Anti-Racist Ally: An Introduction to Activism and Action by Sophie Williams
Publisher: Amistad
Publication Date: October 15, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Do you want to be an anti-racist ally?
This punchy, pocket-sized guide shows you how, whether you’re using your voice for the first time, or are looking for ways to keep the momentum and make long lasting change.
Sophie Williams’ no-holds-barred posts about racism and Black Lives Matter on @officialmillennialblack have taken the online world by storm. Sharp, simple and insightful, they get to the heart of anti-racist principles and show us all how to truly be better allies.
Now, in her iconic Instagram style, this pocket-sized primer unpacks complex topics into their most important concepts, and provides a crucial starting block for every anti-racist ally.
Anti-Racist Ally is the perfect book for someone just getting started on their journey to becoming anti-racist. If you’ve been on this path for a while, it’s a great book for a quick refresher and inspiration of why we’re doing this work and why it’s so important to keep going.
It’s a short book – the audio clocks in at around an hour. It’s divided into easily digestible, bite-sized chunks of information. I read the print because I knew I’d want to refer back to it and read it more than once. Even though it’s short, it covers a wide range of topics, including how to be anti-racist in the workplace, online and with your family. I really appreciated the section on overcoming your anxiety that you won’t get something right. My very favorite tip was to avoid burnout by preparing a stock answer for the arguments people come up against time and time again, e.g. “All lives matter” and “What about black-on-black crime?” and “Why isn’t there a white history month?” Ugh. We all know how tiring those discussions can be.
Being a pocket-sized book, it would make a perfect stocking stuffer. It’s never too early to start Christmas shopping! Highly recommended.
No Filter: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful by Paulina Porizkova
Narrator: Paulina Porizkova
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Release Date: November 15, 2022
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Writer and former model Paulina Porizkova pens a series of intimate, introspective, and enlightening essays about the complexities of womanhood at every age, pulling back the glossy magazine cover and writing from the heart.
Born in Cold War Czechoslovakia, Paulina Porizkova rose to prominence as a model, appearing on her first Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover in 1984. As the face of Estée Lauder in 1989, she was one of the highest-paid models in the world. When she was cast in the music video for the song “Drive” by The Cars, it was love at first sight for her and frontman Ric Ocasek. He was forty at the time, and Porizkova was nineteen. The decades to come would bring marriage, motherhood, a budding writing career; and later sadness, loneliness, isolation, and eventually divorce. Following her ex-husband’s death—and the revelation of a deep betrayal—Porizkova stunned fans with her fierce vulnerability and disarming honesty as she let the whole world share in her experience of being a woman who must start over.
This is a wise and compelling exploration of heartbreak, grief, beauty, aging, relationships, re-invention and finding your purpose. In these essays, Porizkova bares her soul and shares the lessons she’s learned—often the hard way. After a lifetime of being looked at, she is ready to be heard.
When I posted that I was listening to Paulina’s memoir on Instagram, she responded herself (!) to tell me that she wouldn’t really call it a memoir. And she’s right – it’s a collection of essays that are meditations on grief, beauty and aging. One of the central themes is grief. When her husband of thirty years, Ric Ocasek, lead singer of the Cars, died unexpectedly in 2019, Paulina discovered he’d written her out of his will. At the time of his death, they were separated but still living together. She still considered him her best friend so she was shocked that he left her out of his will. His will stated that it was due to her abandoning him, which she did not understand. A large portion of the book is her reconciling the fact that she is simultaneously grieving Ric while feeling betrayed by him.
She also writes about transitioning from a young model who was valued mainly for her beauty to an older woman who is finding her voice. She’s candid about her struggles with the process.
I was impressed with how well-written this book was. Since she wrote a novel without a ghostwriter in 2007 (which I’d like to read now), I’m assuming she didn’t use a ghostwriter for this book either. She didn’t graduate high school but educated herself by reading a lot when she started modeling at fifteen. She’s not just a pretty face.
No Filter wasn’t what I expected and got a little repetitive at times but I still enjoyed listening to it.
July 24th, 2023 in
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Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage by Helen Ellis
Narrator: Helen Ellis
Publisher: Random House Audio
Release Date: June 13, 2023
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Welcome to the Coral Lounge, a room in Helen Ellis’s New York City apartment painted such an exuberant shade that a Peeping Tom left a sticky note asking for the color. It is in the Coral Lounge where all the parties happen: A game called “What’s in the box?” makes its uproarious debut, the Puzzle Posse pounces on a 500-piece jigsaw of a beheaded priest, and guests don blindfolds for a raucous bridal shower.
When the pandemic shuts down the city, the Coral Lounge becomes a place of refuge, where Helen and her husband binge-watch Joan Collins’s Dynasty, dote on two spoiled cats, and where Helen discovers that even twenty years into marriage, her husband still makes her heart pitter patter.
Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge is a book of humorous essays written by Helen Ellis about her life with her husband in New York City. Topics range from an email with instructions to the cat sitter, to Helen’s plant addiction, to how they kept themselves entertained during the pandemic. Even though I think I’m the target audience for this book – a middle-aged woman – I just found these essays to be mildly amusing. None of them were laugh-out-loud funny to me. But I am clearly in the minority because I’ve seen a ton of reviews talking about how hilarious it is. She’s been compared to David Sedaris but I got more Erma Bombeck vibes from it. Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge wasn’t my brand of humor but it may be yours – don’t let me stop you from picking it up.
July 20th, 2023 in
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Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: May 16, 2023
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.
So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.
But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
June and Athena are authors who first became friends at Yale. Athena became the new it girl in publishing with a massive book deal for her debut. June’s first book was a total flop. When Athena dies in a tragic accident, June steals the manuscript for Athena’s next book, The Last Front, and passes it off as her own. The Last Front is a novel about Chinese laborers during World War I. It becomes a huge best-seller, prompting people to ask if June, a white woman, should be profiting off a story about a painful time in Chinese history. Not long after that, June is publically accused of plagiarizing Athena’s work. The lies are spinning out of control, social media has turned against her, and June has deluded herself into thinking she’s more responsible for the success of The Last Front than Athena.
Yellowface is a send-up of systemic racism in the publishing industry. June is completely oblivious to her white privilege in a forehead-smacking way. I was shaking my head at her the whole time. She actually thinks it’s harder for white writers and that Athena’s being Asian played a big part in her success. Kuang does not spare the agents or publishers either. Even though this book is satire, I don’t think it’s too far from the truth.
There is a thriller aspect to Yellowface also. Someone claiming to be Athena is stalking June online and June thinks she’s actually seen Athena at one of her book signings. I found it suspenseful and gripping. I was surprised by the ending which I think was perfection.
Highly recommended.
July 17th, 2023 in
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One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle
Narrator: Lauren Graham
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Release Date: March 01, 2022
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.
But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life.
And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue.
Katy’s mother Carol was her best friend and perfect in her eyes. When she dies, Katy is awash in grief. She decides to leave her husband and take the trip to Positano, Italy that she and her mother had planned. While there, she runs into thirty-year old Carol. How is that possible? She and Carol become friends and Katy learns a lot about Carol’s life that they never talked about when she was alive.
I chose this audiobook simply because Lauren Graham narrates it. I went in blind. I was surprised by the magical realism element but I went with it. It was a clever way for Katy to learn about her mother’s past. I enjoyed the story but the prose got a little repetitive – like every food was described as delicious. Overall, it was an enjoyable listen. I think the narration made me like it more than if I’d read it in print.
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July 13th, 2023 in
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White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better by Regina Jackson
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publication Date: November 1, 2022
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
A no-holds-barred guidebook aimed at white women who want to stop being nice and start dismantling white supremacy from the team behind Race2Dinner and the documentary film, Deconstructing Karen.
It’s no secret that white women are conditioned to be “nice,” but did you know that the desire to be perfect and to avoid conflict at all costs are characteristics of white supremacy culture?
As the founders of Race2Dinner, an organization which facilitates conversations between white women about racism and white supremacy, Regina Jackson and Saira Rao have noticed white women’s tendency to maintain a veneer of niceness, and strive for perfection, even at the expense of anti-racism work.
In this book, Jackson and Rao pose these urgent questions: how has being “nice” helped Black women, Indigenous women and other women of color? How has being “nice” helped you in your quest to end sexism? Has being “nice” earned you economic parity with white men? Beginning with freeing white women from this oppressive need to be nice, they deconstruct and analyze nine aspects of traditional white woman behavior–from tone-policing to weaponizing tears–that uphold white supremacy society, and hurt all of us who are trying to live a freer, more equitable life.
White Women is a call to action to those of you who are looking to take the next steps in dismantling white supremacy. Your white supremacy. If you are in fact doing real anti-racism work, you will find few reasons to be nice, as other white people want to limit your membership in the club. If you are not ticking white people off on a regular basis, you are not doing it right.
I read a lot of anti-racism books and I learn something from every one of them. I’ll never know it all and accepting that is important when doing anti-racism work. I learned a lot from this book. I especially appreciated the section of this book about white feminism and how it is actually holding up white supremacy. That is one topic that I didn’t know much about. There are also sections on micro aggressions, schools, color-blindness and more.
I originally checked this book out from the library but I liked it so much I bought a copy. I know it’s one that I’ll read again and again, taking in more information each time.
Highly, highly recommended for all white women. (If the title makes you uncomfortable, you need to read it for sure.)
July 10th, 2023 in
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The Mutual Friend by Carter Bays
Publisher: Dutton
Publication Date: June 7, 2022
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
From the co-creator of How I Met Your Mother, a hilarious and thought-provoking debut novel set in New York City, following an unforgettable cast of characters as they navigate life, love, loss, ambition, and spirituality—without ever looking up from their phones
It’s the summer of 2015, and Alice Quick needs to get to work. She’s twenty-eight years old, grieving her mother, barely scraping by as a nanny, and freshly kicked out of her apartment. If she can just get her act together and sign up for the MCAT, she can start chasing her dream of becoming a doctor . . . but in the Age of Distraction, the distractions are so distracting. There’s her tech millionaire brother’s religious awakening. His picture-perfect wife’s emotional breakdown. Her chaotic new roommate’s thirst for adventure. And, of course, there’s the biggest distraction of all: love.
From within the story of one summer in one woman’s life, a tapestry of characters is unearthed, tied to one another by threads both seen and unseen. Filled with all the warmth, humor, and heart that gained How I Met Your Mother its cult following, The Mutual Friend captures in sparkling detail the chaos of contemporary life—a life lived simultaneously in two different worlds, the physical one and the one behind our screens—and reveals how connected we all truly are.
The Mutual Friend was a funny, yet scarily realistic look at how much social media and the internet control our lives and distract us. I chose it because it’s written by the co-creator of How I Met Your Mother and I love that show.
Alice Quick posted on Facebook three years ago that she was going to medical school. It’s time for her to bite the bullet and actually study for and take the MCAT. After all, tons of people liked that post. But there are so many distractions, like making the perfect Spotify playlist for when she is studying. Her new roommate Roxy, who has the attention span of a gnat and her nose permanently in her phone, is not helping. She is always twisting Alice’s arm to go to a party or somewhere else.
There are a lot of supporting characters too. It’s one of those books where you know they all end up being tied to each other in one way or another even though it doesn’t seem like it at first. The connections the author made between them were really clever. The internet is a small world!
This book was my book club’s May selection and it got mixed reviews. A couple of us – like me – loved it. Others thought it was too slow. I thought it started out slow but drew me in as I kept reading. I could totally relate to Alice and Roxy – I have a social media addiction that I’m constantly fighting. TikTok is my latest obsession! I’m glad I put my phone down long enough to read this book.
Recommended.
July 6th, 2023 in
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You Can’t Be Serious by Kal Penn
Narrator: Kal Penn
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Release Date: November 02, 2021
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
The star of the Harold and Kumar franchise, House, and Designated Survivor recounts why he rejected the advice of his aunties and guidance counselors and, instead of becoming a doctor or “something practical,” embarked on a surprising journey that has included confronting racism in Hollywood, meeting his future husband, and working in the Obama administration, in this “incredibly joyful and insightful” (Kiefer Sutherland) memoir.
You Can’t Be Serious is a series of funny, consequential, awkward, and ridiculous stories from Kal Penn’s idiosyncratic life. It’s about being the grandson of Gandhian freedom fighters, and the son of immigrant parents: people who came to this country with very little and went very far—and whose vision of the American dream probably never included their son sliding off an oiled-up naked woman in the raunchy Ryan Reynolds movie Van Wilder…or getting a phone call from Air Force One as Kal flew with the country’s first Black president.
“By turns hilarious, poignant, and inspiring” (David Axelrod, New York Times bestselling author), Kal reflects on the most exasperating and rewarding moments from his journey so far. He pulls back the curtain on the nuances of opportunity and racism in the entertainment industry and recounts how he built allies, found encouragement, and dealt with early reminders that he might never fit in. He describes his initially unpromising first date with his now-fiancé Josh, involving an 18-pack of Coors Light and an afternoon of watching NASCAR. And of course, he reveals how, after a decade and a half of fighting for and enjoying successes in Hollywood, he made the terrifying but rewarding decision to take a sabbatical from a fulfilling acting career for an opportunity to serve his country as an Obama White House aide.
Above all, You Can’t Be Serious shows that everyone can have more than one life story. The book “is insightful, funny, and instructive for anyone who’s ever grappled with how they fit into the American dream” (Ronan Farrow, New York Times bestselling author), and demonstrates that no matter who you are and where you come from, you have many more choices than those presented to you. And okay, yes, it’s also about how Kal accidentally (and very stupidly) accepted an invitation to take the entire White House Office of Public Engagement to a strip club—because, let’s be honest, that’s the kind of stuff you really want to hear about.
You probably know Kal Penn best from his starring role in the Harold and Kumar movies. You were probably as surprised as I was when it was announced that he had taken a role as an advisor in the Obama administration. After reading this book, I’m not surprised at all.
The first part of the book is about how Kal got his start in Hollywood and oh my gosh, the overt, unabashed racism and sexism he encountered was astounding. I know the entertainment industry can be racist and sexist but I thought people perpetuating it were a little more subtle about it. But no – like the producer who told Kal he doesn’t hire “chicks” because he doesn’t want to deal with possible sexual harassment lawsuits. Instead of maybe just controlling himself and not being a jerk? Or the producer who said Joseph Gordon-Levitt would never get a job because he was too Asian. Said this to Kal, who is, hello? Also Asian! Kal was not afraid to call out people who treated him poorly. Most of the time, he doesn’t use names but I bet you could figure out who they were if you tried hard enough.
The next part of the book was about Kal’s time in the Obama administration, which totally makes sense to me now. He was taking an international studies course through Stanford at the time. He was a surrogate for Obama during the campaign and learned a lot so when Obama was elected, he applied for a job. He truly did get it on merit, not because he’s a movie star. His role was not symbolic, he actually made important decisions.
One thing that I thought was odd was that he didn’t talk about being gay at all, other than to briefly mention his first few dates with his finance Josh. Apparently, this book was the first time he publically stated that he’s gay. Since he wrote about his parents struggling with his decision to pursue a career in the arts instead of medicine or engineering like most Indian children, I thought he would also write about how they felt about his sexuality. I mean, it’s none of my business but I just thought it was a pretty big part of his life to leave out since he writes about other personal stuff.
He reads You Can’t Be Serious himself and I think that made it extra funny. He has a conversational style that was really engaging. Highly recommended.
July 3rd, 2023 in
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The Celebrants by Steven Rowley
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Publication Date: May 30, 2023
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
It’s been a minute—or five years—since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living—that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves.
But this reunion is different. They’re not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.
A deeply honest tribute to the growing pains of selfhood and the people who keep us going, coupled with Steven Rowley’s signature humor and heart, The Celebrants is a moving tale about the false invincibility of youth and the beautiful ways in which friendship helps us celebrate our lives, even amid the deepest challenges of living.
Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, Marielle and Alec were best friends at Berkley. When Alec dies before graduation, the rest of them make a pact that they will all have living funerals. That is, when one of them is needing support, they will call on the rest of them to gather for their “funeral.” That way, they get to hear all of the nice things their friends have to say about them versus waiting until their actual funeral when they would not be able to benefit from hearing them.
For instance, Marielle called the group together when she was going through a divorce and Craig’s funeral was because he was having some serious legal problems. Now Jorden has called them together but no one is sure why.
The friend group in The Celebrants is made up of friends who don’t actually do a very good job of keeping in touch in between funerals, but once they get together, they pick right up where they left off. I think we all have friends like that. You love them but sometimes life gets in the way.
Like The Guncle, The Celebrants is the perfect blend of humor and heartbreak. Steven Rowley is now on my automatic buy list for sure. Highly recommended.
Other books I’ve reviewed by Steven Rowley:
Lily and the Octopus
The Editor
The Guncle
(I received a complimentary copy of The Celebrants for review.)
June 29th, 2023 in
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Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
Publisher: Harper Wave
Publication Date: June 15, 2021
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
The author of the widely praised Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how cultish groups from Jonestown and Scientology to SoulCycle and social media gurus use language as the ultimate form of power.
What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . .
Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.
Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.
I’ve always been intrigued by cults and wondered why seemingly normal, intelligent people join them. Cultish explains how language has a lot to do with it. Each cult has its own language. A good example of this is Scientology with their “pre-clears” and “Thetans” and whatnot. Members feel special because they are in the know. They have been chosen to learn this special language that not everyone knows.
What I found most eye-opening is the chapters on multi-level marking companies (MLMs) and workout organizations like CrossFit. They both use the same language strategies that cults do. Some might argue that they are cults or at least as the book title says, cultish. Having been briefly part of an MLM myself, I can attest that they used every single ploy that Montell outlines in that chapter.
Cultish was a fascinating look at cults and their language. What I learned stuck with me and I think about it often.
Highly recommended.
June 26th, 2023 in
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