Review of Burn the Page, by Danica Roem

Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

Burn the Page

A True Story of Torching Doubts, Blazing Trails, and Igniting Change

by Danica Roem

Viking, 2022. 296 pages.
Review written November 12, 2022, from a library book

Note: I wrote this review a year ago and didn’t get it posted, but now Danica Roem has just been elected Virginia’s first transgender state senator.

I couldn’t resist reading Danica Roem’s story. She’s the first transgender delegate in Virginia, and she represents a district right next door to me, so she’s a local political force. With a transgender daughter myself, I’m always interested in stories of transgender people, and am proud of how Danica Roem is representing our region.

So I did enjoy this book for those reasons. Mind you, there’s a lot in the book about her love for heavy metal and leading a metal band which I didn’t relate to at all and started to gloss over. She’s also from a different generation than me, so the story of her growing up years didn’t hit any common threads.

But I like hearing about her work first as a local reporter and then as a political leader. She gets to know her constituents and honestly wants to bring their concerns to Richmond to make a difference. And I also like hearing about her joy in living as the woman she’s always known herself to be, and finally daring to make that public.

In all, she’s got an inspiring story. And a refreshing voice in politics. Here’s how she finishes the last chapter before the Epilogue:

For all of that, your most honest internal default setting, in which you don’t trip over yourself and stumble over how you think people want you to be, is to just be authentic. You don’t have to keep track of who you are to some people and who you are to others. I say this as someone who inherently wants to be liked: If they don’t respect you, they’re not worth your time. If they do, though, let ’em know who you are, not who you think they want you to be.

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Review of Solito, by Javier Zamora, read by the author

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Biography, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Solito

A Memoir

by Javier Zamora
read by the author

Random House Audio, 2022. 17 hours, 8 minutes.
Review written May 2, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2023 Alex Award winner

The Alex Award is for books written for adults that will appeal to teens. Solito is a worthy winner, since in the entire memoir the author is nine years old. It’s the intense subject matter that put this book into the adult market.

Solito is a memoir — and the story of the author’s journey from El Salvador to the United States all by himself in 1999 when he was nine years old. His grandfather took him on the first leg to Guatemala. But then Javier was entrusted to a “coyote,” supposed to be taken safely to Mexico and then the USA to be reunited at last with his parents.

The trip was supposed to be relatively simple, taking a maximum of two weeks. Pretty early on, the plans got messed up. I won’t tell you how many weeks or how many tries it took before he was reunited with his parents, because I don’t want to mess up the suspense — but it was more than one try and much more than two weeks.

The journey was harrowing. In boats, in cars, buses and vans, and on foot through the desert. The author remembers details from a child’s perspective, doing what people told him, and making up names for the desert plants and animals. He is especially grateful to the adults who took him under their wing when plans went terribly awry, pretending he was part of their family to get him safely past officials.

The author doesn’t tell you what to think about the journey. But my reaction is that this is terrible. No child should have to go through such an arduous journey just to have to be with his parents.

But no matter what you conclude, this amazing story will have you riveted and will touch your heart.

javierzamora.net

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Review of I Swear, by Katie Porter

Biography, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

I Swear

Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan

by Katie Porter

Crown, 2023. 284 pages.
Review written August 8, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

Okay, reading Katie Porter’s book made me a Katie Porter fan, similar to the way reading Elizabeth Warren’s book years ago made me an Elizabeth Warren fan. What both women have in common? They have both studied bankruptcy and fully understand that financial trouble does not imply moral failing.

One of her early stories is of studying mortgage law — and learning that banks were breaking laws, to the detriment of consumers, when they foreclosed, time and time again.

As a mortgage holder, you do what the banks tell you. You assume they’re following the law. Well, Katie Porter checked. And they weren’t. She began to get attention on that as a professor.

While I had started to change minds and get people in power to see that mortgage companies made mistakes and misbehaved, I did not want to be right. I wanted things to be right. Banks used the law to try to collect every penny; we should expect them to follow every rule.

And she decided to run for office to try to make things right.

This book has plenty about running for office and the challenges of being a single mom in Congress and commuting to the other side of the country. (She and her kids tried living in Virginia, but it didn’t work out.) It tells about her background growing up on a farm and the difficult end of her marriage. But my favorite part was where she describes her work in Congress.

As I see it, the real work of Congress is civic education. Democracy only functions if voters know what’s going on in their government and elected representatives know what’s going on in their communities. As a congressmember, that means teaching and learning, respectively.

The American people set the nation’s agenda every two years with House elections, and every four years with presidential elections. They cannot decide if they support a government policy without first knowing what the government is doing (or not doing). Representatives should be teachers, with constituents as our students.

At the same time, we should also be students, learning from our constituents. Without knowing the challenges and ideas of the people we represent, congressmembers can only substitute their own views for voters’ views. While that may happen, it is not how representative democracy is supposed to work. Getting the facts, doing the research, and gaining experience are moments of learning that help me make the best votes for my community.

Teaching and learning are the exact work I did as a law professor, before I ran for Congress. I loved that, and so not surprisingly, I love Congress work.

And yes, using a white board is a fundamental approach to teaching. Visual aids always help!

This concern for people — trying to make government better for actual people — can’t be faked. May Katie Porter continue to serve in this way for many years to come.

Oh and Hooray! When I checked her Twitter account (@katieporteroc), I see that she’s running for Senate in 2024. And she’s got a tagline on her profile: “I did not go to Washington to learn how to play by the rules. I went to Washington to rewrite them.” This book goes into the reasons why she cares about people and wants to make lives better by making government better.

katieporter.com

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Review of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, by Maggie Smith

Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

You Could Make This Place Beautiful

A Memoir

by Maggie Smith

One Signal Publishers (Atria), 2023. 314 pages.
Review written July 18, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

Oh my goodness. This book was hard to read. But so evocative. So perfectly expressing something awful — what it’s like to go through divorce.

The book is a series of essays, vignettes, poems, thoughts — all about the time period after the author learned her husband was cheating on her.

But it’s not so simple as that. Not by a longshot.

And that’s what I loved about the book. Because, I, too, learned my husband was cheating on me. For me, it was Dalmatian hair on his socks, not a pine cone. And nothing, but nothing, was simple after that. I love the way she captures the oh-so-complicated emotions and thoughts and heart-pangs involved.

It also made me feel like some of the things I was slightly ashamed of — Oh, someone else did that, too!

For example, I didn’t tell my family and friends at first — because I didn’t want to hurt their relationship with him. (And that was a lonely, horrid, place to be.) I, too, went to counseling with my husband, where we didn’t talk about my husband seeing another woman, but about what I was doing wrong. For me, too, the hardest thing to forgive was when he moved to the other side of the world from our children, in order to get away from me. The second-guessing. The weird dreams. So much about her experiences reminded me of my own.

I very much liked the way she told the story in essentially a nonlinear way. Because I’ve tried to tell my story in linear ways, and it inevitably leaves so much out. Not that this includes everything, but I like the way it expresses the wounds within wounds, but also how it’s all tied up in someone you once loved with your whole heart and it’s tangled up in beautiful memories and what does your life mean now and all the bundle of questioning and pondering and trying to keep moving.

And I already loved Maggie Smith’s Keep Moving book. Her divorce happened many years after mine, and as thoroughly happy as I am with my life now — this will always still strike a chord.

Yes. It’s the story of the end of a marriage and moving on after it and somehow coping with parenting and adulting and making a living with a completely unexpected life — all beautifully told.

Thank you, Maggie Smith. This book is beautiful.

maggiesmith.substack.com
@MaggieSmithPoet
SimonandSchuster.com

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Review of Spare, by Prince Harry

Biography, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Spare

by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex
read by the author

Books on Tape, 2023. 15 hours, 40 minutes.
Review written April 15, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’ve never been much of a celebrity-watcher, but I did watch Diana’s funeral so many years ago, and along with so many others, my heart went out to Harry, losing his mother far too soon. When he wrote a book, telling his story his own way rather than through an intermediary, I wanted to hear it, wanted to hear that his heart had healed.

And yes, this is a story of healing.

Though first, it’s a story of pain. It was heart-wrenching to hear how many years went by before he stopped believing that his mother had simply staged her own death and built a life for herself elsewhere and would one day call for him.

There are stories of romances with good people who couldn’t hold up to the horrendous persistent invasive attention of the press. (Prince Harry doesn’t like the press.) But the story of him meeting and falling in love with Meghan Markle simply shines with love.

He finally got therapy. He stood up for himself and sued the press. And he withstood basically being cast out of the royal family.

The end says that a large portion of proceeds from this wildly best-selling book are going to charity, but I hope he keeps some for himself and his family, as the story also includes how the royal family is no longer paying for his security or any living expenses. And I would have rolled my eyes about that before I heard this story. The work of the royal family is public relations. And that includes raising money for charity. That he’s continuing that work he was born into, despite being cast off, is admirable.

I’m left after reading this book wholeheartedly wishing for him and his family health, happiness, and continued deep love for one another. And goodness, I hope the press will start leaving them alone.

This one’s worth a read, and like all audiobooks where the narrator has an English accent, it’s well worth hearing with Harry’s own voice reading it to you.

archewell.com

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Review of The Light We Carry, by Michelle Obama

Biography, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Light We Carry

Overcoming in Uncertain Times

by Michelle Obama

Crown, 2022. 318 pages.
Review written January 16, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review

Michelle Obama is a treasure. This book doesn’t contain profound new insights, but it does contain words and stories to inspire you to be your best, and to see the best in other people. She doesn’t pretend any of this is easy, but she tells stories about persevering when things are difficult.

I like the title, because Michelle Obama is exceptionally good at seeing the light in everyone. Everyone carries light inside them, and she is good at finding it in others. This is reflected in this paragraph talking about her book tour for Becoming:

When I looked out into those audiences, I saw something that confirmed what I knew to be true about my country and about the world more generally. I saw a colorful crowd, full of differences, and better for it. These were spaces where diversity was recognized and celebrated as a strength. I saw different ages, races, genders, ethnicities, identities, outfits, you name it — people laughing, clapping, crying, sharing. I sincerely believe that many of those people had turned up for reasons that stretched well past me or my book. My feeling was they’d shown up at least in part to feel less alone in the world, to locate some lost sense of belonging. Their presence — the energy, warmth, and diversity of those spaces — helped tell a certain story. People were there, I believe, because it felt good — it felt great, actually — to mix our differentness with togetherness.

She talks about living life in relationship with others — friends and family you let into your life. And there may not be anything earth-shaking there, but it is inspirational.

Here’s another paragraph I liked:

All I can do is try to draw closer to your uniqueness, to feel linked by the small overlaps between us. This is how empathy works. It’s how differentness starts to weave itself into togetherness. Empathy fills the gaps between us, but never closes them entirely. We get pulled into the lives of others by virtue of what they feel safe and able to show us, and the generosity with which we are able to meet them. Piece by piece, person by person, we begin to apprehend the world in more fullness.

It’s worth the wait on the Holds list.

michelleobamabooks.com
crownpublishing.com

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Review of The Catch Me If You Can, by Jessica Nabongo

Adventure, Nonfiction Review, Photography, Starred Review, Travel, True Stories 0

The Catch Me If You Can

One Woman’s Journey to Every Country in the World

by Jessica Nabongo

National Geographic, 2022. 413 pages.
Review written February 11, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

This book is awesome!

Jessica Nabongo has traveled to all 195 United Nations-recognized countries in the world. In this book, she takes us along on that journey, complete with stunning photographs. She tells us about the people she met and the experiences she enjoyed.

Jessica is the first Black woman to officially achieve this milestone. I love her attitude of putting aside fear and looking for the good in every place in the world.

And oh my goodness, her outfits! She shows up in many of the pictures, wearing stunning outfits reflecting the location. The photography alone in this book makes it amazing, but combined with her stories, I was fascinated from start to finish.

My plan was to read about one country per day. Well, that was taking a long time, so I upped it to two or three countries per day. And yes, I renewed the book several times. But the dose of adventure and delight became a nice part of my routine.

Jessica’s Introduction is inspiring. Here are two of the lessons she learned:

I have visited the world’s 195 countries and 10 territories. Through these travels I learned two key lessons: First, most people are good. My journey was made possible by the kindness of strangers — some who opened their homes to me and others who donated money to help me reach the finish line. I do not know when we started to assume the worst in each other, but if you consider yourself to be a good person, why would you assume that a stranger is a bad one? I always assume the best of people because that is what I received nine times out of 10 in every corner of the world. The few bad experiences will never outweigh the good.

The second lesson I learned is that we are more similar than we are different. In the end, neither race, gender, social class, religion, sexual orientation, body type, education level, nor nationality make you better than the next person. The French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Once you fully accept that, you realize how much our differences simply do not matter.

I love her goal for the reader:

The intention of this book is not to convince you to travel to every country in the world, though it might. That was my dream. My intention is to show everyone — not just Black women and men, but all women and men — that your dreams are valid. Your dreams are achievable.

Let me encourage you to travel the world with Jessica Nabongo!

thecatchmeifyoucan.com
natgeo.com

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Review of What My Bones Know, by Stephanie Foo

Audiobooks, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

What My Bones Know

A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

by Stephanie Foo
read by the author

Random House Audio, 2022. 10 hours, 3 minutes.
Review written December 22, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review
2022 Sonderbooks Standout:
#1 General Nonfiction

This book is amazing. It’s full of helpful information about healing from complex trauma, and it also tells a compelling story about a resilient person trying to cope with awful things in her history.

Stephanie’s a journalist. So when she got a diagnosis of Complex PTSD, she documented her journey of trying to cope and trying to heal.

Once we find out what her childhood was like, the listener of this audiobook isn’t at all surprised by her diagnosis. Her parents subjected her to horrific abuse — and then abandoned her when she was a teen. That she came to have a functional life and successful career is amazing.

But Stephanie was thrown by her diagnosis. She began reading about C-PTSD, which develops from chronic trauma over a long period of time that a person has to deal with on a daily basis and never feels safe. Her reading told her that C-PTSD has permanent negative effects on people’s lives, and she became afraid that she was incapable of good relationships or a happy life — that everything she did would be destructive.

And there were some low points in her journey and some unhelpful therapists and methods of therapy. But the book progresses to where she came to understand and make peace with her background and learned ways to connect with others and build a meaningful, happy life. In the audiobook, she includes recordings from very helpful sessions she had with an expert on C-PTSD. The book builds to her wedding — where she realized she’d built family and community, and then to the time of the pandemic — where she learned that the coping skills she’d learned as a child were actually superpowers when faced with an actual crisis. They aren’t all bad.

And all of this was fascinating storytelling, combined with deep insights about life and coping and building relationships and healing. A truly wonderful book. You’ll get something out of this no matter what your background.

stephaniefoo.me

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Review of All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson

Audiobooks, Biography, Teen Nonfiction, True Stories 0

All Boys Aren’t Blue

A Memoir-Manifesto

by George M. Johnson
read by the author

Macmillan Audio, 2020. 5 hours, 12 minutes.
Review written November 9, 2020, from a library eaudiobook

In this book, George Johnson talks about what it was like for him growing up Black and queer, even in a loving and supportive family.

His storytelling style is interesting and engaging, though a little repetitive in spots. He had me on the edge of my seat when I listened to him tell about getting his teeth kicked out when he was five years old. His stories of his family, especially his grandma, are warm and loving.

When he talks about sexual coming-of-age, he gets way more detailed than what this middle-aged heterosexual white woman wanted to hear. But this book isn’t written for heterosexual middle-aged white women. It’s written especially to other Black and queer folks to find out they aren’t alone. He even talks about how little information he had about gay sex and how he hopes he can help others go beyond trial and error with a few less errors.

I’m glad this book is out there, and even for those not in its target audience, it’s a story of a boy growing up as an outsider and finding his way with the help of community.

iamgmjohnson.com
us.macmillan.com/audio

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Review of Freeing Jesus, by Diana Butler Bass

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Freeing Jesus

Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence

by Diana Butler Bass

HarperOne, 2021. 285 pages.
Review written July 25, 2022, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

In Freeing Jesus, Diana Butler Bass tells us her life story — and how her life experiences affected the way she looked at Jesus.

She goes through six names for Jesus, which fit how she saw him during six stages of her life. I thought it was interesting that they were the same six names — even “Way” and “Presence” — my pastors used in a sermon series on names of Jesus.

Her journey had many similarities to mine, about a decade before me. I know the Christian college she refers to, because I went to a nearby Christian university that was a sports rival with it.

But it also got me thinking about the ways my views of Jesus have changed — and many of those ways were similar to the journey she describes. I like reading about her wrestling with the theology she was taught, because I’ve wrestled with some of the same ideas. Here’s a passage I marked because I love the way she expresses these transcendent ideas:

Jesus was born a savior, and he saved during his lifetime. “Fear not!” “Peace on earth!” He did not wait around for thirty-three years and suddenly become a savior in an act of ruthless, bloody execution. Indeed, the death was senseless, stupid, shameful, evil. It meant little other than silence without the next act — resurrection — God’s final word that even the most brutal of empires cannot destroy salvus. This is no quid pro quo. Rather, Easter proclaims that God overcomes all oppression and injustice, even the murder of an innocent one. At-one-ment means just that. Through Jesus, all will be renewed, made whole, brought back into oneness, reunited with God. Salvation is not a transaction to get to heaven after death; rather, it is an experience of love and beauty and of paradise here and now. No single metaphor, not even one of Paul’s, can truly describe this. We need a prism of stories to begin to understand the cross and a lifetime to experience it.

I love this concept she spells out at the end of her book:

We know Jesus through our experience. There is no other way to become acquainted with one who lived so long ago and who lives in ways we can barely understand through church, scripture, and good works and in the faces of our neighbors. In these pages, I have shared six Jesuses whom I experienced through something I call “memoir theology” (not theological memoir). Memoir theology is the making of theology — understanding the nature of God — through the text of our own lives and taking seriously how we have encountered Jesus.

This spoke to me because I’m working on a book about Psalms that uses my own experiences to illuminate the different types of Psalms. But she demonstrates with this book how much richness is added to her insights by looking at them through the lens of experience.

And after she said that, she points out that even though many church “fathers” wrote theology in the context of memoir, it was taken seriously because only certain (mostly male) perspectives were taken seriously. But she points out that all our experiences matter:

There is an old Berber proverb: “The true believer begins with herself.” Your experience of Jesus matters. It matters in conversation with the “big names,” when you argue with the tradition, and when you read the words and texts for yourself. It matters when you hear Jesus speaking, feel Jesus prompting, and sink into despair when Jesus seems absent. It all matters. The Jesuses you have known and the Jesus you know matter.

Read this book to think about who Jesus is in the light of one woman’s life story, with inspiration to reflect on how Jesus has touched your own life story. Think about who Jesus is and how he has touched your life.

dianabutlerbass.com
harpercollins.com

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