No Matter the Wreckage

No Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay

Fiction

Not to sound cheesy, but Sarah Kay’s No Matter the Wreckage is truly poetry for the modern era. Most people know her from her TED Talk or her YouTube videos where she performs spoken word poetry and has given a new face to poetry, which is normally alienating and a genre most readers my age avoid. But, Sarah Kay’s poems are anything but alienating. I actually thought that a lot of her poems dealt with themes that were very familiar, most notably “B.” “B” may be my favorite poem because it was the first poem that I saw Kay perform in her TED Talk, or it could be because it emphasizes resilience despite hard times, which is a theme that all readers can relate to.

 

The Social Animal

The Social Animal by David Brooks
Fiction (sort of)

I know I haven’t posted a lot in a while because things have been so busy with school, so I decided to just make some of the reviews short so I can get through more books.  I always want to make sure that I have time to read, even if I might not have a lot of time to write long reviews. Right now I am reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, which argues that humans are prone to making systematic irrational errors, so I will probably have more to add to this review when I am done with it.

 In The Social Animal, David Brooks follows the lives of two fictional characters, Harold and Erica, while examining human behavior through psychology, sociology, and biology. Brooks argues that human behavior can largely be understood by looking at the brain on a subconscious level. Brooks uses the lives of Harold and Erica as tools in order to demonstrate these patterns of behavior in action. Brooks's book provides interesting insight into the society that we live in and our own actions.

Lean In and Wonder Women

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg and

Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection by Debora L. Spar

Nonfiction

Sheryl Sandberg combines personal experiences with data and figures to explain why so few women are in leadership positions. The stories and anecdotes are possibly the best part of the book because they connect the reader to an influential COO and depict a softer image of Sandberg. Instead of being a self-help guru, Sandberg acknowledges her own flaws and her own struggles by being open and authentic. She admits that she doesn’t have all the answers, which makes her success seem more achievable and not as distant. Sandberg debunks the myth of doing it all and challenges the double standard to which women are held.

Debora L. Spar also presents a feminist view of the working woman’s condition in her book, Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection. Spar summarizes how past efforts to empower women ironically have led to women trying to conform to many different roles.  Instead of escaping the role of a domestic goddess, women are now expected to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company as well as the CEO of a home. Being free to pursue careers that were originally shut off from them didn’t liberate women in the way they intended. Instead, it added additional burdens.

Although these books came out a few years ago, they are especially relevant now given the current political climate.

In Order to Live

In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park

Non Fiction

Yeonmi Park’s memoir describes her escape from North Korea to China at thirteen, her harrowing life in China, her trek through the Gobi Desert, and eventually her adjustment to life as a college student and human rights activist. This remarkable journey depicts the horrors that she faced in North Korea and as a sex slave in China. These hardships include the psychological and physical struggles of escaping North Korea and her past.

            Some people have criticized Yeonmi for inconsistencies in her accounts to the media. Some of these inconsistencies are as minor as statements that her mom had a Chanel handbag while in North Korea, but some are more significant, such as her claim that she saw dead bodies in a river. A particularly significant inconsistency involves her saying that she witnessed the execution of her friend’s mom when she was nine (in 2002), although there have not been any large scale executions in North Korea since 2000.

As a girl, Yeonmi may have actually believed that her mom had a Chanel handbag and only realized that the handbag was a knockoff when the press pointed out the improbability. In her book, Yeonmi said that the bags were probably knockoffs. As for seeing dead bodies in the river on the way to school, a reporter said that he traveled to North Korea and didn’t see any corpses in the river. That may have been true when the reporter visited, but during her childhood, Yeonmi might have seen a few dead bodies in the river.

The location of the execution and the reason for it have also been inconsistent, but Yeonmi has been through hardships that hardly anyone has experienced, which could have muddled her memory. This execution was not mentioned in the book.

There have been various other inconsistencies, which could be the result of PTSD or she could have just plain forgotten. The point is, Yeonmi has very little reason to lie about her experiences in North Korea. Yeonmi mentions that even though she is in South Korea now, North Korea still watches her.  Merely speaking out puts her safety in danger, and even if an event didn’t happen to her, it may have happened to another defector or another citizen of North Korea. Yeonmi confesses at the end of her book that she can’t hide her past, but instead should use it to bring attention to the atrocities that are happening inside North Korea.

We Were Liars

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Fiction

The Sinclairs are perfect. They live on a private island and are rich, beautiful, and skilled at hiding secrets. Cadence has spent nearly every summer of her childhood on her grandparents’ private island and is used to holding herself together in times of stress. She spends the summer with her cousins, Mirren and Johnny, as well as Gat, who is not quite a family friend due to his poor background. After an accident, Cadence develops amnesia and is unable to remember a major event at the end of her last summer. As Cadence tries to piece together what happened, we learn that some secrets are too big to remain hidden.

Lockhart creates a world that is puzzling and confusing, leaving the reader as much in the dark as Cadence is about what happened the previous summer.  This confusion escalates and culminates until the world the reader was made to believe was true comes crashing down, revealing one never expected. Lockhart uses language that is poetic and beautiful, but at the same time creates a division between the reader and the characters. This makes it difficult to understand and relate to the characters, which may be Lockhart’s intent. Everybody lies to keep up appearances.  In the end, Cadence realizes that while lies may seem to make life better, living requires the truth.