Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer
This is one of the most unique memoirs I've read in a long time. Riva Lehrer was born in 1958 with spina bifida. Miraculously there is a surgeon at the hospital who could perform the emergency surgery on Riva after she's born to close up her spinal cord. She survives the surgery and spends the next two years in the hospital having surgery after surgery. Riva's mother worked in the medical field before marrying, so she knows more than the average parent, but still Riva's health is always at risk. The first half of the book covers Riva's life into high school - going to a special school for disabled children, trying to find independence from her family while needing them so much because of her health, etc. The first half also focuses a lot on Riva's relationship with her mother. Riva's mother also had several painful surgeries related to a ruptured disc in her back. So beyond just the normal mother/daughter bond they also bond of their pain and surgeries. This family REALLY had some rough medical issues. The second half of the book covers Riva's art career and how she found her place to "fit in" with a group of Disabled artists. The book is filled with her vivid, yet often disturbing, artwork. At the end there is a section with more information on all the portraits included in the book. I found it really interesting that she ended up teaching anatomical drawing to medical school students - like her life really went full circle in a way.
I found the first half of the book more interesting than the second half. Parts of the second half were interesting, but there was a lot of relationship drama and a lot of very detailed parts about working on some of her portraits. One of the reviews I read said that that reader couldn't relate to Riva at all and didn't think she would like her - I could somewhat agree with that. Not having disabilities would make it hard to relate personally to someone like Riva. I'm not sure what she would be like in person, but there was something about the book that was so readable - even when I was uncomfortable or she was talking about something I didn't get or agree with I still found myself wanting to keep reading. She has had an incredibly hard life in many ways and at times it was hard to read one more awful thing happening to her. But, Riva has never shied away from her Golem Girl side and really brings to light how much society shuns anything that is not the "norm." But, when no one is perfect what is the norm? Lots to think about after reading this really unique book.
Some quotes I liked:
"By the time Frankenstein was published, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley had already had one miscarriage and given birth to two children. The second - a daughter - died before she was two. Of Shelley's five pregnancies, only the last survived to adulthood. Is it any surprise that she fantasized the power to revive the dead? Could Frankenstein have been written by anyone but a mother who had lost child after child? A woman for whom the line between life and death had smudged and faded?" (p. 21)
"If my fertility had been valued, perhaps I would have been taken seriously when I complained of pelvic pain. Instead, I had to begin hemorrhaging before anyone examined me. I don't know whether anything could have been done to preserve my fertility, or whether pregnancy was as dangerous as my mother claimed, but I do know that her reaction, and that of Dr. Martin, speaks to a long-held societal dread of disabled people making more disabled people. I know that no one, back then, expressed a single word of sorrow at the loss of my ability to procreate." (p. 139)
"I hadn't known there was a difference between the cosmetic aspect of the way I walked and whether my limp was doing me any harm. It's still hard to sort out. My scoliosis was never seen as benign. My curvature was upsetting for others to look at, therefore harmful to society, ergo injurious to me. I gambled my body on other people's visions. I believed that there could be an end to surgeries. That someday, I would be normal enough." (p. 147)
"Got it. The Universal equated to men at war and women in bed. The fragile human body pertained only to me. Bryan Jones, TA Extraordinaire, had just stripped me of my nascent purpose in becoming an artist. I unpinned my work with hands that shook so badly that each drawing dropped to the ground. Kids dove under chairs to retrieve the sheets before they were ruined. I surprised myself, though. Instead of sobbing, or quitting, I felt the beginnings of fuck you stirring in my soul." (p. 181)
"Most of my own family treated Will [Riva's first college boyfriend] with friendly bafflement, but Grandpa pulled me aside while I was downstairs shooting pool with my cousins. 'I know you like this boy, Riva, but if you really care for him, you should let him see other girls.' Apparently there had been a family conference: all these people who loved me believed that Will could not." (p. 191)
" I had spent years fighting against misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism, yet I'd so easily believed that I should be ashamed of my body that I'd never understood that the shame was both the product of and tool of injustice. I hadn't just needed Disabled friends. I'd needed friends who could give my experience context and analysis." (p. 243)
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (Books & Banter, re-read)
This was my absolutely FAVORITE book series when I was a kid. My grandmother gave me all the books and I even got my husband to read this one before we went to Prince Edward Island for our honeymoon. But, I was concerned about re-reading it and not liking it as much as an adult. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. After I finished it my first thought was, "Now I want to re-read the rest of the series!"
Anne is an orphan girl who is mistakenly given to brother and sister Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert when they wanted to adopt a young man to help on their farm. Matthew is charmed by talkative Anne and convinces Marilla to keep her. Anne has a way of always getting into "scrapes" and trouble always finds her, but soon Matthew and Marilla have fallen in love with Anne and can't imagine Green Gables without her. The reader follows Anne as she goes from a VERY talkative child to a young woman by the end of the book. I will admit the younger Anne kind of got on my nerves a little with all her talking, but Montgomery does a great job in showing Anne grow up, but still keeping her personality and imagination intact. Overall, a very uplifting and fun book with a wonderful main character.
Some quotes I really liked:
"'Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great field all alone or into the deep, deep woods, and I'd look up into the sky - up - up - up - into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer.'" (p. 52)
"'I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it?'" (p. 118)
Second re-reading for book club. Still a great book and I do want to re-read the series. Maybe I'll do that next summer. One additional quote from this re-reading:
"When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes - what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows - what new landscapes - what new beauties - what curves and hills and valleys further on." (p. 293)
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Evening Edition, re-read)
In the 1870's the Ingalls family lives in the deep woods of Wisconsin. Laura, her older sister Mary, and her younger sister Carrie live with their Ma and Pa. Pa hunts, traps, and farms while Ma keeps the house, kids, cooks, and cleans. Laura and Mary spend a lot of time playing outside except in the winter. While there are lots of dangerous animals in the Big Woods, the girls feel safe in their cabin with Ma and Pa. Most nights they fall asleep to Pa playing his fiddle and singing at the end of the day.
Little House in the Big Woods sets the stage for the Ingalls family that is followed in the rest of the series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read these books as a child and LOVED them and my Mom actually made me a Laura Ingalls Wilder costume for Halloween one year. In recent years there has been some controversy over these books, namely that Laura's daughter, Rose, was the real author of the series, and that there is racist language especially toward Native Americans in some of the later books. My opinion may change as I keep going, but I feel like the tone is consistent with the time period it was written, not overtly racist on purpose. Overall, I'm excited to re-read these childhood favorites and I think children today could still enjoy this introduction to Laura and the series.
A quote I liked:
"Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named Nettie. Laura had only a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan. It wasn't Susan's fault that she was only a corncob." (p. 20-21)
Update from re-reading for book club: Still an enjoyable book and the way it's written is just lovely. You immediately relate to Laura who tries so hard to be good and wishes she could be like her older sister. I especially enjoy reading about the food preparation and harvest for the winter.
Whistle Blower: my journey to silicon valley and fight for justice at Uber by Susan Fowler
Susan Fowler was 25 years old when she quit her job at Uber because of on-going sexual harassment and retaliation. She had previous left two other jobs in the tech/Silicon Valley industry for the same (yet remarkably less blatant) reasons. She thought quitting would bring relief, but it didn't. She was hearing from friends still working at Uber that nothing was changing and nothing likely would. So on a whim she wrote a blog post detailing the harassment and retaliation she endured at Uber. Her post instantly went viral and shortly thereafter she was the target of both journalists and private investigators hired by Uber to follow her and try to dig up dirt on her. But, because she spoke out others started to speak out and things ultimately did change at Uber - the CEO was forced out and finally the frat-boy culture started to truly change. Fowler has a remarkable story to tell - not just about what happened to her at Uber, but throughout her life she had to fight to get ahead. She grew up very poor in rural Arizona and knew education was her way to a better life. She continued to face harassment and discrimination in college - even in an Ivy League school. But, what she realized after the Uber situation blew up was that all these things prepared her to be in the place to take a stand against Uber at the time she did. It's so frustrating to know this kind of blatant discrimination still takes place today - particularly in fields like science and technology that have traditionally had fewer women in the field (after reading this book it's not hard to understand why so few women are in these fields). But, it's refreshing to see Fowler's story about standing up and something actually happening because of what she brought to light. When these "open secrets" start to be exposed that's when things can truly begin to change for the better.
Some quotes I liked:
"I was used to people hating me and mistreating me because of my Jewish background, for my sex, for my sexual orientation, for my social class. I didn't understand it...As a teenager, I'd believed with all of my heart that if I made it out of poverty, if I worked hard enough and got what I called a 'fancy, high-paying job,' I'd never have to endure that kind of treatment again, because I believed that the creepy, inappropriate, demeaning, and discriminatory treatment I'd experienced came from a place of profound ignorance...But now I had that 'fancy, high-paying job' in the real work - one that I assumed would earn me a little more respect, one that was ostensibly protected by hefty federal employment law - and it seemed like things weren't all that different. The thought that such treatment might follow me, no matter how high up the socioeconomic ladder I climbed, absolutely terrified me." (p. 91-2)
"I'd believed in these [diversity] initiatives during the first few months that I worked at the company, but I quickly became disillusioned. The issue wasn't that Uber needed to be more diverse and inclusive; the issue was that Uber had a culture that ignored and violated civil right and employment laws. Uber didn't just need more women engineers, or more employees of color; it needed to stop breaking the law." (p. 161)
"If Uber's internal lawyers got to something or someone first, they would destroy evidence and try to scare or intimidate employees. Several of the women who had made harassment and discrimination complaints during my time at Uber started to put their own documentation together to hand over to Holder's investigation, only to find that their emails, screenshots, and files about harassment and discrimination had been deleted from their email accounts. After one of my friends met with investigators, her personal phone and computer were stolen from her desk. When she reported the theft to Uber's security, they said that the office cameras normally watching her desk were turned off at the time, so they couldn't help her. Another friend had his personal phone stolen from his desk, in the exact same situation, several days later." (p. 229)
The Growing Season: how I saved an American farm - and built a new life by Sarah Frey
Sarah Frey was the youngest of her parents' combined 21 children. She grew up on a struggling farm and learned quickly to take care of herself. Her family did all kinds of work to survive and Sarah helped her mother re-sell melons from local farmers to grocery stores. By the time she was 16 she had expanded the melon business and roped in her brothers to help her. She eventually bought her parents' farm when it was about to be foreclosed. Her small-time melon business turned into a multi-million dollar business that supplied Walmart with produce and owned farms in several states.
When I read reviews of this book I was more thinking it would be like Forrest Pritchard's book Gaining Ground about turning his family's farm from industrial monoculture to a financially successful diversified farm. But, Sarah Frey's story is more of creating a huge empire that just started with her own family's farm. Her success is great and the struggles she overcame while growing up are impressive, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I liked the chapters that covered her childhood better than the second half of the book. I think because of how she grew up she was so hell bent on succeeding and growing that parts of the book were stressful to read because she was just doing SO MUCH ALL THE TIME. I'm not surprised her marriage didn't last - it would take a very unique person to be in a relationship with someone so driven and hyper-focused. I loved that this was a story of a woman making a successful business in a typically male dominated field, but I just didn't love the book as much as I wanted to.
Some quotes I liked:
[When Sarah's hired workers from Mexico were discriminated against at her local bank] "'I understand that you folks are a little uncomfortable with our workers coming in to cash their checks,' I said, keeping my voice steady. 'You're making them wait out in the heat because you're not comfortable with them all here? Well, you know what? Now I'm uncomfortable, too. I'm uncomfortable having my money here. Close out all of my accounts. Now. There,' I called on my way out. 'Now no one has to feel uncomfortable.'" (p. 155)
"After all, how many times have I had a man show up at my farm or at one of my facilities and ask me if they could speak to the 'man in charge'? Probably a million. Every time I politely smile and say, 'Sure, I'll go get him.' Then I go find one of my brothers and say, 'Hey, he wants to speak to the man in charge. Maybe you should go have a conversation with him.' My brother goes to speak with the guy. And as soon as the guy asks a question, my brother says, 'You know what? I don't have any idea. I'm going to have to talk to my sister. She's the boss. You had the opportunity to talk to her directly, but now she's gone. Don't worry, though. I'll pass along your question and I'm sure she'll make it a priority to get back to you right away.' Sometimes it's better to let people find out after the fact that they've been rude, rather than depleting your energy educating them." (p. 164)
Rockaway: surfing headlong into a new life by Diane Cardwell
After her divorce Diane Cardwell feels like she's floundering in her own life. On paper everything looked great, but she wasn't really happy. And now that she's divorced and in her forties she feels like she's starting over in middle age. Writing a story for The New York Times in Montauk, she sees surfers in the water and is transfixed. On a whim she decides to rent a house and take surfing lessons later in the summer. This one small decision changes Cardwell's life. She eventually ends up moving out to Rockaway full time and is just steps from the beach so she can surf as often as she can. She'd been in her Rockaway house for less than a year when Hurricane Sandy hits. Thankfully her house only has minimal damage and she is able to ride out the storm with friends, but the area is devastated. That is the moment when Rockaway really becomes home for Cardwell. She stays, despite having no electricity, to be close to her friends and keep working on the area and cleaning up the damage to her house. Surfing and living at the beach become part of her identity and she creates a new community of fellow surfers and beach dwellers in Rockaway. A very well-written reinvention memoir about how surfing led Diane Cardwell to a more fulfilling life.
A quote I liked:
"As we clattered through Queens, I felt a soreness settling into my body that I could tell wasn't from any kind of damage. Instead it was the hard-won, righteous soreness from going all-out chasing after something that I'd decided, entirely on my own, I wanted to do. I was proud of myself for not chickening out, for not, as usual, letting the fear of failure stop me." (p. 39)
Because I Was a Girl: true stories for girls of all ages by Melissa de la Cruz, ed.
I just happened to see this book on the shelf at the library and pick it up. I was familiar with Melissa de la Cruz's fiction, but was unaware of this collection she edited. It's a collection of short essay written by women about either something they did or didn't do or were treated in a certain way because they were a girl or woman. The stories are organized by decade starting with the 1920's -1930's and going up to the 2010's. At the beginning of each section there are several facts about women's rights or issues that took place or were achieved in that decade. I really liked that most of the stories were just from regular women - not necessarily celebrities or famous people. Ordinary women who have achieved great things shows any young girl reading this book that they too can do great things. Overall, it was a solid book that would be good for teen/preteen girls (or older as I'm well past those ages). My only minor complaint was that the few articles in the 2010's section were of pretty young girls with not a whole lot of content (at least compared to the rest of the stories). Still, a book worth reading.
People Who Love to Eat Are Always the Best People: and other wisdom by Julia Child
Julia Child is well-known for her cooking shows and cookbooks, but also for her infectious laugh and humor. This small book is a collection of many of her best-known quotes - including the title, People who love to eat are always the best people. At the end of the book is a list of all the quote sources and also a few pages on Julia Child's life and legacy. This is a very quick read, but would make a great gift to any Julia Child fans.
Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
"You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients." (p. 61)
"Fat gives things flavor." (p. 77)
"I just hate health food." (p. 127)
Letters to the Church by Francis Chan (Lake Forest)
Francis Chan had a hugely successful megachurch in California. Then he decided to walk away from it. He started feeling like he wasn't making the impact he wanted to as a pastor. First he thought he and his family might move to another country to start a ministry or church, but in visiting churches around the world Chan started to see how smaller house churches seemed to have a bigger impact in these countries than larger churches in the US. His family came back to California and started a house church movement. To date they have over 45 house churches in the San Francisco area. These churches aren't about him as the pastor or about fancy programs or incredible music - they are about the basics of the Bible and spreading the gospel message.
While parts of this book were convicting and encouraging, I didn't agree with everything he said. I really didn't like the chapter where he compares church to gang life - as in churches should be more like gangs (you know, except without the murder and drugs). There are SO MANY other examples he could have used and I found the gang analogy to be very off-putting and offensive. Yes, gang member "have each others backs," but in a very dysfunctional way - gangs are NOT a good example of love and really caring for others. But, overall I think this is still a book worth reading and thinking about. I personally think a lot of the differences in the churches that he highlights in this book are more cultural differences - a church will reflect the people in it and their culture of the day. That doesn't mean we can't strive to do better here in America and I feel like that is more of Chan's overall message in the book. Definitely a unique and challenging book.
Some quotes I liked:
"Suffering is rarely talked about in the American church. I find this ironic because suffering is all through the New Testament. I did a sermon one time where I went through every book of the New Testament and started reading verse after verse about suffering to show it's not just in one book. It's not just one verse. It's all over the place. It's one of the clearest doctrines in the New Testament." (p. 68)
"Has it ever struck you that besides Jesus no one else seemed to recognize the sin of these two groups of people? You don't see the crowds of Jewish temple-goers confronting Pharisees or getting upset about the unholy activity going on in God's temple. They were used to it. It was part of their culture." (p. 71)
Honey and Venom: confessions of an urban beekeeper by Andrew Cote
Andrew Cote comes from generations of beekeepers. He started helping his dad with beekeeping when he was a kid and continued, but started to get more serious as he got older. He eventually left a career in academia to work as a full time beekeeper. While he lives in Connecticut, he keeps bees all over New York City - on the rooftops of many famous buildings. He founded the organization New York City Beekeepers Association to help lobby New York City to allow urban beekeeping again (it had been made illegal in 1999 by Mayor Giuliani) and also a nonprofit called Bees Without Borders to help people in other countries become more successful beekeepers. In this book Cote goes through a year of beekeeping - January through December. Each month highlights what beekeepers would be doing during that time of year and also some of his personal beekeeping experiences. While parts of the book were very interesting in some chapters his personal stories felt forced into the chapter. There were also several un-necessary/unwelcome sexual jokes or innuendos that felt forced and didn't add to the book (or make him look good) at all. He obviously knows honey bees and is interested in sharing his knowledge and helping other beekeepers. Overall, the book was good, but not great. I think some changes in his personal stories or more/better editing could have made it an amazing book.
A quote I liked:
[Bees on NASA space ships to see how honey bees would react to zero gravity] "In space, the lack of gravity influenced the bees to build their honeycomb at odd angles and not to the perfect pitch of the Earth that they normally would. They also, initially, could not fly, and just walked around, but by the end of the week they had worked out how to fly in their new environs. Honey bees are quick studies." (p. 57)
Uncommon Ground: staying faithful in a world of difference by Timothy Keller and John Inazu, eds.
America feels more divided than ever right now and social media only seems to fuel that division. So, how can Christians interact with people in today's divisive culture in a loving way while still remaining true to the gospel message of the Bible? In this book Timothy Keller and John Inazu invite in ten others to write about various ways we can connect with people even when we disagree. The book is divided into three sections - framing our engagement, communicating our engagement, and embodying our engagement - basically thinking, speaking, and living. While there aren't a lot of specific do's and don't's or lists of suggestions, the overall gist of the book is that as Christ-followers we are supposed to try to live like Jesus every day. Prayer was highlighted over and over again and even though it's so obvious how many of us pray before responding to a Facebook post we disagree with? How many of us pray before going to work every day that we will be a good example of the faith to our coworkers? How many of us have friends who aren't believers or are of another faith? How often do we really interact with people who are different than us/have different views/etc.? To me the main theme of this book is to try to live every day more like Jesus. He embodied the example of truth AND love - you can't have just one or the other, it has to be both and that's really hard to do. Overall, a very good and very timely book.
Some quotes I liked:
"One side wanted us to accept the dominant culture's beliefs about homosexuality, while the other wanted us to cut off homosexuals entirely. The Christian gospel, however, did not allow us to do either. The gospel did not fit the conventional categories or received perspective, and Christians who followed the gospel were out of step with everyone." (p. 25)
"Our supervisor's admonition to use words charitably shaped how we felt about the university and its administration - it actually made us feel more charity toward those with whom we disagreed, and it changed our understanding of what was happening. It was not easy to articulate in writing our differences with the administration in a way that honored what was best about the university. It would have been much easier, and more attention-getting, to write a scorched-earth takedown of liberal elites in the academy. Our more nuanced task was to disagree publicly and try, however fumbling and imperfectly, to use words and arguments that were truthful yet humble and that respected the dignity of those with whom we were arguing - to be people who spoke and wrote with conviction, but who resisted the short-lived sweetness of self-righteous vitriol." (p. 76)
"On one hand, we give too much weight to words. We confuse the pursuit of justice - the slow work of building or transforming institutions and systems - with using the right hashtag or rattling off an opinion on social media or venting rage or virtue signaling. It's not that hashtagging or using social media are irredeemable practices. But social media is never a neutral tool; it shapes how we see the world - and how we speak and act in it. Ironically, it can lead us to greater disengagement even as we consume more and more information about the world. We can become too quick to speak or write, and too slow to listen, understand, and respond with depth and creative action." (p. 81)
"A songwriter is called onto the scene not to make spiritual sense of it, or to answer for it, but simply to look around and cry out, 'Oh my God! Look at this unfathomable beauty!' Or, 'Oh my God! Look at this sh*t show!' This is what we see in the Psalms anyway." (p. 86)
"I believe in the idea that we 'vote' with our lives, money, and time. But if I feel as though my sole identity is as a walking representative of my church, my denomination, or my political party, then my speech and creativity are reduced to propaganda. I have to ask myself if I am stifling honest inquiry because I'm afraid to admit a flaw in the groups with which I most closely identify...My identity doesn't come from these organizations, and while the body of Christ is essential to my faith, I don't have to protect any particular organization at the expense of transparency and honest inquiry." (p. 95)
"What's more, we have trouble digesting a narrative that doesn't fit our worldview. It's actually easier for us to believe a false narrative that fits out outlook on the world than a true narrative that shakes and shatters our perspective. And that is true regardless of where we stand." (p. 106)
"Sometimes the inapt characterizations bother me, but more often they amuse me, like the time a faculty colleague said to me, 'I don't get you; you're religious, but you care about poor people.' Or the many times I've heard from Christians who tell me they can't trust a 'liberal law professor' like me. I regularly encounter people in my university world who assume from my faith that I am a Republican who likes guns. People in my church world often assume from my profession that I am a Democrat who reads only the New York Times." (p. 124-5)
"Respect isn't a synonym for agreement, but it does impact the way a person disagrees. One cannot respect another and harbor a desire to overpower that person through insults, dismissal, or derogatory actions." (p. 133)
"...Christians should not overidentify with any particular political party or platform. This does not mean that it is wrong to be a Democrat or a Republican (or a political independent, or part of some other party)...But Christians should also be wary of any identity that claims primacy over their identity in Christ." (p. 195)
