Dear World: A Syrian Girl's Story of War and Plea for Peace by Bana Alabed

Dear World: A Syrian Girl's Story of War and Plea for Peace by Bana Alabed
My Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Finished Reading: August 17, 2018
Format: Book
Favorite Quote(s):

"There are no children in Syria. You all were forced to become adults - to understand killing, to experience fear and starvation and pain in a way that all children should be shielded from. But that was a luxury we did not have. Something changed for me too when Yasmin died and when the siege overtook us in those brutal months after. Along with being terrified and heartbroken, I became angry - angry that we had to endure this while the world did nothing. Angry that I was helpless to protect my children. Angry that there is a world where bombing and killing children is tolerated. Angry that I taught you to be generous and fair and kind and then offered you a world that was anything but. As things became more desperate so too did your questions: Do people know this is happening to us? Does anyone care? Why do they keep bombing us? Why won't they stop? Why can't we have peace? I was angry most of all that I didn't have answers to those questions. And that you, a seven-year-old girl, had to ask them."

Review:
This is an incredibly important read about the true life experience of a girl who survived the war in Syria. I had not heard about Bana while she was tweeting about the siege and I didn't learn of her until she was safe. At the Oscars in 2018, Andra Day and Common sang Stand Up for Something. In the background spotlights came on to show 10 people. I could recognize 5 of them as my heroes, but there was a little girl that I did not know. I looked her up and it was Bana al-Abed, who tweeted through the Syrian war and had just published a book about her experiences. I bought the book that night. It's taken me several months to pick it up. It's so easy to ignore injustice, like the book I ignored on my shelf for 5 months. That's why you need to read this book. It will shake you awake to the experience that you should know about and care about. I don't pretend to understand the Syrian war. I do understand that children should be safe; that turning refugees away is evil; that I do not fight hard enough for what I know to be right. So, in order to help make Bana's wishes come true, I will act. I will write to my legislators, I will inform my peers of what is going on, I will donate to causes that do the work that I cannot, and I will not ignore the injustices that I know are happening. Thank you Bana.

Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth's Most Awesome Creatures by Nick Pyenson

Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth's Most Awesome Creatures by Nick Pyenson
My Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Finished Reading: August 16, 2018
Format: Book
Favorite Quote(s):

"We sent whalesong into interstellar space because the creatures that sing these songs are superlative beings that fill us with awe, terror, and affection. We have hunted them for thousands of years and scratched them into our mythologies and iconography. Their bones frame the archways of medieval castles. They’re so compelling that we imagine aliens might find them interesting — or perhaps understand their otherworldly, ethereal song."

Review:
First, I listened to the audio book and didn't realize that the physical book is full of drawings and diagrams. I think this book would have been easier to follow if those diagrams had been provided to audio book listeners. Second, I had a hard time with the author describing hitching a ride with a whaling fleet out of Reykjavik. He gives many justifications that end with something along the lines of "if they're killing them anyway, at least let science benefit." This is bothersome to me especially because in what I think is the very next part he discusses the horrible impact of whaling. Pyenson says he is not a "whale hugger," however, I am a "whale hugger," and I think many of the people who will pick up this book are too. I feel like describing benefitting from the culling of whales was an oversight and miscalculation by Pyenson of who (outside of the science community) was going to be reading his book.

All of that said, I learned a lot about the animals that I go out to see in Stellwagen Bank 4 or 5 times per year. Though this book does tend towards the science-minded (make no mistake, this book is about the paleontology of whales, written by a paleontologist), it was packed full of information about the past, present, and future of whales that was very interesting to me (not a paleontologist... I'm a special ed math teacher). My favorite thing that I learned had to do with how we live in the age of giants now, a time that I thought we were long past. The part about the right whale with the stone harpoon was pretty incredible as well. Overall, it is an well written book if you know what you are getting into.

Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones

Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones
My Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Finished Reading: August 13, 2018
Format: Book
Favorite Quote(s):

"There's this golden moment when the sun licks through the gauze fluttering at my window warming my eyes to open this golden moment when I'm not yet awake enough to remember that there are things I would rather forget."

Review:
While I thought I would relate to this story more due to my younger sister being hospitalized while we were younger, I wasn't disappointed despite my high expectations. It was a well done novel-in-verse that was a quick read about an important topic. I especially liked the references to places that I have been (tracing the steps of the ducklings in the public gardens and eating on Revere Beach after getting dinner at Kelly's). I was not expecting the author to be a local.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
My Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Finished Reading: August 12, 2018
Format: Book
Favorite Quote(s):

"What does it say about our culture that the desire for weight loss is considered a default feature of womanhood?"

"In yet another commercial, Oprah somberly says, 'Inside every overweight woman is a woman she knows she can be.' This is a popular notion, the idea that the fat among us are carrying a thin woman inside. Each time I see this particular commercial, I think, I ate that thin woman and she was delicious but unsatisfying. And then I think about how fucked up it is to promote this idea that our truest selves are thin women hiding in our fat bodies like impostors, usurpers, illegitimates."

"Fat shaming is real, constant, and rather pointed. There are a shocking number of people who believe they can simply torment fat people into weight loss and disciplining their bodies or disappearing their bodies from the public sphere. They believe they are medical experts, listing a litany of health problems associated with fatness as personal affronts. These tormentors bind themselves in righteousness when they point out the obvious - that our bodies are unruly, defiant, fat. When people try to shame me for being fat, I feel rage. I get stubborn. I want to make myself fatter to spite the shamers..."

"I am stronger than I am broken."

"As a woman, as a fat woman, I am not supposed to take up space. And yet, as a feminist, I am encouraged to believe I can take up space. I live in a contradictory space where I should try to take up space but not too much of it, and not in the wrong way, where the wrong way is any way where my body is concerned."

Review:
This book was raw and honest in a way that I could never dream to be. Reading this book was a deeply personal experience for me and I'm not certain that I'm fully ready to review it yet. I do want to say thank you so much for writing this book Dr. Gay!

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay

** Trigger Warning: SA **

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay
My Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Finished Reading: August 9, 2018
Format: Book
Favorite Quote(s):

"Their work gave me survival and writing. From them, I learned the blazing insight that rape was not an act between an individual, hidden in a dark room - that was what my rapist wanted me to think. Rape was and is a cultural and political act: it attempts to remove a person with agency, autonomy, and belonging from their community, to secrete them and separate them, to depoliticize their body by rendering it detachable, violable, nothing." - So Mayer

"There is an impossible paradox when you are victimized by sexual assault. You want to - you have t- convince yourself that it wasn't 'that bad' in order to have any hope of healing. If it really is as bad as you feel like it is, how will you ever get out from under it? How will you ever get 'better'? On the other hand, you need to convince others it was 'bad enough' to get the help and support you need to do that healing. To get out from under it. To get an appointment at the clinic. To get friends to come over with Styrofoam food containers when you can't feed yourself." - Stacey May Fowles

"When I raised this in counseling, she told me: 'The survivor who was raped at knifepoint feels guilty she has taken up space of a survivor who was raped at gunpoint. Everyone believes there is suffering worse than her own, that they should be strong enough to cope without me.'" - Stacey May Fowles

Review:
This book's message is revelatory, not in that sexual violence happens to so many of us; all women and many men know this. It's revelatory in the way that "He's Just Not That Into You" blew your mind by being so obvious and so hard to believe at the same time. Not That Bad, compiled by Roxane Gay, is a book of essays about sexual violence and most importantly the feeling that what was experienced was "not that bad." We all know someone who has gone through much worse than we have. I will repeat that: we ALL know someone who has had it worse (even that person you are thinking of thinks this). That's not even possible unless pain is relative and though it's probably self-preservation (trying desperately to gain any bit of our stolen power back) it's complete nonsense. It was that bad. IT IS THAT BAD. From the "little" stuff that makes us uncomfortable to the life-altering (-ruining?) stuff that kills off who we once were. It is bad. Period.

Someone asked recently in a travel group that I am in if the #metoo movement has impacted women's travel behaviors. "No!" was the response over and over again, not at all, because the #metoo movement didn't reveal anything that women didn't already know about how unsafe we are. It has empowered us to reveal our experiences, but the only people who have learned anything new are men. That's why they need to read this book. Women, you need to read this too, but not because you will learn about anything you didn't already know but because reading the common theme of it not being so bad laid down at your feet in the most obvious way that you might even feel a bit silly for never realizing it before... while you read each story you will compare them to your own and be horrified to realize that you find yourself thinking that what you went through, as little or big as it is, was that bad and you deserve to cope with it in whatever way helps you to survive it.

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
My Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Finished Reading: June 25, 2018
Format: Audiobook
Favorite Quote(s):

"My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs."

"'You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,' she says now. 'You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.'" 

Review:
I think I might need to sit with this for a bit longer to write a worthy review. For now, I'm questioning so many things... like public education and my role in it. Are we providing students with the tools they need to for higher education or are we draining the curiosity out of them? 3/7ths of the Westovers have PhDs. I think there is something there to at least discuss. I'm also thinking about my interactions with my sister. We are very different people and have never experienced or interpreted a mutual event in our lives the same way. It's an incredibly lonely experience to be denied your own perspective, but it feels a bit like Tara has validated me on her journey to validate herself.

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
My Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Finished Reading: March 10, 2018
Format: Book
Favorite Quote(s):

"Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about postive change."

Review:
Incredibly quick read about feminism in Nigerian and the United States and the remarkable similarities. My favorite part was when she discussed how men are blind to the privileges they have, questioning why a woman would identify herself as a woman instead of a human being while at the same time men identify themselves with race or socioeconomic status. She also touches on "emasculation" and how women are expected to stroke the fragile egos of men. Good read, super quick.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
My Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Finished Reading: March 10, 2018
Format: Audiobook
Favorite Quote(s):

"Each one of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done."
"The opposite of poverty is not wealth, the opposite of poverty is justice."

Review:
Bryan Stevenson is a human rights hero and more people should know his name.
This book alternates between telling the true story of wrongfully convicted death row inmate Walter McMillian and discussing real-life death row and life imprisonment stories from Mr. Stevenson's years as an attorney at his organization the Equal Justice Initiative. The chapters that Mr. Stevenson wraps around Mr. McMillian's story include those focusing on children being tried and sentenced as adults (despite being as young as 10 years old), women being imprisoned for life for giving birth to still-born babies, and those with intellectual disabilities who were not capable of defending themselves at trial. He writes about his treatment as a black lawyer in the south, the treatment of people who have served their time by society upon release (even when they didn't actually commit a crime), and the trauma and violation inmates are exposed to while in prison (particularly children sent to adult prisons). Please consider reading this book and making a monthly donation to EJI.