The New York Times

A wonderful always edifying, often moving, collection of articles originally published by the New York Times in its Disability Series. Each piece covers some aspect of being disabled. What does a morning look like for a person with paraplegia? After you have been hospitalized for severe mental illness, how does that change your worklife and the way you are perceived by colleagues? How do you sustain a marriage and parenting when your spouse becomes your caretaker after diagnosis of a show more progressive degenerative illness? What is it like to have an invisible disability that is easy for people to disregard or scoff at? When you have a genetic disability how does that impact your decision to procreate (and what does it say about your life if tests show that a child will have that disability and parents chose to terminate for that reason?) Why does everyone seem to think people with disabilities are (or should be) inspirational when they are just living their lives? Those issues and many more are covered here. I learned so much from the opportunity to listen to these honest eye-opening articles, and the writing is uniformly excellent. As with any collection some of these pieces work better than others, but it's the New York Times so you can bet on a certain standard of quality. Recommended to all. show less

n illustrated introduction to many women of color and queer women responsible for voting rights in America.

Beginning with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, whose historic territory was the site of the Seneca Falls convention, and ending with Dakota Sioux activist Zitkála-Šá, this friendly primer highlights the lesser-known heroes whose fight for their right to vote did not end with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Chambers and her co-authors from the New York Times strike an show more authoritative yet colloquial tone: “[T]here are tons of women beyond Susan [B. Anthony] and Elizabeth [Cady Stanton]’s demographic who helped make suffrage a reality for all women,” they write. Well-chosen quotes and engaging biographical information about such activists as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mary McLeod Bethune, Angelina Weld Grimké, Mabel Ping-hua Lee, and Jovita Idár are interspersed with trenchant observations from contemporary women working in service to their ancestors’ ideals, including Louise Herne, Charlotte Brooks, and Vilma Martínez. White and straight women are supporting characters, either as allies or barriers. Ornate, colorful page layouts also include playful doodles, at times somewhat distractingly atop historial images. Stories like that of Susette La Flesche Tibbles, who had to stand up to several White government officials before she could become the first Native woman to teach on her reservation, emphasize the theme that rights require constant advocacy.

Timely, moving, and necessary. (authors’ note, minibiographies, timeline, statistics, acknowledgements, further reading, bibliography, index) (Collective biography. 8-14)

-Kirkus Review show less

Early in the lockdown I was jarred by television images of people at parties and large groups, people not wearing masks, family gatherings around dinner tables. None of it reflected my reality: my spouse and I isolated in our home, walking in freezing weather before anyone else was on the street, learning Instacart and Doordash and Zoom.

This collection of stories caught my attention because they were reflections of this new reality. And, seeing the top-notch writers who contributed, I knew I show more would not be disappointed.

The stories reflect the shifting concerns and fears we experienced and are experiencing.

Oh yes, the early dearth of toilet paper! In a panic, my spouse ordered some from Amazon at an exorbitant cost. It took three months to arrive from Asia.

Zooming, homeschooling your kids, the obsession with news, watching for a glimmer of hope. The daily deaths. Learning how death can show up any time.

The fleeting happiness of isolating in place with another. Dreading that this is the new normal for ever. Teenagers obliviously carrying on as usual. Making masks. Scarfing up Chromebooks.

We are sharing a nightmare. Those who escape will be haunted. Some of these stories stick in my mind as perfect reflections of what haunts me.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

This second volume was a bit of a disappointment to me. Perhaps the first volume was so good as to crowd out any favor for this one. On the other hand, these essays seemed colder, more distant than the earlier ones. There is relatively little of the artists in these works, while the earlier essays seemed heart-felt, quickened by their very life blood. That said, there were several standouts. The essays written around the time of 9/11 by A. M. Homes and Mary Karr were wonderful expositions on show more the power of art, specifically writing, in the face of unimaginable pain and terror. And both sprung from the depths of their soul The other standout must have been culled from the deepest reaches of the Times' archives - Arthur Miller on politics in the days before America joined World War II. That war is viewed with a gleaming nostalgia from this modern age. But the times were ugly and divisive in ways that right far too true for the last decade in this country. Miller unveils the dirty underside of American sentiment towards immigrants and the plight of the rest of the world, and it's not what you'll find in the movies, at all. show less