As much as I love reading pop science, for some reason I find these books the hardest to write and discuss. Is it because I'm afraid of summarizing them poorly or inaccurately? I have no idea. Minis it is! In Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hijacking of America's Response to the Pandemic, journalist Nina... Continue Reading →
Isabel Allende On Feminism, Love, And Life Getting Better As It Goes
Review: The Soul of a Woman, by Isabel Allende The patriarchy is stony. Feminism, like the ocean, is fluid, powerful, deep, and encompasses the infinite complexity of life; it moves in waves, currents, tides, and sometimes in storms. Like the ocean, feminism never stays quiet. Beloved Chilean novelist Isabel Allende's second memoir, The Soul of... Continue Reading →
The Complicated Story of Women, Alcohol, and Sobriety
Book review: Quit Like a Woman, by Holly Whitaker (Amazon / Book Depository) Women are drinking more than we ever have before. Between 2002 and 2012, the rates of alcohol addiction among women rose by 84 percent—as in, it nearly doubled. One in ten adult American women will die an alcohol-related death, and from 2007... Continue Reading →
Light Essays on Heavier Topics from Roxane Gay
Book review: Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay (Amazon / Book Depository) These essays are political and they are personal. They are, like feminism, flawed, but they come from a genuine place. I am just one woman trying to make sense of the world we live in. I'm raising my voice to show all the ways we... Continue Reading →
Witty, Sharply Smart Essays on All Kinds of Thickness
Book review: Thick, by Tressie McMillan Cottom (Amazon / Book Depository) Being too much of one thing and not enough of another had been a recurring theme in my life ... Thick where I should have been thin, more when I should have been less, a high school teacher nicknamed me "Ms. Personality," and it... Continue Reading →
Cleaning the Pain of Others’ Lives With Lessons Learned From Her Own
Book review: The Trauma Cleaner, by Sarah Krasnostein (Amazon / SecondSale.com) This is how it ends, sometimes, with strangers in gloves looking at your blood and your too-many bottles of shampoo and your now-ironic Make Positive Changes postcard of Krishna and the last TV channel you flipped to on the night you died and the... Continue Reading →
Injustice and the Transgender Tipping Point
Book review: A Murder Over a Girl, by Ken Corbett Psychologist and professor Ken Corbett exhaustively covered the trial of Brandon McInerney, who at age fourteen, executed a classmate, Larry King (not THAT one.) Supposedly because King, who was gay and beginning to express himself in ways that indicate he was probably transgender, was sexually harassing him.... Continue Reading →
All About Eddie
Book review: Believe Me, by Eddie Izzard "I was a bit bonkers. But good bonkers. There is a difference." Eddie Izzard is a beloved British comedian, actor, activist and marathon runner. He's also known, for better or for worse, for being a proud transvestite. I say for better or for worse because as he explains in his... Continue Reading →
Tracing Gender and Identity, in Budapest and Beyond
Book review: In the Darkroom, by Susan Faludi (Amazon / Book Depository) Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, author, and feminist Susan Faludi received an email out of the blue in 2004, from her father whom she's been estranged from for 27 years. He informed her that he'd undergone sex reassignment surgery, and was now known as Stefánie. Shocked... Continue Reading →