Bingo Notes: This one is my True Story because it’s non-fiction and represents the lives of most women at some point, including myself.
This book is both tragic and hilarious. It is a guidebook for getting through office life in The Patriarchy. Sarah outlines what should be great comedy, if it weren’t so very, very true. In fact, I bought this copy for my office while we were having a particularly hard time with the Boys Club aspect. One of my coworkers refused to finish it because she was too depressed by how real it was.
This book contains drawings, activities, lists, general advice, and, for when all else fails, fake mustaches. All of these are designed to make you laugh instead of cry, while driving home exactly what is wrong in contemporary workplaces if you happen to not be a man. There are blank pages on which to doodle while you are waiting for a man to be done explaining something to you. There are men’s achievement stickers (which I wish wouldn’t get me fired to hand out because they are so deserved) that include things like “Treated a woman like a human” and “Waited an extra minute before interrupting a female coworker.” Each chapter has an opening and conclusion that outline what the chapter is going to cover – things like Gaslighting for Beginners. Each chapter also ends with an exercise. For example, the chapter I mentioned before wraps with an exercise and worksheet for coming up with thoughts to have in response to gaslighting that keep you from voicing your objection.
This book is the embodiment of the laugh/cry gif. It makes you laugh until you think about how true it is, and then you want to curl into a ball and cry at the state of the world. At least there’s glitter!