Salka
I haven't given a rating because I didn't read the whole thing, just skimmed.
The author is clear that this is a book about Americans for Americans, and I would agree - it is very specific in its scope and context and is not as generalisable as I anticipated. It is not about about racialised trauma generally or intergenerational trauma generally. From a therapist's perspective I think it seems to integrate well the current therapeutic modes of trauma recovery and trauma therapy with sociological and justice narratives around oppression, racialised violence, inequality and intergeneration trauma for Black American bodies.
ESSENTIAL reading for mental health professionals.
I've said it before, but this book really should have the reputation of The Body Keeps Score - because it achieves what many want out of Van Der Kolk's book, but better, I'd say!
If that isn't the best endorsement, I don't know what is.
Don't be put off by the dry title. Although academic, this work is accessible and not too difficult to read. It's definitely more academic that your average pop-psychology bestseller, but any reader with an interest in relational trauma or emotion regulation willing to get into some more science-y non-fiction would love it.
In Affect Regulation Theory, Daniel Hill clearly and efficiently integrates existing research and understandings of the neuroscience of the nervous system (think fight/flight/freeze) with attachment research (think insecure attachment styles) and contemporary understandings of trauma symptomology including dissociation and the pattern of symptoms often labelled Borderline Personality Disorder.
Hill ties together the more recent advances in psychological research by Allan Schore, Peter Fonagy, and Judith Herman with attachment researchers and theorists like Dan Siegel, Main, Ainsworth and Bowlby. It has a warm endorsement from Pat Ogden, founder of sensorimotor therapy.
The book is structured well and starts with probably the best explanation of the neuroscience of the autonomic nervous system and limbic system I've read, then summarises how these parts of the nervous system develop with reference to early attachment experiences. Hill then moves on to using these interpersonal neurobiology frameworks to describe common pathologies and symptoms in relational trauma, summarises mentalisation theory, and at the end provides some practical examples of rupture and repair in adult therapy (ie how the insecure attachment underlying relational trauma symptoms can be repaired in the therapeutic relationship).
In this way Affect Regulation Theory provides a kind of capstone or grand integration of cutting edge psychological approaches to date, tying together broad swathes of research that are often less accessible and more academically dense or scientific in structure and language.
If you are going to read one interpersonal neurobiology book, make it this one.
Four and a half stars.
This is a gorgeous, gorgeous book that feels so personally relevant to me.
It is a story of healing, and place, and identity, and family.
Davidson is a wonderfully engaging writer, introspective and descriptive, evoking the familiar (to me) landscapes I myself grew up in, and travelled to, and with similar approaches to life and living.
When I watched the film adaptation of Davidson's Tracks and later read the book, I felt an incredible representation of myself onscreen and on the page that I had not felt before, and I had this feeling again in this memoir.
For those with maybe less personal common ground with Robinson's life, you will still find plenty of value here. Literature lovers will be drawn in by Davidson's accounts of her experiences living with and being mentored by Doris Lessing, her acquaintance and influence on Bruce Chatwin, her tumultous relationship and influence on Salman Rushdie (who is never mentioned by name), and her decades long relationship with Rajput political figure Narendra Singh Bhati.
The book jumps between time and place, but these movements are not stilted, but rather fluid, and adept and somewhat evocative of the dynamics of memory - a testament to Davidson's narrative skill.
I also loved Davidson's way of speaking about and evoking generational attitudes and zeitgeists in Australia, and I felt this contributed to my understanding of these generational shifts and differences in a way that added insight into my own family and experiences as someone of a younger generation.
Highly recommend!
This book is not for the faint-hearted.
Dickens once described Great Expectations as “a very fine, new and grotesque idea”, and this story, apparently inspired by Great Expectations, is definitely grotesque.
Be prepared for quite graphic rape, murder, sexual assault, and torture, at least every 30 pages of this ~350 page multi-generational epic. And epic it is, though a far cry from Pachinko. Another comparison I've seen is Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude.
The grotesque and the sensationalist storytelling is, either by author or translator, somehow, perhaps through its writhing vivid imagery, singing in blood and the fierce will to live of its protagonists, written with literary strokes which keep the reader engaged, though disturbed.
I was reminded of the novel When I Dance, Mountains Sing, by Irene Sola, in its tone, more than Great Expectations.
This story's sensationalism was uncomfortable for me. The horrific eventualities that befall its female and differently abled protagonists, though both historically accurate and somewhat fitting the hyperbole of folkloric satirical tone, imply an awareness in the male author of the voyeuristic pleasure some audiences will find in their perverse sensationalism, which the book's tone cannot excuse. I think what reinforced this opinion in me was Cheon Myeong-Kwan's unsophisticated handling of transgender experiences and wlw relationships.
I don't regret reading this book. I suspect many of the cultural and historical references were lost on me as someone not as intimately acquainted with the history of the Korean peninsula and politics as many, and others may find a greater richness with knowledge of these references, but be forewarned it's not for everyone.
Four and a half stars.
This is a series of literary reflections very much in the tradition of Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, with the author and poet's musings on a series of words, packed tight with experiential wisdom.
While I didn't resonate will all the entries, I did find many excerpts profoundly resonant and meaningful. I felt particularly disconnected from the entries on places important to Christian history and the Western imagination - Rome and Istanbul, those places have their own meaning to me that was very different from the author's and I felt they didn't really fit in the compilation. They seemed a self-indulgent inclusion in which a tone of personal individual perspective contradicted the aspiring universalist tone of the other entries.
There are definitely some limitations to the author's traditional Western, Christian bias in these entries which prevents them reaching more transcendent knowledge or universal appeal and reveals the confines of the author's own perspectives a little plainly (he's no Gibran). But there is still some goodness and wisdom to be found as worthy food for personal reflection. The foreward by Maria Popova of Brainpickings fame, is gorgeously written.
Australian speciulative fiction that imagines a life in which the metaverse, AI, and other tech become entangled with what it means to be human and to exist embodied in the world. I'd probably bump this up to 3.5 stars for the ending- maybe the last 100 pages make this book much more worthwhile than I found it initially. Starting out, I found it hard to be engaged in the story- it seemed, vapid, cliched and a bit contrived at times, but really developed some steam, intrigue and conflict, moving from utopian to dystopian really quick. This is a very millenial-on-the-cusp-of-genz, australia-as-part-of-asia feel that I enjoyed, and I think it's an important addition to Australian new writing. Glad I read it! Worth your time! Looks like there'll be a sequel which I'll be interested to read.
A beautiful exploration of the phenomenology of pain and what it means to adjust to chronic illness.
In Melbourne, our nameless narrator is recovering from a severe flare up of an autoimmune condition (something akin to rheumatoid arthritis) as she awaits, and then recovers from, surgery.
Katherine Brabon's writing is understated but weaves a powerful meditation on our relationships to our body and the tension between effort and activity versus rest and comfort. This internalised conflict is played out into the protagonist's relationship with two “friends” Frida and Sylvia, who appear to be somewhat inspired by women creatives familiar with the theme of the female body and pain: Frida Kahlo and Sylvia Plath.
The voices of Frida and Sylvia urge rest and action as the solution to health in a cyclical tug of war very familiar to anyone who lives with a condition that causes chronic discomfort. Also familiar: themes of guilt, shame, and the tyranny of the “shoulds” that so many of us living in female bodies feel in relation to our embodied behaviours and actions.
Four and a half stars rather than four because this literary voice is so needed and welcome and unique.
Gorgeous, lyrical, expansive. How can a novella of 200 pages contain so much complexity and depth??!!
An astonishing achievement, it's definitely bucked the bounds of sc-fi with its poeticism and the ostensible paradox of its simultaneous intimacy and cosmic scope. Ursula Le Guin would be proud.
There are so many layers here. A joy of a creation.
I imagine Shu Qi and Lupita Nyong'o in the title roles of an epic adaptation.
Some useful therapeutic resources - the acceptance and mindfulness chapter, body image measures, self talk examples, and writing activities are good templates to adapt for practice, but some aspects are very outdated eg language has echoes of upper class, western, femme white feminist perspectives of the body that exclude other bodily experiences.
Still on the fence with the mirror activities included.
Part professional memoir, part advocacy apple crate pitch, part self-promo, this engaging book by paediatrician Nadine Burke Harris chronicles her work in linking science around developmental trauma and lifelong health outcomes with applied practice as a doctor and health professional. It's a must read for any health professional, regardless of your familiarity with ACEs or the physiology of the stress response.
Burke-Harris' occasional venture into that tenor of self promotion common to American entrepreneurism is not too invasive and can be seen as a creature of the environment she campaigned within.
A humanoid AI tells the story of her life from department store to her role as service companion to a young adolescent. Klara's relationship with the Sun is central to the story but remains enigmatic, almost spiritual. I was waiting for more technical explanations but Ishiguro appears to prefer to leave the reader with philosophical and spiritual questions.
This story muses on what it means to be human, to have hope and reminds me somewhat of the Simone Weil phrase that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”.
This story reminded me a little of the Kogonada film After Yang, which has a similar premise.
I felt Klara and the Sun had potential to embrace and explore greater complexity, but I also appreciated Ishiguro's focus on simplicity.
This book is about the toxicity of white fragility. It's about white fragility as denial, as egoic defence, as individualistic selfishness. And its genius is that it gets in the head of white readers and shows them a mirror.
As a white reader, Yellowface had me subconsciously constantly comparing myself with Juniper, as if to reassure myself I could see and understand her racism and wasn't as racist a white woman as her. In other words, by writing from a white villian perspective, but a white villain that is JUST relatable enough to lower middle class/working class white “sjws” like myself, the book perfectly situates itself to calibrate your internalised norms and learn what racism looks like from your perspective AS THE PERPETRATOR.
As a child of parents who were essentially neoorientalists who idealised and fetishised Asian cultures, I have spent time trying to unlearn. As I child I would relish attention and validation from others when I was able to astonish them with my understanding of other cultures. This white person's understanding of non-white culutral information became a vehicle for ego gratification. I think I'm doing better now. But as an adult who retains interest in global cinema and literature, as well as being a BTS ARMY, I am in intercultural spaces where I am constantly questioning myself to find what else I need to unlearn.
I have a pretty constant internal dialogue which compares my behaviours to those of weiboos, koreaboos, white Geoffs with yellow fever, anime enthusiasts, white Buddhists, and my parents, to make sure I am nowhere near what they represent. In other words I do what many of us do, I engage in analysis of degrees of racism, problematic behaviour, and political appropriateness in a process that appears infinite. To assume it's not an infinite iterative process is to accept a level of internal failure or harm to others of which you are prepared to be ignorant of, or ignore and tolerate. I guess that's where the white fragility comes in. White fragility assumes there are boundaries to racism, assumes the process of self-reflection is discrete, and that discomfort does not need to be ongoing, does not need to be personal.
I have had to check myself when writing tweets, when I realised my twitter account didn't have any clues to my ethnicity and I was going on antiracist rants in a way that other accounts might assume I was a POC. Context is important. Authorship identity is important. This is the most obvious message of Yellowface. I see my adult desire to do the right thing battling with my childhood desire for validation in a way that is scary sometimes, and also scarily not unlike June's. This gets at the point of Kuang's book, or one of them.
I found the character of Juniper an ugly soul - cold, selfish, oblivious, almost a caricature. Juniper is an objectively terrible person, BUT at the same time she retains elements of familiarity.
I could relate to Juniper's experiences of financial hardship/frustrated envy at the seemingly arbitrary wealth of others, feel the dismissal of powerful people who assume you are boring, physically unattractive white porridge. As a white woman who is not sexually attractive, you have no value. As a well-educated white woman you were used to throwing around your privilege in highschool and university and now as you've aged, you've become invisible.
Juniper is ignorant, and ignores racism, while assuming its boundaries. And this assumption is in the service of a deep reflex of self-preservation against insecurity and anxiety. Juniper is messed up. But her narration contains gems like “My heart's pounding so hard I can feel it in my boobs” and can simultaneously mock references to Barthes and Baudrillard for dated faux-literati schtick. Like I said, Kuang retains that skerrick of relatability in Juniper. Kuang somehow manages to bring Juniper back from the brink of caricature while retaining the horror that will provide the perfect aversive conditioning for its readers to maybe do those subconscious internal calibrations required to undo their own white fragility. I guess this is the power of good satire.
One very effective way Kuang appears to do this is by illustrating the process of Juniper's internal doubts which she then buries and dismisses through excuses and external validation often with the popular self-help self-actualisation girl-boss attitudes and white feminist platitudes common to women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. The book shows how Juniper is capable of identifying the racism, but buries her knowledge with greed, envy, fear of her own distress and anxiety and incapacity to sit with that anxiety and discomfort. Juniper hates other people because she finds herself lacking and hates herself for it, but lacks the courage to embrace the discomfort of growth. That's white fragility right there.
Aside from its depiction of white fragility, another confirmation this book is targetted at educated white millennials (ie: me): the plot occurs on twitter and Kuang's Juniper refers to the “babies” on tiktok. As an aside, reading this book during the death throes of Twitter (X?) makes it feel like important documentation, a timecapsule if you will, of the zeitgeist of cultural discourse on adult social media for the last 15 years. Seeing this era distilled on the page so accurately is a sure-fire sign the discourse has chewed through the life of a cultural phenomenon, is ready to excrete it out, and get is teeth on the next thing. Although we are witnessing its end as I write this, Twitter is a vivid and dynamic part of the heart of this novel. Kuang aptly understands that to depict the call-out culture of universal culpability, that of “no-one is above accusations of prejudice, racism, homophobia” without Twitter, would be like describing alphabet spaghetti without the soup.
What else about Kuang's choices did I appreciate? The genius double-bluff on queer-baiting.
What did I not like? The brief inclusion of the horrific ghost stories of necrophilia and women sexual slaves. What did it really add? Juniper's perverse fetishistic voyeurism had already been established.
Kuang is fierce and scathing in this book. You can see her taking aim at plenty of real-life literary names if you're at all familiar with literary discourse of the last 20 years. Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates are the most obvious examples, but you can sense Kuang channeling years of personal experience in the cultural and literary elite as an Athena Liu-esque writer and being self-aware about her own flaws, privileges, and failings. She's received criticism for writing about East Asian history outside her scope of personal experience as an American, as well as coming from a massively financially privileged background. It's meta!
I recommend watching Youtubers WithCindy, The Poptimist, and BooksandBao for a deeper exploration of the above.
This is a FANTASTIC pick for a bookclub and would be amazing on a school or college curriculum because there is just so much to talk about with this book.
Such an enjoyable read. Sea of Tranquility surprised my with its plot, its sci-fi but literary sensibilities and the beauty of its writing.
This is a book involving time travel, and a sci-fi novel for people who don't like traditional sci-fi. There's something reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin or Ted Chiang but of course there's a contemporaneity that can only come from a Covid-19-era publication. There's a humanity and philosophical beauty to St John Mandel's prose that is quietly moving and deeply satisfying.
I know a lot of people loved this book, and I don't want to take their joy away from them. These views are entirely subjective. I did not finish reading this book. I found it unrealistic and contrived, a fluffy pastiche of hollywood fanfiction whose intrigues could not overcome simplistic and heavy-handed writing. And I mean to cast no aspersions on the validity of fanfiction there, only to comment that the story does not feel original in plot or writing style and does not have the flair, eloquence, metaphor, meaning, and rhythm of solid literary fare.
I found the central characters of Monique and Evelyn lacked emotion, soul, and nuance for my liking and seemed tired and without freshness or complexity.
This is the best book I've read to-date on trauma - particularly complex/relational/developmental trauma.
Foo generously and eloquently interweaves her own lived experience with a fairly comprehensive summary of contemporary trauma discourse and industry consensus. This deft memoir literary nonfiction hybrid is greatly enhanced by Foo's journalistic efforts to interview professionals and researchers as well as documenting her own varied experiences with trauma therapies from EMDR, psilocybin, Internal Family Systems, and attachment-based talk therapies.
The book considers what trauma looks like in school systems, intergenerational trauma and epigenetics, microaggressions and minority stress, ACEs, trauma-related inflammatory diseases, and healing through relationship.
It really is something special and I would say essential (but highly enjoyable and accessible!) reading for anyone in the profession or with an interest in trauma (most of us?!).
Keiko Furukura has worked in a convenience store for 18 years. It is the only part of her life that gives her meaning and purpose, predictability and certainty. Keiko's eternal struggle is to appear normal to the people around her to gain acceptance. Keiko does this by paying close attention to social norms and cues, and her attention to detail makes her mask and camouflage adequately.
This short novella explores a lot in its brief pages: the reliance on and comfort to be found in the predictability of consumer capitalist culture, alexithymia, neurodivergence (perhaps Keiko is autistic or lives with antisocial personality disorder?), agency, meaning and purpose, social and gender norms, asexuality and aromanticism, heteronormativity, incel culture and toxic masculinity.
Murata's talent seems to be in revealing how experiences or thoughts a reader may think are unique or individual, even unusual, are actually symptomatic of something more universal and human.
I really liked the ending of the story. Keiko's ultimate empowerment challenges us to rejoice in her rejection of and escape from toxic masculinity and expected gender roles, and yet we feel eerily haunted by her finding salvation and delight in being a cog in the consumer capitalist machine - a role in which she accepts and delights in having no gender and being closer to animal than human.
But are these latter feelings inherent to Keiko or are they really a product of her social exclusion and alienation?
Ugh there's so much to unpack here, and that it Murata's brilliance: starting a conversation.
A cross between Rebecca Solnit, Nan Shepherd and Robert Macfarlane, this memoir intersperses stories of the weather, wildlife, and history of the Orkneys with the author's personal story of healing and recovery from alcoholism in that landscape.
Very readable and will appeal to nature lovers and those interested in mental health equally.
I enjoyed this novel up to a point. It's definitely 4 stars for the writing and the way it brings the protagonist's inner world to life so beautifully. It felt a little like reading a novelised version of a BBC period drama set in the 50s - a cross between British dramas The Hour, Mrs Wilson and Call the Midwife.
I did find it a little predictable, and I wanted the explanation for the mystery to be a little more revolutionary to be honest.
Below is why it's overall a 3 star for me, though:
WARNING SPOILER
I felt like the protagonist Jean's attitudes to queerness were generally likely in keeping with 1950s attitudes - befitting to the time the story is set, but I felt like this book preferenced the heterosexual relationship whilst not caring if the queer relationship was doomed or not. In the end, it didn't really care about or describe the outcomes for one of the most interesting main characters whom the story revolved around (Gretchen). It felt like the protagonist Jean, and the writer just did not care about Gretchen once it was revealed she was queer.
Once Gretchen was lost, she was lost. It was unnerving to see how quickly Jean turned and didn't care about her. The ending made clear that Jean's interest in Gretchen was as an object of curiosity rather than a friend.
And Gretchen's queerness was somewhat described as a deficit (she can't like men) and a source of weakness (she can't look after her child effectively). Martha's queerness was painted as a deficit too - her queerness implicitly associated with negative character traits - manipulative and brash, narcissistic, uncouth and dirty.
In terms of resolution to the story, all that was described was what was interesting and important to Jean (not Gretchen!): an intellectual explanation for the mystery and what would happen to the child.
I wanted to know what Gretchen was feeling and thinking in the end and whether she was going to get a happy ever after!
It also felt weird to end the novel in the uncertainty of whether anyone died in the accident. That uncertainty didn't add anything to the story.
I wasn't sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised to find a quality adventure story blending historical fiction and fantasy. And written by an Australian author! And with very cool character exploration around gender identity, bodies, and sexuality.
I'm not usually one for war stories but I was engrossed, and I think that's testament to the complex character development and intrigues.
I've heard good things about the sequel so will check it out.
Apparently Shelley Parker-Chan's inspo was period K-dramas and C-dramas but I think their characters are much sexier, morally complex, and grittier than you'd see on TV whilst retaining all the fun melodrama and plot twists.
Very readable and engaging, surprisingly dark. I enjoyed the portrayal of the counselling/therapy and found it realistic. Autism is never mentioned in this book, yet the main charactor Eleanor certainly has recognisable autistic traits, particularly literal thinking, alexithymia, and preference for routine. Yet I found this portrayal to verge on stereotypical tropes at times, and what behaviours were trauma and what was neurodivergence were very blurred sometimes. This might not be an issue in itself except for the fact that when Eleanor was shown to recover from trauma, some of her autistic behaviours were written away and she began to camouflage more and try to “fit in”. This was depicted as a good thing, a sign she was healing getting better, like the autistic traits were a sign of ill-health. So yeah, didn't feel comfortable on that one. But I did like the depiction of the slow and gradual building of connection, gradual trust, interest and opening up after trauma. That was very real and beautiful.