Written with the authority of experience, this book offers a viable path to true recovery.
The renowned psychiatrist shows us how coming to terms with the pandemic requires a change in thinking.
National Book Award winner Lifton, now 97, has written scores of books, mainly dealing with the effects of trauma. He believes that our society has yet to fully come to terms with the Covid-19 pandemic and its enormous consequences. He draws on the stories of Hiroshima survivors (the subject of his classic 1968 book, Death in Life), Vietnam veterans, and Holocaust survivors to illustrate the importance of finding meaning as a crucial part of psychological recovery—and physical recovery for those dealing with the long-term effects of the disease. Recovery is by no means easy, and the Hiroshima survivors (known in Japan as hibakusha, “explosion-affected persons”) had to deal with feelings of guilt as well as the loss of loved ones. Some became activists campaigning against nuclear weapons, and others became artists or writers. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, a half-destroyed building, provided a focal point for individual and communal mourning. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is another example of how national traumas can be given expression. As such, a lasting monument to the pandemic victims, as proposed by the activist survivor organization Marked by Covid, among other entities, could help the nation move through the grieving process. A national day of remembrance would also provide a sense of unity. However, Lifton argues lucidly that the real key to recovery from the pandemic is a fundamental change in our collective mindset. We must move toward "the formation of a sense of self based significantly upon one’s connection to humankind.” In a thoughtful, pithy, and inspiring narrative, the author shows how “catastrophe calls on us to bring the mind to bear upon the most unpalatable truths of our historical epoch, to expand the limits of imagination on behalf of survival.”
Written with the authority of experience, this book offers a viable path to true recovery.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781620978153
Page Count: 192
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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