The author is incredibly (and rightfully) angry about the many ways (and there are oh so many) in which women are disadvantaged in our data-driven world, data which was gleaned from centuries in which men were considered the default data set and women were atypical. Her chapters overflow with examples of how discrimination compounds on discrimination (men, who controlled the historical narrative, left out or covered up the accomplishments of women, thereby creating a biased record used by modern-day men to claim that women historically did little and were therefore not worthy of study, thereby continuing a trend of bias, etc etc). This data bias means that women’s health is neglected when it comes to research, drugs, and treatment; that women’s physiology is overlooked when it comes to designing for things like automobiles and buildings; that AIs trained on male-based datasets will invisibly prioritize men over women during job searches, etc. Unfortunately, the laser focus of this book is also its weakness; Criado Perez’s single-minded effort to blame sexism for every negative aspect of society overlooks or ignores other contributing factors, and her extreme gender binary view of the world feels uncomfortably dated. Still, a pretty decent (and very enraging) compilation of sexism overall.
Tag: genre-nonfiction
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, by Jeremy Atherton Lin
I was expecting a somewhat more academic treatment of the role of gay bars in society and in history; instead, this is author Atherton Lin exploring his own personal journey through the succession of gay bars that he visited along the way. His perspective, that of an Asian-American navigating London and San Francisco, means that racism occasionally adds an additional layer of alienation onto his experience. He mixes everything together until none of it can be teased apart, from musings about identity and expression in social spheres, to analysis of society’s changing relationship with homosexuality, to detailed descriptions of smells and sensations of bodies in close contact, sometimes all within the same paragraph. He also illustrates ambience by rapidly listing off a succession of musicians, or brands, which I’m sure would have served as anchors for people who recognized them, but for me merely placed his already-foreign (to me) experiences into a landscape which I… didn’t recognize either. Still, it was definitely both educational and entertaining to journey along with Atherton Lin through his past, from adventurous naïf to jaded elder, interrogating society along the way. He doesn’t hesitate to turn the analysis on himself either: “I went out to bars to be literary. I drank to create content. If I earned a reputation for making trouble, it was so that I could write about it the following morning… There was an agency in the retelling, in the self-deprecation and of course self-mythologizing. Memoir is how you groom yourself. Memoir is drag.”
Stay True, by Hua Hsu
Part coming-of-age memoir, part elegy for a lost friend, this account by Hsu focuses mainly on his college years at Berkeley and how they formed his personality. The son of Taiwanese immigrants in search of an identity, Hsu aligned himself with the alternative to anything that was mainstream, creating zines and looking for undiscovered gems at record shops; when he meets Japanese-American Ken, a fraternity member clad in Abercrombie & Fitch and a fan of Dave Matthews, Hsu initially writes him off. They end up being friends though, teaching one another to love things neither would have chosen, sharing extremely Gen X formative experiences, and growing close in the way that only happens for college kids thrown together for long stretches at a time. However, when Ken becomes the victim of a senseless murder, Hsu is set adrift and must figure out how he wants to define himself once more. The moments in which he muses about all the adult experiences which he was unable to share with Ken are especially poignant.
The Land Before Avocado, by Richard Glover
Written as a riposte to people who claim that Australia of the 1960s and 70s was a better time, Glover’s book takes you back to the decade of his childhood in Canberra with witty, biting detail. He amazes his son with facts like the scarcity of avocado and coffee (unrecognizable in the Canberra of today, where sushi rolls and toast come with generous helpings of avocado, and even the tiniest restaurants boast a gleaming espresso machine), and racism, sexism, and corporal punishment are the norm. He mines his own memories as well as those of his radio listeners, and also cites fascinating snippets of the historical record in order to paint a picture of the era. He makes it very clear that he’d take being in the present over the past any day, warts and all, and makes the reader grateful for progress as well.
The North-West is our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel’s People, the Métis Nation, by Jean Teillet
This was incredible and eye-opening. I knew vaguely of the existence of the Métis/Michif, but knew nothing of their origins. Descended from early French/English explorers who intermarried with native women, they formed a culture, identity, and political system derived from both origins but unique to their community. After Confederacy, the Canadians began looking west; although the Métis fought desperately to preserve their lands, both in courts and on the battlefield, they were eventually driven out by deceit and by force. The government in Ottawa broke treaty promises, looked the other way when soldiers committed atrocities, derided the Métis as “half-breeds,” and refused even to recognize the Métis as an Indigenous people until as late as 1982. Teillet, a Métis who has fought for Indigenous rights in court, details the heartbreaking efforts of the Métis as they plead with the government for their lands and their lives. Educated by Catholics and raised with surnames like Riel and Dumont and Grant, they well understood the theft of land and livelihood that was happening to them, and were still powerless to stop it. A large part of the account is spent telling the story of Louis Riel, a Métis icon who led the fight for rights and freedoms. He never gave up hope that his people would be recognized as Canadians of equal status, even as the government in Ontario eventually condemned him to death. (Sidebar: apparently his execution was vehemently opposed in Quebec, where his death became a symbol of Anglophone domination.) Teillet also lets Métis women shine: I loved the stories of Marguerite Caron, who demanded to fight alongside the men, and Eleanor Laurent, who sat calmly scrubbing away evidence of her husband’s conspiracy even as soldiers tore apart her house. The story of Cindy Gladue, victim first of violence against Indigenous women, and then of the Canadian justice system, is heartbreaking. If there’s one criticism of Teillet’s book, it’s that she paints the Métis peoples in a very rosy and romantic light… but given that they were abused and maligned for most of Canadian history, it honestly seems only fair.
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, by Patrick Radden Keefe, read by Matt Blamey
This book about the Troubles, covering the political violence in Northern Ireland from the 1960s to the late 80s, is written so intensely that it feels like a novel. At times you even wish it were a novel, because it’s so inescapably painful to remember that these are real people in history, who lived in terror while their friends and neighbors chose to enact violence and tragedy upon one another. Keefe tells the story by focusing on the individuals. He begins with Jean McConville, a widow who was taken directly from her home while her ten children watched and never seen again. Then he digs into the members of the paramilitary forces likely involved in her disappearance, giving voice to their anger, their pain, and their pride, without excusing their actions in the slightest. As the sad story moves on he also reveals government operations, both clandestine and open, and how those actions may well have done more to continue the violence than to defuse it. The book also covers the I.R.A.’s unlikely evolution from terrorist group to political party, the lies everyone told themselves in order to accept the transition peacefully, and the impact on those left behind, both within and without the I.R.A. Blamey’s Irish-accented narration, quiet but intense, is an amazing way to experience the book. “Say Nothing” is a brilliant title; it touches on the strict code of silence around the actions of the I.R.A., but also points to how those left in the aftermath would rather look the other way than dig up (sometimes literally) the problems that prompted the Troubles in the first place.
Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History, by Keith O’Brien, read by Erin Bennett
Fascinating look at the early days of aviation, when male pilots were celebrated for their daring and skill, and women were actively discouraged from trying to fly planes at all. The women profiled in this book are brought to life not just as pilots, but as extremely interesting and driven people. Rich girl Ruth Nichols took flying lessons in secret, then leveraged her connections to raise money for funding for her flights; saleswoman Louise Thaden got free flying lessons from a customer and never looked back; actress Ruth Elder, not content with film stardom, demanded the chance to break records in the sky; mechanic Florence Klingensmith wanted nothing more than to prove she could fly as well or better than the boys… and social worker Amelia Earhart, who was plucked from obscurity by a publisher who wanted a feel-good story, seized control of her narrative and became an advocate for women in aviation. O’Brien fills the book with details of their struggles, quoting men who doubted their abilities and mocked their ambitions, and crediting the women with fighting on. It is enraging and stirring, and you cannot help but be in awe of the strength and determination of the women who fought for the right to simply do what the men were doing already. If I had one criticism of this book it would be that O’Brien sometimes spends just as much time detailing the histories and actions of the men of the time; I would have preferred a greater focus on the women.
How to be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question, by Michael Schur
Michael Schur is the creator of The Good Place, and in this book he entertainingly summarizes all of the philosophy that he picked up along the way. To sum up: there is no way to be perfect. But there is still good in trying. Schur marches cheerfully through classic philosophical dilemmas, first presenting different philosophers’ takes on them, then pointing out issues with each answer. There are several satisfying callbacks to The Good Place; several cast members also take turns reading some of the quotations from the book, which was lovely to hear. The constant variations on the same theme did get tiresome after a while, but Schur’s narration is smooth and enjoyable, so it wasn’t hard to keep going. Certainly I suspect it was much easier to read this than to try to read the philosophers’ original writings. (Something I found personally amusing: he refers to the “trolley problem” and also brings up the “shopping cart problem“, but here in Australia, shopping carts are referred to as trolleys! So the two problems have the same name.)
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton
I picked up Ducks because it was nominated by Mattea Roach for the nationwide Canada Reads competition; I knew little else about it, and was surprised to find that a) it was an autobiographical comic, b) written by a Cape Breton native, who c) went to work in the Alberta oil sands, and d) began publishing the excellent webcomic Hark! A Vagrant during that time. To pay off her student loans, Beaton joined the masses from Atlantic Canada heading towards Alberta. The experience was extremely toxic, both for the environment (the title refers to a flock of ducks which died after landing in a tailings pond, causing much PR flailing) and for Beaton personally, who pitilessly details the harassment and misogynism that she faced as one of the very few women in the isolated environment, as well as the huge mental toll that it took on her. Although my own experience in male-dominated workplaces was nowhere near as bad, I still recognized many aspects of the casual workplace misogyny, as well as her unhappy, resigned tolerance of it which mirrored my own; I loved so much the clear-eyed way in which she presented it, even as it hurt to read. I also loved visiting both Cape Breton and Newfoundland as a tourist, and am embarrassed to say that I had no idea of the economic situation that drove so many of the locals to look for work elsewhere. The comics are simple, but poignant and very human; in one exchange, Beaton says to her truck driver from Newfoundland, “were you a fisherman, before?” He responds simply, “I’m still a fisherman. I’m just here.” And then the comic zooms out to show the pickup driving through the snowy mine, against a background of heavy equipment, a steep cliff face, and a black, empty sky.
Sink: A Memoir, by Joseph Earl Thomas
This memoir is beautifully written, even though it’s hard to read. It starts out tough and doesn’t get any easier, which pretty much encapsulates young Joey’s life growing up in poverty and violence. The characters in his family behave in ways both cringingly awful and yet recognizably human; the details that Thomas chooses to share illustrate both their helpless despair and the love that sometimes finds its way to the surface. The storytelling is brilliant, mixing reality with the fictional worlds that Joey picks up from geek culture and video games. One of my favorite passages (out of many fiercely beautiful passages) dealt with his helpless protectiveness of the minor Pokemon Zubat, whilst playing the game: “so many Zubats, everywhere, with nowhere to go, no one to protect them. Their entire lives consist of knocking into Pokemon trainers and being slapped around by stronger Pokemon who already have homes and social resources, warm Poké Balls to sleep in.” Though the metaphor is obvious, it is no less poignant and heartbreaking.