Depression and anxiety are at epidemic levels; this book offers an alternative path to a fulfilling, productive life.
A social psychologist shows how perfectionism can hold you back from real achievement and points the way out of the dilemma.
Curran, a psychology professor at the London School of Economics, shows how we are experiencing record levels of burnout, hypercompetitiveness, depression, and anxiety. The reason, he argues, is perfectionism, an impulse that runs through everything from work to personal attractiveness. It is relentless, impossible to satisfy, and inherently dangerous to mental well-being. Curran examines it from various perspectives and provides a self-diagnostic tool called the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. Many perfectionists think of themselves as highly productive, but that belief is not supported by the evidence. In fact, perfectionists often repeat the same task over and over again rather than looking for innovations and alternatives. They can also be intolerant of others, which is disruptive in the workplace and in relationships. Still, perfectionism is ubiquitous. We are constantly bombarded with messages telling us to be better, strive harder, and consume more. The filtered, glossy images of social media set impossible standards that cannot be met, although some people go to enormous lengths in attempts to do so. Curran offers solid suggestions on how to avoid the perfection impulse and move into “the Republic of Good Enough.” The best way is with measured steps, coupled with realistic goals and an understanding of where you actually want to go in your life. Unfortunately, he wanders off the point in the final chapter, when he discusses sociopolitical reforms like a universal basic income and progressive taxation. This section has a tinny tone that clashes with the sturdy research of the rest of the book. However, the author delivers many useful lessons and valuable insights, and that might be quite good enough.
Depression and anxiety are at epidemic levels; this book offers an alternative path to a fulfilling, productive life.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982149536
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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