Tonya's Book Blog: The Dog Days of Summer... (July 2020)

Hi friends,

Here in the DC area we set a record for the number of days in July with highs above 90 degrees, so it’s been pretty hot, but luckily I was able to get some good summer reading in. My reading interests this month ranged from more books about racial justice to income inequality, one very good scifi novel, and two hilarious essay collections. Quite a wide range that made for good, diverse reading.

We had some big changes this month. We decided to send the girls back to school twice a week for the first time since school closed in March. Dan has also started going into his lab on the days they’re at school. Things are, of course, different now with changes ranging from teachers wearing masks and other PPE to smaller class sizes and increased cleaning measures. Of course, whether or not we or others get sick remains to be seen, but we have enjoyed having long, uninterrupted stretches of quiet time a few days a week. Like, REALLY enjoyed it.

As always, let me know your thoughts about any of these books or suggestions for future reading.

Cheers!

Tonya

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Blindness by Michelle Alexander

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes, everyone should read this book

Review: This book is a must read for all Americans. The central thesis of this book asserts that “tough on crime” policies leading to the War on Drugs supported by both Republican and Democratic parties have led to the creation of a new system of racial discrimination to replace the disbandment of Jim Crow era segregation laws with a new, more subtle system of racial segregation. About 1 in 3 black men in the U.S. have spent time in prison, mostly for nonviolent drug crimes. Alexander notes that, “The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism.” My close friend, who’s a criminal defense attorney in Virginia, confirmed that this is exactly what the War on Drugs does and something that she fights to change every day. Alexander observes that, “African Americans are not significantly more likely to use or sell prohibited drugs than whites, but they are made criminals at drastically higher rates for precisely the same conduct. In fact, studies suggest that white professionals may be the most likely of any group to have engaged in illegal drug activity in their lifetime, yet they are the least likely to be made criminals…. Black people have been made criminals by the War on Drugs to a degree that dwarfs its effect on other racial and ethnic groups, especially whites.” Not only does jail time take literal years off a person’s life, but the ensuing system of second-class citizenship that former prisoners enter when released often makes it impossible to find employment and denies them the right to vote. She extends the following invitation to activism several times throughout the book by noting, “racial caste systems do not require racial hostility or overt bigotry to thrive. They need only racial indifference, as Martin Luther King Jr. warned more than forty-five years ago.” I’m still working on educating myself and learning how I can fight racism, and this book was extremely helpful.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes!

Review: As opposed to some of the other policy books that I’ve been reading, this collection of long essays by Coates was definitely a change of pace. Coates weaves the theme of “the black body” through this book as he describes his own experience growing up on the streets in Baltimore, coming to the Mecca of Howard University, and building his career as a writer. The book reads like poetry in parts, and Coates is a master of connecting metaphors to bind the book together into one cohesive unit. As I’ll never know what it’s like to experience life in a black body, this book helped me to see beyond my white privilege and gain more empathy into the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) in America, which is one of the great things that reading can provide.

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Sure! If you liked the first book, or like any other of Hank Green’s work

Review: This book surprised me. After reading the first one, this was not the story I was expecting, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Firstly, I liked that this book had more than one narrator. It was great that this story was told from the perspective of some of my favorite characters from the first book. In addition to telling an awesome scifi story that has some truly awesome action sequences, Green makes some resounding and extremely relevant statements about capitalism, the media, and power. He points out that “power is nothing but ability without restriction,” and no one person or company has any inherent right or deserves to wield it. I binge-read this book over two days, and legitimately liked it better than the first.

Capital and Ideology by Thomas Picketty

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes, if you are at all concerned with economics or income inequality, you should read the cliff notes version of this book

Review: So, my average time to read a book is about a week, but this book took me 4 months to get through all 1009 pages. I checked out a paper copy from the library literally the day before everything shut down, and they closed the library in March. I would read this book at night before bed, as I mostly read e-books but try to avoid looking at screens after 8:00pm. This book expounds on Picketty’s first work Capital in the Twenty-First Century where Picketty builds a case that income inequality is nearing the historically high levels it attained pre-World War I. in this volume, he builds the case for a “participatory socialism” where the concept of property is fluid and everyone enjoys equal access to high-quality education and healthcare. He shows how there is nothing deterministic about history, and that the present state of our hyper-capitalistic and inequitable world is the result of specific choices taken at different points in time. He says that we stand again at a pivot point in history where we can decide to enact a slew of policies he recommends from introducing transparency to tax collection across borders, to implementing estate taxes, and increasing or implementing more progressive income taxes. While I definitely don’t think this book needed to be 1000+pages – there were definitely some historical sections that could have been briefer – I enjoyed the almost meditative state that I would enter when reading this book. Not gonna lie, this is one of those books you read to make yourself feel smart, and while I didn’t understand ever single argument, I got the gist of most of it and learned a ton.

A Field Guide to Awkward Silences by Alexandra Petri

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes, this book will make you laugh, especially if you’re a female millennial

Review: I read a few columns by Petri in the Washington Post where she’s a staff writer, and they always made me laugh, so I decided to check out this book. It’s a collection of long essays on a variety of topics from her intense Star Wars fandom, which I can relate to, to international pun competitions and her teenage obsessions with Robert E. Lee (Your first celebrity crush is always embarrassing. I can relate; mine was Hayden Christiansen from the much-derided Star Wars prequels.). Anyway, it made me laugh out loud a lot.

Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why by Alexandra Petri

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes! You can laugh or you can cry at the state of the world today, and this book helped me laugh

Review: After laughing out loud reading her first book, I definitely had to read this one. Unlike the first, this was a collection of essays, mostly adapted from Petri’s popular column in the Washington Post. About half of them satirize the Trump administration with reflections on Scott Pruit’s extremely vital need for lotion and reflections on the price of office furniture to outfit Ben Carson’s Housing and Urban Development space. In addition to making me laugh out loud, she also made powerful statements regarding the #MeToo movement and gender inequality. She makes the point early on that the world has been turned upside down and now satire is reality. Reading it definitely made me reflect on the past four years and come to the conclusion that the world we live in is increasingly absurd, and you can either laugh or cry about it, and sometimes you need to do both. Highly recommend.

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