Member: jaimelesmaths

Noticed you liked Fight Club, and I was wondering if you'd be interested in reviewing my new novel and posting your comments here as well as a few other book-related sites. Thought you might like my book since it's also about a disturbed bunch of kids and a bit dark :) I could e-mail you the novel in an e-book format if you'd like (I'm out of physical copies at the moment). Let me know if you're interested. Here's a link to a summary in case you're interested:

http://christophertusa.com/

Thanks,

Chris

posted by cmtusa at 7:42 pm (EST) on Jul 22, 2009

You posted on Books That Make Me Think back in August, and I just now read your post. I commented in the thread, but I'm going to paste my comments here, too, to be sure you see them. I see now that I'm on your profile that you already have at least one of the books I recommend. :-)

In response to your comment --

"I also recommend A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America by David K. Shipler. ..... I then went and picked up another book of his: The Working Poor: Invisible in America, and I found it equally interesting (though similar to Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, which I had already read)."

For further reading on the issues raised in A Country of Strangers, I strongly recommend the following:

Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?, by Beverly Tatum, then Dean of Spellman College (although I don't know whether she's still dean).

White Like Me, by Tim Wise

and

White Men Challenging Racism, edited by Cooper Thompson and with a foreword by James Loewen.

All three of these will expand the awareness that the diversity training gave you and also give you ideas about how to become aware of and combat racism in self and environment. One think I really like about White Men Challenging Racism is that it fills a gap in the book world -- there is a long history of individual and decisive action by white men, but not a lot written about it. Each of the men in the book has an incredible story to tell, very inspiring. Strongly recommended and little known.

Also, I like Shipler's Working Poor way better than I like Ehrenreich's Nickeled & Dimed. To me, Shipler's work is more engaging because he reports on people who *really are* the working poor, and how they're holding it together. Ehrenreich's premise was great for an article, and I really enjoyed it when it was published in Harper's but when I much later read the whole book, I found it very thin. I don't think that her experience, done for the purpose of writing an article/book, for a limited time, with a long history of good healthcare behind her, and a safety net at any time she needed it, really added to my understanding of what it's like to be poor. In this vein, I also recommend Jason DeParle's wonderful book American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare. It gives a remarkable picture of the resiliency and flexibility of people who are struggling, and it strips many of our complacent notions about who is on welfare and why to the bone. :-)

posted by janey47 at 6:08 pm (EST) on Nov 15, 2006