jiujensu's reviews
441 reviews

I'm not a regular listener to her podcast, so I came in not knowing too much about what to expect. The first sections on death and sex were okay, but the most helpful sections were the final ones dealing with money and power and identity - which end up being the dreaded political discussions/ fights so commonplace the last few years. 

This quote caught my attention: "A hurt man can be a handful. But a hurt man inspited by the conviction that he's owed something can be dangerous." It's something I've read in a few different contexts and is at the heart of domestic violence, school shootings, patriarchy, and white supremacy.

She talks about maybe in the talking to family section that we have competing needs to both distinguish ourselves from everyone else and also be heard, understood, and belong. Maybe this need for difference and sameness accounts for some of our arguments in religion and politics or what makes them feel so difficult to resolve sometimes. 

About 78% in she talks about a trans man named Liam who descibed two different purposes for speaking up, when he decided to. One is for calling out, making a record, telling what's wrong and why. Other times he'll tread carefully and meet them where they are in order to preserve a connection. That's such an important distinction that I've sometimes gotten tangled up - another source of difficulty and dissatisfaction with my political discussions. He also has a trip wire (i feel that) that signals its time to get out of that situation. I have used the different approaches for sure,  but i guess i thought it was closer to hypocrisy. I should stop in the moment, recognize or choose which is prudent and don't chain myself to the conversation like it's my sole duty to make them understand in this hour why a group deserves rights or humanity as much as they do.

At 79% in, i liked this, it explains so much:
"...in which we are listening to how others see the world and asking whether they can hear how our experience is different. Handling these conversations poorly can severely damage or even ruin a relationship. When we assume too much about what knowledge we share or leap into the fray to compare experiences that half rhyme, we can throw the whole outcome into jeopardy. Identity conversations are about creating space for differences."

At 88% in there's a really helpful section. Discussions of white privelige and male privelige - choosing to engage vs noting and moving on, examining our defensiveness when we are racist or sexist, niceness vs relationship to power.

"Noticing the ways privelige shapes your life is just the start. Next comes admitting and reconsidering the ways that privelige has shaped what you consider yourself entitled to and how you view others."

Really good book. When it started, I wasn't so sure, but this is incredibly relevant to what happened to so many in 2016 and various other upheavals, the breakdown of relationships, loneliness we experience and the dire need for introspection.

I don't know where to start, this is a great read for those who have left the evangelical scene - a must read even. I believe this author is the first or one of the first to identify or name religious trauma syndrome. She breaks down everything - and i mean everything - from the benefits religion gave you to the damage it does to the healing required.

It was honestly hard to get through because of all the experiences and emotions it brings up. I've had to stop and start a few times. There are exercises and writing prompts too. I didn't do all of them but the ones I did were helpful. I made a lot of notes in the margin and on paper, so I consider that a good book.

I checked out the audiobook from the library because you really need this read to you by a British guy. IT'S 18 HOURS! And I did feel it at times. 

I think it's fine for the nostalgia value. I have fond feelings about it even though as a story about hyper masculine rabbits fighting all the time, it shouldn't be good. The decision that they needed does and decided to go take them was a little cringeworthy now too. But I can't help liking the idea of breaking away and creating their own nation where they can improve on the other warrens' flaws - be it danger at home, Cowslip's odd warren, or the authoritarian one - and be free to live how they want. 

It's both recounting WWII battles, as the author commanded troops in the war, and has things everyone can relate to - friendship, independent thought, moving away/exploring, home, finding your place. 

It's always ambitious to have underlying folklore, religions, and languages, though the Lord Frith and El-ahrairah got a little tiresome. But I like the way that these tales compared with the tales told at the very end show history being made.

So there are lots of problems, maybe it doesn't hold up, but I still can't help liking some of the characters and smaller storylines. A bit of nostalgia.

Excellent book about the organizing that goes into the work of challenging and changing social norms and laws. Toward the end, the hopeful point was made that whether groups endure or pop up and disappear, whether they change a law or dissolve without what many consider a measurable success, the fact of their existence and teaching is progress for a more just future. 

There is a good quote in the introduction from Mari Matsuda about "asking the other question" when you are organizing around a particular issue:

"The way I try to understand the interconnection of all forms of subordination is through a method I call "ask the other question." When i see something that looks racist, I ask, "Where is the patriarchy in this?" When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, "Where is the heterosexism in this?" When I see something that looks homophobic,  I ask, "Where are the class interests in this?" Working in coalition forces us to look for both the obvious and the nonobvious relationships of domination, and, as we have done this, we have come to see that no form of subordination ever stands alone."

I wish I could talk to other people as well as he does. He acknowledges he feels the same things as me - the need to fight injustice, being motivated by how the systemic injustices affect our lives, and also the flood of topics that come up in a conversation with a person who "hates" us and the inability to address them with the wit, statistics, and infographics that will surely win the other person over. (It never does.)

An imporant takeaway for me was that I do want conversations with everyone from all perspectives, but the thing that has been frustrating me and making it seem like maybe I wasn't as open to other viewpoints as I wanted was that people seemed to fall into debate and interrogation with me rather than real humanizing conversation. Recognizing that difference is essential - unfortunately I don't know that I have the skill to guide a conversation from the antagonistic debate to an actual conversation. But I enjoyed the book and highly recommend it.

Audiobook from the library. 

Hope is a discipline. Mariame Kaba's famous phrase

This is a perfect starting place for anyone concerned about policing. A lot of people who came out strong on #BLM seemed hesitant with calls to defund police or abolish the prison industrial complex - this was the book I needed to answer those concerns. 

The short answer is that abolition is about getting rid of policing and surveillance, the death penalty and caging. But also various points are addressed surrounding harm, vengeance, accountability vs. punishment, what the system can provide vs. what victims want or need.

Kindle edition. 

Books like these are helping me make sense of my evangelical past. I grew up in what became an increasingly Christian nationalist environment. I wrote and occasionally talked to people I trusted about my concerns around what I called "politics in/and the pulpit." It was Christian nationalism, I found out later. 

The four categories in the book - rejector, resistor, accomodator, ambassador - are a more nuanced way to look at the problem than most political assessments I've seen. While in the church, I was in the camp of strong belief  prayer, attendance, etc but those things reinforced my support for social safety net, anti-war efforts, questioning patriotism narratives as opposed to the legislating the Bible into everyone else that was the prevailing view of everyone I worshiped with. 

It will take time to understand why I rejected Christian nationalism and those around me embraced it, but now there are ways to describe the trends and correlations I saw.

This is a pretty good collection of studies and thoughts on empathy. It makes some surprising points - or at least contrary to the prevailing narrative - that conformity and technology/social media aren't inherently bad or cruel, they're just tools. You can even use them to cultivate empathy.

I appreciated the nuance in the contact theory of the way the power dynamic affects benefit or lack thereof in the interaction we might assume to be equally beneficial. 

The policing example was difficult, though there was acknowledgment that police still prefer their own in group. I don't know for sure, not having much experience, but I feel the the autism example might be problematic. And another glaring issue was describing the Palestinian and Israeli contact approach as something like sports fans connecting rather than occupied/occupier in an apartheid power dynamic.

But overall, it was good to think of what empathy is and how studies have measured it, how can we increase it. There was even a discussion of decreasing your in group empathy as opposed to only increasing your own capacity for it.

Capitalism prioritizes greed, but:
"...People who stop to help others won't have the time to innovate, and will inevitably finish last. As we've seen, this is a myth--empathic individuals are more likely to succeed in a number of ways."

More hopefully:
"We are not merely individuals fighting to empathize in a world of cruelty. We are also communities, families,... that can build kindness into our culture, turning it into people's first option."