At the beginning of the summer I posted this picture of my summer reading list. And here's the post where I describe each of them.
Hmm...well, apparently I still need a firm deadline and maybe a couple of character and plot analysis papers due because I completely failed this summer reading assignment. I only finished one of these - the vampire book by Charlaine Harris - and I'm not sure I could even remember the main plot points. I lent one of these to a friend, read the first chapter or so in 3 others. And returned a couple to the library unopened. Sadness, because I do really want to read all of these books.
What got in the way?
1. So are the Olympics the biggest time suck ever or what? I LOVE the Olympics and was actually on vacation with a good friend for about half of them, so we straight up laid on the sofa, ate, and took naps (like didn't get out of our pj's until dinnertime level of laziness - and then only because we had to go out in public). So that was over 2 weeks of practically no reading because then I was watching the stuff I'd recorded on Tivo. I still have some women's gymnastics and the closing ceremonies on there. It's slightly less fun to watch when it's a month or two in the past.
2. Another factor working against me was the time limits on the library books. Most of these have a waiting list, so I'm only allowed to have them out for 3 weeks at a time. Generally I'm a pretty voracious reader, but not with library books. It's like I rebel against the fact that I don't actually own them and refuse to read them on someone else's time schedule. Ok, that sounds kind of ridiculous. Anyway, I definitely fall prey to the Law of the Universe where all 5 books you've had on hold at the library for months where you were first on one list and 220th on another list all become available on the same day. I need to go ahead and sign up for these again. Maybe just one at a time. I also want to add a book called The Expats.
3. I finally started reading Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn about the oppression and the promise of women worldwide. These authors are a husband and wife team and I read some of their book about China, China Wakes, in college and found it to be incredibly insightful. This book is truly exceptional although I will confess that's really hard and really slow to read because of how heart-wrenching the material is.
This is the kind of book where you'll just sit there and cry after reading some of the stories. It will make you angry and it will make you motivated to get involved. Fortunately, there's a whole movement around this and it's actually "half the sky" month that focuses on lots of ways to take action. I haven't been able to get involved in what's going on with that, but I am making strides to get more involved in protecting and promoting women's health and safety by getting involved in fight sex trafficking in Atlanta. What can you do to get plugged in where you live?
I will say that the book does paint a really bleak picture of men. My struggle in walking away from this book is in thinking through what it looks not just to turn control of everything over to women (although I definitely believe we need women in charge of some more things), but how to empower men as well as women in some of these incredibly impoverished communities to make decisions that benefit their family, community, and country. Wresting authority away from men to give it to women is a tale as old as the Fall from Eden. But I don't think the solution to women's oppression is as simple as the book suggests -my understanding of the book's solution being basically that we should give women control over family resources at the expense of men being active decision makers in the life of the family. Have many men damaged their position as head of the house? Hell yes. But how do we empower and protect women without emasculating the next generation of men? How do we raise up both our boys and girls to have a healthy respect for themselves and one another? Even harder, how do we enter into foreign cultures to promote not only the greatly needed education of women, but also an education of men in how to break free from the cultural norm to care for and respect the women in their lives to the betterment of the entire family.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book (although the chapter on religious influences was not my fave - any discussion of religion, particularly by those who don't personally practice the religious, is bound to be laden with generalizations and misunderstandings). Half the Sky will open your eyes to atrocities that are occurring throughout our world and the role we can have in standing up to those who abuse women. I haven't watched the PBS special "Half the Sky" yet, but I'm recording it tonight.
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