This might be the weirdest book I’ve ever read. Well, the weirdest book I’ve read that I actually ended up enjoying. I might have to think a while before officially giving it that award. My instinct is to put this review away and not think about it for weeks. I just want to sit with the story, let it brew and fester in my mind a little bit. But I know if I do that, I will forget everything and end up floundering around when […]
In which my sweet Granny comes up once again.
I guess I should’ve expected how close to home this would hit: the subtitle sums it up. It revolves around the oral histories of women who were sent to homes for unwed mothers in the 1940s-1960s, their nearly-always coerced adoptions, their lives after surrendering, their reunions if they ever occurred. I am part of a birth family: my mother relinquished my two younger siblings for adoption, and it defined my childhood. Adoption is such a sore nerve, I almost never read about it. Besides which, […]
Truth That is Frustratingly Still Relevant
Best for: Those interested in exploring how feminism has failed at inclusivity, and how U.S. society has failed Black women. In a nutshell: bell hooks provides a history of how racism, sexism and classism have impacted Black women in the U.S. Line that sticks with me: “The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist, and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work […]
The Cycle of Poverty
Thanks to bonnie’s review for turning me on to this book. This was a brutal, heartbreaking, depressing and necessary read. Desmond is a sociologist who spent several years living in Milwaukee’s depressed and impoverished areas, befriending and interviewing the residents of trailer parks, flop houses, and slums. He tells their stories in intertwining chapters that would read like fiction if you didn’t already know that these people are all incredibly real. Because often fact is stranger than fiction, or in this case, revealing, Desmond’s […]
Lamar said the sink was broken. Sherrena said he broke the sink.
I don’t read enough non-fiction, but this came so highly recommended by the world at large that I didn’t hesitate to pick it up, and man, oh man am I equal parts happy to have read it, and completely ruined by it. Matthew Desmond embedded himself in the slums (if you will) of Milwaukee for a long time, built relationships with a number of people on various sides of the complex polyhedron that is the American landlord/tenant dynamic, and in this book, reports on them […]
Ignorance Is Not an Option
What Does It Mean To Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy by Robin DiAngelo
Best for: White people interested in antiracism work (so, hopefully, all white people, but I’m not that naive). In a nutshell: Academic (and white person) Robin DiAngelo breaks down many of the problems white people have in confronting our own socialization in the racist reality we live in. Line that sticks with me: “Because of white social, economic, and political power within a white supremacist culture, whites are in the position to legitimize people of color’s assertions of racism. Yet whites are the least likely […]
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