Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

“Let’s Take the Long Way Home” by Gail Caldwell

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Subtitle: a memoir of friendship

Recommended to me by: Courtney on the Feministing blog

I loved this book. I cried at the beginning, smiled in the middle, and sighed at the end.

Gail Caldwell describes first her grief at her best friend Caroline Knapp’s death, and then their daily joys together while she was alive. They trained their big dogs together, rowed on the Charles River together, and most of all, talked about everything, including both their writing careers, and both their past struggles with alcohol.

The writing is compressed, detailed, elegant, meandering across years within a page. Trying to find a representative sample, I ended up re-reading large swathes of the book. Here, I opened the book at random:

“I’m afraid that no one will ever love me again.” He leaned toward me with a smile of great kindness on his face, his hands clasped in front of him. “Don’t you know?” he asked gently. “The flaw is the thing we love.”

This book is about intimacy, connection, grief, and love. Go read it.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Covering: the Hidden Assault on our Civil Rights” by Kenji Yoshino

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Recommended to me by: Sanguinity in the 50books_poc community

After several books put aside because I just couldn’t get through them, this book is a delight – both lyrical and informative, both personally detailed and globally applicable.

Kenji Yoshino is a gay Japanese-American man, currently working as a professor of law at Yale Law School. In the first third of the book, he describes his journey from covering his gayness as a youth to defending the civil rights of gay people in court as an out gay lawyer. He also describes his parents’ efforts to make him “100% American in America, and 100% Japanese in Japan.”

The rest of the book formally addresses covering and civil rights.  Covering is concealing evidence of a minority trait by adopting majority appearance, affiliation, activism, and/or association. For example, gay people cover by not holding hands in public, and not displaying photos of a partner at work.

Majority culture continues to discriminate against minorities by demanding covering, even after civil rights have been successfully won. For example, gay parents can lose custody of their children in many states for “flaunting” their gayness by having a same-sex partner, where a heterosexual parent would not be penalized for having a new partner.

The book ends with a call for all of us to take civil rights beyond the courts by celebrating diversity in others, and taking the risk to cover less ourselves.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Girl Who Fell from the Sky” by Heidi W. Durrow

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I wanted to love and learn from this book, but there were too many jarring inconsistencies with my own knowledge.

As a child, Rachel falls 9 stories and her only lasting injury is to the hearing in one ear. With everything I know about physical and psychological trauma, I wanted at least one sentence explaining that one. Even her hearing disability is only mentioned in passing, as if an editor said, “Hey, whatever happened to that?”

So much trauma and loss, some of it arbitrary and unlikely, and no one in the book grieves. Some of the characters drink, but no one talks about grieving.

I live very near where this book is set, walking distance from Irving Park and its tennis courts, biking distance from Laurelhurst park and its duck pond.

Rachel’s grandma neglects her garden, and the only green is under the bird feeder from fallen seeds. This is Portland. Some plants may die, but any unattended earth is guaranteed to be overrun by verdant weeds.

I wanted to learn about being biracial in Portland in 1982, about racism and anti-racism and one girl’s experience. I wish I trusted the information I received.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Writing the Other” by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward

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Subtitle: A Practical Approach

Recommended to me by: reading Nisi Shawl’s other book “Filter House”

I felt so warmed and included by Nisi Shawl’s writing in “Filter House” that I was eager to read “Writing the Other.” I wanted both to learn how to write inclusively, and to experience more of that included feeling.

This short book includes three essays and an excerpt from Nisi Shawl’s forthcoming novel. The first essay’s full title is “Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction.” Aimed specifically at fiction writers from mainstream culture, this essay was informative but did not feel inclusive itself.

The acronym ROAARS covers differences that majority culture recognizes as significant: Race/(sexual) Orientation/Ability/Age/Religion/Sex. Class is mentioned as a difference but intentionally excluded from the acronym.

White privilege, and more generally unmarked privilege, are the hidden, taken-for-granted benefits that come from matching majority culture on the ROAARS characteristics. For example, white heterosexual couples do not worry about being insulted if they publicly hold hands, nor do they notice that they’re not worrying, unless one of them has previously been in a homosexual or mixed-race relationship.

Parallax is the writerly art of showing the world from the character’s point of view, rather than the writer’s.

Both positive and negative examples of inclusive writing are cited. Writing exercises are given for practice.

What I noticed most about the writing exercises is how they didn’t fit me. They assumed a familiarity with writing character vignettes that I don’t have. They assumed a familiarity with majority culture that I also don’t have. When asked to choose a celebrity to write about, I chose a well-known Balkan dance teacher, but the second part of the exercise assumed I had chosen an American celebrity. Several of the exercises required a writing partner.

The most illuminating moment came from an exercise I couldn’t bring myself to do, even though there weren’t any obvious impediments. It asked me to write about myself as if I had one major difference in my ROAARS characteristics. I found myself unwilling to relinquish any of my majority or minority truths, especially the ones that are indeterminate or unclear.

I can’t tell if I’m not advanced enough to benefit from this book, or if I already knew most of the multi-cultural, inclusive lessons it is teaching. Perhaps a mix of both.

“The Girl with the Silver Eyes” by Willo Davis Roberts

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Recommended to me by: an adult who loved it as a child

This book was published in 1980, back when I was in its target age group of pre-teen kids. I don’t know what I would have thought of it then, but it didn’t go over well in 2010.

Katie, age 9, has silver eyes, telekinetic powers, and an unchildlike self-control. The book does some exploration of what it’s like to be different and lonely. Mainly, though, Katie uses her powers to sneakily hurt bullies. In other words, she behaves like a bully herself. This is neither acknowledged nor discussed in the book.

One chapter was so offensive it knocked me right out of the story. Katie got rid of one babysitter, and her next babysitter is “grossly fat” and the author indulges in every possible negative stereotype about fat people. In addition to being blatantly offensive, it’s bad writing – it reads as if she needed an extra chapter and pulled out a cardboard stereotype instead of doing the work of creating a nuanced secondary character.

I would not recommend this book to readers of any age.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Parenting, A Field Guide” by Dr. Patricia Nan Anderson

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Subtitle: 150 Key Ideas for Raising Successful, Well-Adjusted And Confident Kids

Recommended to me by: Patricia Anderson’s “I Need a Nudge” author coaching

I have benefited from Patricia Anderson’s you-can-do-it-and-here’s-how author coaching for a year now. I’ve been curious about her own book, which she got written and out to readers in 5 months.

The book starts out asking readers to articulate their own values around parenting, and reminds us to keep our eyes on the eventual goal: raising children who are “healthy, successful, likeable, loveable, well-adjusted, and capable.” Parts of the book continue this values-centered theme, and parts are more clearly based on the author’s individual values.

Each topic is addressed briefly in one or two pages, with a related exercise or additional information on the facing page. It’s meant to be read in short bursts, between child-related interruptions. A wide variety of topics are covered, from brain development to sex ed to siblings of a special-needs child.

I would have liked to see more emphasis on diversity. There was one two-page section on gay children, one two-page section on diversity and inclusiveness, and no mention of trans kids.

Overall, the book raises a lot of issues to consider around parenting, and reassures parents that they are not alone in tackling those issues.

Available at bookshop.org.