Book Review: The Hurting Kind

 

The Hurting Kind is Ada Limón's latest collection of poetry and to say it's timely would almost be a cliché at this point.

In the poem, "Not the Saddest Thing in the World", she writes

"Once it has been witnessed/and buried, I go about my day, which isn't/ordinary, exactly, because nothing is ordinary/now even when it is ordinary. Now something's/breaking always on the skyline"

The pandemic that is still gripping most of the world runs as an undercurrent throughout nearly every poem in the book. As does war and pain. It's a weary, a knowing weary, collection of poems. But there is hope in the weariness. In another poem: 

"I trust the world to come back./Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned"

The title poem, which is six parts, hits like a well timed shock to the system. The book builds to it and the line "I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof" is so beautifully put.

A worthy and deserved addition to anyone's bookshelves and an even more amazing book from the author!

Book Review: I hope this finds you well

 

Kate Baer stuns and delights again in her latest collection, I hope this finds you well. The poems are made from comments in DM's she has gotten, statements made in the media, comment sections of articles and she distills the verbose and often sexist tropes into poems that catch the reader off guard in the best way possible.

From a comment about #MeToo,

"women/want to/live/without fear/For thousands of years/We were not believed/this/is/what we/carry

From a comment from a (presumably) male identified person who actually tells Baer "I find your work well written, but the subject matter not necessarily what I want to read about." (I actually gasped at that sentence; sexism shouldn't still surprise these days, but it was so starkly painted here.)

"it is/unbearable/the way/we have allowed/what is good/to take/the/shape of/men"

The author balances the vitriol and downright crudeness with love and hope from readers who reached out after seeing her work and the reader can feel the love in the latter poems.

Many readers were excited for her new book after her instant bestseller, What Kind of Woman and this book does not fail to deliver. Baer has also stated that a third book is in the final stages, set for publication in Fall of 2022.

If this is the new fall trend, count me delighted to have this wonderful poet to look forward to in late fall every year.

This collection is for everyone in your life and I only wish it were longer.

(Image: personal collection)

Book Review: Wintering

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times is author Katherine's May's third memoir and it hits the sweet or not so sweet spot in the winter after 2020, when many of us are reeling after a year unlike any other.

The book opens with May's husband in the hospital and her own health issues starting. She ends up leaving her job due to health issues and ends up homeschooling her son. She talks about her own 'winterings' in life; episodes of depression and coming to terms with the diagnosis of autism late in life. As she comes to explain, wintering is both the act of making it through the winter season and the season of basically everything falling to bits and needing to regroup and re-center. She encounters both during this book.

There is an early, highly underlined passage, especially after this previous year:

        "I'm tired, inevitably. But it's more than that. I'm hollowed out. I'm tetchy and irritable, constantly         feeling like prey, believing  that everything is urgent and that I can never do enough."

The book is divided into months, from September to March, which each month having two or three chapters contained within, ie November has Metamorphosis and Slumber. Each mini chapter within each month had a specific nourishment, to the season in question.

Reading the bulk of this book in February felt like such a gift, whilst in bed before sleep. We talk a lot about refilling our wells, our cups, especially for mothers after 2020. But this book helps with that. Taking time for one's self, practicing nourishing routines and actually resting, all highlighted in relatable detail.

This quote hit like a gut punch. As someone who has struggled with anxiety since I was pre-teen, I would always wish away an anxiety flare up, so I could go back to being 'normal'. This helped ease that pain.

        "It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It         is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the             best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife."

This is a deeply felt, but easily accessible book. One for each person in your life to help, just a bit, ease the pain of last year and give them the strength to march forward.

Image credit: Penguin Random House)

Book Review: What Kind of Woman

I, like many folks, first read Kate Baer when Joanna Goddard featured her on her "A Cup of Jo" blog back when time had meaning. I followed her on the gram and it only took about 5 seconds before I wanted to sit and have a coffee with her and ask kindly exactly was able to read my mind from her home state of Pennsylvania.

Her debut collection, What Kind of Woman contains more of the same mind reading. My actual copy of the book is pictured, bedecked with stickers, marking certain poems. I devoured this book in three sittings; forcing myself to pace the poems.

It's a collection that speaks to motherhood on the rawest level. Baer does acknowledge that she speaks with the privileges of being a white woman and so many of the poems contain the pain that the last four years have wrought, including immigration and school shootings. In "Back to School Shopping" /I do not tell you/I am afraid...How does a mother hold her terrors? How does/a school become a haunted place?/  In the poem, "What I Meant", /What I meant when I said 'I don't have time' is that/every minute that passes I'm disappointing someone/.

She isn't shy about being a plus size (whatever the hell that means anymore) woman and the poem "Like a Wife" had me chortling out loud. Nor does she shy away from the current political and social justice climate; I remember reading "Female Candidate" right after Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the primary race.

She talks about wifehood, the casual sexism of life, sexual assault and so much more. This is a book to buy for every woman in your life. For you to highlight your favorite poems and phrases until the spine becomes creased and pages dog-eared.

Book Review: Adventures in Opting Out

 

Unlike most things in 2020, this book was very appropriately timed. Cait Flanders follow up to her best selling memoir, A Year of Less, is entitled Adventures in Opting Out: A Field Guide to Leading an Intentional Life.

Like many folks this year, Flanders was looking at a different way of living life. In her case, it was travelling nearly full time, mainly in Europe. She chronicles that in this new book, along with highlighting all the steps one could take in 'opting out' from a conventional life, using hiking as an extended (sometimes literal) metaphor.

The book is broken down into sections, labelled as parts of a hike one would encounter: base, viewpoint, valley, slope and summit, and within each of those sections; she gives advice on how creating an intentional life for one's self can be achieved. Whether its literally stopping to breath or adjust the straps on a pack, to taking it slow or looking both ways, the author deftly creates a self help narrative unlike most other books in the self-help section of the bookstore.

Most self help books tout a flourish, if not a quick and/or easy route, with sprinkles of easy Instagrammable options, if one chooses. Flanders, however, acknowledges that she doesn't have the answers, she just has experience opting out of conventional paths in life, including choosing a life of sobriety.

A very timely book and one that had me underlining several paragraphs as I read, it's a worthwhile investment, especially during a year when so many are rethinking their own 'paths' in life.

(Image Credit: Amazon)

Book Review: Memorial Drive

 

"I took with me what I had cultivated all those years: mute avoidance of my past, silence and willed amnesia buried deep in me like a root."

So begins Natasha Trethewey's memoir, Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir. It is a gut punch of a book about her childhood and her mother and how her mother was murdered by an abusive ex-partner.

The book details her parent's illegal marriage and subsequent divorce; the mother daughter duo's move from Mississippi to Atlanta, Georgia, where Gwen, her mother, meets Joel aka Big Joe. Big Joe is a deeply troubled and troubling person, putting it extremely mildly. He torments Natasha, uses his son with Natasha's mother as a bargaining chip (which is classic abuser technique) to coerce her into doing what he wants, and begins beating her repeatedly.

The second half of the book details what happens once Gwen decides to leave. Reading about her escape is incredibly bittersweet because from the outset of the book, the reader knows that Gwen doesn't make it out alive. Included in the second half are several pages of text that she wrote out on legal pads while in the shelter and several pages of transcripts from taped phone calls, which are chilling to read.

Trethewey makes repeated mention throughout the slim volume about forgetting and remembering, how they are intertwined and how she wishes she could take back the purposeful forgetting she did immediately after her mother's murder, so she could remember more of her.

But even as much as the author buried, she notes:

"Some forgetting is necessary and the mind works to shield us from things that are too painful; even so, some aspect of trauma lives on in the body, from which it can reemerge unexpectedly. Even when I was trying to bury the past, there were moments from those lost years that kept coming back, rising to mind unbidden.'

The author ends the book asking, "...How could I have been that close and not destroyed by it? Why was I spared?-" She, at the end, is able to make some semblance of peace with her mother's murder and the man behind it. It is a deeply wrenching, thoughtful book and at it's core, a love letter to a mother that she tried in vain to protect, to a mother she was robbed of knowing and to a mother who fought to protect her children to the end of her life.

It is a book that is deeply, deeply felt and hard to read at parts, but very clearly written by both a poet and someone who loved someone very much.

Book Review: Ledger

Jane Hirshfield's latest collection, Ledger, is a wonderful new book that sneaks up and packs a wallop when you least expect it.

From the book's title poem:

"Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin is 3,592 measures./A voice kept far from feeling is heard as measured./What's wanted in desperate times are desperate measures."

Hirshfield is able to deftly maneuver threads about the environment, the current status of politics in the United States, and personal tales into an enjoyable volume.

Some of the best poems in the collection are "Let Them Not Say":

"Let them not say:    it was not spoken, it was not written./We spoke,/we witnessed with voices and hands."

And in "Today, Another Universe" the lines "Today, for some a universe will vanish/First noisily,/then just another silence" completely took my breath away. And then in "Wild Turkeys" "I, who am to myself also not meat, feed mosquitoes nightly" you can't help but chuckle lightly at the description. Who among us has not suffered at the hands of the tiny blood suckers?

There are so many small moments encased within the larger poems and larger sections, they are a joy to uncover on each subsequent page.

A definite read for any poetry lover!

Book Review: She Said

Reading this book was like watching the movie Spotlight; about journalists at the Boston Globe in 2001 who broke the story about the horrific abuses that the Catholic Church inflicted on not just the city of Boston, but across North America and the world. The movie is one of my favorites because of how journalism is portrayed as a necessary, urgent part of life in contemporary society.

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement is a quick read but not in the sense of flipping pages simply to finish the tome. It's fast paced and hooks you into the journey that not only Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey take in unraveling that man's disgusting abuses, but the journey that the women who survived him took. Women who ended up breaking NDA's, who had never told their spouses, who were forced to reckon with the evil deeds Weinstein carried out.

Kantor and Twohey spell out the incredible amount of research and interviews they conducted over the year that they were both writing and uncovering more of Weinstein's crimes. They include email excerpts, phone call transcripts (some with Weinstein himself), texts, internal documents including a memo written by a woman who left Miramax because of the abuses she saw.

The book then transitions into background leading up to the testimony that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford gave at the Senate Hearings about Brett Kavanaugh. We get to hear from Dr. Ford herself and gain new sympathy for not only having to endure sexual assault, but the agonizing choice she made to testify.

The book ends with a group interview that the authors arranged with the women who survived Weinstein, Dr. Ford, and Kim Lawson, who launched a campaign taking on McDonald's for sexual harassment and lack of policies and protections for workers. It was deeply honoring to hear the women speak about life on the other side of going public with abuses suffered in silence.

In an era where facts are denounced by a man who is cut from the same sycophantic and narcissistic cloth as Weinstein and Kavanaugh, reading this book, however awful the subject matter may be, felt like salve on an open wound.

(Image Credit)

Book Review: How to Do Nothing

Jenny Odell's book, "How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy" was nothing short of amazing and enthralling. I read, post its in hand and tabbed a sentence or a paragraph on nearly every page in the book.

She starts out with this bold quote:

"Here's what I want to escape. To me, one of the most troubling ways social media has been used in recent years is to foment waves of hysteria and fear, both by news media and by users themselves. Whipped into a permanent state of frenzy, people create and subject themselves to news cycles, complaining of anxiety at the same time they check back ever more diligently...Media companies trying to keep up with each other create a kind of 'arms race' of urgency that abuses our attention and leaves us no time to think. The result is something like the sleep-deprivation tactics the military uses on detainees, but on a larger scale."

But what really encapsulates the book is her statement that to truly take our attention back we need ""To do nothing is to hold yourself still so that you can perceive what is actually there." Taking the time to focus, something that is lost more and more each day, on what the world, what people need from us, how we can be the answer.

She breaks the book down into six chapters; each talking about a different part of the attention economy and how to pay attention to different parts of life. She makes it clear she isn't anti-social media (she has her own Twitter account anyway) but what she is interested in is, "...a mass movement of attention: what happens when people regain control over their attention and begin to direct it again, together."

Because what matters, what truly matters in this firey hellscape (fully acknowledging the privilege that it is to have only been truly terrified since 2016, rather than for my entire life-something Odell does remark on frequently throughout the book) is the fact that "[t[he world needs my participation more than ever. Again, it is not a question of whether but how."

She also points out "[the] cruel irony that the platforms on which we encounter and speak about these issues are simultaneously profiting from a collapse of context that keeps us from being able to think straight." And further still, "[m]eanwhile, media companies continue churning out deliberately incendiary takes, and we're so quickly outraged by their headlines that we can't even consider the option of not reading and sharing them."

Each person in this current day and age must decide for themselves, how they commit their time, energy and body to the frenetic attention grabbers. And not to say anything of how ecologically and physically this buzzing economy takes a toll. This book helps us take a step back, several actually, and re-examine, well, everything.

A must read for everyone and everyone.

Book Review: So You Want to Talk About Race

Ijeoma Oluo's new book, So You Want to Talk About Race is a must read.

Most especially for white people.

We all know those out of touch, overtly racist relatives and those you see in the Target checkout line. But the more covert and micro-agressiveness types of racism are still so prevalent and overlooked but desperately need to be tackled. Precisely because most white people don't think it exists. Racism = a loud boorish person singing the N word, not someone coming up and touching a person of color's hair and then getting mad at them for slapping their hands away.

This book lays out, step by step, how to address the systematic racism that's been the backbone of much of the United States since white people landed on the shores.

This how to manual is broken into seventeen chapters, covering topics like "What is intersectionality and why do I need it?" to "What is the school-to-prison pipeline?" to "What are microaggressions?" Each chapter covers a different section of the white supremacist state and how moving parts are in place to subjugate communities and people of color. The entire book is incredibly helpful and well paced. Oluo tackles complex topics but never dilutes any chapter, while still making it accessible for those who want to dismantle systematic racism.

White people who want to step up after the horrific election of the current resident in the Oval Office, but aren't quite sure how, can turn to this book as a great starting point. Buy it for every white person in your life.

2016 Books Reviewed

Annual wrap up! I also made a Pinterest board, where all of my reviews are linked.

Book Review: Simple Matters
The reason decluttering, slow living and conscious choices are the buzzwords lately is because something has to change. I know I was the not the only one who felt it during and after the Great Recession. A lot of people wanted a change. We were well stocked, but restless. Boyle notes this throughout the book, stating, "When our lives are crowded with endless supplies of stuff, we lose the ability to get excited about something new."

Book Review: The Feminist Activity Book
The Feminist Activity Book capitalizes on the latest adult coloring craze in the best way possible. I mean, where else could you do this?

Book Review: Spark Joy
The third section is the shortest, but like her first book, so gentle and touching. Kondo reiterates her original message but elaborates on the finer details. She wants the reader to enjoy their life and she knows that many people can't because they are bogged down, literally in some cases (she has one client who has a staircase of books that Kondo must gingerly climb up), with stuff that they don't love. Part of why tidying works, Kondo says, is because "tidying up means confronting yourself". It's easier to bury emotional baggage that you don't want to confront in cute stuff around the house.

Book Reviews: Here's the Plan
This is a guide, in every sense of the word, for women who will be experiencing pregnancy or child rearing. Downey surveyed over 2,000 women on a range of topics, which she broke down into 8 chapters, starting with the specifics of family leave (the author makes it very clear throughout the book to emphasize that it is family leave and fathers and other guardians should use it just as much as mothers), putting an action plan in place for work while out, what happens if discrimination rears its ugly head, various care options, returning to work and tackling change for women in the future.

Book Review: Shrill

"it was just part of the lifelong, pervasive alienation from my body that every woman absorbs to some extent. Your body is never yours. Your body is your enemy. Your body is gross. Your body is wrong. Your body is broken. Your body isn't what men like. Your body is less important than a fetus. Your body should be 'perfect' or it should be hidden."

Book Review: How Does That Make You Feel?
But this collection also contains small and large beautiful moments of people receiving the help they very desperately need and it's not always the patient. Juli Fraga's essay, "When the Therapist Cries" is a moving piece about patient boundaries and how to navigate them as a human being, let alone a therapist. Or Allison McCarthy's piece, "How About a Hug?" covering similar issues, but from the view of the patient.

Book Review: How Does That Make You Feel?

"Wally Lamb wrote, 'God exists in the roundness of things.' As the present becomes the past, I know every summer ends. September is always right around the corner, yet it arrives when we least expect it and are ill-prepared for the changes it brings. We do our best. We fling ourselves into the air and hope to land on solid ground."

Seal Press's latest anthology, "How Does that Make You Feel? True Confessions from both sides of the therapy couch" debuts today and how apt that the above quote was included in one of the essays, "Lies I Told My Therapist" and not just for the month this collection comes out.

Therapy is a risk, for not just those seeking help, but those providing it and such stories are portrayed a plenty. There is the young woman, seeking help despite it being frowned upon in her community to seek the help of white people in Jenine Holmes' essay, "Therapy is for White People." Or those who encounter less than exemplary help or those who would pervert it altogether, as found in Pamela Rafalow Grossman's essay, "With Some Gratitude to My Asshole Former Therapist" who despite being a terrible therapist, ended up helping her nonetheless. Or in Laura Bogart's essay, "My Shrink's Ultimatum," where the author must decide if her therapist's advice is worth following, at the sake of her self preservation.

But this collection also contains small and large beautiful moments of people receiving the help they very desperately need and it's not always the patient. Juli Fraga's essay, "When the Therapist Cries" is a moving piece about patient boundaries and how to navigate them as a human being, let alone a therapist. Or Allison McCarthy's piece, "How About a Hug?" covering similar issues, but from the view of the patient.

At the very core of therapy and counseling and all the other names, it is flawed humans helping flawed humans. Two of the essays in the collection, illustrate this beautifully. In Martha Crawford's, "Back into the Wild", she states

                "I wonder about the other creatures-- the ones that were healed and released.....Preserving                    the calls of the wild for those that are in danger of forgetting. Allowing those who know                      little of their own animal instinct to listen in a language that they can tolerate."

Therapists bridge the gap as rehabilitated animals from a sanctuary, speaking the tongues of both sides.

And finally, in Megan Devine's "I'm Not the Right One for This Job,"

             "In all of it, in everything I do now, I'm speaking from that spot....I don't want that for you. I                don't want you to look back and think you lost yourself somewhere. I'm telling you in                            tenderness because I want that for myself."

A moving anthology showing the rawness and utter mistakes of human life, but realizing life is richer for it.

Photo Credit: Amazon
Disclaimer: A friend is published in this volume and I received a pdf review copy.

Book Reviews: Shrill

I can always appreciate a good Slurpee reference and Lindy West, in her memoir, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman includes one in a triple whammy:

"only now once a month hot brown blood just glops and glops out of your private area like a broke Slurpee machine. Forever...Don't worry, to deal, you just have to cork up your hole with this thing that's like a severed toe made of cotton..."

Which pretty much sets the stage for the rest of the book.

Lindy West is a phenomenal writer and covers abortion, aforementioned periods, being fat, misogyny in comedy and vitriol on the Internet. Half the time, the reader has to laugh because she is goddamned funny and the other half, you suck in your breath because shit, that's too real.

"it was just part of the lifelong, pervasive alienation from my body that every woman absorbs to some extent. Your body is never yours. Your body is your enemy. Your body is gross. Your body is wrong. Your body is broken. Your body isn't what men like. Your body is less important than a fetus. Your body should be 'perfect' or it should be hidden."

One of the most touching moments (and there are many, including tearing up toward the end when she speaks beautifully about her father and the subsequent troll encounter) is when she starts to realize she doesn't have to hide her body (even though it was fat and not the 'ideal' size) any longer:

"What if my body didn't have to be a secret? What if I was wrong all along-what if this was all a magic trick, and I could just decide I was valuable and it would be true? Why, instead, had I left that decision in the hands of strangers who hated me? Denying people access to value is an incredibly insidious form of emotional violence, one that our culture wields aggressively and liberally to keep marginalized groups small and quiet." (Emphasis mine)

Value being denied to people is one of the main themes that is referenced throughout the book and she delves into just how pervasive it is. Her words, throughout the book, are a rallying cry; both for those who are disenfranchised, due to race, body size, or gender identity and against those who seek to shame, humiliate and even kill those who speak out.

She tackles the subjects, matter-of-factly, bluntly and sometimes humorously, but without being overly dense. Abortion rights and how she "believe[s] unconditionally in the right of people with uteruses to decided what grows inside of their body and feeds on their blood and endangers their life and reroutes their future" are discussed with the same ease as her landlord once walking in on her in the shower with insurance appraisers (which lends itself to the fact that the word boners and insurance are uttered in the same sentence).

She ends the book talking about world building and how saying no can be one of the ways that happens. "I say no to men who feel entitled to my attention...I say no to religious zealots who insist that I'm less important than an embryo...It's a way of kicking down the boundaries that society has set for women-be compliant, be a caregiver, be quiet-and erecting my own."

An absolute necessity in American society today and if I may add one final thought: A-fucking-men.

(Photo Credit: Amazon.com)

Book Review: Here's the Plan

One of Seal Press's latest, Here's the Plan: Your Practical Guide to Advancing Your Career During Pregnancy and Parenthood, caught me completely by surprise. For one, non fiction books are hard to get into, harder than fiction anyway. For two, I had several forehead slapping moments of "HOW did I not think of that?!"

This is a guide, in every sense of the word, for women who will be experiencing pregnancy or child rearing. Downey surveyed over 2,000 women on a range of topics, which she broke down into 8 chapters, starting with the specifics of family leave (the author makes it very clear throughout the book to emphasize that it is family leave and fathers and other guardians should use it just as much as mothers), putting an action plan in place for work while out, what happens if discrimination rears its ugly head, various care options, returning to work and tackling change for women in the future.

At the end of each chapter, there is a short section called Worth Remembering, which both sum up and allow the reader to make an action list based on the previous chapter. Downey includes items such as using a plan for your leave as a way to catalog and present your success within the company, both as a way to ask for the next promotion and, god forbid, a way to help fight a discrimination suit; putting any and all pumping times on your calendar while on leave to avoid back to back meetings; and take time to reset both your work and home priorities.

Another refreshing aspect of the book was the gentle non judgement combined with the gentle nudging of fighting for self care. Downey explicitly does not take sides in the sleep or breast feeding debates that can often rage unchecked online. But she does encourage women to talk with their partners about making sure scheduling is on equal footing, especially the emotional labor of planning and thinking about planning, which often defaults to women.

I thoroughly enjoyed the feminist bristling at the term 'mommy brain'. She states:
      "In considering their findings, Dr. Miller and other scientists have theorized that when pregnant women and new mothers have normal cognitive slips, they overattribute them to their 'mommy brain,' having internalized this pervasive cultural assumption." I have never really considered how much the phrase could hurt women, especially when we already apologize for too much in our daily lives.

This book should be required reading for anyone who plans to get pregnant. It is thorough, inclusive and incredibly informative.

(Photo Credit: Sealpress.com)

Book Review: Spark Joy

Marie Kondo's follow up/companion to her best selling book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, both expands and refines her tidying message and methods.

The book is broken down into three sections: KonMari Master Tips, The Tidying Encyclopedia and Life Changing Magic. The first section touches upon expansion of her message; how to find that "joy spark" when none of your possessions do at first glance, how to keep going through the work, adding joy back into your house ("It's far more important to adorn your home with things you love than to keep it so bare it lacks anything that brings you joy") and life after you finish purging and storage tips and techniques.

One of the useful tips she includes is about tools;

"A simple design that puts you at ease, a high degree of functionality that makes life simpler, a sense of rightness, or the recognition that a possession is useful in our daily lives--these, too, indicate joy."

As someone who was just recently gifted a very well crafted hammer after years of using one that was duct taped together, I completely agree with this sentiment.

The second section is how to tidy or store those items that don't often spring to mind (ski poles, bulky sweaters, cell phone charger cables, etc) but she also includes step by step instructions with diagrams for the every day items. And rather than worry about doing it 'the right way', Kondo expresses throughout the book the idea of taking her message and honing it to work for you.

An interesting point that I hadn't considered fully that she explains, is "the more textual information you have in your environment, the more you home becomes filled with noise." And she means labels on the laundry detergent, bright labels on your bathroom supplies, etc.

The third section is the shortest, but like her first book, so gentle and touching. Kondo reiterates her original message but elaborates on the finer details. She wants the reader to enjoy their life and she knows that many people can't because they are bogged down, literally in some cases (she has one client who has a staircase of books that Kondo must gingerly climb up), with stuff that they don't love. Part of why tidying works, Kondo says, is because "tidying up means confronting yourself". It's easier to bury emotional baggage that you don't want to confront in cute stuff around the house.

One of the most touching passages in the book is toward the very end:
"Recently, an expression that keeps coming to mind as I work with my clients is mono no aware. This Japanese terms, which literally means 'pathos of things,' describes the deep emotion that is evoked when we are touched by nature, art, or the lives of others with an awareness of their transience." We only have but so long on this planet. Why not spend our days with the things and people that we love? That is the message Kondo wants to impart upon her readers and clients, "what really brings joy to our lives is savoring daily life, instead of taking it for granted."

A worthy idea indeed.

(Image credit: Amazon.com)

Book Review: The Feminist Activity Book

The Feminist Activity Book capitalizes on the latest adult coloring craze in the best way possible. I mean, where else could you do this?

I, for one, loathe the period commercials with the blue liquid. Helpful PSA: If blue liquid is actually flowing from your nether regions, seek medical attention.

Who doesn't love a good word find? Especially when searching for misogyny?

What about pro-noun badges?

Or trading cards with bell hooks' face?

The activities cover a variety of topics and people: the Bechdel test, feminist literature, gender identity definitions, Audre Lorde and Malala Yousafzai as trading cards, riddles and even Bingo!

There are tons of great activities in this book for varying age ranges. A fun book to curl up with on the beach with a cup of coloring pencils or crayons.

(Image Credit: Front cover-Seal Press, Pages-Taken by author)

Book Review: Simple Matters

I found the always entertaining blog, Reading My Tea Leaves through A Cup of Jo, when she interviewed Erin Boyle about living in 240 sq feet. I loved her dry humor with a dash of sass and not so subtle feminist overtones and gulped nearly the entirety of her series Life in a Tiny Apartment series in about four days, despite the fact that I live in just under a 1500 square foot house and kept trying to convince my husband to purge our entire house.

Her writing draws you in, pours you a cup of tea and invites to kick off your shoes and pull up a blanket on the couch, which is why I was thrilled to find out she was writing a book. Simple Matters: Living with Less and Ending Up with More could be filed away in the vein of a lot of decluttering/slow living books which are popping up everywhere these days.

And yet.

At less than 200 pages, this volume is concise with only nine chapters with the message "The things you love are the things you'll keep. Reconsider everything else." The author touches upon decluttering, DIY healthy cleaning supplies, the best items to put on a wedding registry and why fast fashion has destroyed thrift stores.

The reason decluttering, slow living and conscious choices are the buzzwords lately is because something has to change. I know I was the not the only one who felt it during and after the Great Recession. A lot of people wanted a change. We were well stocked, but restless. Boyle notes this throughout the book, stating, "When our lives are crowded with endless supplies of stuff, we lose the ability to get excited about something new."

Even the book's layout gave the reader space to breathe and pause, with tons of white space and the simplest photographs. We so often forget that simple step; stop, pause and breathe. With that in mind, I leave you with this quote:

"More than an aesthetic or economic choice, living simply requires conscious acts.
By consuming less, purchasing more thoughtfully, and sending fewer things to the landfill, we
can free up time and space for the things that really matter. By making useful art out of any
square footage, we can improve the tenor of our days. No matter who or where you are,
you can make your life matter, simply."

(Photo credit: Amazon)

2015 Book Reviews!

In case you need something to read in the new year.


The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

The premise of the KonMari tidying method is to pull everything, all of your possessions, onto one spot (starting with clothes and then moving onto to subsequent categories) and while holding each item, decide whether is sparks joy. The idea behind starting with everything in one place, rather than room by room, means it will be less likely that you forgot about that box in the closet in that room.

The Beauty

There are such simple stanzas, but the lines force the reader to linger and digest more than what lies on the page. Some other lines included:

"Generation./Strange word: both making and passing"

I'm not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet

The book does include some very thoughtful and important points, like specifically calling out the fact that "the components of a slut's sluttiness include: displaying agency, being active rather than passive, choosing her actions....Agency is a critical element of the sexual double standard, in which only girls, never boys, are called to tasks for their real or presumed sexual aggression."Women who don't toe the party line or play the game have been called aggressive or slutty since the beginning of time. Calling a woman a slut "convinces girls and women who have been victimized that they are the ones who have done something wrong," when in fact it is a tool to subjugate women. Young women "[recognize] that sexual equality does not in fact yet exist in practice. When a girl and boy are identically sexually active, only the girl is treated punitively."

Asking For It

Advising women how to stave off rapists does not work. Nor does policing women's lifestyle choices. The idea of putting the problem squarely on women's shoulders rather than the men who rape also didn't sit well with Zerlina Maxwell, who stated in March of 2013, "I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there." Many people lost their collective shit over such a statement and when the surrounding culture has given free passes to men regardless of what they do, it's not a big surprise.

Book Review-Asking For It

I was a fan of this book by page 12 when Harding asked for a permanent ban on the holiday song, "Baby It's Cold Outside." I, too, have forever hated that song and yet it blasts through my car radio every. damn. winter.

And yet Kate Harding's latest book, Asking For It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture-and What We Can Do About It is hard to read. Just like checking the news, Twitter or Facebook these days is hard. This book took me about two months longer to read than most books and it was because it was easier to look at puppy videos or the one with the cat wearing a hat. Fuzzy animals were easier than reading about the man who was accquited of rape by saying he fell into a woman's vagina. While that article might seem mind-boggling, it's not even rare these days. Because rape culture and what it entails is not new to any person, man or woman, black or white, trans or cis, who has suffered through it. Rape culture "condones physical and emotional terrorism against women and presents it as the norm."

The book is broken down into three parts (Slut Shaming, Victim Blaming and Rape Myths; Law and Order; and The Culture of Rape). In the first part, Harding presents the seven rape (American) myths and references them frequently throughout, from "He didn't mean to" to "She lied" to "Rape is a deviant event". The rape myths are pervasive and a very common one is the idea of instructing women on how to dress or enjoy a night out. The author makes clear that policing women's every move is asinine and dangerous.
       "This ubiquitous idea that by controlling our behavior, appearance, and whereabouts we can keep         ourselves from being raped does nothing to help women (let alone potential victims who aren't           women). It merely takes the onus off the rest of society to seriously consider what we can all do         to prevent sexual violence....Blaming women's drinking instead of men's decision to rape means         throwing up our hands and saying, 'Well, as long as the criminals keep choosing this one sort of           victim, there's nothing to be done about the second worst crime there is!' We might as well say           outright that it's perfectly legal to rape a drunk person."

Advising women how to stave off rapists does not work. Nor does policing women's lifestyle choices. The idea of putting the problem squarely on women's shoulders rather than the men who rape also didn't sit well with Zerlina Maxwell, who stated in March of 2013, "I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there." Many people lost their collective shit over such a statement and when the surrounding culture has given free passes to men regardless of what they do, it's not a big surprise.

The second section, Law and Order, explores how police departments don't routinely trust rape reports ('Women falsely report rape to call attention to themselves.'...17.6 percent [of officers] agreed...with one of the most pernicious rape myths there is."), sexual assault in the military, missing and untested rape kits, of which there is a massive backlog. The rest of the criminal justice system is also explored and is also equally depressing.

The third and final section, The Culture of Rape, gets into the nitty gritty of rape culture. Yes, it is terrorism committed against women, but there are other aspects like, "a women who wants to be sexual on her own terms without being punished for it, who wants the power to say both yes and no as freely as a man can." How many times have we heard "Well, if she didn't want to get pregnant, she should have kept her legs shut?" Women are not permitted to enjoy sex on their own terms. Period.

Another poisonous aspect of rape culture is the fact that "men are taught to see women as passive objects to collect and discard as it suits them....you end up with a lot of men who are really angry at women who speak publicly without asking permission." Not even just speaking publicly, existing, protesting, writing, etc.

Thankfully, Harding ends the book with the small measures of hope that exist today; student activists pushing forward with Title IX accountability for colleges, consent laws being enacted across the United States and even the power of social media as a way to hold people accountable and for victims to share stories and support.

This thoroughly researched book was hard to read. But very very necessary. While the book did focus on the United States, it is a good starting point for anyone trying to learn more about how insidious rape culture is. It is dangerous to women, especially women of color, disabled women, or any woman who doesn't fit into the chaste virgin stereotype. It's dangerous for a man who wants to navigate a healthy relationship but is confronted with harmful stereotypes about women and masculinity. But arming ourselves with the knowledge of how to combat the lies perpetrated by rape culture is a step forward to changing this toxic mindset.

(Photo credit: Amazon.com)

Book Review: I'm not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet

I was thrilled that one of my all time favorite books,
Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation was getting a follow up. I first read Slut! at 16 and it was one of my awakening books, the "Oh, this actually happens to other people/I'm not alone" type of books. I eagerly anticipated the same feeling with Tanenbaum's newest, but I was sadly and woefully disappointed.

The book is broken down in nine chapters, starting with the differences of slut bashing and shaming today versus twenty years ago, the differences between a "good" slut and a "bad" slut, how online harassment has developed, sexual assault and how to cope and eventually eliminate the term. Tanenbaum states upfront that there is a lot of ground to cover because "the label 'slut' is far more common, and utterly more confusing than ever before. But one thing has not changed: regardless of context, the consequences of being labelled a slut are nearly always damaging." Damaging indeed. Countless young women, including Rehtaeh Parsons, Felicia Garcia, Audrie Pott, took their lives after brutal and disgusting bullying, mostly about their sexual lives. The author states that one thing that has changed is that there are now two separate types of harassment: slut-bashing and slut-shaming, the latter being a causal way of judging peers, but still nonetheless harmful because it polices others' behavior. The term 'slut' has always been about controlling women.

The book does include some very thoughtful and important points, like specifically calling out the fact that "the components of a slut's sluttiness include: displaying agency, being active rather than passive, choosing her actions....Agency is a critical element of the sexual double standard, in which only girls, never boys, are called to tasks for their real or presumed sexual aggression."Women who don't toe the party line or play the game have been called aggressive or slutty since the beginning of time. Calling a woman a slut "convinces girls and women who have been victimized that they are the ones who have done something wrong," when in fact it is a tool to subjugate women. Young women "[recognize] that sexual equality does not in fact yet exist in practice. When a girl and boy are identically sexually active, only the girl is treated punitively."

The book concludes with talking about the StopSlut movement and the activism, both online and in the public sphere, including Hollaback!, all of which are making a noticeable difference in women's lives around the world. One of the appendices also includes good ideas about halting toxic behavior, like calling out someone who uses the term slut or ho.

However, there were several disappointing parts in the book. While Tanenbaum includes the ethnicity of the young women she interviewed (skewed toward white women), she also included physical descriptions, such as hair style and clothing choices, which seemed unnecessary. And while many aspects of the digital age are numerous and sometimes understood only colloquially, the author plays up to the fact that she is out of date. Social media isn't difficult, nor are teenagers a separate species.

One of the biggest issues was the discrepancies in advice or judgement. On one page, this is stated: "It's true that something is horribly wrong. But hand wringing, clucking or lecturing girls to behave 'appropriately' or 'modestly' is an ineffective as a 'Do Not Track' app." And yet on the very next page, "We wonder: Don't young females today recognize that if they sexualize themselves, particularly in nonsexual contexts such as school, others will regard them as sexual objects?...Are they really so clueless?" And yet still on the next page, "In general, these girls claim that they make clothing choices for themselves, not male attention. This, my friends, is a smoke screen." Gobsmackingly, this same book spoke about agency and how "sluts" take agency and control and are thus penalized for it. I'm at a loss as to what effect the previous statements could possibly hope to make.

I appreciate the situation as it is currently: we want to encourage women to dress and act as they wish, because they are independent human beings, but also must acknowledge the fact that rape culture and outdated and dangerous attitudes prevail, which lead to whispered advice and contradictory attitudes about drinking while out in public. But the advice given seems deliberately contradictory.

When the book ended with appendices, I admit I was incensed. They included "Don't insult your daughter over her clothing choices" for parents but in The Slut-Shaming Self-Defense Toolkit, "Don't binge drink" and "Don't dress in a sexually provocative manner unless you want to be looked at sexually and can handle being reduced to a sexual object" were listed. For the latter appendix, the author does preface with "It's never your fault for being slut-shamed or assaulted. The ultimate goals described in this book are to eliminate slut-shaming and to redirect blame for sexual assault onto those responsible for it: the assaulters."

Since Ms. Tanenbaum is unclear on the topic, please allow me to state it unequivocally: "A woman could be stone cold drunk, unconscious and a gigantic arrow pointing to her orifices and guess what? STILL ISN'T HER FAULT THAT SHE WAS RAPED." It is utterly galling to read a book geared toward young women seeking advice about how to combat sexist attitudes and harassment that includes those very same judgments within the same book. As previously mentioned, I understand how difficult it can be to help women avoid assault. I realize attitudes and actions take measurably longer to change, but this book feels yet again that we are putting the onus on women to avoid rape rather than teaching men healthy boundaries, consent and to not rape women.

(Photo Credit: http://www.leoratanenbaum.com/)