![]() ![]() The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.Ītlantic senior writer Coates ( The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “Yet there is no other way to live.”Ī moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose-as well as the moral purpose underscoring it-suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. ![]() Sharp and always humane, Cooper’s book suggests important ways in which feminism needs to evolve for the betterment not just of black women, but society as a whole.Ī timely and provocative book that shows “what you build is infinitely more important than what you tear down.”Ī neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. By learning how to channel their rage in their areas of endeavor, they have earned game-changing respect that has transcended race and gender. Cooper points to tennis star Serena Williams, former first lady Michelle Obama, and singer Beyoncé as contemporary black feminist role models. ![]() Once uncovered and focused, however, the rage that inevitably comes from such injustices is of tremendous benefit to all. Cooper’s feminist journey also forced her to shed cultural “baggage”-such as the racism of a white society that questioned her movements on American streets and the sexism of black society that sought to control her sexuality through the church-that limited her passage through the world. Participating in these separate battles did not blind her to the need for alliances with both groups, however they only made her more aware of the need for creating solidarity across communities to topple patriarchy. The author begins by detailing the difficult journey that led her to “disidentify with whiteness” of mainstream feminism and learn to embrace her “particular Black girl magic.” Her quest for political authenticity meant fighting with white women over racism and black men over sexism. But as her feminist foremother Audre Lorde once remarked, this anger was not only legitimate it was also “a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.” Here, Cooper brings together essays tracing her evolution as a feminist while giving voice to the political (out)rage seething within. “We are told we are irrational, crazy, out of touch, entitled, disruptive and not team players,” writes Cooper (Women and Gender Studies, Africana Studies/Rutgers Univ.). A professor explores the ways “sexism, and racism, and classism work together to fuck shit up for everybody” and how feminism can begin undoing the damage. ![]()
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