nonfiction

Book Review: Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America by Eyal Press

Stephanie1 Comment

There’s a lot in the news right now about work: supply chain issues, fights over minimum wage, unions, strikes, and of course, the worker shortage. None of these are truly new issues, but the pandemic has exacerbated them all. And to get at the heart of these issues, you need to understand work culture in the US on a deeper level. It’s not all briefcases and meetings; sometimes, work means doing jobs that are looked down upon, but are deeply necessarily for society’s survival. I added Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America by Eyal Press (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021) to my TBR as soon as I learned about it, but a segment about the book on NPR a a few days later really had me looking forward to reading it. And I wasn’t disappointed, though this is by no means an easy or comfortable read.

Think of a job you would never want to do. A scary job, a dangerous job, maybe one that turns your stomach. How much would you have to be paid in order to perform that job? How much do you think the people who perform it are paid, and do you think they’re afforded the respect they deserve? What do you think it costs them on a personal level to work that job? Eyal Press takes a look at some of the jobs and industries that are lowest on the proverbial totem pole in America- some that might immediately come to mind, such as prison guard and slaughterhouse workers- and some that probably didn’t, like the members of the military responsible for drone strikes, and oil rig workers. These jobs are highly underpaid, often leave deep scars on the psyche of those are employed in these industries, and aren’t often discussed in polite society, because we’d rather forget that such dirty work is performed in our name, and that we benefit from so much suffering.

Eyal Press interviews workers in each other these industries, human beings who suffer because of the jobs they often had little choice but to take (this is one of the many examples of inequality in the book; these industries are often located in rural, poverty-stricken areas where survival comes before morals, which ends up costing us all). The suffering is immense, and we all bear guilt for it; it’s just that so many of us choose to ignore it. Dirty Work will have you reexamining your views on class, work, and inequality in America.

This was an extremely emotionally difficult read. It broke my heart multiple times to read about how easily our society dismisses suffering and how ready we are to use people until they’re broken and then throw them away entirely, without a second thought to what they need or how to ease their pain. Disabled from work that we benefit from? Too bad for you, go somewhere I can’t see you and don’t have to think about it anymore, is the general attitude. Mentally unwell because of the killing you did in America’s name in the military? Stop talking about it; our thanks for your service should be all the balm you need. America’s attitude of ‘Ask not what your country can do for you’ is on full display in this book, because America just doesn’t do anything for the Americans who are harmed by it.

It took me almost a week to get through this book, because I kept having to stop reading in order to take a mental break. The problem, Eyal Press reminds us, is systemic, and individual acts aren’t going to make much difference at all. It’s going to take the actions of the majority of us, loud, constant voices screaming that this isn’t right and demanding change, for conditions to better. I don’t know that we have it in us, to be honest; far too many of us are happily willing to accept that others suffer and sometimes die so we can have things like cheap meat. I don’t think we’re all that good at deep self-examination and reflection as a society, as this pandemic has emphasized.

This is an impressive, hard-hitting book that should shock a reader into deep contemplation, and will hopefully help you rethink what you may have learned before about the kind of work that you may not like to think about, but that you definitely benefit from, or that is done in your name. It’s a tough, tough read, but it’s a necessary one, and I hope it sparks a national conversation about the suffering we’re willing to tolerate, and why.

Visit Eyal Press’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

fiction · romance

Book Review: Love, Chai, and Other Four-Letter Words (Chai Masala Club #1) by Annika Sharma

Stephanie1 Comment

When someone mentioned Love, Chai, and Other Four-Letter Words (Chai Masala Club #1) by Annika Sharma (Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2021) on Twitter a few weeks ago, I immediately added it to my TBR (this is why I can’t get my TBR down any further, y’all!). I love books with characters who come from different cultures or sub-cultures than I do, and the premise of a series centered around a friend group whose members are all different versions of Indian (two are Indian American, one is British Indian, and another was born and raised in India but lives in America now) intrigued me. Seriously great Indian rep right there. There was a lot to enjoy here, but the story itself fell a little flat for me.

Kiran grew up in a small village in India, the daughter of parents who sacrificed her whole life so that she could be educated and successful. Her older sister Kirti was disowned after her wedding to a man from a lower caste; her village didn’t approve, and thus to avoid the shame it would bring on the family and the lessening of Kiran’s chances in life, the family banished her. Kiran has since become a successful engineer in New York City, but she’s weighted down by her responsibilities and her parents’ expectations.

Enter Nash, a blond psychologist who just moved to the city from- of course- Nashville. He’s Kiran’s new neighbor with family drama of his own, and as they strike up a friendship, Kiran feels like she might be falling in love for the first time. Which is big time not good, since Nash is white and American- definitely not on her parents’ approval list. Her friends are there for her when she struggles with her options, and there for her when her parents cast her away as well. It’s only when an emergency happens thousands of miles away that everyone learns the power of family, forgiveness, and love.

I loved the premise of this, the closeness of the friend group, and their diversity of experience (both in terms of work experience and life experience; so many different and beautiful connections to India); their support for Kiran and each other; their constant text messages; and the fact that there’s a GUY in this friend group! (I’m super curious as to what Akash’s love story will look like.) Kiran’s sense of duty to her parents, especially in the light of what happened with her older sister, is admirable; her struggle with that sense of duty is realistic and relatable. I did want her and Nash to work out as a couple, since she obviously loved him, and I was pulling for them.

Nash is…a little on the bland side, to be honest. For having a doctorate in psychology, he seemed deeply unaware of how to handle cultural differences and unable to fully grasp most situations from Kiran’s point of view. For someone so highly educated, I would have expected him to start delving deeply into some cultural studies and making an effort to understand what made Kiran the woman she is, where she came from and what life was and is like there, but nope, nothing. He just…fumbled here and there. Not exactly my ideal hero. And really, he has no excuse. Nashville, for its being a blue dot in a red (RED RED RED) sea, is a deeply multicultural city. I lived on the outskirts for five years and was constantly in Nashville proper, where my husband worked. There are multiple synagogues; a large Muslim population; a Somali community; and among many, many others, an Indian community. There are many excellent Indian restaurants in Nashville (two of my favorites were within walking distance of Vanderbilt, where Nash graduated from (and where my husband worked, so I’m intimately familiar with the area. He 100% would have known about them; they’re both really popular. I often say those two restaurants are the only thing I miss about living there). If Nash was as oblivious as he seemed, it wasn’t because he lived in Nashville and attended Vanderbilt University; he would’ve had to work pretty hard to avoid the cultural mosaic around him.

It felt to me as though the story went from cutesy-first-butterflies scene to Nash and Kiran admitting their feelings and ending up immediately in bed (all fade-to-black; zero open door scenes) very quickly; I never got a good sense of why they liked each other and had a hard time feeling much chemistry at all between the two. This may be because I didn’t feel like I connected with the writing style well, but I also felt that the writing itself lacked sparkle. Too much telling and not enough showing for me.

This was just okay; I had hoped for a little bit more, to be honest.

Visit Annika Sharma’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France

Stephanie5 Comments

I was born in 1980; for people born in my generation, there’s never been a time where AIDS hasn’t existed. I remember first learning about the deadly virus in fifth grade, when my class watched a video featuring Magic Johnson, and my teacher (who was one of the best teachers I ever had) led a class discussion afterwards. In my life, AIDS has gone from an absolute death sentence to a chronic health condition that can be managed with one pill a day (for some folks). The implications of that are enormous. One of the books I recommend most is And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts; it was because I love that book so much that I wanted to read a more recently-written story about the people behind the long, painful journey to an effective treatment for AIDS. I knew as soon as I heard about How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France (Knopf, 2013), I had to read it. At over 500 pages of narrative, it’s a dense, hefty read, but it’s well worth your time.

David France has chronicled the emotional odyssey of the late seventies through the mid-nineties for the New York gay community, from the first few deaths that rang alarm bells and alerted people that some terrible new illness was going around, to the final triumphant moments when an effective treatment was finally on the horizon. The path to that triumph is littered with dead bodies, pain, horrific suffering (both physical and emotional), ruined lives, and grief; it was also lined with friendship, camaraderie, infighting, broken friendships, and young adults coming into their own amidst terrible tragedy.

The government ignored them (“It only affects gay people, so just let it take them out”). Their families abandoned them. Their health providers often turned them away. Hospitals refused AIDS patients treatment. Funeral homes refused to care for their wasted bodies. Scientists didn’t see their suffering as a priority. But the gay community refused to face death sitting down; their voices rose to a fever pitch and remained there, even throughout their grief and suffering, until finally, finally, after so much loss and death, the people who could help began to listen. It would take over 100,000 American deaths for an effective treatment to finally arrive.

This is a moving, tragic, infuriating, and beautifully written narrative of a time in history that should never, ever have happened. It’s horrifying how easily the United States is willing to throw its own citizens away (and this happens in so, so many aspects); it was more than willing to write off the endless suffering of the gay community, telling them they had brought this on themselves and it was God’s punishment (in Judaism, there’s a term for this kind of behavior, which translates to ‘desecration of the name of God;’ I think it fits in this instance. Using God to justify someone else’s suffering, while you stand idly by and mock them? Yeah. It fits).

Author David France pops into the story now and then, as he was in the midst of it all, attending meetings and protests, caring for sick friends and lovers, and grieving many, many losses (people losing hundreds of friends wasn’t uncommon). This adds a personal touch to the story which gives it emotional depth; it’s not all protests, emotionally charged meetings, and observations from afar. This is a story observed up close; it’s personal to him, and he makes sure the reader knows it.

How to Survive a Plague is a heavy, emotional read, but it’s well worth your time.

Visit David France’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

Monthly roundup

Monthly Roundup: October 2021

Stephanie2 Comments

October flew by as well! I’m starting to think we’re either in some kind of bizarre time warp, or I just don’t understand how time works anymore.

It’s been a good month in terms of quality of reading, but I’ve been reading a lot of really emotionally intense things. I’m working down my Goodreads TBR list of what’s available at my local library, and it’s a lot of harder books, subjects I’ve put off or have been waiting until things are slightly less crazy in life to get to. Well…I don’t know when or if things are ever going to truly settle down, so I’ve been diving in. It’s been a rough month in a number of ways, but the reading has helped a lot. I hope you’re hanging in there as well, and that you had a happy Halloween, if it’s something you celebrate! Welcome to November. I’m grateful for books, my library, and for you. 🙂

Let’s get this recap started, shall we?

Books I Read in October 2021

1. The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

2. Men Who Hate Women – From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All by Laura Bates

3. Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness by Jennifer Berry Hawes

4. The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz (no review; read out loud to my daughter)

5. A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold

6. Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood by Mark Oppenheimer

7. In the Land of Believers: An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church by Gina Welch

8. Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero by Saadia Faruqi

9. The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism (no review)

10. Broke In America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty by Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox

11. How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France (review to come)

12. Free: Two Years, Six Lives, and the Long Journey Home by Lauren Kessler (review to come)

So, bit of a slow month overall, but amazing in terms of quality, and not easy in terms of the emotional impact of these books. Undocumented immigrants, violent misogyny, racial hatred that led to murder, a middle grade historical fiction, the psychological effect of a mass school shooting, antisemitism that led to murder, undercover writing about Evangelical Christianity, Islamophobia, more racial hatred, extreme poverty. Once again, phew! I do have more fiction on my TBR, I promise! I WILL get to it eventually! I just enjoy nonfiction a lot, even the tough stuff. I enjoy learning about the world from someone else’s perspective and feeling like I’m using my brain (the opportunity for that doesn’t happen often these days, so I’m grasping for any chance I can get!).

My daughter and I are reading Anne of Avonlea. I don’t know that she enjoys this one as much as she did Anne of Green Gables, simply because it’s harder for her to relate to a more grown-up Anne, but I’m enjoying it! Not sure what’s next on our list.

Nine of these books came from my TBR.

Reading Challenge Updates

Not current participating in any reading challenges.

State of the Goodreads TBR

Last month, we left off at 156 books on said TBR; this month, we’re down to 150! Imagine, there once was a time when it was down to 78…It’s nice to have goals, right???

Books I Acquired in October 2021

None!

Bookish Things I Did in October 2021

I was browsing an online calendar for virtual Jewish events at the end of September when I came across two events that I immediately wanted to attend. The first was an appearance by Mark Oppenheimer, author, journalist, and co-host of the Unorthodox podcast, to discuss his latest book, Squirrel Hill. I hadn’t read the book yet, but as luck would have it, it came in at my library that night. The interview with Mark was wonderful and illustrated his emotional ties to both the Jewish community as a whole and his ancestral neighborhood of Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh. The second event I attended happened several days later; author Dara Horn was promoting her latest book, People Love Dead Jews, which I had already read. She discussed her book and debated a few topics with another speaker; she’s wildly intelligent and I really enjoyed being able to hear her speak.

These online author presentations are one of the few gifts we’ve been given from this awful pandemic, and it’s something I hope continues long into the future.

Current Podcast Love

Still listening to and enjoying the Ologies podcast! It’s endless fun, and a fun way to learn as I’m falling asleep, or when I wake up in the middle of the night. Alie Ward is a fabulous interviewer, and even subjects I have no interest in, she makes me go, “Huh, maybe this is interesting after all…” Highly recommended!

Stephanie’s Read Harder Challenge

Uh, yeah. No progress on that this month. I’ll talk about why below.

Real Life Stuff

Oof, what a month.

Depression and anxiety hit me HARD last month. Like, really, really hard, and it only continued to get worse this month. My heart was racing, I couldn’t focus, my stomach noped out of eating pretty much anything because it felt like it was full of pre-performance butterflies at all times…things were bad, friends. Like, finally bad enough for me to break down and call to get a same-day doctor appointment with a doctor who I’ve seen before but who is not my regular provider. Crying to someone you barely know while wearing a mask really sucks, you know? He was kind and sympathetic and agreed that I was entirely emotionally tapped out from *gestures broadly at everything* and prescribed me a low dose of antidepressants to get me over this hump. And fortunately, they kicked in after about a week and a half…

…just in time for my back to go out again! (I can’t win.) I had been doing great since my caudal injections last month, until I bent over to buckle my daughter in her car seat and something on my left side spasmed mightily, leaving me in heaps of pain, struggling to walk and once again feeling like my pelvis is trying to electrocute me when I’m in a sitting position- only this time, because of the antidepressant, I couldn’t take the gabapentin to control that like I would have before. My physiatrist’s office responded to my message on Monday; they were able to fit me in for an emergency appointment the next day, where we scheduled more caudal injections. She said if I keep flaring after this set of injections, she wants to redo my MRI and consult with the surgeon about maybe going in there and shaving off the herniated part of what’s left of my L5S1 disc. Not my ideal situation, but it would be nice to, you know, move normally again and not be in SO much pain all the time, so we’ll see. Round 2 of injections happens tomorrow, so think good thoughts for me! 🙂  (On the way out the door, my doctor saw my copy of How to Survive a Plague by David France and remarked, “Oh, that’s a really good book!” She’s got excellent taste in books, y’all!)

That’s about it! I’m crossing everything that my daughter will be able to get vaccinated this month; our local Walgreens said they were preparing to vaccinate kids in the next week or two, so here’s hoping! May your November be filled with love, warmth, light, and beautiful colors, no matter where you’re at in the world. Be safe, friends.

nonfiction

Book Review: Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty by Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox

Stephanie1 Comment

Poverty is a special kind of hell, and it takes a special kind of miracle to unearth oneself from its depths. The myth of working hard in order to better one’s station in life is some Horatio Alger-type nonsense; how can you work hard enough when the rent alone is over half of your take-home pay? How is it possible to get ahead when you’re barely keeping up and a blown tire or a minor medical emergency is all it takes to put you behind yet again? Salaries haven’t kept up with increases in cost of living, and if you don’t understand poverty well or have never picked up a book on the subject, Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty by Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox (BenBella Books, 2021) is an excellent place to start.

In this well-researched and aptly argued primer on poverty in the United States, authors Goldblum and Shaddox lay out the case for exactly how dire the situation is- bad for some, worse for others (and notably worse for nonwhites in every case). The system is stacked against people to move up out of poverty; those who come from money are likely stay there, and those who don’t aren’t statistically likely to get ahead. Those who do manage to claw their way out end up nowhere near those who are born into money in terms of assets. It’s a terrible, vicious cycle, one that is unmistakable throughout every chapter of this book, with example after depressing example and even more disheartening statistics.

But poverty is a choice, the authors argue- not a choice made by the people living it, but a choice we as a society are making. We choose to allow this; we choose to maintain a system set up to sentence people to intense suffering and hideous living conditions. We don’t have to live like this, and myriad suggestions point out how easily (and not so easily) things could change. If you’re looking to make a difference in the landscape of American poverty, Broke In America should be on your reading list.

This is an intense book, one that will definitely open your eyes if you’re unaware of what life is like for people who live at or under the poverty line (currently defined as $26,200 for a family of four). Children going hungry and sitting in full diapers because parents can’t afford more. Women using toilet paper and old rags because they can’t afford menstrual products, and missing work and school because of it. Medical conditions that go untreated due to lack of insurance or money to pay a doctor. Families living in unheated homes and apartments in brutally cold winter temperatures, and children going without winter coats in the snow.

Charities aren’t enough; societal problems take societal solutions (you can’t personal responsibility your way out of a societal problem, as Twitter is fond of pointing out), and there are plenty, but Goldblum and Shaddox make the reader aware that it’s going to take a lot of action, and a lot of long-term action. We’ve let society become this kind of mess over a long period of time, and it’s going to take an immense amount of effort and political will that I’m not sure we have to solve this. The American myth of people deserving the situation they’re in is deeply baked-in here, and I don’t have the slightest idea how to disavow people of that, when not only is it something so many have believed all their lives, but the kind of people who believe that are most often not the kind who would pick up a book like this. They’re more interested in policing people already suffering (as evidenced by the woman I saw on social media the other day, complaining about how she always *insert eyeroll* saw people on food stamps buying shopping carts full of steak and lobster. I told her that was pretty nosy of her to not only monitor what other people were buying but to get close enough to check what kind of card they were paying with, and did she not have any more productive hobbies? Reader, she did not respond).

Broke in America is a sobering look at the way far too many of our fellow citizens live, and it’ll make you consider what you can do to make a difference. I already have some ideas.

Follow Joanne Samuel Goldblum on Twitter.

Visit Colleen Shaddox’s website here.

fiction

Book Review: Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero by Saadia Faruqi

Stephanie3 Comments

Ah, Twitter. Land of intense debate, mocking quips, up-to-the-moment news, adorable animal pictures, and far, far more book recommendations than I have time for. It was just a few weeks ago- September 11th, to be exact- when I learned of the existence of Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero by Saadia Faruqi (Quill Tree Books, 2021). It was a fitting date for the book to be shared and to go onto my TBR, since the story deals with the anniversary of 9/11 and Muslim families. My library had a copy in the New Books section of the middle grade books, and, desperately needing some fiction (I feel like I’ve read so little fiction this past year!), I grabbed it on my last library trip. My library is excellent about promoting diverse books; we live in a really amazing diverse community, but honestly, diversifying their collection should be a goal of every library out there. When we learn about each other, we understand what it’s like to walk in each other’s shoes, and that makes the world a better place.

Yusuf Azeem is a new middle schooler in the small town of Frey, Texas, nervous for this school year, but excited about the prospect of finally being able to participate in a well-known robotics competition for his school’s team. But tensions are high among his family and his Muslim community as a whole, since this year is the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, something Yusuf, who was born well after 2001, doesn’t fully understand until his uncle gives him his journal from 2001, when he was a boy. As he reads his uncle’s entries, Yusuf learns about the Islamophobia his community experienced, the hatred they felt, his uncle’s best friend who turned against him. Yusuf better begins to understand the strain everyone around him is feeling.

Things aren’t great in Frey. While Yusuf works diligently with his robotics team, nasty notes appear in his locker, a local group purporting to be patriots begins to threaten the Muslim community’s new mosque, his father’s store is vandalized, and Yusuf is repeatedly bullied by a fellow student (and he’s not the only victim). Saadia Faruqi has penned a novel that will have readers understanding the effects of hatred and fear on families, communities, and friendships.

This book has a more positive ending than a lot of real-life stories. Ms. Faruqi stated she wanted to show what life could be like when a community steps up and does the right thing, and I think that’s not only an excellent message, but that this book provides an excellent blueprint for what it looks like to do the right thing, from Yusuf’s gentle parents, the pastor who doesn’t back down, the friend who realizes he was wrong, the principle who steps in to change school policy. There are a lot of examples of missteps in this book, but there are far, far more examples of characters who recognize their errors and who work hard to make things right. And that’s how things should be.

Yusuf is a well-developed character. He’s a diligent student with varied interests, and his affection for his much younger sister is really sweet to read. His friend group is diverse, with distinct characteristics (one boy who’s more religious than Yusuf, another who is dead-set on assimilation, a girl who’s initially miffed at her role in the robotics club but who totally rocks it, a relative of the school’s and town’s biggest bully who changes throughout the story), and his religious community is complex, varied, and interesting. I enjoyed the scenes set in Sunday school (Islamic teaching classes for kids that happen on Sunday; my synagogue also has Sunday school for kids! Just religious school on Sunday), and Yusuf’s relating the lessons he learned there to the events happening in his daily life.

The Islamophobia is painful to read, no doubt. Yusuf’s family and friends suffer (and suffered in the past) due to people’s fear and misunderstanding about their religion and culture. Even the microaggressions, such as Yusuf’s teacher calling him up in front of the class to explain an Islamophobic incident in school, as though he were the authority on all things Muslim simply because he’s Muslim himself, show his distress well (teachers and other folks, don’t do this to your students!). If this were a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to read about other people’s pain in order to fully understand it, but I hope that this book makes clear how harmful it is to disregard the feelings of our Muslim brothers and sisters, and the pain it causes them when we stand on the sidelines instead of coming to their aid.

Homeschoolers, this is an excellent teaching tool if you’re doing a unit on September 11th, and it would make an AMAZING parent-child read together or book club selection. (DO NOT put your Muslim members on the spot, though! If anything, ask them privately if they’d like to share anything about their experiences, but don’t expect them to put their pain on display as a teaching tool. PLEASE.) Heads up for several mentions of COVID, including mention of a family death in the year prior; COVID is over during the telling of this story, so I’m guessing either the references were added in afterwards, or the book was finished in the days when we expected this would be a much shorter-lived experience.

Wonderful, wonderful book that I can’t recommend highly enough, both for the middle grade to early YA set, and for adults as well.

Visit Saadia Faruqi’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: In the Land of Believers: An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church by Gina Welch

Stephanie1 Comment

I enjoy a good going-undercover book now and then. I’ve read a few stories by former FBI agents who posed as various bad guys in order to infiltrate certain groups, and I definitely enjoyed Kevin Roose’s book about his stint at Liberty University, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University (Metropolitan Books, 2010). So when I learned about Gina Welch’s book, In the Land of Believers: An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church (Metropolitan Books, 2010), it went directly onto my TBR. Unfortunately, while being well-written, I ended up having a lot of issues with the book.

Gina Welch, a young secular atheist Jew, was curious about Evangelical Christians, so she decided to throw herself headfirst into the deep end of life as one. Posing as someone interested in Christianity, she showed up at Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church in Virginia. She began attending church services and group meetings, then was baptized as a member. She was a church member when Jerry Falwell died; she signed up to attend a mission trip to Alaska with the sole purpose of converting people (mostly homeless people) and converted one nine-year-old girl herself. Throughout the narrative, Ms. Welch shares her insights that posing as an Evangelical Christian brought her.

Okay.

So.

I have zero problems with the writing in this book. Whatever else I thought of what happened, Ms. Welch is a talented writer who understands well how to craft a compelling narrative out of her personal lived experiences. The book as a whole is interesting and well-written and I enjoyed the experience of reading her words.

BUT.

I have a lot, a LOT of issues with the ethics of this entire experiment. I’m not Christian and I have plenty of issues with a lot of Evangelical Christianity that I won’t go into, but this book really bothered me. Going undercover and showing up as someone already Christian would have been one thing and I would have had zero issues with that, but as someone who repeatedly stated that she was not able to change her views on God but yet still participated in rituals that are sacred to many, many people felt seriously icky to me. I wouldn’t be okay with someone doing this with my religion; I’m not okay with someone doing it with someone else’s. To be fair, Ms. Welch was completely respectful about everything and in all her actions, but simply participating fully in something you know isn’t meant for you, in which you don’t believe, doesn’t sit right with me. At all.

Her whole reasoning of taking on this project at all was to get to know the people behind the labels, and she did. I have no doubt that many of the people she got to know were kind and generous and friendly…especially to someone they thought was just like them, or had the potential to be just like them. Even when they learned the truth about who she was and why she was there, they were still kind to her (having been blindsided by learning that the person they’d spent the last two years getting to know, traveling with, and participating in religious activities with was writing a book in which they would feature heavily, including their reactions to this news…). She’s easily able to write off their more abhorrent views, which deeply rubbed me the wrong way; the homophobia and Islamaphobia, among other vile things, that have come out of this particular church are absolutely glossed over like they’re no big deal and haven’t ruined lives. Ms. Welch’s participation in the missionary trip to Alaska was also incredibly problematic. Personally converting a child to a religion you’ve repeatedly stated you don’t believe in is unethical, and was for me one of the worst scenes in this book. She shouldn’t have been on that trip and shouldn’t have participated in these kinds of activities. I’m frankly a bit appalled that she did.

At times, it felt like she wanted to believe, wanted to be a part of that, and if that was truly the case, then that’s perfectly fine and that could have been an entirely different book. But participating in rituals and conversion (yours and that of others) under the guise of someone who was sincere in her beliefs (while purporting not to be) is wrong, no matter what side you’re coming from. The book itself was well-written, but the activities Ms. Welch wrote about are something I can’t condone.

nonfiction

Book Review: Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood by Mark Oppenheimer

Stephanie1 Comment

As soon as I heard that Mark Oppenheimer was writing a book about the Squirrel Hill synagogue shooting, I added the book to my want-to-read list. This horrible even happened before my conversion, but converting had been something I’d been considering many, many years prior. I was sitting in the waiting area of my daughter’s gymnastics class that Saturday when my phone started buzzing and the news that a shooting had happened in a Pittsburgh synagogue began to fill my news feed. As I have a friend who lives in the area, I went to her Facebook page and began frantically refreshing her feed, trying to ascertain whether she was safe or not (she was; Tree of Life was not her congregation). And as I did that, a little voice in my brain said, “What about now? Still want to convert?” And the immediate answer was, “Absolutely. These are my people.” It took a little longer, but I made it happen, and it still hurts to read about this tragedy. Someone from my congregation lost family because of this shooting. The Jewish community is close-knit and well-connected with each other, and we’re all still feeling this. Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood (Knopf Publishing Group, 2021) is a beautiful testament to the strength of community and how a neighborhood and the greater community can come together in the wake of tragedy.

In the morning of October 27, 2018, a man walked into the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha congregation (which also housed two other congregations, Dor Hadash and New Light Congregation) and gunned down eleven Jews, injuring six more, and traumatizing all the rest. The focus of this book isn’t on what happened during the shooting, but rather, what happened afterwards, because there’s no need to glorify the killer or focus on the line of thinking that brought him to this point. Mark Oppenheimer’s family lived in Squirrel Hill for many generations; it’s a heavily Jewish area that is very close-knit, and the book delves into the beauty of recovery, of neighbors helping neighbors, of the wider world lending a hand and stepping in to help dry the tears of a hurting people.

People traveled from multiple faraway states with therapy dogs, homemade memorials, and more. The local firefighters memorialized one of the victims who always stopped by the firehouse for a chat. People came to prepare food for the victims’ families, borrowing another synagogue’s kitchen to ensure that the food would be kosher. Public art began appearing in support of the local Jewish community, most notably in a Starbucks window, where it can still be viewed today. Not everything was easy to take; a young Black woman expressed distress that when her people are shot and killed, no one shows up like this (and her distress is entirely understandable and this needs to change); just like at Mother Emanuel, the AME church in Charleston where nine Black worshippers were murdered, trauma tourists came by to ogle the site; a local newspaper editor lost his job after his bold decision to use the first few words of the Mourner’s Kaddish (a prayer recited for the dead, which has no mention of death in it) as a headline. But Squirrel Hill is a special place, and the way the community came together after this nightmare will show you exactly how special it is.

It takes a special writer to make me want to pack up and travel anywhere; Maeve Binchy does it with her novels about Ireland, and Mark Oppenheimer has done it with this book. From a terrible, unthinkable crime sprang a community’s love and support, and that’s about the best you can hope for when so many are suffering. He manages to both respect individual grief and trauma while composing a love letter to his ancestral neighborhood, amplifying the good that they shouldn’t have had to engage in but still chose to.

Security has always been tight at all the synagogues I’ve been to; I can imagine that this has only increased worldwide in the wake of the Pittsburgh massacre. Several police officers are on guard outside every service we have; the doors are always locked and you have to be buzzed in (or know the code); if you’re going somewhere new, it’s considered good form to call first and let them know you’re coming, so they’re not alarmed by the presence of a new person at services. It’s an absolute shame, but not surprising, and Squirrel Hill will show you exactly why all of this is necessary.

This is a sad, but lovely book, one that I highly recommend.

Visit Mark Oppenheimer’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold

Stephanie3 Comments

I was 18 when the massacre at Columbine happened, just under a year after having graduated from high school myself. I remember waking up that day and hearing the news and being shocked and horrified, and as the news continued to filter in over the next few weeks, I grieved not just for the victims and their families, but for the families of the perpetrators. What must their parents be feeling at that moment? Not only had they lost their children to suicide, those children had died in the most horrific (for the surviving parents) manner possible- purposefully taking others out with them. My heart ached badly for those parents, and over the years, I wondered how they were doing. A few years ago, I learned that Sue Klebold, mother of Dylan, had written a book, entitled A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (Crown, 2016). I immediately knew I wanted to read it (though I never formally added it to my TBR). On my last trip to the library, as I was grabbing a different book, her book was right in front of me on the shelf. I took it as a sign and put it into my bag.

Think back to when you were a teenager. How open were you with your parents? Did you inform them of the times you suffered from debilitating depression? Did you let them know about what was going on with your friend groups at all times? How many times did you spill the beans about what went on at those parties you went to? Did they really know the truth about all your friends? Teenagers hide a lot from their parents; it’s mostly developmentally normal, a way that they can begin to separate themselves from their parents and begin to form their full adult selves. And teens get really good at hiding things- I know I was- so much so that even the most attentive parents can miss major things. Such was the case for Sue Klebold and her husband Tom, who had begun to notice Dylan seeming a little distant just before the massacre, and who had plans to sit down and talk to him, but tragedy struck too soon.

In the aftermath of Columbine, Sue struggled greatly, unsure of how to process the fact that this child whom she had loved so very much, who had rarely given them any trouble and who seemed to be looking forward to a future at college, had murdered so many of his fellow classmates before turning the gun on himself. How had she not seen the signs? How could she ever possibly atone for the damage her son had caused the community? In her fog of grief, Sue began speaking with therapists, academics, brain health professionals, people who study violence and mass shootings, trying to find answers. Some, she found; others are questions that will remain unanswered forever.

This is a heavy memoir of the deep-seated grief of a mother who has lost her youngest son in one of the worst ways imaginable. It’s bad enough to lose a child; to lose a child who has killed others before killing himself, shattering everything you thought you knew not only about him but about your family and yourself as a parent, is a source of never-ending trauma. Sue Klebold has poured out her heart, soul, pain, grief, and desperate love for a son who committed heinous acts on these pages. You don’t stop loving your child when they do something terrible, but it takes a lot of mental readjustment to incorporate that into your understanding of that child. This book demonstrates the unthinkable difficulty of how to continue on after a nightmare comes to life, and it does so with grace and dignity.

My heart broke over and over for the Klebolds throughout this book: for their pain, for their loss, for the realization that they misinterpreted the signs that something was wrong, and for their gradual understanding that there’s not always a failproof way to prevent these things (look at how difficult it is to get any kind of mental health help; Ms Klebold mentions that Eric Harris, the other Columbine shooter, had been receiving help). It’s not always or maybe even often about how children are parented- how many families can you think of where one sibling has major problems like drugs or crime and the rest of the siblings live normal lives?

So much grief and guilt on every page of this book. I truly hope that Ms. Klebold has been able to find some modicum of peace. I know she’ll never stop loving and missing her son and questioning why- why him, why her, why their family, but I truly, truly hope she’s been able to find peace after such a terrible, terrible loss and painful aftermath.

nonfiction

Book Review: Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness by Jennifer Berry Hawes

Stephanie3 Comments

One of the many benefits of having bookish friends is when they make you aware of a book that you likely wouldn’t have picked up on your own. My friend Jennifer, who is a librarian extraordinaire at a university in Alabama, told my longtime parenting group’s book forum about an author visit she was hosting a while back: one Ms. Jennifer Berry Hawes, author of Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness (St. Martin’s Press, 2019). I remembered this tragedy well; the title of this book, however, made me a little nervous. I had avoided the book about the gunman who shot up an Amish school simply because of the religious pressure to forgive, which isn’t the way my religion works, and the very idea of being required to forgive even when you’re not ready for it made me uncomfortable. But my friend assured me it wasn’t that kind of book; that not everyone forgave the killer, and that it was a really incredibly story all around, so onto my list it went.

In 2015, Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a traditionally Black church, hosted a Bible study one Wednesday evening in June. A young white man joined the Black churchgoers; this wasn’t unusual, and they welcomed him with open arms. And as the Bible study concluded, the young man pulled out a gun and murdered nine people.

The manhunt that followed was successful fairly quickly, but the mess he left behind at Mother Emanuel, as the church is known, stretched on and on. Almost the entire pastoral leadership had been murdered; husbands had lost wives, wives had lost husbands, parents had lost children. Grief amplifies what is already there, and some family relationships, already struggling, fractured further. The leadership that took over in the wake of the massacre seemed to have the wrong motivations, and financial hijinks made everyone suspicious. Longtime church members, include some who were present and survived the massacre, began to fall away from the church. Some of the survivors immediately forgave the gunman; others struggled with the concept, while still others were unsure how to ever move on with their lives without their loved ones.

This isn’t a pretty, wrapped-up-in-a-bow, everyone-holds-hands-and-sings story of a mass shooting. This is raw pain and anger, desperation, and grief. The survivors grapple with a lot of painful emotions surrounding the massacre- not only the losses of the their friends and family, but the losses of their trusted clergy, the loss of their perceived safety, the loss of trust in the team that stepped in to lead afterwards, the loss of love between family members, the anger they felt at the entire situation. Their pain and, at times, desperation, is palpable. Ms. Hawes conveys that excellently while still allowing the survivors the respect and dignity they deserve.

There is quite a lot of coverage of and about the killer in this book (I’m not using his name here); the depths of his soullessness are disturbing, so be prepared for that if you pick this book up. And there are plenty of parts that will bring you to tears, for many different reasons- depth of strength, grief, suffering, the community coming together, the senselessness of it all. There’s hope as well, but mostly, there’s pain, and a community that suffers deeply because of hatred. Grace Will Lead Us Home is an amazingly well-written book, one that I wish hadn’t had to be written at all.

Visit Jennifer Berry Hawes’s author page here.

Follow her on Twitter here.