I started gradually rejoining the online world in 2016, after about two years away. I’d spent the six years before that being an unbearable Pollyanna, trying to get everyone to have interactions where we could find common ground and have Meaningful Discussions and for shit’s sake stop calling each other evil. I’d exhausted myself by…
Category: Politics
Calculating the Worth of Human Lives
Along the same lines as my earlier thoughts about Howard Zinn, I have this to say about a paragraph in the introduction to my textbook (the Norton Anthology of American Literature (shorter ninth edition)). “The Civil War transformed the lives of the four million African Americans who obtained their freedom from slavery, but its costs…
On the Process of Coming to Consciousness
This is a paper I wrote for a course called Writing for Social Change in 2019, then presented at the Utah Valley University Conference on Writing for Social Change in March 2020. It’s 6:00 in the morning and still dark outside. The tiny white chair I’m sitting in feels like I’m perching on a wood…
The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality, by Chris Mooney
Four stars, read in April 2019. The world and the United States in particular are under the tyrannical rule of a group of people who have literally created their own reality based on a shared and intentionally-propagated delusion. They didn’t like where reality was taking us, so they founded institutions to grow their own experts…
Rethinking Howard Zinn
While reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s We Were Eight Years in Power a couple years ago, I came across some information that required consideration. In the book Coates addresses some remarks made by Howard Zinn regarding the Civil War, which Coates had written about for The Atlantic. These are Zinn’s comments, made a few months before he…
Moranifesto, by Caitlin Moran
Five stars, read in April 2018. It is possible that, as an American under the age of 40, I have been so deprived of sensible and ethical political discussion that what seems like earth-shattering brilliance to me is just common sense to the rest of you. But as I read this book, Caitlin Moran officially…
Mendelssohn is on the Roof, by Jiří Weil
Four and a half stars, read in July 2018. I’m tired of World War II stories, because their popularity in our culture seems saccharine, nationalistic, almost fetishistic—an excuse to pat ourselves on the back and fawn over the “glory days” of the “Greatest Generation”—while generally managing to sideline the sickeningly-relevant lessons we should be learning from…
Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling, by Amy Chozick
Two stars, read in June 2018. Very mixed feelings. I’m giving it two stars for the interest factor, but writing this review made me angry enough at the book that I almost want to go down to one. Interesting though this inherently was, it became more and more frustrating as the book went on, and…
Imagine
We think of ourselves as civilization accomplished, but I’ve come to believe that we’re not even close to civilized yet—rather, we’re just barely out of our infancy as a species. Civilization means “an advanced stage of social development and organization,” and while the present is nearly always more advanced than the past, “more advanced” is…
On “Trying to Understand”
It was a common topic over the last year and a half, as liberals devoted particular attention to learning about, becoming less judgmental of, and humanizing the Trump voter. It’s been bothering me, though it took me a while to recognize and articulate the problem, and then to wade through my own anxiety-induced mental fog…
Will Everyone Complaining About “Identity Politics” Please Shut Up
I don’t understand how white intellectuals are so dense on the subject of “identity politics.” Sam Harris was the first to frustrate me (he’s done it again recently), and a little while ago I read this whole piece at Brain Pickings on the tragedy of “imprisoning ourselves in the fractal infinity of our ever-subdividing identities,…
We Were Eight Years in Power, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Five stars, read in November 2017. This book covers the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. For each year, there is an article Coates wrote for The Atlantic, preceded by an essay (“a sort of extended blog post,” I think is how he describes it) in which he looks back on his own work and assesses…
Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why, by Sady Doyle
Five stars, read in January 2018. This book was like an electric jolt to me. I was genuinely frustrated every minute that I couldn’t be listening to it on Overdrive, and I wish it could’ve been twice as long. I don’t follow much pop culture, so although I’d heard of most of these stories in…
Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America’s Gutsiest Troublemakers, by Nick Offerman
Four stars, read in January 2018. I am not quite juvenile enough to really hang out with Nick Offerman, and I think he would happily agree with me. But also, I would fucking love to hang out with Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally. And regardless of whether or not I could handle all the farting…
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Marijuana (But Were Too Stoned to Ask), by Tim Pilcher
Three stars, read in February 2018. I don’t know what was more surprising, Henry Ford’s marijuana car (made from cellulose bioplastics, including hemp, that were stronger and lighter than steel; he was also going to use it in fuel); the fact that up to 30 percent of the earth’s population might be allergic to it;…
The Origin of Others, by Toni Morrison
Four stars, read in December 2017. When I think back on this book, the anecdote I remember is the one Morrison shares about coming across a woman near the fence on her property. The scene of their meeting is peaceful and friendly (because fences are “where the most interesting things always happen”), and Morrison’s thoughts…
We Need—I Needed—N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy Right Now
Five stars each and for the series as a whole; read mostly in December 2017. I read this series for the past two weeks of 2017, and it is so annoyingly perfect that The Stone Sky was the first book I finished in 2018. My stony, cynical heart doesn’t want to feel as hopeful as this…
Things I would like people to stop mocking Trump for:
His hair. Stop making fun of his physical appearance. His skin color. Stop making fun of his physical appearance. His hands. Stop making fun of his physical appearance, especially something he can’t control. His body/weight. Seriously, I shouldn’t have to explain this. Being a “draft dodger.” War is not patriotism, and patriotism, AS WE NOW…
My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, by Wendy Simmons
Four stars, read in January 2018. I almost didn’t take this home, irritated with it for seeming flippant about a subject that is not in any way amusing (particularly after I’d just finished accounts by Jang Jin-sung and Suki Kim that were emotional and difficult to read). I flipped through to see the photos, of which there are many,…
Part Three: Scream Into the Roaring Waves
And for all the things I can’t get enough of, there is too much of what should not be at all. There is too much wrong for one world. The more I read, the more injustice I discover, and it seems like I can’t pick up a book anymore without uncovering a whole new field…
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, by Cathy O’Neil
Five stars, read in December 2017. I’ve read a lot of nonfiction this year that I consider to be important, even essential to the goal of social justice. There was Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Susan Jacoby, and Sam Harris on the damaging nature of religion and anti-intellectualism; Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison,…
All or Nothing
I’m finally realizing why I can’t find a manageable way to keep up with things, why it seems to be either all or nothing. It’s because it is. There are no universal news sources anymore, there are not even universal facts anymore. To be well-informed you have to keep up with multiple sources, all of…
The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth about Food and Flavor, by Mark Schatzker
Five stars for the outstanding information and research, though I’m questioning now whether I should have deducted a star for the pervasive and very off-putting fat-shaming. Read in November 2017. I brought this book home after reading the blurb on the back and realizing that this must be, finally, the thing that would explain my…
A World That Is Disappointing Us Every Single Day
A little while ago I read a great interview with Bob Odenkirk. When asked if he thought of himself as a cynical person, this is what he said: Most people who are described as cynical are truly not. They’re idealists, and the cynical points of view that they espouse are literally their idealistic mentalities reacting…
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, by Alison Bechdel
Five stars, read in July 2014. For the first 50 pages it seemed like I wasn’t making any progress—it’s one of those books that looks longer than it is, so you feel like it will never end. Once I got to the last hundred or so pages, I was hoping it never would. It’s funny, really, because several of…
The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby
Four stars, read in July 2017. The most consistent theme of my experience reading this book was oh my god, if she said this ten years ago, what would she say now? I have minor differences with Jacoby, but her premise is clearly, demonstrably correct: in whatever our current age is called, almost nothing in…
What Happened, by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Four stars, or maybe 3.5, read in September 2017. I haven’t actually spoken to many people about Hillary Clinton, because I try not to for my own sanity. But when I have, and when I’ve read articles and books about her, they have almost never—the “almost” might not even be necessary—been entirely reasonable. Hillary has said…
Books for People Who Wonder Why Everything Is So Fucked Up
Because that’s what I’ve been reading for several years now, but this year, it’s almost all I can read. Rather than explain in advance, because I am on the verge of developing carpal tunnel after a week and a half spent cataloging Vietnamese books for the library, I will just put this random collection here—if you’re wondering…
My Goodbye Post to Facebook
I’m reading a lot to try and figure out why the world is the way it is. I can’t say it makes me feel much better, but it does help—if you can’t fix what’s wrong, at least being able to name it allows you to stay sane. The last book I finished was The Age…
How to Fake a Moon Landing, by Darryl Cunningham
Four stars, read in March 2017. Three and a half stars, maybe, but I don’t mind rounding up to balance out all the reviews that hate it way more than I think is warranted. (Though I do wonder, since this is yet another instance of books titled “how to __” which do not in any…
Meanwhile the World Goes On 