Untamed - Glennon Doyle

Sometimes you read something that is like a shot of adrenaline into your veins and you can feel the light and the knowledge pressing up against your skin from the inside. That is what reading Untamed does. There were so many moments while reading this book that I placed my finger into the page, took a deep breath and just felt the truth of Glennon's words wash over me.

I'm not quite as sensitive as Glennon, but over time I've learned the same lessons about what the world expected of me as a woman. To be quiet. To take up as little space as possible. I've stayed quiet about things even when I knew the right answer. I'm a Enneagram 9 so I felt all of this book.

A lot of my remaining quiet or reserved was undone by a pretty marvelous high school experience surrounded by intelligent and independent women. And I'm lucky to have seen what living authentically can look like. Can I ask for more? Demand what I think I deserve? Not now.. not worth ruffling the feathers I used to think. And then I read: "Maybe in a different life. Isn't that interesting? As if I had more than one?"

As if I had more than one.

I don't. This is it. This one beautiful life that is mine for doing within whatever I think most fulfills it. Isn't that just selfishness my old self asks? Aren't you cloaking selfishness in some kind of higher philosophy? No. Because I've made other people's feelings my touch trees for too long. And when I do that I do everyone a disservice. So me and myself, we are till death do us part. And that's the tea.

5/5 Stars. 

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - Mindy Kaling

I love Mindy Kaling. One of my favorite parts about listening to the Office Ladies Pod is hearing which Office episodes I wrote were written by Mindy. She's witty and smart and her jokes just land. So I was very excited to find this book on our office book swap shelves. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me is a collection of essays, written in between the hey day of The Office and the start of The Mindy Project when Mindy went from a fan favorite character on a popular sitcom to the lead of her own vehicle.

I never watched the Mindy Project because I don't really watch TV and I don't have Hulu, but I did see her latest movie Late Night, which I loved. The writing in it was so reminiscent of some of the best Office episodes she's credited for. So I guess I am surprised I didn't fall out of my seat in love with this book. But while each little story was funny on its own, I didn't devour it as a whole.

I liked learning about her background and I'm real bummed that I didn't even know Matt & Ben was a thing until listening to the Office Ladies Pod. So if anyone is doing a revival of that after we all stop hiding in our homes, hit me up because I'd like to see it. That she was an awkward, pudgy youth is not really a surprise. People who grow up golden don't typically tend to have a sense of humor.

So I'm glad I read this. And I love Mindy. I'll definitely read Why Not Me?, her second book, whether I find it for free at the office or not.

3.5/5 Stars 

Kindred - Octavia Butler

I like a good time travel novel. Outlander and Time Traveler's Wife are two of my favorites. So for Black History Month, what better than Octavia Butler's famous time travel entry, Kindred. I listened to this one on audio and the narration was... not great. The narration made weakness in some of the dialogue obvious. And the narrator used the same voice for Rufus from when he was a inquisitive six year old through when he was a ruthless 25 year old man.

Had the narration not been off, I may have lent my own imaginative gravitas to some of the dialogue where it was lacking. The premise of the book is that Dana, an black women living in 1970s Los Angeles gets sucked back in time to 1810 to help her generations ago relative and white Maryland plantation owner who keeps almost dying, requiring her help.

Dana is married to a white man, Kevin, and when she pops back into her own time after being confronted with the barrel of a gun by Rufus' father, they both seem alarmed but also very casual about the fact that Dana just traveled back in time. It's a moment that is shockingly devoid of feeling. Perhaps we just don't know Dana well enough yet. She proves over the course of the book to be alarmingly practical even in the face of startling cruelty.

I understand the premise of the book is how easy it is to slip into they rhythms and requirements of slavery, even for someone who is so outside the experience, but Dana's tone and approach to the whole thing came off a little mechanical and more geared toward furthering the point rather than developing her own character.

As the relationship between Dana and Rufus changes over time as Rufus grows into his expected role and Dana continues to insist on her own independence, things become increasingly tense and the stakes for Dana become increasingly high.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and premise but it wasn't quite as good as it could have been.

3/5 Stars.

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row - Anthony Ray Hinton

Over the past couple of years, I have tried to focus on black authors for the month of February. I had taken a look at the authors I was reading and found that I was gravitating to authors that looked a lot like me, namely white women of means. It's probably why I didn't understand the controversy surrounding the book, The Help (I went to an author talk and was quoted in a Chicago Tribune story about how much I liked the book - gulp). So I started reading more black authors and listening more intently to black voices. And what I learned, was that I knew nothing.

The Sun Does Shine was my fifth book for Black History Month. I had just finished Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy and Anthony Ray Hinton is mentioned towards the end. So although I felt tired and worn down by stories of racial injustice in our criminal prosecution system, I felt compelled to read Ray's story.

Five books. I felt worn down by the black experience. All those stories of marginalization, silencing, tone policing, tokenism, violence. I had READ them. So what does this kind of racism do to those that live these lives? It weathers them. (There's a very good article explaining just what "weathering" is here: https://psmag.com/social-justice/raci....) I work in health care. I'm aware of the health discrepancies between whites and minorities. And I too thought it was likely due to income inequality, but it's so much more insidious than this. 

Anthony Ray Hinton spent 30 years on Alabama's death row as an innocent man. The shear magnitude of this injustice cannot be counted in days or dollars. That the state continued to deprive him of his freedom even when confronted with its inadequate evidence was so infuriating to read. When confronted with proof of innocence, the state was more willing to turn away from the proof to maintain a status quo. What was one more black man in the penitentiary system anyway?

While I was reading this book, the State of Alabama executed Nathaniel Woods. While serving an arrest warrant on Mr. Woods, police entered the house to arrest him and he surrendered. Woods' roommate, fearing he would be arrested, opened fire killing three officers and wounding a fourth. Both men were sentenced to death in Alabama. The state argued that Woods was just as culpable under a theory of accomplice murder, even though he never fired a shot and was in the process of surrendering when the officers were killed. Woods had not lived a perfect life. But he was black. The officers were white, and this was Alabama. And the old me, that person attending a reading of The Help, might have scoffed at the idea that race had anything to do with it. But that person didn't know that 84% of executions in modern era Alabama have been for crimes involving white victims, even though only 20% of the state's homicide victims are white. (you can read more about Nathaniel Woods here).

We could also discuss that in Alabama a jury can recommend life in prison, but the judge can override this decision and sentence a prisoner to death. Or that only 10/2 jurors can recommend the death penalty. Or that Alabama has no state-funded system for providing lawyers to death row prisoners. Don't have money? Your appointed lawyer will be given $1,000 to mount your defense and it's likely he/she has never defended a capital case before. It doesn't take common sense to understand that rich people with endless resources and money avoid the death penalty.

Yet this is a system that millions insist is providing value to our country. This is a system that has executed more than 1,500 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 but has exonerated more than 160 since 1973. This is an error rate that can't be ignored, unless you're okay with the idea of executing innocent people.

I wish Anthony Ray Hinton many more years of freedom and if I'm ever blessed enough to hear him speak in person I will be sure to tell him that our country doesn't deserve the grace he showed in "weathering" this type of injustice. 

4/5 Stars.