Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

“Indie Publishing” edited by Ellen Lupton

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Subtitle: How to Design and Produce Your Own Book

Recommended to me by: Found on the library shelf in the self-publishing section, and renewed several times.

This is a quirky book with practical, detailed advice about self-publishing and designing books. I appreciate the information on choosing a page layout and some good typographical options.

I’m less enthusiastic about their choices for book examples, which tend toward the erotic. They also mention a specific print on demand company often enough to make me wonder if they get a kickback. Still, well worth reading for the design advice.

Available at biblio.com.

“The Female Man” by Joanna Russ

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Recommended to me by: wordweaverlynn

Joanna Russ died recently, and many people have been posting tributes to her visionary feminist writing. I had heard of her, but not read her books. Someone linked to her short story When It Changed (full version at the link) and I wanted to read more.

Reading “The Female Man” is a bumpy ride. One always starts a book disoriented, looking for cues about what governs the setting and characters. All the way through, I was still looking for cues, still waiting to get oriented.

I loved the descriptions of Whileaway, a planet with only women. I could quibble with some of the authorial choices (everyone has babies around age 30, all children are taken from their mothers at age 5), but the relief of a society without patriarchy overrides all that.

I winced at the descriptions of the world of typical (middle class, white) women in the 1960’s. Again, I could quibble with some of the details, but there is too much painful truth there, and too much of it is still true.

“But I don’t like it,” she said simply. You’re not supposed to do that. On Whileaway, perhaps, but not here. […]

He takes her hand and closes her fingers around the glass, shaking his forefinger at her playfully: “Come on now, I can’t believe that; you made me get it for you—”

The third setting, a dystopia divided into Manland and Womanland, left me cold. I nearly stopped reading because of the sudden violence and contempt for gender-variance.

The book starts with a quote from “The Politics of Experience” about the layers of invalidation involved in the dynamics between men and women. With courage and clarity, this book cuts through all that. “Here is my truth! Here is my experience!”   I can see how it would be a lifeline to women drowning in invalidation.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Whipping Girl” by Julia Serano

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Subtitle: A transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity

An illuminating book. Julia Serano describes her own experience as a transsexual woman, including the identities she explored before deciding to transition, and the internal and external changes she noticed during transition. She uses her experiences, carefully supported with research, to call out some of our societal assumptions and prejudices about gender.

She proposes that we all have a subconscious sex from birth. For people in whom it matches the body’s sex, it remains unnoticed, and leads to the assumption that it matches for everyone. For people in whom it does not match, it causes ongoing deep pain and sadness. Changing the body’s sex and gender presentation relieves the pain and leads to a sense of rightness instead.

She argues that rather than being marginal in feminism, the treatment of transsexual women is a central issue. Transsexual women are discriminated against because they have chosen to move from a societally more valued class – men – to a societally less valued class – women. She sees transsexual men receiving much less discrimination because they don’t violate the societal preference for maleness.

She notes in the introduction that her biggest challenge in writing the book is addressing several audiences: transsexual people, non-trans academics in women’s, queer, and gender studies, and those who want to learn more about transsexuality and feminism. I fall in the third camp, and found myself less engaged by detailed discussions of academic framing of transsexuality, or interpersonal politics in LGBT groups.

At the same time, I’m glad the material was there. Now I’m aware that many academics view gender as entirely socially constructed, and that transsexuals tend to be marginalized in LGBT groups because many of them express gender in a more stereotypically masculine or feminine way.

She argues that it is femininity itself which is devalued and under attack, being equated with weakness, passivity, and artifice. I see her point that she became more connected with her emotions when she started taking estrogen, and that emotions are devalued in our culture. I also see that women (and men) can enjoy dressing up to please themselves.

At the same time, I struggled with her assertion that femininity is natural. Many attributes I associate with femininity (rather than femaleness) are artificial and mandated by the patriarchy: dieting, makeup to appear youthful, hair sculpted with toxic chemicals, high heels, uncomfortable movement-impairing clothing, etc.

I agree that we need to accept each person’s gender expression as equally valuable, while also working to remove patriarchal manipulations of the expression of femininity (and masculinity as well).

Highly recommended to anyone interested in better understanding feminism, sexism, and transsexuality.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Golden Key” by George MacDonald

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Illustrated by: Maurice Sendak

Recommended to me by: rushthatspeaks

In the afterword, written December 1966, W. H. Auden says, “To me, George MacDonald’s most extraordinary, and precious, gift is his ability, in all his stories, to create an atmosphere of goodness about which there is nothing phony or moralistic.”

My experience of this brief book was the opposite. I saw goodness equated with whiteness several times, and also with beauty. I saw a moralistic and wholly unnecessary aside about cleanliness.

In the (lovely) illustrations, the girl is always leaning on someone or being led or rescued, where the boy is alone or leading or standing sturdily as he talks with someone. The only exception is the last image, where she sits waiting and he approaches.

For all of that it is a whimsical, lilting story, quickly read, with deeper themes of long seeking, endurance, and transformation.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Undefended Love” by Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyons

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A thought-provoking book, more profound than I expected. Refreshingly, both same-gender and opposite-gender couples are used for the examples.

The authors warn several times to be sure a relationship is not abusive before using it as a crucible for personal work. This is a warning that’s missing from most relationship books I’ve read, which instead blithely assure the reader that one-sided work can fix everything.

The requirements for a close relationship are covered first: Reciprocity, Entitlement, Approval, Consensus, and Trustworthiness, conveniently abbreviated REACT.

In an non-abusive, close relationship, conflicts can help the partners look inward to discover their “Cracked Identity,” pass through the agony of the Black Hole instead of defending against it, and emerge into peaceful, joyous essence on the other side.

This is similar to the process of accepting and integrating past trauma, so that all made sense to me.

I was less comfortable with the hierarchy of needs, wants, desires, preferences, and no preferences. It’s too easy for me to pretend my needs aren’t important when I know it’s “more enlightened” not to have preferences at all. At the same time, I know that an issue will be much less urgent for me if I have processed past associations with it.

Despite the much-needed warnings about abusive relationships, I am still uneasy about the power dynamics that aren’t addressed. Calmly witnessing someone’s deep personal work takes training, and it’s not necessarily healthy for couples to act as therapists for each other. Also, saying that it’s better to act from essence than from personality is yet another judgment of ourselves and each other.

That said, the more people healing their inner wounds, the better!

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Bards of Bone Plain” by Patricia McKillip

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As much as I loved some of McKillip’s early books, I think I’ve aged out of her target audience. This book seemed put together from bits and pieces of past books, with many cookie-cutter characters and an emphasis on the young adults falling in love and pairing off at the end – heterosexually, of course.

The steampunk trams and cars are new. The princess who goes on archaeological digs is new. Harpists, towers, plains, schools, robes, riddles, shape-shifting, and power tied to the land are all familiar themes, and they seem tossed in piecemeal rather than woven together as they were in the Riddle-Master series.

Several beautiful, musically talented women characters are almost indistinguishable, and they’re all responsible for cooking on top of their other duties. The queen is solely focused on her archaeologist daughter’s “improper” clothing, and an older princess is solely focused on her upcoming wedding.

The book is interesting enough to read to the end, and has some themes around failure and success worth thinking about, but overall I was disappointed.

Available at bookshop.org.