Hi there! I'm Jen. This is Remembered
Reads. And this is going to be a wrap-up
of some of the recent nonfiction that
I've been reading. First up is a new
release and that is Disability
Visibility: personal stories from the
21st century. This was edited by Alice
Wong who has a website called Disability
Visibility, who has a podcast of the same
name. If you are interested in disability
culture, disability rights, disability
justice and you're not following her on
social media and you really should be.
Because she does bring together a lot of
different people and a lot of
information. This collects mostly newer
articles although not exclusively it
opens with Harriet McBryde Johnson's
fairly well-known piece where she
describes meetings with Peter Singer who
in addition to being the person who
wrote Animal Liberation is also someone
who has suggested that parents should be
allowed to kill their disabled children.
And she was a lawyer who dealt with a
lot of disability rights if you haven't
read her memoir she passed away a few
years ago but if you haven't read her
memoir "too late to die young" or her sort
of young adult novel "accidents of nature"
both of those are very worth reading. 
I thought that was a great opening even
though that is more than 15 years old
just because it's such a good overall
introduction to what kind of the kind of
attitudes that people who don't pay
attention to disability quote-unquote
issues don't notice is out there in the
culture and then act shocked when things
happen. This collects articles from
people across the class, and ethnic. and
disability spectrum in a way that I
thought was makes it a really great book
to lend to people - which is definitely
something I plan to do it.  I felt like somebody who's
completely new to any of this would have
the same reaction to this that I had
reading The Ragged Edge collection book 25
years ago and that I think had a much
smaller subsection of both disability
and kind of other demographic categories
across it, even though I think the goal
was similar. And this definitely brings
it up to date for the 21st century so I
thought this was brilliant I will be
lending this to people as with anything
that collects work from different
authors some will probably connect with
you more or less.
There were a few of these that in
addition to the first one that I had
read before and a few others that were
new essays written specifically for this
where I had read the author's blogs
or memoirs so they were a little more
familiar. But as I said, this is
definitely a book I will be lending to
people. And it's great to see something
updated because I do have other books
that I have lent to people and they are
all from between 20 and 25 years ago. So
I love that I have an updated version.
And yes, if you don't if you aren't
familiar with disability rights, justice,
culture etc I thoroughly recommend
picking this up to gain some extra
information. While I'm on that theme I'm
going to insert something I pre-recorded
that I had to take back to the library
because it's sort of a similar kind of
theme here. All right this is past me
because I need to talk about this while
holding it up and I'm gonna return this
to the library soon: "hello I want to die
please fix me" by Anna Miller Paperny.
This is half memoir and half
investigative reporting the author is
someone who has written for The Globe
and Mail and a number of other Canadian
newspapers. And she's also had long-term
struggles with clinical depression, and
fairly severe clinical depression. And after she had experiences of
being involuntarily committed after some
suicide attempts she did some
investigation into mental health
treatments, funding medication, other non-
medication and non-therapy interventions,
things like that and wrote this book. It
is a fascinating look into a lot of
those things. I thought the strongest
parts were both the memoir and the
pharmaceutical funding bits because that
was really fascinating the memoir bits
are quite strong and surprising in a lot
of ways I think a lot of her stories
challenge a lot of the narrative
surrounding depression which was
interesting she is quite open about her
history of suicidal thoughts and and
attempts so if that's something that's
going to be upsetting for you this
wouldn't be a book for you to read but I
think if you are interested in hearing
about that this
definitely eye-opening for me the
pharmaceutical stuff again was
fascinating because I had not realized
how much research - I think I imagined
that there was a lot more academic or
government funding behind a lot of
research, whereas it is a lot of very
"who's gonna buy this?" and "how are we
gonna fund it that way based on the
market for things?" So that was really
interesting. She goes through some bits
and pieces about mental health supports
and she mostly focuses on the situation
in Canada which varies quite a bit by
province but she also looks into some
things in the US and in Europe and it
ends up being a little too little of a
lot of them. So it felt like there were a
lot of minor points that weren't
necessarily as well connected as they
could have been. So I thought some of the
investigative bits weren't quite as
strong that way. But I was still quite
pleased to have read this just because
it was very enlightening I had no idea a
lot of about a lot of the experimental
treatments and as I said the memoir bits
were just fascinating for me because it
was very different from from some of the
other popular depression memoirs that
I've seen. So yeah, this was fascinating.
It was quite a quick read she writes in
a very - I wouldn't say 100%
conversational, but she has a definite
flow to the writing style - so that even
when it is going through the non memoir
pieces it does feel is a very smooth
read so yeah that was interesting. Next
up I read Ibram X Kendi's "Stamped
from the Beginning: the definitive
history of racist ideas in America" in
the wake of the kind of - I don't know -
mainstreaming of the black lives matter
movement, a lot of people have been
talking about Kendi's "how to be an
anti-racist." And Alba from Seriela and I
both realize that we had this book that
we hadn't read so, we thought we'd do a
buddy read of it. This goes through the
history of the United States from the
colonial period to the current day with
each era following, not exclusively one
individual, but primarily focused around
their lifespan or their activities
within the world of racism and anti
racism. And so we go from basically the
Puritans through to
current-day. I thought this was very
educational in part because I knew
nothing for example about the Puritan
period in the early settlement in the
United States. There were huge spans of
the 1800s where there were things that I
had never heard of before. So
I definitely learned a lot of American
history from this. It also made me
realize that the section that is around
the point of American independence
focuses on Thomas Jefferson and that was
really interesting because most of my I
guess knowledge of Jefferson was from
when I lived in the DC area I did go to
his house at Monticello and took some of
the tours there. And the thing about
learning from that is it *is* educational
but you don't necessarily remember the
facts exactly correctly. So that was
really interesting to be updated on that.
As it goes through when we at the point
that we hit the 1990s it felt like there
was a bit too much everything plus the
kitchen sink in there, which was a little
odd to me. Especially because that's the
section where I it started to be things
that I recognized it was about movies
that I had seen. He talks about like the
Spike Lee biopic of Malcolm X which when
I was in high school we had a school
trip to go and see that, because I was
taking a Canadian-American comparative
history class when I was in high school.
That movie was so long it had a
intermission/interval in the middle!
Anyway, one of those central points in
here is that candy presents us with two
different styles of racism:
segregationist and assimilationist. And
the assimilationist style of racism is
of a form that explains a lot of
colonialism that happened outside of the
Anglosphere where and I'm thinking
particularly for example in the
Portuguese or Ottoman empires, where
people could be part of the Empire and
if they converted and changed their name
they sort of became part of the dominant
group in a way that in within British
colonialism you just didn't see. And it
kind of explains that to say "no, that's
also racism." It's this other style of
racism. Which also
gives you a label for some of those
people who are very racist and then
claim they can't be because as their
partner or their children are some other
ethnicity. That kind of a gives you a
framework for thinking about that beyond
just the vague racist or not racist
which is not as useful. So as a whole I
found this really interesting and I was
glad I read it. I did think one major
flaw is that it is focused very
specifically on blackness and whiteness.
And if you are going to call something
"the definitive history of racist ideas
in America" to ignore Indigenous anything
to such an extent - there are a few
mentions of Indigenous people but very
very few - and I
couldn't understand how you could call
something "definitive" and have that gap
there. So not a fan of the subheading, but
the book itself I thought was very
educational and very interesting. So
following up on that book because the
final section of that book the person's
being followed is Angela Davis, I then
went and read some of her work. She was I
think a stereotype just having been a
member of the Black Panther Party which
she was for a while but she was more
dominantly a member of the u.s. communis
party which I had not known much about
at all so I picked up one of her works
which was Freedom as a Constant Struggle,
which is a collection of essays and
interviews. It was published about
five years ago, so it's not necessarily
the most current given the current
American political situation, but it is
surprisingly up-to-date in a lot of ways
she does talk about the black lives
matter movement in the contest in the
context of Ferguson. She talks about
militarization of the police in the
United States also in Israel. She talks
about the fact that the United States
hasn't really reckoned with the imperial
history and what that means with regard
to national identity. She also talks
about that in the context of Turkey. It
was a lot more broad in terms of both
the the context and in terms of the
issues that she talks about. The only two
kind of nitpicky things I mean whether
one agrees or disagrees with her
particular politics it is still very
interesting to see see them present it
all together like that. So I did find
that very interesting the only two
issues that I would have one is that
because so many of these are speeches
there are points in the text where she
mentions as she would have in the speech
I've
run out of time the additional things I
would have talked about are and very
often the things that are cut off are
the disability issues. She does talk
quite a bit about gender and sexuality
and ethnicity and I did think it was
unfortunate that that's always one of
the last things that she talked about so
it's clearly not a priority in the same
way. And I thought that was had some
unfortunate implications to it. But I
mean, it is what it is.
Also, at one point she encourages people
to feel free to jump into movements
without doing huge amounts of research
first. And she's talking about that in
the context of Palestinian issues,
however after reading the other book I
did go and do some reading on her. And
she in the 1960s encountered some
controversy because she did in the 60s a
some really, I would say unfortunate,
things about political prisoners in the
Soviet Union and in Czechoslovakia. And
while you understand that given the
context of the 1960s and what was known
or not known, but she was going over
there often, she was a member of the US
Communist Party... It did make me
think, knowing that bit of her history,
the part where she says "you don't need
to research before you get involved in
activism" did make me think - yeah, you know
research is kind of important sometimes.
And I mean and this is in a case where I
don't actually disagree with the general
political stance but I just thought
people ought research. So
I was glad I read it. It was interesting.
A different take on communist politics: I
also read a graphic memoir and that was
Emei Burrell's We Served the People: my
mother's stories. The author is a Swedish
cartoonist and her mother is Chinese and
was a teenager when the Cultural
Revolution started and was one of the
people who was taken out of school and
sent down to work in a rural area. This
follows her mother through that through
the period of the Cultural Revolution,
the years afterwards when people were
trying to get themselves sent back home
which was quite an ordeal, the years
afterwards when her mother was still
trying to get an education when most
people were not allowed to if they eight
were above a certain age, and then
eventually to her mother's immigration
to Sweden. The book starts out almost
scrapbook style. So going through the
first few pages I almost
expected it to be something like Nora
Krug's Heimat (or Belonging, depending on
what market you're in) in which you have
almost a combination memoir/scrapbook.
But it does switch to being a
traditional comic style fairly quickly
the art style is solid but I think it's
interesting primarily because it is a
story it is it's kind of unusually I
think in the Cultural Revolution memoirs
that you both read - and if I mean just
talking to friends whose parents lived
through the Cultural Revolution - a lot of
those stories end on a kind of hope for
the next generation, or hope for the
younger siblings of the children or
something like that, and less so for the
people who had their education
interrupted, and their lives disrupted in
this significant way. And this doesn't do
that though. Her mother did get a degree,
and did get to emigrate herself, and all
of that. So it's a different take on it
and she does kind
muse on the elements of luck that
happened had to happen along with the
work that her mother put in, because
they're both things happening. So yeah it
was an interesting read just because it
was I think we almost come to expect a
very specific style of cultural
revolution narrative in which for the
people who were directly impacted it's
all bad and in this case it was mostly
bad but it wasn't completely terrible so
so it was a surprise but as graphic
memoirs go I don't feel like it was the
most memorable of them on their own and
if it weren't for the specific subject
matter of the author's mother having a
story that's just a little different for
most of them. That is the outstanding
point rather than specifically the art
of the storytelling. So well worth
reading just for that and the art is
definitely solid. So again, something I'm
glad I picked up. All right, if you've
read any of these I'd love to hear what
you thought of them. And yeah, hope you're
keeping well that's it for now. Ciao!
