities and their displacement, as well as about the root causes of gentrification and what contributes to it. As someone with an embarrassingly limited knowledge of gentrification – I knew the basic premise of rich, white people flooding cities and displacing poor people, especially people of color – I felt like I learned so much from this book while still appreciating its accessible writing and smart flow between ideas and concepts. I learned so much about use and exchange values and how urban land is used to enhance wealth, how suburbanization and gentrification relate to disadvantage poor people and radical community-building (e.g., omg as someone who grew up in a suburb, I now see how isolating and awful they are, ugh), and how neoliberalism itself maintains gentrification. I won’t go into all of these ideas in this review, so check out Gabriella’s review if you want more depth as she writes about these topics with depth well. Here’s one quote I’ll pull that describes the definition of gentrification: “Gentrification, at its deepest level, is really about reorienting the purpose of cities away from being spaces that provide for the poor and middle classes and toward being spaces that generate capital for the rich. The trend isn’t limited to cities: for decades conservatives in the US government have been working to deregulate industry and defund our safety nets, to turn the United States from a welfare state based on the vision of John Maynard Keynes… into a neoliberal, corporate-friendly oligarchy concerned only with increasing the share of wealth owned by the upper class.” I appreciate this book even more because Moskowitz describes their emotional experience with gentrification and they provide tangible strategies to fight gentrification. I felt emotional reading their experience watching their own city of New York and the people they love within it fade away and get displaced by the rich. While describing this, they also acknowledged their own positionality as a white person and a gentrifier coming from a family of gentrifiers. Toward the end of the book they provide several strategies I found useful, such as fighting to raise the minimum wage, expanding and protecting public lands, regulating housing, and more. While I felt sad and defeated reading the descriptions of gentrification in this book, Moskowitz supplies us with strategies to fight this phenomenon that may elicit more feelings of empowerment, especially if we take action. Overall, highly recommended to those like me who had not known that much about gentrification. As Moskowitz writes about, I hope that housing justice and access become topics that are more heavily discussed in the political sphere and social justice spheres broadly. ...more |
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Jan 10, 2020
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Jan 14, 2020
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Aug 22, 2019
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| 0896082210
| 9780896082212
| 4.39
| 6,152
| 1984
| Dec 01, 1984
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it was amazing
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Another iconic feminist text from bell hooks. I love that hooks’s writing always takes mainstream feminist thinking and elevates it. She encourages us
Another iconic feminist text from bell hooks. I love that hooks’s writing always takes mainstream feminist thinking and elevates it. She encourages us to deeply consider how racism and classism intersect with sexism to further marginalize women of color and poor women. She argues that we should conceptualize feminism as a radical, revolutionary movement as opposed to an individual lifestyle. Her writing, while intelligent and replete with critical analysis, remains accessible and close to the human lived experience. For example, here is a quote about how she interrogates why feminism is not just about equality with men, even though we often market it that way: ”Women in lower class and poor groups, particularly those who are non-white, would not have defined women’s liberation as women gaining social equality with men since they are continually reminded in their everyday lives that all women do not share a common social status. Concurrently, they know that many males in their social groups are exploited and oppressed. Knowing that men in their groups do not have social, political, and economic power, they would not deem it liberatory to share their social status… from the very onset of the women’s liberation movement, [women in lower class and poor groups, particularly those who are non-white] were suspicious of feminism precisely because they recognized the limitations inherent in its definition. They recognized the possibility that feminism defined as social equality with men might easily become a movement that would primarily affect the social standing of white women in middle and upper class groups while affecting only in a very marginal way the social status of working class and poor women.” I would highly recommend this text to everyone, especially those who are interested in feminism who hold dominant identities (e.g., white, middle to upper middle class, etc.) hooks’s writing challenged me to think about my own complicity, both as a man and as someone who comes from a higher socioeconomic status. When she wrote about how writing about feminism is often too secluded and filled with academic jargon to be understandable, accessible, or even helpful at all for poor women and women who have not had access to education, I was forced to confront my own privilege of attending somewhat elite schools and universities throughout my life and my own complicity in classism. Even in sections where I disagreed with her – I felt that she could have done a better job discussing how heteronormative lifestyles do in fact perpetuate patriarchy, for example the wedding industrial complex – I still appreciated her thought process and her passion. I will end this review by integrating a few passages from an early section of the book, about feminism and its more revolutionary roots: ”The willingness to see feminism as a lifestyle choice rather than a political commitment reflects the class nature of the movement. It is not surprising that the vast majority of women who equate feminism with alternative lifestyle are from middle class backgrounds, unmarried, college-educated, often students who are without many of the social and economic responsibilities that working class and poor women who are laborers, parents, homemakers, and wives confront daily… Often emphasis on identity and lifestyle is appealing because it creates a false sense that one is engaged in praxis. However, praxis within any political movement that aims to have a radical transformative impact on society cannot be solely focused on creating spaces wherein would-be-radicals experience safety and support. Feminist movement to end sexist oppression actively engages participants in revolutionary struggle. Struggle is rarely safe or pleasurable.” ...more |
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Jul 28, 2019
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Aug 2019
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Jun 02, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0374156026
| 9780374156022
| 3.88
| 49,429
| Apr 16, 2019
| Apr 16, 2019
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it was amazing
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A captivating courtroom drama that incorporates deep themes of family, immigration, and disability, Miracle Creek will speak to fans of Celeste Ng and
A captivating courtroom drama that incorporates deep themes of family, immigration, and disability, Miracle Creek will speak to fans of Celeste Ng and Jodi Picoult. The book begins with the explosion of an experimental medical treatment device called the Miracle Submarine, an explosion that leaves two people dead and several more injured. We follow the three-member Yoo family: Young and Pak who immigrated from Korea to ensure a better life for their daughter Mary, only to encounter devastation and loss after their move. We also track with Elizabeth, the single mom of an autistic child who dies in the explosion, and see into the hearts and minds of a group of mothers who wish the best for their children with mixed results. The case peels back layer after layer of these characters and their relationships, so that we can see how much they sacrifice and love and hurt one another beneath the secrets they keep, the secrets that come bubbling up to the surface in the courtroom. I most loved how Angie Kim both established such a thrilling pace of plot with Miracle Creek and a strong emotional core within her cast of characters. The way she ended each chapter, the slow-burn suspense of who lit the fire, and the overall quality of her writing all made me want to keep flipping pages, up until I finished the book in two days. With the thrilling speed of the plot, Kim still manages to slow down and let us savor the moments of emotional intensity and intimacy between these characters. I felt most connected to how she wrote about the Yoo family and how immigration affected them so much, how Young had to work all the time and sacrifice her relationship with her daughter, how Mary received racist taunts that made her want to travel back to Korea, how Pak’s lack of English-speaking ability emasculated him, and much more. The tenderness, conflict, and estrangement between Young and Mary served as the emotional backbone of this book for me, as their connection felt so nuanced and engaging and bound by cultural constraints. I also found the subplot about the group of mothers of autistic children important and well-written, in particular the parts when Kim showed the complexity of these mothers’ deep, all-consuming affection for their kids. Parent-child relationships span several emotional notes and Kim captures a lot of them in Miracle Creek. One small yet significant part of the book that bothered me: the way Kim wrote about the fetishization and exotification of Asian American women. I loved that she included the grossness of it and the character at hand’s emotional reaction to the racism she experiences. Yet, Kim’s commentary on the issue read very much like a “why is it that an attraction to Asian American women is perceived as fetishization, when people are attracted to blondes and that’s not a problem,” which I felt grossly over-simplified the issue. I wish Kim’s commentary on fetishization and exotification included how, due to the power of whiteness in white supremacy, people of color are othered (see bell hooks’ iconic book Black Looks ) so that a preference for blondes and a preference for Asians is indeed very different, as well as how so many people of color are socialized to idealize whiteness and are taught to want to date white people above fellow people of color. Because the book follows so many different topics (e.g., immigration, autism, family, etc.) Kim did not have space to go into every topic in-depth – like an awful sexual assault that occurs – which may leave some readers disappointed. Overall, though, one of the strongest thrillers I have ever read and one that, unlike many other thrillers, includes themes of diversity and race that strengthened the novel as a whole. I tipped between 4 and 5 stars for this and landed on 5, in large part because of Young Yoo’s growth and development as a character. One scene between her and Mary made me cry at the end of the book, in a great way. I cannot wait to read more people’s reactions to this novel as well as Kim’s future work. ...more |
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Jun 07, 2019
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Jun 09, 2019
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May 26, 2019
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| 1250312841
| 9781250312846
| 4.00
| 25,459
| May 07, 2019
| May 07, 2019
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it was amazing
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I turn 24 this Saturday and this book feels like the best early birthday present ever. I cried for five minutes in my office at work after I finished
I turn 24 this Saturday and this book feels like the best early birthday present ever. I cried for five minutes in my office at work after I finished it. The book's themes of toxic relationships and healthy ones, self-worth and what we seek when we lack it, and the painful wisdom of growing up all resonated with me to my very core. The gorgeous black, white, and pink illustrations helped immerse me in the story as well. Backing up, the story follows Freddy Riley, a high school student who's dating Laura Dean, the most popular girl in school. Laura Dean, with her confidence, charisma, and good looks, seems like Freddy's dream girl. The only issue with their relationship: Laura Dean may not treat Freddy all that well. With the help of her best friend Doodle, Freddy searches for guidance from Seek-Her, a mysterious medium, as well as Anna Vice, an advice columnist. But as Freddy's relationship with Laura Dean gets more intense in all the wrong ways, Freddy finds herself still going back to Laura Dean, even at the cost of her friendship with Doodle. Freddy will have to look both deep within herself as well as outside to those who can see her relationship with Laura Dean with more clarity, so she can choose what will work best for her heart and the hearts of those she cares about. I love how this graphic novel portrays love: unhealthy love, love that dissipates between friends, and love that reemerges when one puts in the effort. The story itself is super simple, no huge or intricate plot twists at all. Yet the earnest characterization and the high quality of the illustrations made the emotions evoked by Freddy's journey run so deep. I really felt like I felt everything Freddy felt: the desire for Laura Dean even when it hurt Freddy herself, the guilt Freddy experienced when she realized how she herself messed up, and the eventual victory of the story's ending. My heart feels so full of warmth when I think about how young people will have access to this book's excellent messages about toxic relationships and what it takes to act as a caring, considerate friend. I came across this book right when I needed to. Though it's a young-adult read, the themes and emotions are universal: the strength of longing and desire, the importance of communication in relationships, and what it takes to let go of people who stop you from loving yourself. As I approach 24, I'm still learning and reminding myself to focus my love and my heart on people who give to me as much as I give to them. With its queer representation, immense compassion, and deeply meaningful message, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me has skyrocketed to the top of my favorite 2019 reads. ...more |
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May 21, 2019
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May 22, 2019
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May 14, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 4.30
| 7,813
| Jun 04, 2019
| Jun 04, 2019
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it was amazing
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Could YA books with queer characters of color be any more iconic? I loved Like a Love Story and I'm so happy it exists, alongside books like Benjamin
Could YA books with queer characters of color be any more iconic? I loved Like a Love Story and I'm so happy it exists, alongside books like Benjamin Alire Saenz's
Ari and Dante
and Kelly Loy Gilbert's
Picture Us in the Light
and more. What sets this novel apart from other similarly fantastic YA reads is its masterful portrayal of the 1980s AIDS epidemic and the activism of that era. The novel follows Reza, a closeted Iranian teen, Art, the out and proud guy Reza falls for, and Judy, Art's best friend who excels at fashion design. Toward the beginning of the book, Reza dates Judy to conceal his sexuality. When this arrangement unravels the three must deal with the fallout, of Reza's sexuality, of Art and Judy's friendship, and more. Abdi Nazemian tackles so much in Like a Love Story and grounds it all in history so well. The fear Reza experiences about contracting AIDS and dying, Art and Judy's uncle Stephen's activism with ACT UP, the characters' love for Madonna - Nazemian shows how the historical oppression of queer people affects his characters in intimate and powerful ways. He honors so many complex, important topics like coming out as a person of color, what happens when a friend betrays you, death and grief, and more. He writes in a palatable, straightforward way that still gives space for all the feelings that come with loss and love. The focus on love is what made this book shine the most. Until the last 80 or so pages I considered giving it four stars, as Art and Reza's relationship gave me insta-love vibes and did not feel as developed or compelling compared to the romances in Aristotle and Dante and Picture Us in the Light. But, the last 80 or so pages tied all of the novel's threads together to reveal its beautiful center: love of art, love of activism, love of love. I got pretty emotional reading Nazemian's author's note and felt so inspired by and happy for him, how he took his experience as a queer youth of color and transformed it into such amazing art. I know that we have a lot more to fight for to advance equality and justice for the LGBTIA+ community. And, right now, I'm giving my queer heart a little break, a little moment, so it can sing a happy song for this book's existence and all the love it entails. ...more |
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Jun 16, 2019
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Jun 20, 2019
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May 12, 2019
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| 0061284920
| 9780061284922
| 3.88
| 7,201
| Mar 06, 2018
| Mar 06, 2018
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it was amazing
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A sparse novel that tore through my heart in the best way possible, Speak No Evil feels like a grittier, darker version of The Hate U Give and a more
A sparse novel that tore through my heart in the best way possible, Speak No Evil feels like a grittier, darker version of The Hate U Give and a more modern, intersectional queer coming of age story than Call Me By Your Name. At first I felt distanced from our protagonist Niru, a gay Nigerian Harvard-bound high school senior who has only disclosed his sexuality to his best friend Meredith. But as the book went on the emotions elicited by the narrative - Niru's pain and longing and shame - won me over. Uzodinma Iweala covers a lot of painful ground with Niru's identity, whether his conservative parents try to force the gay out of him or his classmates joke and microagress him about the size of his genitalia. We need more books like Speak No Evil with characters like Niru, who embody multiple underrepresented identities and give voice to the hurt that emerges from when racism, homophobia, and more collide. Iweala's writing in scenes of high emotional intensity elevated this to a five star novel for me. A scene early on in the novel when Niru's father finds out about Niru's sexuality and attacks Niru made my heart race - the description of Niru's father's hands choking him and Niru trying to talk to his father through his tears got me all wound up. Iweala captures rich emotions in quite a few scenes throughout the book, like when Niru experiences his first gay kiss and the sparks fly. I felt so impressed by how Iweala captured longing and physical craving within Niru and with Niru and his flame. While some critics describe this novel as less polished than Iweala's other work, the book's lack of pretense and its rawness made it even more moving for me, in particular given our protagonist's young age. Overall, an important novel that I hope will go more noticed, both in the queer community and in communities of color. Not gonna lie, I put off reading this and kinda wanted to dislike it because the author reminds me of my most recent crush |
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Jun 05, 2019
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Jun 07, 2019
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Apr 29, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0896084337
| 9780896084339
| 4.32
| 1,929
| May 25, 1992
| Jul 01, 1999
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it was amazing
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Another iconic bell hooks book, this one about how American pop culture marginalizes, exploits, and stereotypes Black people across literature, music,
Another iconic bell hooks book, this one about how American pop culture marginalizes, exploits, and stereotypes Black people across literature, music, and film. I love how hooks delivers sharp insight after sharp insight about race and representation without trying to make her writing palatable to white audiences. She delves deep into how white women often appropriate Black culture, how toxic masculinity within black communities perpetuates homophobia, misogyny, and racism, the shared oppression of Native Americans and black individuals, and other pressing topics. One quote I appreciated about racial solidarity and how white people can participate in it: “Anti-racist work that tries to get [white] individuals to see themselves as ‘victimized’ by racism in the hopes that this will act as an intervention is a misguided strategy. And indeed we must be willing to acknowledge that individuals of great privilege who are in no way victimized are capable, via their political choices, of working on behalf of the oppressed. Such solidarity does not need to be rooted in shared experience. It can be based on one’s political and ethical understanding of racism and one’s rejection of domination. Therefore we can see the necessity for the kind of education for critical consciousness that can enable those with power and privilege rooted in structures of domination to divest without having to see themselves as victims. Such thinking does not have to negate collective awareness that a culture of domination does seek to fundamentally distort and pervert the psyches of all citizens or that this perversion is wounding.” hooks plows past any notion of colorblindness to interrogate why we must consider race, in particular the terror of whiteness. As someone wrote in the used copy of this book I own, for people of color, especially black people, “your color matters because it is your identity, and you must defend it and explore it.” Through her trenchant analysis of race and representation – an analysis that still applies to contemporary society though the book came out 20 years ago or so – hooks provides us a path to understand and resist how white supremacy elevates whiteness at the cost of all others. While I found hooks’ reading of the Anita Hill case to be a bit too hostile and blaming toward Hill and some of her analyses discursive, I still learned a lot from reading this collection and would recommend it to anyone who cares about social justice. I feel that this book has inspired and will continue to inspire nuanced, powerful conversations and actions about body image, race, and racism in the United States. I will end this review with another quote I loved, this one about the reality of racism even as people try to deny it: ”It is telling of our history that enables political self-recovery. In contemporary society, white and black people alike believe that racism no longer exists. This erasure, however mythic, diffuses the representation of whiteness as terror in the black imagination. It allows for assimilation and forgetfulness. The eagerness with which contemporary society does away with racism, replacing this recognition with evocations of pluralism and diversity that further mask reality, is a response to the terror. It has also become a way to perpetuate the terror by providing a cover, a hiding place. Black people still feel the terror, still associate it with whiteness, but are rarely able to articulate the varied ways we are terrorized because it is easy to silence by accusations of reverse racism or by suggesting that black folks who talk about the ways we are terrorized by whites are merely evoking victimization to demand special treatment.” ...more |
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1
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Jun 02, 2019
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Jun 05, 2019
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Mar 23, 2019
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Paperback
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| 1566894913
| 9781566894913
| 4.30
| 2,357
| Nov 07, 2017
| Nov 14, 2017
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it was amazing
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An intelligent, darkly humorous, and irreverent memoir about growing up as a queer mixed-race Chicana. I always find it difficult for books to make me
An intelligent, darkly humorous, and irreverent memoir about growing up as a queer mixed-race Chicana. I always find it difficult for books to make me laugh but I laughed out loud several times reading Mean. Myriam Gurba’s distinct voice reflects both her ability to form sharp observations about the people and situations around her as well as her capacity to know herself, so that she can elicit laughter even when discussing topics like sexual assault, eating disorders, and racism. In sixty-one short, fast-moving chapters, Gurba details the emotions of growing up as a girl of color, her burgeoning love of art and her developing feminist consciousness. She imbues her coming of age narrative with brilliant, piercing social justice-related observations, like how she had to apologize when white girls acted racist toward her and her friends, or how a doctor did not believe her sister had anorexia because the doctor had racist ideas that Mexican people could not get anorexia, or the objectification and brutalization of the Mexican American female body by boys and men. By the end of the memoir I wanted just a little more introspection, a little more clarity about the importance of meanness and her healing process. At the same time, I loved how Gurba wrote directly about preserving her dignity and setting clear boundaries around how much she wanted to disclose about her life. Overall, a fantastic memoir that details Gurba’s trauma, her wit, and how she wields her voice and her art to make sense of all that has happened to her. I also wanted to share some brief quotes I found super funny, lol. On when she told a boy he had to climb a high obstacle to join her club as a kid: ”I hoped Steve would injure himself and die so that I wouldn’t have to let him into my club. That had been my strategy. To give his sex an insurmountable initiation. Like the literacy tests given to black folks in the American South before the Voting Rights Act passed. I was an early on-set feminist.” On the stereotypes she encountered as a young person of color: ”By eighth grade, being called a ho was water off of my wet back. I was a paradoxical ho, though, a bookworm ho with a fading Mexican complexion. Young people of color are supposed to enjoy looting and eating trans fats, not sustained silent reading, but I found a way to reconcile my assigned stereotype with my passions. I microwaved nachos and ate them while reading Jackie Collins paperbacks I stole from my mother – trans fats, looting, and literature.” On encountering a white girl when Gurba and father tried to find parking on college move-in day: ”The white girl looked at something beyond us, at something we couldn’t see. Maybe the white privilege fairy. She was steadfast in her colonization.” ...more |
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1
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Jun 21, 2019
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Jun 23, 2019
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Mar 22, 2019
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Paperback
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| 1640091815
| 9781640091818
| 4.22
| 853
| May 07, 2019
| May 07, 2019
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it was amazing
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An essential book for destroying the patriarchy and creating better men for us all. In The Man They Wanted Me to Be, Jared Yates Sexton writes about h
An essential book for destroying the patriarchy and creating better men for us all. In The Man They Wanted Me to Be, Jared Yates Sexton writes about his and his family's experience of toxic masculinity, the research showing toxic masculinity's negative health and relational consequences, and how toxic masculinity contributes to Trump and the rise of the alt-right. I loved how Sexton shares his personal story with us, how he started out as a soft, sensitive child and hardened after experiencing abuse and problematic masculine role models, outside of his mother and grandfather. Through his sharing in this book, Sexton emulates how more men, especially white men, should act: confronting our trauma with self-compassion while owning up to the ways we perpetuate misogyny and other forms of oppression. I appreciated how he wrote about going to therapy and the courage it takes to seek help. Sexton also does a splendid job incorporating research about masculinity throughout this book. He does so in a way that adds context and builds to the narrative instead of distracting from it. He writes about how boys are socialized to repress emotions instead of anger, to devalue anything that is perceived as "feminine," and to enact aggression and violence to prove their masculinity. As exemplified by his father's story, Sexton links this socialization to how men often do not seek help for their health issues later on in life, leading to their earlier deaths compared to women. Throughout The Man They Wanted Me to Be, Sexton also makes clear men's culpability in carrying out mass shootings and other acts of devastating violence. Overall, I would highly recommend this book to everyone, especially men and to those interested in masculinity and feminism. This book feels like an important addition to the iconic The Will to Change by bell hooks. Indeed, we do need more men, especially white men, owning up to our complicity in toxic masculinity and showing how we can change it for the better. I will note that I wish Sexton had touched on how hegemonic white male masculinity often traps men of color, queer men, men at the intersection of those identities and more, etc. in its lethal grasp. I also wish Sexton had qualified his idea in the last section of the book that the answer to these issues includes showing men love. While I agree with the importance of showing men love, those harmed by men (e.g., femmes, women of color) should not have to bear the burden of making men better, a point to which I think Sexton agrees. Still, a fantastic read I hope people will pick up in 2019 and beyond. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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May 03, 2019
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May 05, 2019
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Mar 15, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 1551527383
| 9781551527383
| 4.65
| 1,150
| Oct 30, 2018
| Oct 30, 2018
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it was amazing
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One of the most mind-expanding and heart-opening books I have ever read. In Care Work, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha delves deep into the realities
One of the most mind-expanding and heart-opening books I have ever read. In Care Work, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha delves deep into the realities and politics of disability justice, a movement that centers sick and disabled queer and trans Black and brown people. She writes about so many important topics, including the importance of accessibility and how we should strive beyond accessibility too, the ways that we should honor and celebrate femme labor and pain as opposed to devaluing it, and questioning the survivor-industrial complex that states that survivors of abuse or trauma have to present a certain way to receive respect and dignity. She writes with openness and intelligence and invites readers into her world, which made Care Work such a compelling read. I learned a lot about my own ableism and ableist assumptions through this book. Care Work has motivated me to challenge myself and other able-bodied and neurotypical folks on how to dismantle ableist practices and institutions, so that we can expand our compassion and empathy beyond ableist models. The essay about the survivor-industrial complex really resonated with me too. As a survivor of trauma and abuse, I often feel like I have to present myself a certain way – put together, intelligent-sounding, etc. – to minimize my painful life experiences and how they continue to affect me, even if they affect me less than they used to. This book has helped me to see how my individual struggle in that regard is linked to broader systems of ableism and capitalist ideology. Yes, I’m a trauma and abuse survivor and I still have bad moments and days and I’m still iconic and I don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Overall, would highly recommend this book to everyone. For fellow able-bodied and neurotypical people it’ll most likely challenge you, in a way that you should be challenged and that you’ll grow from. I’ve already put another of Piepzna-Samarasinha’s books on my soon to be read shelf. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jan 21, 2020
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Jan 26, 2020
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Feb 20, 2019
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Paperback
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| 1631495631
| 9781631495632
| 3.90
| 7,576
| Jun 04, 2019
| Jun 04, 2019
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it was amazing
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Such a powerful, well-written novel about Patsy, a woman who leaves Jamaica and her daughter behind to pursue an independent life in America, only to
Such a powerful, well-written novel about Patsy, a woman who leaves Jamaica and her daughter behind to pursue an independent life in America, only to encounter a fractured version of the American dream full of challenges. I loved this book because the characters feel so complex and human and Nicole Dennis-Benn writes their emotions with such rawness and vibrancy. For example, Patsy leaves her daughter behind in large part because she had her daughter before she felt ready for motherhood. Dennis-Benn describes the negative effects this abandonment has on Tru, holding Patsy accountable for her actions, while also displaying Patsy’s own suffering and desire for freedom in a way that humanizes her and made me root for her. This complexity of character extends to others in the novel as well, ranging from Roy, a problematic yet ultimately present father for Tru, to Tru herself, a young woman curious about her mother while also fighting to break free from the strict gender roles in her Jamaican town. Patsy’s fierce leaning toward independence, Tru’s angst and feelings of loneliness, Roy’s persistent love for Tru, all resonated with me and imbued Patsy with so much heart. I most appreciated Patsy and Tru’s resilience and growth over time in the face of so many life obstacles, though of course it should not be their responsibility to be resilient when the barriers the systemic forms of oppression they face – sexism, racism, etc. – are what need to be dismantled. I also appreciated the diversity and political themes in Patsy. A book that so thoughtfully and honestly captures the immigrant experience, its trials and tribulations, is quite fitting in 2019. I wrote down so many little yet meaningful moments and themes to bring up in my feminist book club, including when Patsy has to work as a nanny for a white woman who is writing about Jamaica (i.e., cultural appropriation/exploitation), to the pressure for undocumented women to marry men so they could secure their status in America, to the stigma against mental health and capitalism’s complete disregard for mental wellbeing. While the novel is a little long in parts, I’d still thoroughly recommend it, including to fans of books like Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, and Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jul 22, 2019
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Jul 24, 2019
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Feb 09, 2019
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1632868806
| 9781632868800
| 3.85
| 418
| Feb 05, 2019
| Feb 05, 2019
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it was amazing
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In some ways I feel like I have waited for this essay collection all my life. In Hard to Love, Briallen Hopper rejects the rigid dichotomy so often en
In some ways I feel like I have waited for this essay collection all my life. In Hard to Love, Briallen Hopper rejects the rigid dichotomy so often enforced in society: marry your romantic partner and live happily ever after, or grow old and die alone. Hopper trail blazes a courageous newer path, where she finds connection and love with her close friends. She also celebrates other underappreciated forms of love, like love of writing and art and love between siblings. I so appreciated how Hopper shows the messiness of these relationships, like the turmoil she experienced with her friend Cathy when she moved in with her, or how her bond with her brother grew distant in part because of their differing religious and political beliefs. Above all, Hopper's writing flows with intelligence and a willingness to unpack assumptions. Her compassion for herself, her friends, and her family shine clear. One quote about chosen family that made my heart grow warm: "What I love about found family is that it can accommodate all the love and meals and holidays and hospital visits of any other family - all the true confessions and late-night conversations and child chaos and quotidian mess and hugs and endearments and quantity time; and yet it is often kinder than original family, and more miraculous, because it is a gift given when you are old enough to appreciate it, a commitment continuously made when you know what that commitment costs and means. A family found in adulthood can never attain the involuntary intimacy of the siblings who have known you since birth, and squabbled with you in bathrooms and at breakfast tables from time immemorial. But sometimes, perhaps for this reason, a found family can know and love you for who you are - not for who you once were, or who you never were." I feel like I have waited for these essays all my life because I write about the glorification of romance and my love for my friends on my blog all the freaking time. Just last week I texted one of my close friends A that I wish I saw examples of women and femmes who basked in their singleness and close friends, because I often only see people enmeshed in romantic relationships or single people desperate to escape singlehood. Through herself in Hard to Love, Hopper offers that example of a woman finding love with her friends and her writing. Two of the essays toward the start of the collection, "Lean On" and "On Spinsters," blew me away with the depth of their insight. "Lean On" acts as a radical defense of relying on others, especially outside of romantic relationships, in a society that encourages self-reliance and detachment. "On Spinsters" serves as an ode to single women and those throughout history who have built loving relationships outside the government-sanctioned institution of marriage. These two essays worked their way into my heart and into the list of top essays I have ever read with ease. A short paragraph from On Spinsters that wowed me (one of many): "I cling to the word 'spinster' in the second decade of the twenty-first century because it serves as a challenge to the way our society still conflates coupledom with love, maturity, and citizenship, while seeing unmarried people as - to quote Justice Kennedy - 'condemned to live in loneliness.' And, to borrow a phrase from second-wave historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, I cling to the word because it links me with my spinster sisters throughout history in a shared 'female world of love and ritual.' I cling to it and hold it close because, to riff on a refrain from Hilton Als, it's the spinsters who made me." Hopper covers so much amazing ground in terms of writing that centers friendship and other forms of non-romantic intimacy. She writes about how she and a group of friends formed a care team for their friend who got diagnosed with cancer and did not have a partner to rely on. She shares, with great vulnerability and sincerity, about her search for sperm so she can have a child without a traditional romance in tow. She analyzes a show she loves, Cheers unpacking its dynamics of romance and friendship and what works and does not work within a feminist framework. These essays showcase Hopper's versatility as a writer. They highlight how writers have so much ground to cover outside of romance, a radical notion for women and femmes in particular. I would recommend these essays to absolutely everyone, especially those who also want to nurture love in friendship and in other non-romantic forms. The collection is perhaps not perfect - I felt that some of the essays toward the end (e.g., "The Stars") could have benefited from a firmer thematic connection to the other essays. I also wish Hopper had done more to unpack her white, cis privilege in her essay on the Women's March, as she did a fabulous job of doing so in her essay "The Foundling Museum." Still, I cherished this collection so much and am grateful for the feminist ideas and genuine love it contributes to the literary canon. An excellent essay collection that I hope helps others appreciate and cultivate their own many types of love. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 22, 2019
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Mar 24, 2019
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Feb 05, 2019
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 4.59
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it was amazing
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Jan 21, 2021
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Dec 30, 2020
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| 4.62
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it was amazing
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Feb 03, 2021
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Nov 19, 2020
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| 4.09
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it was amazing
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Aug 09, 2020
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Aug 05, 2020
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| 3.86
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it was amazing
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Oct 13, 2020
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Jul 18, 2020
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| 4.12
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it was amazing
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Jun 2020
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May 23, 2020
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| 4.18
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it was amazing
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Dec 28, 2020
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May 19, 2020
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| 4.42
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it was amazing
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Feb 16, 2021
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May 06, 2020
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| 4.03
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it was amazing
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May 19, 2020
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May 03, 2020
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| 4.05
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it was amazing
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Mar 31, 2020
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Jan 22, 2020
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| 4.16
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it was amazing
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Mar 17, 2020
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Jan 21, 2020
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| 3.36
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it was amazing
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Jan 20, 2020
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Jan 18, 2020
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| 4.23
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it was amazing
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Feb 28, 2020
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Dec 31, 2019
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| 4.25
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it was amazing
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Jan 05, 2020
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Dec 30, 2019
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| 4.51
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it was amazing
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Jan 04, 2021
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Dec 22, 2019
| |||||
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| 3.93
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it was amazing
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Nov 23, 2019
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Nov 13, 2019
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| 4.30
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it was amazing
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Oct 03, 2019
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Sep 28, 2019
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| 4.71
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it was amazing
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Nov 10, 2019
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Sep 04, 2019
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| 4.33
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it was amazing
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Mar 14, 2020
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Aug 25, 2019
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| 4.08
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it was amazing
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Jan 14, 2020
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Aug 22, 2019
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| 4.39
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it was amazing
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Aug 2019
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Jun 02, 2019
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| 3.88
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it was amazing
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Jun 09, 2019
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May 26, 2019
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| 4.00
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it was amazing
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May 22, 2019
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May 14, 2019
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| 4.30
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it was amazing
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Jun 20, 2019
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May 12, 2019
| |||||
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| 3.88
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it was amazing
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Jun 07, 2019
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Apr 29, 2019
| |||||
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| 4.32
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it was amazing
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Jun 05, 2019
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Mar 23, 2019
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| 4.30
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it was amazing
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Jun 23, 2019
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Mar 22, 2019
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| 4.22
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it was amazing
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May 05, 2019
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Mar 15, 2019
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| 4.65
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it was amazing
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Jan 26, 2020
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Feb 20, 2019
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| 3.90
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it was amazing
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Jul 24, 2019
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Feb 09, 2019
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| 3.85
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it was amazing
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Mar 24, 2019
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Feb 05, 2019
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