Lean In

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg.

After all the hype and controversy, I thought it would be good if I actually read this one for myself. I'm glad I did. I think I'll have to reread it annually. It was that good.

Sandberg's basic points are that women have been conditioned to keep our heads down, be nice, and if we work really, really hard, we'll be rewarded. But, the data doesn't support that. If we want to succeed, we need to take chances, raise our hands, and toot our own horns. (Women often feel that have to be 100% qualified for a job before applying. Men only feel they have to be 60% qualified.)

But she also recognizes the world we live in-- tooting your own horn is valuable if you're a guy, but often penalizes you if you're a woman. She also knows this weird chicken/egg world we live in--workplaces are hard on women with families and many women leave instead of fighting to the top, but you need women at the top to get change, but you can't get to the top if your workplace won't help you support your family and round and round it goes.

Sandberg also recognizes her own privilege and the book is really for white-collar jobs.

BUT it is a stellar call to action for women AND men to step back and look at the gender imbalance, why its there, and what we can do about it. I do like the cold truth that no one's going to hand out a better job and situation, you have to go grab it, or at least ask for it.

Not all of it applied to me-- public librarianship, especially youth services, is female heavy. My boss is female, as is her's, as is her's up to the director (also female.) But I still found advice to take to heart, and a different way of looking at things.

I think it's a very strong (and quickly readable) call to action. It points out a lot of hard truths about what's going on, and hwy, but also offers solid suggestions on how to fix them, not just in your personal job, but in society as a whole.

It's an important book and you should probably read it.

Book Provided by... my local library

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A Crooked Rib

Old Reviews! I have a backlog of about 100 reviews to write. Books don't always get reviewed right away for various reasons. Even books I really liked. And then it's been so long it's hard to write the review, because I can't remember them well. So, we're going to take a Good Reads summary and I'll say what I remember and call it a day.

A book from 2007:

From a Crooked Rib Nuruddin Farah

From GoodReads:

Written with complete conviction from a woman’s point of view, Nuruddin Farah’s spare, shocking first novel savagely attacks the traditional values of his people yet is also a haunting celebration of the unbroken human spirit. Ebla, an orphan of eighteen, runs away from her nomadic encampment in rural Somalia when she discovers that her grandfather has promised her in marriage to an older man. But even after her escape to Mogadishu, she finds herself as powerless and dependent on men as she was out in the bush. As she is propelled through servitude, marriage, poverty, and violence, Ebla has to fight to retain her identity in a world where women are “sold like cattle."

What I remember: This was a hard book to read. Elba's entire life is lived at the mercy of the men in her life. Every time she gets out of one bad situation, she's taken advantage of by another man. At the same time, I loved the language and structure. I also really loved the contrast between country life in a nomadic tribe and city life in Mogadishu. I will also note that this book takes place around the time of Somali independence, so it's not a portrait of modern-day life in the country. There were some themes hinted at, mainly by the men in the city, that dealt with the changing political landscape.

Book Provided by... my local library

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National Poetry Month: Kindergarten at the Transylvania Flavour Restaurant

Kindergarten at the Transylvania Flavor Restaurant
by Fiona Lam

My son interrogates me.
A piece of schnitzel at lunch leads to
the location of Transylvania, next
the Austro-Hungarian empire,
the origins of World War I, then World War II,
the bombing of Pearl Harbor,
and of course, the Atomic Bomb.
In fifteen minutes, breaded chicken
leads to civilian massacre.

Thank goodness
for Sachertorte.

I am a deficient encyclopedia.
I watch him savour his cake and recall
that Britannica set, twelve years out of date,
in its own special bookcase
that my mother bought for $100,
persuaded by the salesman
to give her children the world.
Tiny lines of knowledge gleaned
from anonymous minds teemed
on gold-edged pages bound
between heavy cream covers.

The atlas mapped our existence,
our galaxy, solar system,
layers of civilization marked
by the occasional mini pyramid or coliseum.
How far we'd come. A century per inch
And then the clouds.

I always snuck off with the "anatomy" volume.
Human archeology on transparent pages.
The skin of a naked Adam, a naked Eve,
Next, their striated muscles. The webs
of blood and nerve underneath, then organs
gray brain, pink lung, snaking
sausage of intestines, finally
the ultimate core of bone.
What I sought again and again,
as was sought long ago
in cadavers--by scientists, artists,
da Vinci, as if one could excavate
to discover the architect through
architecture. How it happened

that I am. Here. Eating schnitzel, cake
with my son who was created from my body
and his father's, through our ancestors'--
an Australian navigator routing his plane
over the Pacific to a dance in Winnipeg,
a girl singing her grief in a Saigon teahouse
to a fortune-teller's son, to others
through siege and war, and all the interstices.
I am learning, as my son is learning.
Gathering evidence, as we make it.


All the poems this week have been from the wonderful anthology, Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women, a World Poetry Anthology, edited by Kate Rogers and Viki Holmes

Book Provided by... the publisher, for review consideration.

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

National Poetry Month: Right-Hand Man

Right-Hand Man
by Phoebe Tsang

Waving goodbye to you was like cutting off
my right arm: I bled for days before
I found a doctor to seal the stump with a hundred
slick stitches, red and raw as mosquito-kisses.

At first I didn't want the replacement
he offered me-- it didn't look real
and smelled suspiciously sterile
in the clean-cut style of medical men.

It languished in my room while I mourned
my old arm I'd left wrapped
tight round your heart and wondered
if you'd noticed yet and shaken it off--

In time I got used to the idea. Now
my shiny new graft arm follows the surgeon around
like a well-trained pet. No one would guess
that inside are just batteries and wirse.

Sometimes I wonder how it would be if my dear
doctor ever took his arm back from me
and would I even feel a phantom
emptiness, since I've no blood left to spill:

I used it all up dying for you, thinking
I'd never survive until I realised
I'm better off without a useless limb
that never knew how to hold on to you, to let go.


All of this week's poems have been from the anthology Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women, a World Poetry Anthology, edited by Kate Rogers and Viki Holmes

Book Provided by... the publisher, for review consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

National Poetry Month: 2 Poems

Sorry All!

I've been sick so I missed yesterday's poetry post. To make it up to you, I'm giving you 2 poems today!

Medusa
by Anindita Sengupta

Did you look in the mirror one day and
find that you had grown used to it? The hair--
gleaming little coils, each one tensile
as rope; the tongue quick and sharp as sunlight;
eyes vast in that thin face, deeper than earth.

Had you almost forgotten what you looked
like once, in an earlier time, when you were
still untouched by love, still free as a
tidal wave, brazen and full of joy like
that girl leaping in to meet the sea?

Or did you like too much the blood that burns
through your veins now, magical and potent,
the heady insanity or being
utterly and totally unloved?
Do you see them in dreams--your stone eulogies?

Perhaps, on rain-soaked nights you also
stare at passing cars and wait for the churn
to subside; the dreadful, ancient passion
to return to slumber; fumbling in the
dark, curse softly. Perhaps, you even weep.



Resting
by Kavita Jindal

I'm not getting up
when you call
I don't want to
do your bidding

I'll just lie here
chase some flies
with my eyes

You can be
forgiving.



All of this week's poems are from the most wonderful anthology, Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women, a World Poetry Anthology edited by Kate Rogers and Viki Holmes.

Book Provided by... the publisher, for review consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

National Poetry Month: Magic Flute

Magic Flute
by Anna Evans

My daughter is modeling a tune
she has heard, pressing
her fingers into the clay
of the instrument.

With each attempt
she smoothes the brow
of the music
into truer form.

It is years since I thought
I could do this: hold a worldly
pattern in my head
and feather a creature from it.

She almost has it perfect now:
a bird, solid with her breath,
vibrating at her will.

A sparrow,
thin-wining the treetops
in search of an updraft.

Let her charm the hawk,
his hidden smoke
in the sudden dusk.



This week I'm sharing poems from Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women, a World Poetry Anthology edited by Kate Rogers and Viki Holmes

Book Provided by... the publisher for review consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Month: Sin

This week, I'm going to be sharing poems from the most wonderful anthology, Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women, a World Poetry Anthology edited by Kate Rogers and Viki Holmes. Collecting poems from all over the world, in English and translation, it roughly divides the poems into categories: oman as Creator, Woman as Family, Woman as Archetype, Woman as Explorer, Woman as Myth Maker, Woman as Home Maker, Woman as Landscape, Woman as Lover, Woman as Freedom Fighter, Woman as Keeper of Secrets, Woman as Keeper of Memories, and Woman Ageing. Various allusions and references are footnoted with explanations in the back. There are also author biographies. This is an anthology that I've dipped in an out of many times.

Sin
by Rafa Matar, translated by Sayed Gouda

A sunbeam stole
All the snow in the world--
Frostbite burned its toes.
It dreamt then of the sun's glory.

It dreamt of possessing it--absolutely,
Of veiling the sun so the world does not see,
Of shielding this sin from the light of day
And with the sun, having its own way.


Book Provided by... the publisher, for review consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Nonfiction Monday: The Good, The Bad, and the Barbie

The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us Tanya Lee Stone

Barbie-- blank slate for girls to project their dreams onto or "the number #1 most destructive force on the self-image of women all over the globe?"*

Covering Barbie's creation, history, and the reactions to her (good and bad), Stone gives us a brief overview of this cultural icon (and no matter what your feelings are on her, she is a cultural icon.

Overall, Stone ends up in the pro-Barbie camp. She agrees with Ruth Handler (Barbie creator and founder of Mattel) that Barbie was a blank slate for girls to project their dreams and fantasies on. Barbie can be whatever you want her to be-- a princess, a racecar driver, a surgeon, or a mother, or all of the above.

She doesn't deny that some people don't like Barbie and she doesn't think that's wrong, just that Barbie in and of herself isn't inherently bad. But, she does see Barbie as one facet and a scapegoat of larger societal norms forcing unrealistic expectations of beauty onto girls. Getting rid of Barbie wouldn't get rid of airbrushing magazine covers...

Despite Stone's ultimate pro-Barbie take, she does give a lot of space and credit to those who disagree with Barbie and doesn't spend a lot of time negating their arguments.

There are also fun chapters on how kids warp Barbie when playing with her (popping off her head, running her over, dying her hair...)** and how modern artists use Barbie in their art. 

Overall it was a very fun book and a pretty quick read. Although it's marketed as an adult title, the length (130 pages) and layout (picture book size with so many pictures and pull-out boxes) would make it right at home with many tween and teen nonfiction titles. I think many teens would also enjoy reading it. Women of all ages, including several teens and tweens are quoted discussing their feelings on Barbie and her impact on them and their friends.

In fact, it turns out that this project started when Stone suggested to her editor that the next book she wrote for the tween/teen Up Close biography series would be about Barbie. Ultimately they decided that while Barbie did meet the series's criteria of being about an American icon that kids and teens are familiar with and has made a significant impact on American culture, she didn't quite fit in with the other people featured in the series. 

*So sayeth psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman, as quoted in this book

**Mine frequently got thrown off a cliff (the staircase banister) by My Little Pony, because Barbie was too big to be riding My Little Pony so My Little Pony would buck and AAAAAAAA! There went Barbie onto the rocks and swirling ocean below (aka, down the stairs and into the front hall.)

Today's Nonfiction Roundup is over at Picture Book of the Day!

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Nonfiction Monday: From the Beast to the Blonde

From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers Marina Warner

Ok, this isn't a book for kids or teens, or even one with teen interest, but I think it is of interest to adults who work with children's literature, so I thought I'd share it for nonfiction Monday.

This is an fascinating, academic, and meandering history and case that, although most of the big names in fairly tales (Grimm, Perrault, Anderson) are male, fairy tales are women's stories.

Warner doesn't really get into the stories themselves until the second half the book. The first half mainly discusses women's speech and the role in played in society from the Greeks up though the mid-19th century. The relevance tends to become clear in the second half, although I loved her exploration of the changing meaning of "gossip" (originally it meant a christening feast, when women would gather to celebrate and help the new mother) and how words like "cackle" became associated with women's laughter and with the sounds of birds, how storks and geese came in the springtime which is when most babies were born, and how it all connects up to Mother Goose.

I also very much enjoyed her explorations of Bluebeard and its variants, where she points out that in a time when so many women died in childbirth, marriage could be seen as a death sentence. Also, the evolving nature of the Beast (from Beauty and the) as what scared us in the animal kingdom changed.

There are some points that she belabors to make and I still don't entirely buy, and there are some things where I was like "I GET IT ALREADY! MOVE ON!" It was a hard book for me to read because I don't have a huge background in literary criticism or gender/women's studies.

I also would love an updated version. This came out in 1996 and she only focuses on the work of Angela Carter for examples of modern tellings of fairy tales (although she does draw heavily from current-to-then movies and some TV shows.) While Jane Yolen gets a name-drop, she doesn't look at any of the work like the Fairy Tale series that Ace did in the late 80s/early 90s.  Also, there's been such an explosion of fairy tale reworkings, especially aimed at teens, in the last 10 years that I'd love to see that worked into her analysis.

I'd also love something like this for non-European tales.

Overall though, a really interesting look at fairy tales and their origins and their changes over the years and reasons behind them...


round up is over at Wendie's Wanderings


Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Pride and Prejudice 4-Evah

Currently Reading: The Opposite of Fate Amy Tan

So, according to the listeners of Women's Hour, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the book that has most transformed women's lives.

Hmmmm. Now, I love P&P, even to the point where I pretentiosly abbriviate it as such, because doesn't everyone know what I'm talking about? But it didn't really transform my life. No more than Bridget Jones's Diary did. (We all know it's the same story, right?) Except for making me feel slightly more normal than I did before reading it.

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, however, did. I read it last winter and it scared me because it just feels so immenantly possible. It made me start acting up.