Bookish – Page 4 – …on the B.L.

Keep Marching

May 1, 2018 RaeAnna

Difficulty: II
Length: III
Quick Review: A look into the pitfalls, the successes, the struggles, the reality of being a woman in the United States today.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner is a founder of MomsRising and works tirelessly to promote women’s rights through public speaking, campaigning, writing, and, yes, marching. Keep Marching is a look into the status of women in the United States. It’s incredibly well researched and accessible. I will refer to the author as KRF for the rest of the post because it is simpler.

I am always wary of feminist books, especially when written by white women. Feminism, historically, has left women-of-color out of the narrative, out of the statistics, and out of the picture. From the beginning of Keep Marching, KRF preaches inclusivity and intersectionality. Thankfully, she follows through.

I don’t want to give too much away. KRF discusses topics falling into three categories: Our Money, Our Bodies, Our Communities. Under these categories our right to choose, pay gap, motherhood, immigration, laws, and more are discussed at length.

Full of statistics, Keep Marching is both distressing and shows signs of hope for women and society. Motherhood is a recurring topic as it is a central component in many women’s lives, even those who are not mothers face obstacles based on reproduction. Women of color are often overlooked, and KRF includes statistics to show just how left behind they are. The stats are often given for women as a whole, but also given based on ethnic background, socioeconomic background, motherhood status, and more.

The book is separated into three parts discussing different topics in chapters. The reader is not bogged down solely in statistics. There are many anecdotes supporting her claims and statistics. The stories also show the struggles every day women face from all backgrounds. They ground her argument in reality. At the end of each chapter, there is a short section about taking action. In case the chapter sparks your interest or lights a fire under your butt, you now have a resource to help you know where to start.

As a cofounder of MomsRising, KRF has been a part of legal reform on state and federal levels. She often reiterates the phrase “we won” giving a sense of hope. An important theme to keep repeating. If we connect, support, fight, and raise our voices as a group, women can win. When women win, society wins. KRF gives many examples showing that when women win we all win. Investing in the future and success is an investment in society. She gives a lot of statistics on how society improves when women are involved at all levels because people need proof to take women seriously…. Or at least, that’s my experience.

It feels like Keep Marching is directed at white women. It is important to educate all women, but KRF makes it important to highlight the battles woc face. White feminists have left this group of women out of the discussion, and KRF is doing her best to include them. I was really impressed by the fact KRF focused so much on the different groups making up women. We are a group, but we are a diverse group, most of whom are consistently overlooked.

None of the information was new to me, but KRF does an excellent job laying out the information in an appealing and educational format without losing the reader.

Title: Keep Marching; How Every Woman Can Take Action and Change Our World
Author: Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner
Publisher: Hachette Books
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780316515566

Baked Goods, In The Kitchen

Thumbprint Cookies

January 7, 2018 RaeAnna

I love baking. In my family, like many others, recipes become part of the landscape of our lives. The recipes are handed down through generations.

Thumbprint cookies are some of my favorite cookies, and they come straight from my Great Grandmother’s recipe box. Although, she never baked them for me, my mom always did. I had never baked them myself until last year because they were always her specialty, and I was teensy bit scared I would ruin them. They’re amazing throughout the year, but I grew up with them during the Christmas season. They melt in your mouth with a nutty outside. Not too sweet, you can eat dozens of them if you’re not careful! I absolutely adore them with a cup of black tea and a book. The perfect afternoon snack.

Ingredients

1 cup Butter
½ cup Brown Sugar
2 Eggs Yolks
2 Egg Whites Beaten
1 teaspoon Vanilla
2 cups Flour
½ teaspoon Salt
Chopped Nuts (I prefer pecans or walnuts)
Favorite Jam or Frosting

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350॰ F. Ungreased cookie sheet.
Mix together butter, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla. Add flour and salt. Blend well.
Roll dough into balls. Dip the balls in egg whites then roll in chopped nuts. I rolled them in pecans this time. Place cookies on ungreased cookie sheet at least an inch and a half a part.
Bake for five minutes. Take out and press thumb into the middle of the cookie to create a shallow bowl. Put back in oven and bake for eight more minutes.
Pull cookies out of the oven when golden brown and firm to the touch.
Cool completely
Fill the thumbprint with your favorite jam or frosting or leave unfilled! My favorites are blackberry jam, buttercream frosting, or pastry cream. They’re so delicious!

Books, Fiction

How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas

December 28, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 297
Quick Review Layla Claus, Santa’s wife, saved Christmas in the 17th century from Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan English Parliament.

Jeff Guinn wrote How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas in 2005 as a stand alone sequel to his 1994 best-seller The Autobiography of Santa Claus. I have not read the autobiography, but it did not hinder my enjoyment.

Layla of Niobrara was born in Lycia – modern day Turkey – in the year 377. She was not like other girls wanting a husband; instead, she wanted to travel the world. After visiting the tomb of Bishop Nicholas, she had the idea to travel giving gifts to the poor. Taking off she eventually ran into the assumed dead Nicholas and his companion Felix. Being blessed with extraordinary travel rates and never aging, they gathered trusted friends throughout the years, who enjoyed the same blessings. Layla ended up in England during the Puritan rule in the late 17th century as Oliver Cromwell gained power. Layla was a key player in saving Christmas from harsh Puritan law.

The book begins with a foreword by Santa Claus himself. Consisting of twenty-four chapters, each chapter begins with a sketch of a scene from the following chapter. Throughout the book, the significant characters are depicted through a small sketch portrait. At the end of the book, there is a recipe for the Peppermint Pie the Clauses and their companions love so much.

How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas is an engaging sweet story about an often overlooked yet beloved character in the American social psyche. Guinn discusses a history very accurately. Overall, the book is really just a fun way of educating people on an interesting aspect of British and American history. Guinn goes to a little too effort making the bad guy be the bad guy. I didn’t need that much convincing he was devil incarnate.

All in all, I really enjoyed the book, and I will be reading The Autobiography of Santa Claus as well.

Memorable Quotes
“Each of us should have the right to decide who and what we want to be.”
“Alan was insisting I stay as long as I like, “up to and including forever.””
“In life, no great achievement is possible without equally great risk.”

Title : How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas
As Told To: Jeff Guinn
Publisher: Jeremy T. Tarcher/Penguin Group
Copyright: 2005
ISBN: 9781585424375

Books, Fiction

Children of the Jacaranda Tree

October 3, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 285
Quick Review The complexities of being a parent making choices forever impacting children, and children forever remembering and reeling from their parents’ choices.

Delijani begins Children of the Jacaranda Tree with a booming voice describing a mother’s love and desperate journey for survival. With moments of roman á clef, it is evident the topic of the novel is very near to Delijani’s heart.

The novel is about children growing up against the backdrop of Iran in the midst of the war with Iraq and struggle with the revolution during the 1980’s as well as the early 2000’s. The adults are revolutionaries in prison or raising the children of revolutionaries in prison. The children are grown up trying to piece together the meaning of their lives in relation to their parents and their home country.

The jacaranda tree is in the backyard of a grandmother. Every character goes in and out of this woman’s house. Some stay longer than others, but the tree plays a very small role in the book. Though it becomes a powerful symbol for each person; though, to each person it symbolizes something different.

Delijani is able to write with a palpable sense of fear as it permeates every main and supporting characters’ life in Iran as women, as men, as people, as revolutionaries. The adults fear for their lives and their freedom; they fear how to explain reality to their children. Though the children are too young to comprehend, they are able to sense fear. Every parent must explain the revolution and Evin prison to their children, but each struggles to explain it in a different way. As every parent must explain struggle and hardship, they do the best they can.

History repeats itself. Though decades separate the struggles of the parents and the children, they end up fighting the same battles with the same repercussions always with a sense of fear they will end up in Evin prison, where their parents once were imprisoned. The children repeat their parents’ hopes, actions, lives, and even mistakes. Some children know the details of their parents’ pasts, and some do not. The actions and pasts of their parents belong to the children in one way or another impacting their lives.

Every character in the story is trapped. Some are physically bound, and others are restrained psychologically. They are trapped by past, by grief, by tradition, by prison, by family, by responsibility, by secrets, and more.

Delijani writes a vibrant and emotionally charged novel about a subject so often forgotten, glanced over, or blatantly ignored. It is difficult to imagine this being the reality children had to grow up in less than thirty years ago. Delijani is able to bring that reality to life by telling the stories of so many children left behind.

Memorable Quotes
“It was important to her to know that she could choose those dresses, that this choice, although hidden from view, was still hers.”
“He was no longer anywhere.”
“The past is slippery, unreliable, like melting snow on marble stairs.”
“For secrets steal your childhood away from you.”

Title: Children of the Jacaranda Tree
Author: Sahar Delijani
Publisher: Atria Paperback (Simon & Schuster)
Copyright: 2014
ISBN: 9781476709109

Books

Blackass

September 25, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 272
Quick Review A modern retelling of Kafka’s Metamorphosis exploring identity through race in Lagos, Nigeria after a black man wakes up as a white man.

A. Igoni Barrett brings a new depth to a classic novel by diving into the complicated issue of race in Nigeria as well as the power of perception. Barrett writes with incredible wit.

Furo wakes up one morning to discover his once dark skin is now very pink and pale. Blackass follows Furo as he navigates the world he was once familiar with through very different eyes.

Furo is a young man in his early thirties. For the young and all ages in between, Twitter and Facebook have become incredibly integral parts of our lives, and Barrett is able to incorporate these aspects into the narrative. An entire section of the novel is dedicated to sleuthing through tweets, as we have all cyberstalked someone once. Barrett also describes the difficult challenge of trying to shut down a Facebook page and needing Google to find the answer. Technology has permeated every aspect of our lives including our literature.

Barrett explores how truly powerful perception can be both in favor and against a person. As people, we immediately begin sorting people into different classes by the way they look. Though we do our best to fight it, it is an intrinsic quality we have. Even the Nigerians tend to prefer whiteness to blackness in everything they do from the little things from bleaching cream to deferential treatment to blatant statements that white westerners are more together than black Africans.

The most interesting aspect of the novel is how well Barrett is able to capture the depth and range of the female experience in such a short novel. There are several women who weave in and out of Furo’s story. Each woman is able to portray a different woman’s part in society. In moments, I was astounded at the depth of understanding Barrett had for the female condition. It is powerful and moving in its unwavering honesty.

Barrett writes a captivating novel from beginning to end.

Memorable Quotes
“Then again, she had never faced the parental pressure he did – a woman can find a husband to take care of her, but a man must take care of his wife…”
“… I was already trying to say what I see now, that we are all constructed narratives.”
“A white man in Lagos has no voice louder than the dollar sign branded on to his forehead.”
“No one asks you to be born, to be black or white or any colour in between, and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world.”
“Who I was as a person was more than what I looked like, but then again, how people saw me was a part of who I was.”
“Womanhood comes with its peculiar burdens, among them the distant reminder of subordinate status whose dominant symptom was uninvited sexual attention from men.”
“Pity the man who never becomes the woman he could be.”
“‘And you’re a white man. You don’t have to fuck anyone for favours.’”
“No one’s path is laid out from birth, we must all choose our own through life, and what greater gift is given a person than the chance to see the destinations where the roads not taken might have led you.”

Title: Blackass
Author: A. Igoni Barrett
Publisher: Graywolf Press (Vintage/Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2015
ISBN: 9781555977337

Books, Fiction

Blueprints for Building Better Girls

September 21, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 288
Quick Review A collection of eight stories loosely connected exploring the pressures of being female in a rapidly changing world.

Elissa Schappell tries to approach the issues of modern womanhood with her collection of Blueprints for Building Better Girls. She approaches issues concerning women: sexual assault, rape, motherhood, working, miscarriage, marriage, education, and eating disorders. The women in Schappell’s stories are post-modern women trying to carve out their own paths, but are constantly bombarded with advice from the old guard. Many women eventually succumb to the roles their mother’s filled. Even the characters who go against the traditional have a subconscious voicing the opinions of the older generation. This voice comes out in their opinions of other women; always critiquing and judging other women on their appearance, look, and life choices. The stories are all told from the female perspective. Motherhood, being the perfect mom. The story also explores the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship from both viewpoints of mother and daughter. It also has a brief glimpse into the influence men can have on women as husbands, fathers, brothers, and people in society.

Schappell writes with moments of true insight into the essence of womanhood. She crafts some truly lovely sentences, which scream to be quoted. The stories are loosely linked as some characters or their actions show up in the stories of others. I enjoyed this component of the book, but I also found it highly confusing. Anytime a character was named, I was trying to figure out where I had, if I had, seen them before in the book; it encouraged active reading, but also created a sort of chunkiness to the flow. There were stories with a high level of interaction with the book as a whole; while others called their real importance into question for the collection as a whole.

One of my favorite stories was “Out of the Blue and into the Black.” The main character, Belinda/Bender, is a young woman in college trying to find her own way in the world while figuring out how to live her life on campus after her friend, a main character from another story, was raped by a fraternity boy. Bender was there the night her friend was raped; she feels like she is the only one who remembers her friend and her struggle. The most interesting part of this story was when she calls attention to the fact her guy friends were in an uproar when they found out about the rape. The guys said they would go and beat him up. Another said he would talk to the fraternity president because they needed to know. After time passed and nothing happened, Bender realized it was just male bravado. Men act upset but never actually do anything. The friend who said he’d talk to the president kept brushing it off saying it was a “private issue.” I think this moment in the story makes a point about how swept under the rug and how common place and how ignored and how accepted rape is by the gender who commits it the majority of the time.

The stories take place in different time periods with different aged protagonists from different backgrounds. The majority of the women were educated, middle-class women, all assumably white. The perspective and narrator differs from story to story. This allows for each story to stand apart from the other, but it causes some difficulty with cohesiveness.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. I don’t think it makes sense entirely as a whole. Each part is really wonderful. Schappell brings attention to a lot of important issues women deal with throughout history and will continue to experience for a long time to come.

Memorable Quotes
“If I stopped him, we’d have to talk. The last thing I wanted to do is talk.”
“I don’t know why he’s so desperate to name me.”
“The label was slut, not charity worker.”
“People have always hated strong women. They fear we’re one turkey-baster away from abolishing men.”
“At least she’d lost weight. Ten pounds in three weeks. What did her mother always say? You have such a pretty face.”
“What did a woman who didn’t want children want? Or what did she want more than children? It was creepy.”
“Still, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to never see my mother again.”

Title: Blueprints for Building Better Girls
Author: Elissa Schappell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2011
ISBN: 9780743276702