“I’ve never done a job that I didn’t think was a stretch.”
Sandra Day O’Connor
I love reading biographies. Not every biography, certainly. They have a reputation for being dry and overly long, and of course some of them are. Worse is when a biography begs the reader to worship at the feet of the subject, showing only the positive while skimming over the negative. So it’s true that not every biography is worth your time. But I’ve read several biographies that are truly moving, and First: Sandra Day O’Connor by Evan Thomas is one of them. I was touched by Thomas’s portrait of this powerhouse woman.
If you’re like me before I read this book, you know Sandra Day O’Connor was a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, but that’s about it. She certainly doesn’t have the same place in popular culture that’s occupied by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example. That said, I wish people knew more about her, because I was inspired by her determination, intelligence, and grit, even if I don’t necessarily agree with her every ruling or viewpoint.
Sandra Day O’Connor—or SOC, as she’s referred to in her husband’s journals—grew up on a ranch in Arizona surrounded by honest-to-goodness cowboys. Her childhood wasn’t what I’d call idyllic, but it was happy. She attended law school at Stanford University where she was one of the few women in the program. She graduated at the top of her class only to find that real law firms cared more about her gender than her legal prowess, so her husband John was offered a well-paying job while firm after firm told her that she’d be more suited to secretarial work.
Undeterred, she won a seat on the Arizona State Senate and managed to find her place in a Boy’s Club, holding her own against snide comments and open mockery. She became a federal judge and was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981 by Ronald Reagan. She was the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court, and she held the deciding vote for a great deal of her time there.
That’s an extremely bare-bones summary of SOC’s incredible life, so I beg you to read this book to get a fuller picture of her. I got it on audiobook and I found myself making excuses to go on longer walks or car rides to get a few more minutes of listening in. I grew to love and admire the woman who helped pave the way for female lawyers and judges in the U.S., and who was a voice of integrity on the Supreme Court for decades. That’s not to say that she didn’t do some incredibly controversial things—her handling of Bush v. Gore in 2000, for example—but Evan Thomas convinced me that her heart was in the right place even as she made decisions that made a lot of people unhappy. I, like her colleagues on the Supreme Court and elsewhere, came to respect her.
Her relationship with her husband also really touched me. I love stories of couples who stick together and stick it out, even when times are hard. Her husband, John O’Connor, spent a lot of time in his wife’s shadow. In a time when other men might have resented her or tried to keep her down, he was so proud of her and did everything he could to lift her up. In fact, he was one of the ones who helped get her name in front of President Reagan for consideration to the Supreme Court. Sandra and John O’Connor are such a good example of love and mutual support.
Honestly, this whole book was just an inspiration. If you’re looking to learn about a fascinating woman while also feeling uplifted, this is the biography for you.
“If you want to lift up humanity, empower women. It is the most comprehensive, pervasive, high-leverage investment you can make in human beings.”
Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
Some of the best books I’ve ever read have been at the recommendation of a friend. If you’re a book lover and you don’t have a book-loving friend to commiserate with, get one. Get a friend that picks up books you normally wouldn’t. I read Melinda Gates’ The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World because a friend (with whom I have what we call “a book club of two”) told me that she’d really enjoyed it. This probably isn’t something that would have caught my eye otherwise. I know who Bill and Melinda Gates are, obviously, but I’ve never felt much interest in them. And while I’m a feminist, sometimes books about feminism can feel ironically condescending.
The Moment of Lift was not, in my opinion, condescending. It’s a close look at the Gates’ charity work and how that work has evolved as their (and specifically Melinda’s) understanding of world issues has deepened.
Melinda Gates never sets herself up as someone who has all the answers. In fact, she quoted her mentor Hans Rosling as saying that rich Americans throwing money at problems just make things worse. In her book, she’s very cognizant of the fact that she and her husband have the responsibility to avoid having a negative impact on the world through their ignorance of the issues. It seems to me like she gets down into the nitty gritty of the data and is willing to learn from people who are more knowledgeable than she is. That is so crucial to good humanitarian work, and I was pleased to see her emphasis on it.
She (mostly) didn’t center herself. As I’ve been learning about activism and anti-racism, one thing that I’ve become the most aware of is something called the “White Savior Complex.” It’s basically the idea that white people, by virtue of their whiteness, assume that they have all of the answers and should be the heroes of every story. (For example, high school and college students who go on voluntourism trips to rural African villages to “help” when they don’t have any real, useful skills. But they take some pictures with some local children, talk about what a difference they made, and go home to the praise of their family and friends, having made little or no positive impact.) An Instagram account called @nowhitesaviors has really opened my eyes to how pervasive this is and has forced me to examine some of my own biases. But I digress. The point is that The Moment of Lift could have featured Melinda Gates as a white savior, but I think that she does a decent job of putting the focus on the people who are on the ground doing the actual work in the cities and villages she writes about. She celebrates their ideas and their successes, noting that in some cases they were doing work she didn’t realize needed to be done, but was so much more effective than the work she and her husband had planned to fund. Gates paints herself as the person who bankrolls their good ideas and watches them work miracles, not the one who personally saves the day.
I was impressed by how Gates shared her feelings about family planning and how she struggled to reconcile her beliefs about birth control with her Catholic faith. It humanized her. Instead of reading about someone who never doubted or wavered, I was reading about someone who was grappling with difficult questions, had to make tough choices, and had to deal with the consequences of her choices.
I also appreciated the fact that Gates took the opportunity to mention the impact of relationships with other women. The way she talked about her friends echoed my own feelings for my gal pals. I, like Gates, have been befriended and blessed by some truly amazing women, and it was wonderful to see someone like Melinda Gates open up about how meaningful those relationships have been for her.
If you’re at all interested in humanitarian work, you should run a bookstore, library, or electronic device and get this book. If you’re interested in learning how to better support and empower women, do likewise. If you’re looking for a biography or memoir of Melinda Gates, that’s not really what this is. It’s more of a reflection on past work and a call to action. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in reading about, give this book a try.
“The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential.”
Chanel Miller, Know My Name
Let me tell you a story before I get into this review, and please be aware that this may be triggering if you’ve been the victim of a sexual assault. Honestly, this whole review may be triggering, so it may be better to skip this one if that’s something you’re sensitive about.
I had been married for a year, maybe two, when the women at my university started to be terrorized by a man we all called “The Groper.” It was a male student who would walk by, seemingly innocently, but then grab the body of a nearby woman, then take off running. We went to a pretty “safe” university, but there was a hill on the south of campus we all called “rape hill” because there had been a few assaults at night, and students were cautioned to avoid the area if they were walking alone. There were little signs and emergency telephones and everything. Even so, we felt pretty safe there. I’d never heard of anyone actually getting attacked until “The Groper” came on the scene. His assaults got bolder until he finally broke into some girls’ apartment. As far as I know, he didn’t harm them physically, but he robbed them of their feeling of safety.
At this time, my husband and I lived in a crappy little apartment near campus with a creepy parking garage, terrible lighting, and a few seedy neighbors. I was getting ready for work one morning and I asked my husband if he would walk me to my car since I was nervous about the parking garage with “The Groper” on the loose. He assured me that I’d be fine. He wasn’t dressed yet, it would be inconvenient, and there was really nothing to worry about after all. Now I don’t want you to hate on my husband, because he’s truly a caring and thoughtful partner, but in this situation he just didn’t understand how scary the situation was for me. I went to my car by myself clutching my keys between my fingers. I was fine. Nothing happened.
But that was the day that I realized just how different my experience of the world was from my husband’s. I lived in a world in which women carry pepper spray and hold their keys between their fingers like Wolverine. We avoid certain areas, especially at night, and try to never walk alone if we can avoid it. Meanwhile, my husband lived in a world in which he could pretty much go where he wanted without ever thinking about it. He’d never bought pepper spray. He’d never checked the backseat of his car for lurking danger. He could walk through a creepy parking garage and not give it a second thought. Since then, he’s learned about the sort of vigilance expected of women and why I act the way I do sometimes.
This sort of blindness is endemic to men in our society, I think. They tend not to see the ways in which women mold their lives around the possibility of sexual assault, and when they do see our precautions they mock us as being paranoid. That is, until a woman is assaulted, and then she was stupid for [fill in the blank.] She should have known better than to get drunk. She should have dressed more modestly. What was she doing walking alone at night? Why was she in such a rough part of town? What did she think was going to happen?
Chanel Miller’s incredible memoir, Know My Name, shines a glaring light on this type of attitude and shows us just how damaging it can be. For many years, I didn’t know Chanel’s name. I knew her as Emily Doe, Brock Turner’s victim. In this book, she courageously steps out, tells her story, and challenges the world to be better.
I can’t tell you how much I loved and hated this book. I hated the things that happened to her. I hated having to read about her assault and how the court system continually revictimized her over the course of years while Brock Turner fought his felony charges. I hated Chanel’s sleepless nights, her isolation, her pain. How her very hometown had been poisoned for her by Turner’s actions. I hated that the trial kept getting postponed, causing Chanel and her family to have to rearrange their schedules time and again to accommodate other people. I hated Stanford’s patronization of her, their too-late attempts to help her.
But I loved Chanel’s fighting spirit, how she was drowning but kept swimming toward the surface anyway. I loved her refusal to be silenced. How, when Stanford insisted she put a “hopeful, affirming” quote on the plaque in the memorial garden, she told them to just forget it. She’d rather say nothing at all than empty platitudes. I loved reading about the love of her family, the support of her friends, the steadiness of her boyfriend. There was beauty in the ugliness, and we’re privileged that she let us see it.
Chanel Miller is a talented writer. Period. She’s not a talented writer “for a rape victim,” or a talented writer “for someone so young.” She’s just good. Her voice is fresh and powerful, her words impactful. I listened to this on audiobook (which she narrated herself! Seriously, I don’t know how she got through it.) and I found myself whispering her words to myself to try to remember them.
Can I share some of my favorite quotes with you? I know I’m gushing, but I just want everyone to read at least some of her words.
“When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?”
“I did not come into existence when he harmed me. She found her voice! I had a voice, he stripped it, left me groping around blind for a bit, but I always had it. I just used it like I never had to use it before. I do not owe him my success, becoming, he did not create me. The only credit Brock can take is for assaulting me, and he could never even admit to that.”
“What we needed to raise in others was this instinct. The ability to recognize, in an instant, right from wrong. The clarity of mind to face it rather than ignore it. I learned that before they had chased Brock, they had checked on me. Masculinity is often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying.”
This book isn’t an easy read. If you don’t have the mental or emotional space to read it right now, that’s okay. But someday, if you’re feeling up to it, I really want you to pick this one up. Especially if you’re a man. Not so you can feel guilty, but so you can understand. So you can see the importance of being one of the Swedish bicyclists who saved Chanel, not the gross Freshman taking advantage of her behind a dumpster. So you can be the elderly man manning the booth to get signatures for the judge’s recall, not the judge who gave a young man six months (actually three, because of good behavior) for sexually assaulting a woman because he was more worried about the cost of accountability for the rapist than about the damage to the victim.
Out of the deepest betrayal Alexandre Dumas would weave imagined worlds that resurrected his father’s dreams and the fantastical age of glory, honor, idealism, and emancipation he championed.
“You see, Father,” he writes in his memoir, as if for himself, “I haven’t forgotten any of the memories that you told me to keep. From the time I could think, your memory has lived in me like a sacred lamp, illuminating everything and everyone you ever touched, even though death has taken it away.” (Reiss, 2012, 323)
Go out and get a copy of this book. Immediately. It was a beyond captivating read. I’m going to go pretty in depth in my discussion of this book, but I promise that I’m just gliding over the surface. It will still be well-worth the read, even after going through this review.
I’ve read several books by the novelist known as Alexandre Dumas père (as opposed to his son, Alexandre Dumas fils, also a novelist and playwright). But I’d known very little about the first Alexandre Dumas, father of Dumas père, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, known (thankfully) simply as Alex Dumas in adulthood. The book The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss brought General Dumas’ vibrant life into complete technicolor.
This is a story of courage. Of bravery and betrayal. Of a France that, for about a decade, was a place where “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” applied to everyone, regardless of skin color. And it’s the story of how one man, Napoleon, set race relations in France back decades. It’s also the story of how France has all but forgotten one of its most glorious sons.
Alexandre Dumas by Olivier Pichat – Musée Alexandre Dumas, Villers-Cotterëts
Alex Dumas was born on Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti), the son of a ne’er do well marquis and his slave concubine. His father eventually sold Alex’s mother and his other siblings because, I don’t know, I guess he was just completely devoid of natural affection. Alex must have been his favorite though, because he pawned him instead of selling him outright, and redeemed him as soon as he could. He brought 14-year-old Alex back with him to France and made him a count. Alex lived the life of a Parisian dandy for a while, but he eventually joined the French army, leaving behind his fancy pants name and title and taking his mother’s last name, Dumas, as his own. He believed strongly in the ideals of the French Revolution, and he would hold fast to those principles throughout his life. He negotiated the shifting sands of Revolutionary France without getting guillotined and fought brilliantly in the military. He rose quickly through the ranks to become a General. Napoleon nicknamed him “the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol” because Alex had managed to single-handedly hold a bridge against an enemy squadron until reinforcements arrived.
However, spoiler alert (except not really because everyone knows this), Napoleon was a major jerk. At one point, Napoleon and Josephine were supposed to be the godparents to Alex’s firstborn son, but by the time little Alexandre Dumas was born, Napoleon and Alex were on the outs. Basically, Napoleon grew to dislike Alex Dumas because Alex truly believed in the principles of the Revolution and wouldn’t get behind Napoleon’s increasingly blatant attempts to seize power. Alex also insulted one of Napoleon’s friends, and apparently the little man knew how to hold a grudge. Napoleon had a big hand in ruining the Alex’s health, his life, and plunging his family into poverty.
As a lifelong fan of his son’s work, it was fascinating to see how the experiences of Alex Dumas are reflected in his son’s novels. Tom Reiss pays particular attention to the similarities between Alex Dumas and The Count of Monte Cristo‘s Edmond Dantès. Dantès and Dumas were both cast into prison for years without a trial. Both were essentially forgotten by those who could have, and should have, helped them in their plight. In fact, it seems that the image of his father, alone and forgotten by his countrymen, seems to have impacted Alexandre Dumas deeply.
To remember a person is the most important thing in the novels of Alexandre Dumas. The worst sin anyone can commit is to forget. The villains of The Count of Monte Cristo do not murder the hero, Edmond Dantès – they have him thrown into a dungeon where he is forgotten by the world. The heroes of Dumas never forget anything or anyone: Dantès has a perfect memory for the details of every field of human knowledge, for the history of the world and for everyone he has encountered in his life. When he confronts them one by one, he finds that the assassins of his identity have forgotten the very fact that he existed, and thus the fact of their crime. (3)
Tom Reiss also delves into the effect of Revolutionary France on People of Color. I was surprised to discover the French had a proud tradition of not having slaves in France itself, even though they depended on a particularly brutal form of slavery to keep their plantations in the Caribbean running. Things got messy when Frenchmen returned to France from the Caribbean with their slaves in tow. Should the slaves be freed once they set foot on French soil, or did the property rights of the Caribbean extend to France? Apparently there was a wave of lawsuits in which slaves brought to France sued for their freedom – and won.
There was certainly still racism. Reiss relates one episode in which young Alex Dumas, upon escorting a woman to the theater, was insulted and humiliated by a white man because of his race. However, Dumas’ race was much less of a hindrance in France than it would have been in America at the time. It didn’t stop Dumas from marrying his sweetheart Marie-Louise, the daughter of an innkeeper in Villers-Cotterêts. I had expected her parents to be against the match, but they were thrilled. Her father always proudly referred to Dumas as “the General,” and he enjoyed a warm relationship with his in-laws throughout his life. Neither did Dumas’ race keep him from a meteoric rise through the military. He was the commander-in-chief of several armies throughout his life, led numerous successful campaigns (sometimes against extraordinary odds), and had the respect and loyalty of his soldiers and fellow officers.
The fact that a Black man could rise so high in the 1790’s was astounding to me. Until reading this book, I’d never given much thought to race relations in other countries. I knew that the United States wasn’t the only country stained by the sin of slavery, but other than some general knowledge about William Wilberforce and the movement to end the slave trade in Great Britain, I was pretty ignorant. I’d certainly had no idea that Black and mixed-race people in France enjoyed, for a time, rights that they wouldn’t see in the U.S. for almost another two hundred years. I suppose I assumed that People of Color received the same treatment abroad as they had in the U.S.
This is absolutely not to absolve France from the horrors inflicted upon Black slaves in Saint-Domingue and their other Caribbean colonies. The conditions of slavery on Caribbean sugar plantations remain some of the most barbarous acts of cruelty man has ever inflicted on man. However, before reading this book I was less critical of American slave owners than I should have been.
When I reflected on the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson as he penned the words, “all men are created equal,” I think I gave him a bit of a pass because I believed that he was simply a product of his time and that most people in the Western world treated slavery as a matter-of-course. I considered Jefferson, Washington, and other slave-owning Founding Fathers to be “products of their time.” Well, it turns out that people in their time were well-aware that slavery was an abomination, and that the choice to continue the system was a simple matter of putting money over morals. Not only that, but while even free Blacks in America were being trampled on and degraded, a Black man in France could become the commander-in-chief of an army.
But then why did France not remain on that trajectory? Because Napoleon is the worst. That’s why. When he took over, he knew that France couldn’t remain competitive economically if it didn’t have the income generated by slavery in the Caribbean colonies, so he rolled back a ton of the progress that had been made in Saint-Domingue during the Revolution, and he severely restricted the rights of People of Color in France. When General Alex Dumas was released from prison in Italy, he returned home to a country that had largely forgotten him and which, in just a few short years, had decided that he was less than. He had to practically beg his best friend to be the godfather to his son, Alexandre, and even then his friend couldn’t actually be bothered to show up for the ceremony itself. General Dumas was not awarded the Legion of Honor, even though all of his fellow generals got the award. Nor did he receive his military pension, back pay for his time in a foreign prison, or a new commission in the army. France, it seemed, had no further use for the general. He died a broken, impoverished man in 1806.
In the early 1900’s, a statue was finally erected to honor General Dumas. It stood next to the statues of his son and grandson. But even then it remained covered for months because French bureaucrats couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to inaugurate it. The Nazis eventually destroyed it.
By Unknown author – Late 19th-century picture of a statue of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas that was destroyed by the Germans during the occupation of Paris, Public Domain
Several years ago, France did make an attempt to honor General Dumas. Here’s the result:
While I think we could agree it’s a powerful statue in its own right, I don’t think anyone looking at it would immediately associate it with Dumas. Said Tom Reiss:
In the race politics of twenty-first century France, the statue of General Dumas had morphed into a symbolic monument to all the victims of French colonial slavery, in the form of these mega-shackles. A military marching band played the “Marseillaise” in Alex Dumas’s honor, followed by an Afro-Caribbean drumming group, then by the mayor and the activist, who both made impassioned speeches. Then everyone went home.
There is still no monument in France commemorating the life of General Alexandre Dumas. (330)
Happy Reading!
Reference List
Reiss, T. (2012). The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (1st ed.). New York, NY: Crown.
The interview that first brought this book to my attention.
Several months ago, I was mindlessly browsing through YouTube clips, you know, as one does, when I came across this short interview between The Daily Show host Trevor Noah and Alicia Menendez, author of The Likeability Trap. I found Menendez’s talking points fascinating because she put into words something that I’d always been subconsciously aware of but had never been able to articulate. That is, that women in leadership often suffer from what she calls the “Goldilocks Conundrum.” They are either seen as “too much” or “not enough.”
I put this book on my To Read list, and forgot about it for a while. I found it again as I was browsing through my library’s online app, and I immediately put it on hold. I’d gotten a few other books as well, and it took me a bit to be in the mood for this particular brand of nonfiction. Let this serve as a PSA, by the way, that it’s okay to wait until you’re in the mood for something before you pick it up. I’ve found that I enjoy books more when I’m actually in the mood for that genre or topic. If I try to force myself to read something “intellectual” because I feel like I should, when I really just want to read what I lovingly call “cotton candy”, it feels like a slog and I don’t end up liking the book. I’ve learned that I’ll eventually be in the mood, so I wait until then, and I enjoy my reading a whole lot more.
So, when I was ready to dive into The Likeability Trap, I really liked it! Basically, her thesis is that women in the workplace and in the public eye are often passed over for leadership positions because they are either warm and well-liked, but seen as less competent, or they’re perceived as competent and effective, but no one likes them. People seem to believe in this dichotomy, that a woman can be likable or she can be successful, but not both. At its core, however, this is a false dichotomy, and Menendez points out ways in which corporate and political culture needs to change to accommodate different styles of leadership. A woman can be warm and tough. She can be competent and caring. But only if she’s allowed to be.
She also gives some ideas for how women can advocate for themselves more effectively while we wait for leadership culture to catch up with the times. I wish she’d fleshed this section out more. Her suggestions were good, but I wanted more of them.
If you’re a woman who doesn’t work in this type of environment, or even if you’re not a woman at all, I think there are still some valuable insights for you here. Who among us hasn’t felt like they needed to change themselves to be more likable? To smooth out their edges to glide more easily along with others? That’s not to say that we should go around making ourselves obnoxious or abrasive. It’s just that some of us (including yours truly) lose a lot of time and energy worrying about whether other people like us, and it’s time that could be better spent developing skills, engaging in work worth doing, and enjoying relationships with those who accept us for who we are, warts and all. Think of the mental space we could save if we gave ourselves permission to simply be who we are!
It’s not as though this book solved all of my issues and made me completely indifferent to how others perceive me. But it did give me some things to think about, and a few things that I will try to implement in my own life as I strive to be more fully myself. If that appeals to you, then consider picking this book up.
Nonfiction tends to get a bad rap. Some people are intimidated by it and think that they’re not going to be “smart enough” (whatever that means) to appreciate it. Others may think that it’s going to be dry, and they’d rather stick with fiction. Well I am here in defense of nonfiction.
It’s wonderful! Sure, some of it is dry and inaccessible, and if you pick up a book and you find that you’re not getting anything out of it, I give you permission to put it down. (A post about that coming later.) But I think that you’ll find a lot more nonfiction books that are totally fascinating. What have you always wanted to know more about? I guarantee there’s a book about it.
I once decided, kind of randomly, that I wanted to learn about octopuses. I’d learned a little bit about them, I thought they were interesting, and I wanted to know more. My search led me to a fantastic book by Peter Godfrey-Smith called Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. It sounds formidable, right? I’m here to tell you that I loved that book. I satisfied my curiosity, learned a lot more about octopuses, and enjoyed a well-written book. Think of what I would have missed if I’d shied away from nonfiction!
Another time, I picked up a book about dolphins. That book, for whatever reason, didn’t click with me, and it’s totally okay. I’ll find another book about dolphins. But the point is, I’ll keep looking.
So my challenge to you, if you’re not already a reader of nonfiction, is to give it a try. Think of a topic you’d like to learn more about, do a little digging to find a book that others recommend, and dig in! Or, if you’re looking to get your nonfiction feet wet, try one of these five books below. I recommend them all.
1.John Adams, David McCullough
Anyone who’s seen Hamilton knows that John Adams was the butt of several jokes. They did him dirty. History has mostly forgotten him, but I wish that everyone would learn about this amazing man and his equally amazing wife.
John and Abigail Adams were a power couple in the truest sense. They weren’t perfect, but they spent their lives doing and being good. In a time when real goodness and integrity seem to matter not at all, it’s refreshing to read about someone who stood fast to his principles. I’m so grateful to David McCullough for bringing our second president back to life and giving him the recognition that he so rightly deserves, but seldom receives. This book is fascinating, and you should read it.
2.Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond
Evicted is an important book, and one I think everyone should read. The author, Matthew Desmond, lived in a few different low-income neighborhoods in Milwaukee for a year. He writes about the people he met, their circumstances, and how difficult it is to keep a roof over your head when the cost of even bad housing outstrips your income.
What I like about the author’s take on this is that he doesn’t paint anyone as the bad guy. Landlords are given the benefit of the doubt, as are the tenants. He recognizes the right of landlords to collect rent and make a profit, but he also recognizes the impact that eviction has on tenants. I also appreciated that he suggested, and made a rather compelling argument for, a solution to homelessness and substandard housing. If you read one book this year, it should be this one.
Note: The author does use some strong language, usually when quoting someone. I just want you to be aware if that’s not your thing.
3.Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them, Jennifer Wright
I first read this book in May of 2019, and I had no idea how relevant it would soon become to my lived experience of a pandemic. One of the things that stuck out to me, even at the time, was Wright’s insistence that we should elect our leaders based on how we think they’d handle a crisis, not based on who we’d rather go bowling with. I’m not quoting directly, but she said something to the effect of, “Who do you want in charge when the bodies start to pile up in the streets?”
I’d heard of most of these plagues before and thought I knew enough about them, but I was astonished at what I did not know. And moreover, I was touched, many times, by the author’s suggestion that we all be a little kinder. It soothes my inner Hufflepuff when I read about people coming together to support and uplift one another and fight a common enemy.
Get Well Soon was informative and reminded me that we don’t need to be geniuses to make a difference. We just have to give a darn about our fellow man.
Also, Jennifer Wright is hilarious. I want to be her friend.
Note: Strong language here too. Not a ton, but it’s there occasionally. Do with that what you will.
4.Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, Dee Brown
It took me a really long time to finish this, not because it was uninteresting or poorly written, but because it was so emotionally draining. At one point my husband said “It’s like they’re telling the same story over and over again. Like the author is just repeating himself.” It seemed like that because the same scenario played out again and again along the various tribes. Because of this, a lot of the stories are jumbled in my head. It was hard to keep it all straight. But my overall feeling at the end of this book was a deep sadness and an anger that these things were so glossed over in my history classes. I knew that the Native Americans had been poorly treated and tricked into giving up their land. I didn’t realize just how despicably the US government had acted.
Throughout my life, I have sometimes heard people speak unkindly about Native Americans. There are a lot of prejudicial views about them and I think some people feel as though Native Americans have no real reason to complain or feel resentment. I don’t think I really felt one way or the other about it before reading this book. Now, I really want to shout from the rooftops just how justified those feelings of resentment are. This book helped me understand, just a little bit better, the feelings that Native Americans have about things that are still happening to them, like the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, or people dressing up in headdresses at music festivals. I get it now.
I really recommend this book. If it feels like a slog, push through it. It’s worth it.
5.King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild
“An ancient English law made it illegal to witness a murder or discover a corpse and not raise a human cry. But we live in a world of corpses, and only about some of them is there a human cry.” – Adam Hochschild
When I read King Leopold’s Ghost, I was appalled not just by the atrocities committed against the Congolese people, but also by how much I didn’t already know about it. Before reading this book, my only exposure to this terrible part of history was reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in high school. I didn’t pay enough attention to that book at the time, and I’ll be rereading it.
I was struck by King Leopold’s cruelty and avarice, but also by his savvy. He convinced the whole world, for years, that his barbaric for-profit tyranny in the Congo was actually benevolent philanthropy. That’s Class A villainy. I was also inspired by the heroic efforts of E.D. Morel, Roger Casement, William Shepherd, George Washington Williams, Alice Harris, etc. These people basically started the entire concept of a campaign for human rights.
This book made me reflect on the horrific things that are still going on in the world, which things become newsworthy, which things spark outrage, and why. Why is it that American schoolchildren learn all about Germany’s atrocities in the Holocaust, but know nothing about it’s genocide of the Herero people in Africa? Why is it that many Belgians today have very little idea of the suffering their nation caused in the Congo? I think we know why, and it’s time that changed. Friends, read this book.
BonusQuiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain
Sorry, I couldn’t recommend just five. So you get a bonus recommendation!
Quiet was highly validating for me. I’ve lived my whole life feeling somewhat uncomfortable in my own skin in social situations. Actually, let me amend that statement. I’ve felt uncomfortable in large groups. Anyone who knows me knows I love a small group conversation. I can talk on the phone to my best friends for hours. But send me to a party or drag me to a school dance and I’m instantly off balance. In Quiet, Susan Cain became the first person in my entire life to tell me that that’s okay. She framed my introversion as a strength, as opposed to something that needs to be overcome. I’m grateful. So if you’re an introvert, I’d suggest giving this a read. And if you’re an extrovert, maybe this will help you understand your introverted friends and family a bit better.
Have you read any of these books? If so, what did you think of them? Tell me in the comments! And please let me know if you have a favorite nonfiction book to recommend. I’d love to hear about the books that you love.
