Book Recommendations

[darnkatz]

Just finished Life's Work: A Moral Argument for Choice by Dr. Willie Parker. I'll just include the synopsis because I don't know how else to describe it. He is an incredibly inspiring man.

In Life’s Work, an outspoken, Christian reproductive justice advocate and abortion provider (one of the few doctors to provide such services to women in Mississippi and Alabama) pulls from his personal and professional journeys as well as the scientific training he received as a doctor to reveal how he came to believe, unequivocally, that helping women in need, without judgment, is precisely the Christian thing to do.

Dr. Willie Parker grew up in the Deep South, lived in a Christian household, and converted to an even more fundamentalist form of Christianity as a young man. But upon reading an interpretation of the Good Samaritan in a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he realized that in order to be a true Christian, he must show compassion for all women regardless of their needs. In 2009, he stopped practicing obstetrics to focus entirely on providing safe abortions for the women who need help the most—often women in poverty and women of color—and in the hot bed of the pro-choice debate: the South. He soon thereafter traded in his private practice and his penthouse apartment in Hawaii for the life of an itinerant abortion provider, focusing most recently on women in the Deep South.

In Life’s Work, Dr. Willie Parker tells a deeply personal and thought-provoking narrative that illuminates the complex societal, political, religious, and personal realities of abortion in the United States from the unique perspective of someone who performs them and defends the right to do so every day. He also looks at how a new wave of anti-abortion activism, aimed at making incremental changes in laws and regulations state by state, are slowly chipping away at the rights of women to control their own lives. In revealing his daily battle against mandatory waiting periods and bogus rules governing the width of hallways, Dr. Parker uncovers the growing number of strings attached to the right to choose and makes a powerful Christian case for championing reproductive rights.

[thejen626]

Apr 23, 2017 11:31:35 GMT -5 darnkatz said:

Just finished Life's Work: A Moral Argument for Choice by Dr. Willie Parker. I'll just include the synopsis because I don't know how else to describe it. He is an incredibly inspiring man.

In Life’s Work, an outspoken, Christian reproductive justice advocate and abortion provider (one of the few doctors to provide such services to women in Mississippi and Alabama) pulls from his personal and professional journeys as well as the scientific training he received as a doctor to reveal how he came to believe, unequivocally, that helping women in need, without judgment, is precisely the Christian thing to do.

Dr. Willie Parker grew up in the Deep South, lived in a Christian household, and converted to an even more fundamentalist form of Christianity as a young man. But upon reading an interpretation of the Good Samaritan in a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he realized that in order to be a true Christian, he must show compassion for all women regardless of their needs. In 2009, he stopped practicing obstetrics to focus entirely on providing safe abortions for the women who need help the most—often women in poverty and women of color—and in the hot bed of the pro-choice debate: the South. He soon thereafter traded in his private practice and his penthouse apartment in Hawaii for the life of an itinerant abortion provider, focusing most recently on women in the Deep South.

In Life’s Work, Dr. Willie Parker tells a deeply personal and thought-provoking narrative that illuminates the complex societal, political, religious, and personal realities of abortion in the United States from the unique perspective of someone who performs them and defends the right to do so every day. He also looks at how a new wave of anti-abortion activism, aimed at making incremental changes in laws and regulations state by state, are slowly chipping away at the rights of women to control their own lives. In revealing his daily battle against mandatory waiting periods and bogus rules governing the width of hallways, Dr. Parker uncovers the growing number of strings attached to the right to choose and makes a powerful Christian case for championing reproductive rights.

Thank you for this. I got to see him speak at a PP event this year. He's amazing.

[2curlydogs]

So, there's this 100+ tweetstorm going on about the whole HBO Confederacy bullshit show. But in the middle are a slew of good book recommendations by WOC, some of which I hadn't heard. I'll post here:

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland - Civil War meets zombies
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton - In Orléans, the people are born gray, they are born damned, and only with the help of a Belle and her talents can they transform and be made beautiful.
Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman - Sephy is a Cross -- a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a Nought -- a “colourless” member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses.
The Blazing Star by Imani Josey - Twin sisters are transported to ancient Egypt
An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole - Elle Burns is a former slave with a passion for justice and an eidetic memory. Trading in her life of freedom in Massachusetts, she returns to the indignity of slavery in the South—to spy for the Union Army.

[loira]

Mar 25, 2013 12:17:16 GMT -5 @lcap said:

What a good idea!

My two favorite books that I read last year were Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. Both won the Booker Prize and are part of a triology on the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minuster during the Boylen and Seymour years. They're told from his POV. I promise you, you can't read these books and not fall in love with him. They're that good

Hm, I normally love historical fiction but I could not get through Wolf Hall. I wanted to love it, but I didn't like the narrative voice. I ended up abandoning it, something I rarely do. I should have just gone to see the play because I heard that was amazing.

[loira]

I recently read The Expatriates and it was pretty good, although I wish the author hadn't made all 3 main characters American.

Summary: The book follows the lives of 3 American women living in Hong Kong, as they navigate expat life and come to terms with their own problems. (disclaimer: @ trigger)

[bex]

I just finished Dog Whistle Politics by Ian Haney Lopez and it was excellent. It must have been recommended here but I don't see it on this list.  It's not very long (about 230 pages) but it is dense, reminds me of something we would have read in a poli sci class in college. It's about how the right started using coded racial appeals in the 60s and how the language changed over the decades and how it impacted American politics, society and the justice system.  A lot of it is stuff we have discussed here and some of it is obvious (Reagan's welfare queen, for example) but there was lots of new information in it and I found it fascinating.

It was published in 2014 so pre-Trump, so I wonder how it would be different today, lol.

[mrshandy]

This was a very hard read, but very good.

www.amazon.com/Ravensbruck-Death-Hitlers-Concentration-Women/dp/0307278719

Months before the outbreak of World War II, Heinrich Himmler—prime architect of the Holocaust—designed a special concentration camp for women, located fifty miles north of Berlin. Only a small number of the prisoners were Jewish. Ravensbrück was primarily a place for the Nazis to hold other inferior beings: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Resistance fighters, lesbians, prostitutes, and aristocrats—even the sister of New York’s Mayor LaGuardia. Over six years the prisoners endured forced labor, torture, starvation, and random execution. In the final months of the war, Ravensbrück became an extermination camp. Estimates of the final death toll have ranged from 30,000 to 90,000.
For decades the story of Ravensbrück was hidden behind the Iron Curtain. Now, using testimony unearthed since the end of the Cold War and interviews with survivors who have never talked before, Sarah Helm takes us into the heart of the camp. The result is a landmark achievement that weaves together many accounts, following figures on both sides of the prisoner/guard divide. Chilling, compelling, and deeply necessary, Ravensbrück is essential reading for anyone concerned with Nazi history.

[StrawberryBlondie]

Has anyone read The Elegance if the Hedgehog?

My book club is reading it for our next meeting and I'm having trouble getting into it.