TagNonfiction

Vulnerable and Cathartic: Untamed by Glennon Doyle

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The Gist: An unabashedly honest memoir, comprised of short essays, Glennon draws on her experiences with consciously uncoupling from her husband, parenting her children in a blended-family, marrying her wife, Abby and reconciling her God with religion as an institution, to unpack the varying ways our current societies cage us. The pacing takes a while to find its rhythm; however, the immersive and thought-provoking prose makes the memoir an exceptional and cathartic read.

Series: Standalone

Release Date: March 10, 2020

Synopsis
There is a voice of longing inside every woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good mothers, daughters, partners, employees, citizens, and friends. We believe all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives, relationships, and world, and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this?

Four years ago, Glennon Doyle, author, activist and humanitarian, wife and mother of three—was speaking at a conference when a woman entered the room. Glennon looked at her and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. Soon she realized that they came to her from within.

Glennon was finally hearing her own voice—the voice that had been silenced by decades of cultural conditioning, numbing addictions, and institutional allegiances. She vowed to never again abandon herself. She decided to build a life of her own—one based on her individual desire, intuition, and imagination. She would reclaim her true, untamed self.

Ending
HEA
Representation
• F/F main couple
• Author identities as queer
Possible Triggers: Yes
• Bulimia (started at 10 years old)
• Discussion of people (including children) dying of cancer
• Discussion of drug and alcohol addiction
Mature Themes
• Discussion of anxiety and depression
• Discussion of infidelity
• Discussion of abortion
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.

Format: Hardcover

Rating: 4.25-stars

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Liberating and Thought-Provoking: How To Get Over A Boy by Chidera Eggerue

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Series: Standalone

Release Date: February 4, 2020

<strong>Synopsis:</strong>
Are you fed up with thinking about that guy every minute of every waking hour, when he doesn’t even reply to your texts?

Are you reeling from the pain of a break-up, unsure of where to turn?

Are you single and looking to be happy with your choices in the face of society’s constant questioning?

In How to Get Over a Boy, bestselling author Chidera Eggerue will show you, once and for all, how to reframe the stale goal of finding a man. She will equip you with tangible and applicable solutions for every part of your dating life, helping you recognize that men hold as much power in our romantic lives as we grant them.

In the past, dating books tend to lean more into the territory of ‘how to make him find you hot!’, ‘how to make him jealous!’, ‘how to get him to propose!’. But these how-tos are placing men on a pedestal of being ‘the prize’. Men are NEVER the prize. You are. Let The Slumflower show you why.

<strong>Ending</strong>
Informative and helpful: provides accessible tools to implement in real-life.
<strong>Representation</strong>
• Black Author
<strong>Possible Triggers:</strong> Yes
Discussion of:
• Physically, emotionally and psychologically abusive relationships
• Gaslighting
• Parental neglect and abandonment
<strong>Mature Themes</strong>
None of Note
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.

Format: Hardcover

Rating: 3.75/5 stars

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14 New Books: My October Book Haul

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My October Book Haul includes both my hardcopy and ebook purchases I’ve made since my September book haul (click here to see). The haul totals to 14 books (including ebooks), and every book, except for two, is a book I’ve wanted to read for months! Despite October being a month dedicated to spooky reads, I’ve never been much of a mystery/thriller fan. However, I’m broadening my typical reading genres by including a mystery in this haul!

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Outstanding and Insightful: Family in Six Tones by Lan Cao and Harlan Margaret Van Cao

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A Refugee Mother, An American Daughter

Series: Standalone

Release Date: September 15, 2020

<strong>Synopsis:</strong>
A dual first-person memoir by the acclaimed Vietnamese-American novelist and her thoroughly American teenage daughter

After more than forty years in the United States, Lan Cao still feels tentative about her place in her adoptive country, one which she came to as a thirteen-year old refugee. And after sixteen years of being a mother, she still ventures through motherhood as if it is a foreign landscape. In this lyrical memoir, Lan explores these two defining experiences of her life with the help of her fierce, independently-minded daughter, Harlan Margaret Van Cao.

In chapters that both reflect and refract her mother’s narrative, Harlan describes the rites of passage of childhood and adolescence, as they are filtered through the aftereffects of her family’s history of war, tragedy, and migration. Lan responds in turn, trying to understand her American daughter through the lens of her own battles with culture clash and bullying. In this unique format of alternating storytelling, their complicated mother-daughter relationship begins to crystallize. Lan’s struggles with the traumatic aftermath of war–punctuated by emotional, detailed flashbacks to her childhood–become operatic and fantastical interludes as told by her daughter. Harlan’s struggle to make friends in high school challenges her mother to step back and let her daughter find her own way.

Family in Six Tones is at once special and universal, speaking to the unique struggles of refugees as well as the universal tug-of-war between mothers and daughters. The journey of a refugee–away from war and loss towards peace and a new life–and the journey of a mother raising a child–to be secure and happy–are both steep paths filled with detours and stumbling blocks. Through explosive fights and painful setbacks, mother and daughter search for a way to accept the past and face the future together.

<strong>Ending: Nonfiction</strong>
N/A
<strong>Representation</strong>
• Vietnamese-American author
• Vietnamese biracial author
<strong>Possible Triggers:</strong> Yes
• Discussion of war crimes
• Discussion of r*pe
• Discussions (including memories) of PTSD episodes
• Discussion of suicide
• Memories of racism and xenophobia
<strong>Mature Themes</strong>
• War
• Death
• PTSD
• Allusions to sex
• Allusions to drug use (by other teenagers)
• See Ending for HEA status.
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.

Format: eARC

Rating: 4.75/5 stars

Note: I received Family in Six Tones through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to FSB Association for the opportunity.

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Compelling Yet Tedious: Here She Is by Hilary Levey Friedman

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Series: Standalone

Release Date: August 25, 2020

<strong>Synopsis:</strong>
A fresh exploration of American feminist history told through the lens of the beauty pageant world.

Many predicted that pageants would disappear by the 21st century. Yet they are thriving. America’s most enduring contest, Miss America, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2020. Why do they persist? In Here She Is, Hilary Levey Friedman reveals the surprising ways pageants have been an empowering feminist tradition. She traces the role of pageants in many of the feminist movement’s signature achievements, including bringing women into the public sphere, helping them become leaders in business and politics, providing increased educational opportunities, and giving them a voice in the age of #MeToo.

Using her unique perspective as a NOW state president, daughter to Miss America 1970, sometimes pageant judge, and scholar, Friedman explores how pageants became so deeply embedded in American life from their origins as a P.T. Barnum spectacle at the birth of the suffrage movement, through Miss Universe’s bathing beauties to the talent- and achievement-based competitions of today. She looks at how pageantry has morphed into culture everywhere from The Bachelor and RuPaul’s Drag Race to cheer and specialized contests like those for children, Indigenous women, and contestants with disabilities. Friedman also acknowledges the damaging and unrealistic expectations pageants place on women in society and discusses the controversies, including Miss America’s ableist and racist history, Trump’s ownership of the Miss Universe Organization, and the death of the child pageant-winner JonBenét Ramsey.

Presenting a more complex narrative than what’s been previously portrayed, Here She Is shows that as American women continue to evolve, so too will beauty pageants.

<strong>Ending:</strong> Non-fiction
N/A
<strong>Representation</strong>
Interrogates:
• racism
• ableism
• homophobia
• transphobia
• antisemitism
<strong>Possible Triggers:</strong> Yes
• Slut-shaming
• Objectification of women (and children)
• Discussion of rape and sexual assault
• Death (including of a child)
• Murder of a child
<strong>Mature Themes</strong>
• References to and discussion of underage drinking, drug abuse and sex
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Note: I received Here She Is through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to FSB Association for the opportunity.

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Brilliant and Indispensable: What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape by Sohaila Abdulali

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Series: Standalone

Release Date: October 25, 2019

<strong>Synopsis:</strong>
Thoughtful, provocative and intelligent, this game-changing book looks at sexual assault and the global discourse on rape from the viewpoint of a survivor, writer, counsellor and activist.

Sohaila Abdulali was the first Indian rape survivor to speak out about her experience. Gang-raped as a teenager in Mumbai and indignant at the deafening silence on the issue in India, she wrote an article for a women’s magazine questioning how we perceive rape and rape victims. Thirty years later she saw the story go viral in the wake of the fatal 2012 Delhi rape and the global outcry that followed.

Drawing on three decades of grappling with the issue personally and professionally, and on her work with hundreds of other survivors, she explores what we think about rape and what we say. She also explores what we don’t say, and asks pertinent questions about who gets raped and who rapes, about consent and desire, about redemption and revenge, and about how we raise our sons. Most importantly, she asks: does rape always have to be a life-defining event, or is it possible to recover joy?

<strong>Ending:</strong> Non-Fiction

 Powerful
<strong>Representation</strong>
• Author describes herself as: “A brown bisexual middle-aged atheist Muslim survivor immigrant writer without a Shame Gene”
• Discusses the rape culture of India (as well as many other non-Western countries)
<strong>Possible Triggers:</strong> Yes
• Discussion of rape culture
• Discussion and description of Rape including,
– Gang rape
– Child rape
– Marital rape
– Casual rape (Perpetrator wants sex)
– Damage rape (Perpetrator wants to cause pain)
• Child brides
• Suicide
• Violence
<strong>Mature Themes</strong>
• Sex work
• Alcohol and drug abuse
• BDSM
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.

Format: Paperback

Rating: 5/5 stars

Trigger Warning: This review discusses topics that can be triggering for some. Please read the ‘Possible Triggers’ tab above for details.

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Important and Transformative: Sex and World Peace by Valerie M. Hudson et al.

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Also by Bonnie Balliff-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli and Chad F. Emmett

Series: Standalone

Release Date: April 7, 2012

<strong>Synopsis:</strong>
“Sex and World Peace” unsettles a variety of assumptions in political and security discourse, demonstrating that the security of women is a vital factor in the security of the state and its incidence of conflict and war.

The authors compare micro-level gender violence and macro-level state peacefulness in global settings, supporting their findings with detailed analyses and color maps. Harnessing an immense amount of data, they call attention to discrepancies between national laws protecting women and the enforcement of those laws, and they note the adverse effects on state security of abnormal sex ratios favoring males, the practice of polygamy, and inequitable realities in family law, among other gendered aggressions.

The authors find that the treatment of women informs human interaction at all levels of society. Their research challenges conventional definitions of security and democracy and shows that the treatment of gender, played out on the world stage, informs the true clash of civilizations. In terms of resolving these injustices, the authors examine top-down and bottom-up approaches to healing wounds of violence against women, as well as ways to rectify inequalities in family law and the lack of parity in decision-making councils. Emphasizing the importance of an R2PW, or state responsibility to protect women, they mount a solid campaign against women’s systemic insecurity, which effectively unravels the security of all.

<strong>Ending:</strong> Non-Fiction

 • Impactful
<strong>Representation</strong>
• BIPOC representation
– Including people (and cultures) from the Middle East, India, Africa as well as Asia
<strong>Possible Triggers:</strong> Yes
• Rape (including of children)
• Female genital mutilation
• Physical abuse
• Psychological abuse
• Forced marriage
<strong>Mature Themes</strong>
• Teenage pregnancy
• Teenage marriage
• Polygamy
• Prostitution
• Pornography
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.

Format: Paperback

Rating: 5/5 stars

Trigger Warning: This review discusses topics that can be triggering for some. Please read the ‘Possible Triggers’ tab above for details.

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