A heartfelt and humane sociological report.
An activist offers a view of modern life through one of the most dismissed of all social groups: teenage girls.
Despite a variety of stereotypes about teenage girls, they are “a wildly underestimated force for good in the world,” writes Goodan, mentorship director of DemocraShe and founder of the Activist Cartel. Informed by a decade and a half of experience working with young women of different races, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic backgrounds, Goodan probes key issues, both internal and external, that girls struggle with on their journey to adulthood. The stormy adolescent feelings that can make girls appear emotionally “lawless” top the list. They cause well-meaning adults to take an “advise and fix” approach to girls’ problems, but the author proposes a far more effective idea: create a validating, nonjudgmental space in which girls can express their emotions. The need to speak honestly about themselves and their lives can also present problems to young women. In Goodan’s experience, teens such as 16-year-old Lori believe that “adults…cover the truth because they think [girls] can’t handle it.” What truth actually does offer is permission to successfully express selfhood. The pressure to be beautiful according to Eurocentric, heteronormative standards is also a source of profound female angst, causing girls to constantly question their value and social worth and fall victim to dangerous disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. When older women model attitudes of self-acceptance, however, girls like 15-year-old Rosy are able to articulate important truths: “[B]eauty is…transparency within yourself, not hiding, being real.” What makes this book stand out is the way Goodan allows girls to share their truths openly and without judgment. In this way, the author empowers young women by showing readers what they have to teach adults about the power of (inter)personal authenticity.
A heartfelt and humane sociological report.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668032688
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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