The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks
I was lucky enough to win this book as part of a Good Read’s First Reads giveaway.
“The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks,” by Jeanne Theoharris, is a look at the very full and very politically active life of Mrs Rosa Parks. Most people, when they think of Mrs Parks, think only of that defining moment on the bus, her refusal to stand. They remember the easy to digest story that she was a simple seamstress, that she was tired. But there was a lot more to her life, and her political action, than that.
Mrs Parks grew up in the very segregated south, where lynchings were common and where her daddy sometimes spent nights sitting up with a rifle across his lap just in case someone came to harass his family. She and her family members sometimes slept in their clothing just in case they had to make a quick getaway. She grew up to become a very active community organizer and to work with the NAACP for over a decade before her stance on the bus. Part of her NAACP work involved trying to press charges against the police for harassment, assault, and rape against Black members of the community. She also worked closely with two other young women who had refused to relinquish their seats to whites on the bus. When Mrs Parks refused to give up her seat she was not the first person, or the first woman, to do so. And her activism didn’t end there, either.
Mrs Parks continued working with the NAACP and MIA and other orgs both in Montgomery and then in Detroit, a move she had to make out of fear for her life (she was receiving harassing phone calls and messages and several other leaders, including Dr King, had had their homes bombed) and because nobody would hire her. In Detroit, she continued her political work. She marched, she spoke, she wrote letters, she gave interviews. She supported Black militant groups including Malcolm X, and worked to end Apartheid in South Africa.
The book touches also on the ways sexism and classism touched her life and her activism. Although male civil rights leaders referred to her as one of the “mothers of the movement,” she was often precluded from speaking while men were given the floor. She, and other working class leaders, struggled against the upper class leadership of the NAACP and other groups. Sinecures and paid positions offered to men where not offered to her, despite her experience and influence, leaving her in poverty for much of her life.
The book additionally gives a broader look at the political and social situation surrounding her refusal to move back and the ensuing bus boycot. It provides a very full look at a dark time in US history, as well as showing that much of the attitudes and opinions of then are still very much alive… and the tactics used to silence civil rights activists then are still being used now, even when they don’t make as much sense (for example, civil rights leaders were accused of being “communists,” during a time when being a communist was a career ending allegation. compare that to allegations that President Obama, pushing for a revamped insurance policy and greater social safety net, is also a communist.).
“The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks” is scholarly without being dry, interesting and horrifying, and gives a great, full look at Mrs Parks’ life and legacy as well as a pretty awful time in US history. We need more books that unflinchingly examine the struggles against racism in the US, more books like this.
The Obvious Game
First of all, I was given the chance to read an advance copy of this book for review purposes. I have not been compensated in any way (other than being given a PDF copy of this book) and my opinion on the book are entirely my own.
Second, this book contains depictions and discussion of disordered eating/anorexia and cancer and may be triggering for some people.
15 year old Diana Keller is having a really hard time. Her mom is sick, incredibly sick, with cancer and that’s a lot to deal with. Her friends are maturing and changing and she’s feeling left behind and left out. And she’s tired of being Fat Diana. She meets Jesse, a new arrival in their tiny rural town, and they start dating, and she wants to be perfect for him. So she starts doing something… she starts exercising, a lot. And she stops eating.
It… doesn’t really help.
This is a pretty unflinching look at ED and the way it impacts people. Arens really digs into the mindset of ED, the obsession, the logic and illogical. It’s beautifully written, but sometimes hard to read because it’s so meaty. Despite the meatiness, however, there’s a lot of humor in the book, and a lot of hope. Diana is, ultimately, lucky: she has some very good friends, and a very close and supportive family. A lot of people notice that Something Is Wrong and do their best to help her. Arens also draws parallels between acceptable ED (young men trying to drop weight to get into a lower weight class for sports) and unacceptable ED (young women trying to drop weight because women are supposed to take up as little space as possible).
If you’re of a certain age, you might have spent Junior High and High School inundated with “problem books” or “issue books,” edifying fiction novels usually featuring teen aged women who have SERIOUS problems in an unending stream. Their parents have cancer or are dead, they have cancer, they want to be concert pianists but break their arms on the weekend before The Big Audition, someone is beating them, someone is raping them, they can’t stop shop lifting, etc. They were depressing books. It would be easy to glance at this book and see “mom has cancer” and “ED” and assume it’s more of the same. It really is not, however. There’s far too much hope, humor, and support in the book. Additionally, giving a character’s mom cancer is usually a way to write mom out of the picture while giving the protag some big drama thing that shapes them. Arens manages to center Diana’s relationship with her mom. Her mom has cancer, but she’s still mom, and she’s still important.
There are two other things I adored about the book. One is Diana’s best guy friend. They love each other very much and trust and respect each other and are siblings with different parents, basically. They are very close emotionally and comfort each other physically (hugs, cuddles) but there’s no romantic pressure or expectations. I really hate the idea that men and women can’t be FRIENDS because SEX/ROMANCE IS INEVITABLE. So it’s super refreshing to see a positive, affirming heterosexual relationship. And speaking of sex, another thing I liked is that Diana has sex and doesn’t get shamed/punished for it. She worries briefly about the consequences of pregnancy and if her boyfriend will still respect her, but he does. She worries her parents will find out, but they don’t. (and if they did, well, they stick by her in every other way so I doubt finding out she got her bone on would be the end of the world) One of her best friends is well known for “kissing” every available guy she sees, and another has a very serious boyfriend and spends a lot of time behind closed doors with him. Neither gets in trouble/shamed for their actions. Whaaat! Young women have sex and it’s not the end of the world!?! ADORE.
That said, I think my absolute favorite scene in the book is Diana’s snippy Passive-Aggressive “attack” on a teacher she doesn’t like. She cracks open “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” and slips a saying about hypocrisy under his door. Oh, nerdy teen angst, I adore and identify with you!
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance
“Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance,” by Lois McMaster Bujold, is the latest installation of the Vorkosigan Saga. Is it really a saga now? Not just a series? Saga? Seriously? Well.
Bujold has a gift for writing interesting, complex female characters. Sometimes they are allowed to stand on their own like Ista (Paladin of Souls) or Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan (before she becomes a full time wife and mother) but more frequently they exist as interesting sexy puzzles for male protagonists to solve and conquer and collect and romance/marry. The latest book is just one more example of this.
Confirmed bachelor Ivan X. Vorpatril is drawn into sexy intrigue by professional gad-about-town and secret agent Byerly Vorrutyer and, on the spur of the moment, gets married to an illegal immigrant/galactic refugee despite knowing almost nothing about her other than her cup-size. OF COURSE they wind up falling in love (it’s a slapsticky romantic comedy, after all), and it’s an interesting look at both Ivan and By, characters who are pretty minor but interesting in the course of the series. It was really great seeing Ivan developed more. Bujold has long handled him well, presenting his public face as one of genial self-effacement and near-idiocy who sunnily manages to always come out on top. Of course, that’s the safest face to present, one of bumbling good will, when one is so very close in line to the Imperial Throne and with such politically savvy, and active, relatives as Miles Vorkosigan. There have long been hints and glimpses that Ivan isn’t as stupid as he pretends to be, and he gets to shine in this book. But Ivan’s time in the spotlight really seems to come at the expense of his wife and of his mother.
It’s long been hinted in the series that Lady Alys, Ivan’s mother, has a complicated relationship with her (deceased) husband, that she has mixed emotions about him and his death. And while it might otherwise be a normal thing to really dig into her relationship with her husband after her son’s marriage, now that he is a husband as well, the longer the series goes on the more I resent the lack of a woman focus. They’re just kind of there. They’re wives and mothers and they have large breasts that men stare at and they have long legs and long hair and they’re smart and capable but their physical appearance is just so important (which is so very odd considering how very ugly Miles is, but he gets a pass because he’s CLEVER and works hard) and Bujold is very happy to continue the presentation of man-as-sex-obsessed-beast.
Look. I like Ivan. I’m glad he got his own book. The fake marriage that oops is a real one has been done before, a lot, but it’s handled well. I’m interested in Ivan’s future career as a diplomat.
But I’m disappointed, too.
Bujold is really really great at making interesting and complex female supporting characters and I wish we’d get to see more of them promoted to main characters… or at least not delegated to secondary status as soon as they hook up with a dude (Cordelia, Ekaterina).
The Gift Of Fear
The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker has some really helpful information when it comes to reminding people –primarily women– that paying attention to their gut instincts is good. However, de Becker is a bit of a proselytizer. He grew up in a violent family and managed to survive, and therefore everyone should do what he did and they’ll survive too. It’s frustrating that someone who grew up in a culture of domestic violence would posit that someone who gets hit by a family member/loved more than once is “a volunteer,” especially as on the same page he goes into details about how abusers are controlling including controlling finances, and how women who flee abusers frequently wind up murdered by their abusers. There was just this victim-blamey disconnect between the reality of domestic abuse and what de Becker’s ideal is (that people get smacked around once, have a sudden brilliant wake up, and then stalk out triumphantly never to be abused again). de Becker also buys into some shitty gender essentialism about women being more innately intuitive than men.
One of my favorite parts of the book involves addressing tools that Pick Up Artists use including “negging” (insulting a woman to keep her off balance and hope that she’ll want to prove the insult wrong IE “I bet you’re too proud to accept help” “but of course you’re too stuck up to have a drink with me” etc) and “loan sharking” (forcing a favor/debt on a woman so she owes you IE insisting on fetching/buying her a drink or insisting on carrying things for her). So there’s some really interesting and useful info in here, but there’s also some personal baggage of de Becker’s and some sexist malarky to wade through as well.
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer
Hold me closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride is the first book in a series. Intelligently (and humorously) written, with a well-developed world and paranormal structure, it’s one of those books That Could Have Been Better… but is good enough as is that its shortfalls are pretty painful.
Sam (Samhain) Corvus LaCroix is a college dropout loser working fastfood with his best friend, Ramon and pals Brooke and Frank. What Sam doesn’t realize until a fateful game of potato hockey in the restaurant’s parking lot is that he’s also a Necromancer, someone who was born with the ability to talk to/raise/command/etc the dead. Also: his mom’s a witch, as in, she literally has magical abilities. And his nozzle of a dad who abandoned their family to start a new franchise in a much nicer part of town did so because of their supernatural abilities. And some dude named Douglas who’s a total badass wants to either train him, or kill. Or both!
Douglas kicks off Sam’s adventure by decapitating then reanimating Brooke, and sending her to Sam as a message.
And that’s part of the problem I have with this book.
Sam’s surrounded by totally awesome, powerful, confident, attractive women. His mom (the witch), his sister (maybe a witch, too), Brooke (who is smart and hot and athletic and is murdered to send him a message), Brid who is a powerful werewolf and next in line to lead her Pack, his next door neighbor (also a witch). These women are smart and capable and foxy and are secondary characters because… why? Conversely, why couldn’t Sam be female? There are a lot of super awesome writers who pull this shit (Lois McMaster Bujold and the Vorkosigan books and Scott Lynch and the Gentleman Bastard books I AM LOOKING AT YOU SO HARD RIGHT NOW) and it’s depressing. Because it sends a very clear message that it doesn’t matter how totally awesome a ladyperson is, she is fit only to be a secondary character and prop up a loser of a dude who can’t pass Bio101.
Years ago, I was in Band and I played the Cornet which is kind of like a Trumpet but different somehow (the tubing is shaped slightly differently, I think). I was unrelentingly awful at it, and eventually quit because I hit a plateau and just did not improve (being partially deaf in one ear did not help). Anyway, at one point early in my musical journey, my teacher kept piling on more and more specific complaints about my playing, and I got frustrated. And he said, the reason I’m complaining is that you’re getting better, so instead of one huge wall of wrong things we can pick out the individual things that are wrong. So although it SEEMS like I’m finding a million things wrong with your playing and that’s a bad thing… it’s actually good, because there’s enough that you’re doing right that the wrong things are standing out.
And I kept thinking about that while reading this book, because there’s stuff in this book I really liked. The action was quick paced, the Council and supernatural world feel fleshed out, Douglas was a good villain. The way Necromancy works in this world, and what it is, is well thought out. McBride manages to make the setting (PNW) real for me, someone who grew up in the midwest and lives in Chicago. The dialog is snappy. It wasn’t very predictable. It’s the first book in a series and I will probably check out the next book, something I wouldn’t do if I disliked a book.
I like Sam. I like the secondary female characters. It’s nice to see so many kick ass ladies tromping about. But at the end of the day, the people who are the focus of the book and the saviors are all male. And I’m just really tired of that.
A Family Of Readers: The Book Lover’s Guide To Children’s and YA Literature
I have a kid who might be starting pre-k next year which means, as we live in Chicago, if we want to get him into a gifted/classical/accelerated/magnet/etc school we need to test him this December. And there’s a lot of politics, both personal and other, about choosing a selective school versus neighborhood school, testing, everything. So Nesko and I have been doing a lot of thinking and talking and reading about education and options. “A Family Of Readers: The Book Lover’s Guide To Children’s and YA Literature,” edited by Roger Sutton and Martha Paravano, was a welcome diversion amongst all the nonfiction heaviness I’ve been handling lately.
Part of the reason it’s so welcome and not-heavy is that Nesko and I are both readers. We are already doing pretty much everything that will ensure Niko will grow up to love and enjoy books. We have a large variety of books for him, we read to him frequently, we tell him stories and sing him songs, we read instead of watching tv, we go to the library regularly… Look. We’re book nerds. This book is basically written for book nerds. We are the target audience for this book. You probably are too.
And unlike a lot of books about education in general that I’ve been reading, it’s not judgmental or preachy or weirdly Conservative or racist/sexist/classist/homophobic out of nowhere. They define a family as “at least two people who care about each other” and define reading as “books.” And those “books” include comic books, statistics books, audio books, fiction books, fantasy books, all the books that are so often sneered at and looked down upon while being exactly the books that kids enjoy and that can best foster a love of reading. I mean, the prologue talks about the much-loved syndicated comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes,” and how Calvin’s parents are frequently and consistently seen with books, reading books, with books right near them.
Everyone involved in this book obviously loves books, loves reading, loves sharing their love of books and reading, and loves kids. It’s a delightful and thoughtful book that breaks book categories down into roughly-age-appropriate areas like “reading to them” versus “reading with them” and “reading on their own.” It talks about what makes a good picture book, biography, fantasy book, book about dinosaurs. It talks about the books marketed toward girls and books marketed toward boys. It talks about fostering a love of poetry. And it gives examples of recommended books and why they’re recommended.
I plucked this book from the library on a whim. It caught my eye on the “new arrivals: nonfiction” shelf. It’s so good I plan on buying it and referring to it frequently throughout Niko’s reading career.
If you’re reading this via RSS or dreamwidth or livejournal syndication, check out the original source at http://www.brigidkeely.com/reviews for an embedded googlebooks preview as well.
Everywhere Babies
Let me get this out of the way before I say anything else.
If your objection to a book is OH GOSH THERE ARE HOMOSEXUAL PEOPLE AND THEY ARE TREATED AS HUMAN BEINGS then I don’t want to know you. If you think including gay couples and persons of color in a book is “political correctness run amuck,” then you’re welcome to find the door. Not surprisingly, most negative reviews of “Everywhere Babies” by Susan Meyers, which portrays families that are not composed entirely of apparently white apparently straight people, pick just that to complain about.
“Everywhere Babies” is a rhyming book about babies. The text is gentle and lively and the babies are adorable and do a lot of different things (walk, run, eat, sleep, smile, cry). My 2.5 year old loves this book. He likes the text, he likes the rhythms of it, and he LOVES the babies. He identifies some of the babies (fat babies versus thin babies, for example; crying babies versus happy babies), he narrates what the babies are doing, he makes up stories about the babies. It’s a pretty solid hit with him, something he requests re-reads of.
As mentioned– as, I think, it’s known for– the book depicts same-sex couples parenting babies/children as well as just walking around, and there are black-looking babies, Hispanic-looking babies, Asian-looking babies, etc. along with the white-looking babies. There are also what appear to be mixed-race families. So if that’s something you’re looking for in a book, this one has it, and not in an OBVIOUS way. It’s not “Heather Has A Black Mommy And A White Daddy,” it’s not the SUBJECT of the book, it’s just there. Not commented on. Treated as normal. Another thing treated as normal is the idea that male-appearing people will do child care duties without female-appearing people around. It’s not all mommies and babies. There’s a lot of dads and grandpas taking babies on walks, feeding them, etc. So there’s a hearty dose of gender balance as well, which I haven’t seen touched on as much in reviews (except, again, someone complaining on amazon that OH MY GOSH BABIES NEED THEIR MOMMIES and shouldn’t leave the house before they’re a full year old. Say it with me. WHAT.)
In summary, it’s a good solid book with well written text, a high readability level, and lush artwork. We checked this out of the library but I’d rate it as a “buy” quality book, and one I’d give to other babies as a gift.
Handling the Undead, John Ajvide Lindqvist
Handling the Undead
The book opens with a bit about the weather. It’s been unusually hot in Sweden. Everyone has headaches. And then the electricity goes on and stays on, all appliances coming to life (so to speak), unable to be turned off. There’s a fantastic bit where a character is running, and his cellphone’s battery gains an extra bar of power as the battery refuels itself without being connected to anything. The weather breaks, the headaches ease off, and the dead start coming back to life.
Well. They animate. They imitate life. But they aren’t alive.
Handling the Undead isn’t really a story about zombies. It’s a story about death and dying and grief, about the human condition and souls, about letting go and moving on. It follows 3.5 story lines: David and his young son and the death of his wife Eva, the love of his life; Gustav Mahler and his daughter and dead grandson; Psychic grandmother and -daughter Elvy and Flora (whose storyline involves them separating then reuniting, hence 3.5 story lines). The book starts off with a bang and keeps the pace up consistently until the end, when it slows down and becomes more contemplative. It’s an emotionally difficult book to read, diving deep into emotionally troubling waters. The characters go through events that are both unusual and specific to them (I mean, there are ‘reliving,’ the formerly dead walking around, that is not an everyday occurrence) but also universal. Death. Loss. Pain. I cried several times while reading this book, and then kept going.
I highly recommend this book. It’s not at all the standard gory zombie fare, and most of the bits I as a reader flinched from were emotional bits, not visceral ones. There’s horror elements in it, well crafted, but it’s primarily an emotional journey, and a very well written one at that.
