Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

memoir

“The Newcomers” by Helen Thorpe

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book coverSubtitle: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom

Recommended to me by: My friend Linda K.

Helen Thorpe spent a year and a half observing and helping in an ELA (English Language Acquisition) class at South High School in Denver Colorado. Her journalist’s eye is both clear and compassionate as she watches a classroom of newly arrived teen refugees from around the world learn English basics.

I remember when ELA used to be called ESL, English as a Second Language, but it is an apt name change since some of these kids already speak three or four languages, and maybe read and write in three or four alphabets.

Both the school as a whole and the beginning ELA teacher Mr. Williams in particular are dedicated to welcoming kids from around the world and helping them succeed.

I was worried that the book would focus on the tragedy of young refugee lives, or look down on the kids, but the book celebrates them as strong, determined, resilient young people. Difficult circumstances and traumatic stories are described with a light touch, clearly and with compassion.

Helen Thorpe gets to know the kids by interacting with them in class (with the help of Google translate on their phones), interviewing them with hired translators, and visiting a few of them at home to talk with their parents. She also learns about the history of war and oppression that has caused these families (and some unaccompanied minors) to flee their homes, sometimes multiple times.

After the school year, she visits the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is still in crisis, and meets some relatives of one of the families she got to know.

The book was written in 2016. It shows both the dedication of the people who help refugees get oriented and settled in the US, and the worsening effect of Trump’s rhetoric on students who are harassed on city buses for wearing hijab or having dark skin. It ends with Trump’s election and the shock of knowing that refugees need help more than ever, but not having an incoming caseload because of Trump’s Muslim Ban.

Highly recommended! Learn about what refugees’ lives are really like, and how hard the lucky ones who make it into the US work to become established here, while enjoying getting to know this group of teens and the people around them.

Population Mountains – a way to visualize the population and surroundings of some of the cities the immigrants came from (not affiliated with the book).

Available at bookshop.org.

“Belonging” by Toko-pa Turner

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Subtitle: Remembering Ourselves Home

The gorgeous, inclusive cover and introduction/dedication to this book grabbed me.

For the rebels and the misfits, the black sheep and the outsiders. For the refugees, the orphans, the scapegoats, and the weirdos. For the uprooted, the abandoned, the shunned and invisible ones.

May you recognize with increasing vividness that you know what you know.

May you give up your allegiances to self-doubt, meekness, and hesitation.

May you be willing to be unlikeable, and in the process be utterly loved.

May you be impervious to the wrongful projections of others, and may you deliver your disagreements with precision and grace.

May you see, with the consummate clarity of nature moving through you, that your voice is not only necessary, but desperately needed to sing us out of this muddle.

May you feel shored up, supported, entwined, and reassured as you offer yourself and your gifts to the world.

May you know for certain that even as you stand by yourself, you are not alone.

With poetic language and myths and Jungian dreamwork, Toko-pa Turner tells her own story of not-belonging and weaves a wider net of strategies to belong better. There is an Outcast archetype who can visit our dreams, and whose patterns we can follow. We can open our hearts to our own pain, and be willing to be more vulnerable (“woundable”) to others.

Her Black Sheep Gospel resonated for me. Adopt your rejected qualities. Venerate your too-muchness. Send out your signals of originality. Go it alone until you are alone with others.

In a lot of this book, I heard, “Try harder! Work harder! Get out of your own way!” While that may be valid advice, I’ve tried a lot of things it advises. It does also touch on fallow time and letting go of connections that no longer work well.

The author is writing from a place when things are going well for her, so she describes her steps in that direction and then prescribes them for others. While I’m glad she landed where she did, I’m not sure it’s so deterministic as all that. She talks both about divine guidance and about taking action on your own behalf. Yes, when things go well, it looks like a mix of those things led you there. A mix of those things can lead people to any number of places, not all of them positive.

The book was published in 2017, so she does acknowledge increasing environmental and political disaster throughout the book. She advises living closer to the earth, returning to more indigenous ways, without noting that all 7.6 billion of us can’t do that at the same time.

Her description of the problem resonated with me. Her solutions, not as much. Recommended especially if you already do dreamwork.

Available at bookshop.org.

“So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo

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Recommended to me by: Ijeoma Oluo’s twitter feed

Ijeomo Oluo is a writer, speaker, and editor at large at The Establishment. She is also a queer Black woman, the single mother of two boys. Her writing is kind, direct, and clear, with practical suggestions on how to talk about race and dismantle racism.

Through both personal anecdotes and statistics from research studies, she lays out what racism is, how it affects people of color, and what we can do about it.

First, she addresses some of the objections white people have to discussing racism at all. Just because white people don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. No, it’s not just about class. Yes, race affects how people are treated in a long-term targeted effort to use Black people’s labor and keep them from competing with white people. Racism is prejudice + systemic power. Calling a white person a cracker does not have the far reaching effects and historic resonance that calling a Black person the n-word does.

With care and clarity, she addresses privilege, intersectionality (don’t leave more marginalized groups behind), police brutality, affirmative action (yes it works, no it’s not a panacea, and sadly it’s being dismantled), school-to-prison pipeline (all kids deserve to be seen in a positive light), cultural appropriation, using the n-word (if you’re not Black, DON’T), touching Black people’s hair (DON’T), microaggressions (when and how to address them), model minorities (still racism), and taking action.

Carefully, at the end of the book, she addresses that we’re all racist (yes me, yes you) because we are all immersed in a racist culture. We can do our best to become aware of our racist thoughts and habits and change them. We are better prepared to have conversations about race with our friends of all races with Ijeoma Oluo’s explanations and detailed advice.

Highly recommended as a no-nonsense, compassionate guide to what white people need to know about racism. I imagine Black people would find it validating as well. Please read this book!

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Deepest Well” by Nadine Burke Harris, MD

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Subtitle: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity

Recommended to me by: listening to Nadine Burke Harris’s TED talk

This is a skillful blend of memoir and scientific information about the effects of trauma, presented for the layperson. Nadine Burke Harris shares how as a newly licensed doctor she founded a pediatric clinic in Bayview, the poorest section of San Francisco with the most at-risk patients, and how that clinic came to focus on trauma as the underlying cause of a lot of medical issues, especially for children. Later she founded the Center for Youth Wellness, also in San Francisco.

She does not dwell on the effects of being a Black woman, but she does not skip over them either. She notes the benefits of networking with other women and offering each other support. While marginalization and racism contribute to people’s load of trauma, trauma is not only a “poor, Black issue.” Privilege does not exempt people from trauma or its long-term effects.

There is a strong correlation between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and health issues caused by the body’s ongoing stress response. The stress response can be buffered by strong relationships with caring adults.

Nadine Burke Harris developed a screening tool that asks a parent about the number of a child’s ACEs, but does not ask them to disclose the stories involved. She advocates for this screening tool to be used everywhere, just as infants are now universally screened for hypothyroid and jaundice.

The treatments for a body dysregulated by trauma are sleep, mental health, healthy relationships, exercise, nutrition, and meditation. Schools that help children regulate their nervous systems rather than punishing them for “acting out” enjoy both a more peaceful atmosphere and higher success rates by every measure.

(While screening is catching on in medical offices, I hear from nurses that treatment is catching on less quickly, leaving them in the frustrating position of knowing that people’s issues are caused by trauma, but not having the time and resources to help them.)

Highly recommended both for the information about the effects on trauma, and the memoir of a groundbreaking scientist and doctor who is radically improving how we care for both children and adults affected by trauma.

Available at bookshop.org.

“A Safe Place for Pearl” by Ani Rose Whaleswan

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Recommended to me by: Ani Rose Whaleswan. I’ve known the author for a long time online, and I contributed an essay to her collection We Have Come Far.

“A Safe Place for Pearl” is a gentle offering of artwork, dreams, and narration, full of hope and inner resources. When there is no human support available, Nature and Spirit step in to support a child going through hard times. (The hard times are not described.) The remembering adult is supported as well. This book powerfully answers the question, “How did you survive? What helped you through?”

Recommended as support for looking inside and trusting what supports you, even if it is not visible to others.

Available at Amazon.

“Lost Connections” by Johann Hari

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Subtitle: Uncovering the real causes of depression – and the unexpected solutions

Recommended to me by: Alice

This is a carefully researched, elegantly written book about depression and its causes. Hari interviewed people doing basic research on depression, its causes, and its solutions. He also shares about his own experiences with depression and meds that only worked temporarily.

Along the way, the idea that depression is caused by a lack of serotonin is thoroughly debunked. Apparently scientists never thought so, but it’s convenient for marketing anti-depressant drugs. Which, by the way, studies show only work for a minority of people to alleviate a small amount of depression. When they work long-term, it is largely through the placebo effect. Which is great as far as it goes, but there are serious “side-effects” (main effects) caused by these drugs.

Careful studies show that depression is not an internal malfunction. Depression is a sane response to external circumstances. Hari explores 9 causes. He notes that there are probably others, and that one of them (childhood trauma) covers a lot of ground.

Depression is caused by disconnection from:

  • meaningful work
  • other people
  • meaningful values (as opposed to pursuing material wealth)
  • [ourselves because of] childhood trauma
  • status and respect
  • the natural world
  • a hopeful or secure future

The last two causes are genes and changes in the brain. Genes can predispose us to depression, but external events trigger it. Changes in the brain happen in response to those external circumstances, and can change back when circumstances improve.

He explores solutions that have helped people reconnect. We can find anti-depressants that are social solutions rather than chemicals taken to “fix” individuals.

  • People coming together in community, extending their sense of home not just to four walls, but to the people around them.
  • Social prescribing: doctors who prescribe group projects when needed, as well as surgery and drugs when those are appropriate to the patient’s problem.
  • Co-ops and other ways to find meaning at work.
  • Exploring meaningful values and getting away from advertising that promotes feelings of inadequacy to make people buy things.
  • Sympathetic joy: shifting from envy and competition to sympathetic joy and cooperation. Also meditation and reconnecting with the self.
  • Overcoming trauma. This is a very short section for a very big topic. Hari mentions overcoming shame by speaking what happened and being heard non-judgmentally.
  • Restoring the future. This is another huge topic. Universal basic income is mentioned as a good start.

The only downside I noticed in this book is some concern-trolling about the “serious medical crisis” of obesity. It was jarring in a book where I didn’t notice other overtly oppressive language. He interviews enough women scientists that I didn’t feel the need to go back and count how many women and men there were. I don’t know how many were people of color.

Highly recommended for everyone who is experiencing our highly disconnected, advertising-saturated, chronically insecure society.

Available at bookshop.org.