Barking to the Choir by Gregory Boyle

This follow up to Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart, is every bit as compelling. Boyle is a master at telling stories about his work at Homeboy Industries, and then summarizing in a sentence or two the beauty and mystery of love at the heart of that work. That people who have lived through such hell have create home for each other every day at Homeboy Industries is inspiring and humbling. What’s the problem with Congress, for example, if former enemies can not only work together but care for one another?

Boyle has a knack for the summarizing sentence, the nugget that gets at the heart of what he’s been telling through anecdotes about the men and women who are his Homeboy family. After a story about running into a homie at Target and chatting about his life now, Boyle writes, “The goal is not perfection but a wholeness anchored in grateful living.”

If it’s a knottier subject — like the ego — it may take more than one sentence but Boyle is still incredibly lucid. He talks about a speaking engagement where he was “swamped” by fans after, but one woman waited to tell him, “I have nothing but hate for you and your organization” because her “son was killed by a gang member.” Boyle writes about feeling “stunned,” and wishes he could have heard the woman’s story in more detail, for her own benefit, so that she could be heard. He goes on to say “Nonetheless, it returned me to my true home, anchored and grounded far from any adulation. . . and though the sting was sharp, I knew not to take it personally. . . . One can choose to let suffering be the elevator to a heightened place of humble loving. . . . the opposite of clinging is not letting go but cherishing. This is the goal of the practice of humility. That having a ‘light grasp’ on life prepares the way for cherishing what is right in front of us.” Wow.

Barking to the Choir: the Power of Radical Kinship isn’t just a feel-good book about incredible work with people who society casts as “bad guys.” Boyle answers his detractors more directly in this book, and also speaks truth about police brutality (although towards the end he also calls out a thoughtful officer who appears to have found his own way to do Boyle-style compassionate work on the job). But mainly what’s a little tough about this book is that Boyle’s entire attitude of abundance and well being coming from unwavering hospitality, boundless love, and “radical kinship” — of the ubuntu style, there is no I without you — is so counter to what we are seeing all around us right now.

Which makes me hope that we are simply not keeping our eyes — the eyes of our hearts, not just the eyes of our faces — open enough. That we have to seek those stories, (Good News Network is on of my sources) that counter the dominant narrative of separateness and other. Boyle says it better: “If we could simply drop the burden of our own judgments, we could see with clarity and then compassion would be possible.” See, then love. Boyle wants us to know it’s that simple.

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Believe Me by Eddie Izzard

I got Believe Me for the Computer Scientist for Christmas, but he’s been working his way through the Smiley books so hasn’t gotten to it yet and I wanted something more uplifting than the tough fiction I’ve read lately. We really admire Eddie Izzard around here — last summer we sat in the front row at his show in Concord (I still can’t believe he came to Concord) and it was amazing. His humor is so intelligent and watching it happen up close was incredible. I hadn’t heard about the memoir, I admit, until Bill Gates posted about the top five books he read last year. I think generally Eddie Izzard isn’t as well known in the U.S. as he should be.

It took me longer to read than I expected because it’s written in similar style to the way Izzard does his comedy — a lot of thoughts coming at you and you just kind of have to hang on until they all come together. it was fun to learn more about his life and definitely the sheer determination he has had to accomplish what he wants in life is inspiring. It’s not a funny book — it’s not meant to be — and it was pretty heavy at times, as there has been some tough stuff in Izzard’s life. His idea that people are all pretty much the same everywhere and his faith in humanity are nice, although reading these thoughts with the world as it is felt a little disjointed. But it’s a good read and I enjoyed it.

 

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The Power by Naomi Alderman

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post and I’m still thinking about Sing, Unburied, Sing. In between I read a book for Kirkus. Along the way I was reading a little bit of The Power, by Naomi Alderman, before bed, but not much — I’ve been pouring it on in terms of coursework for my science communication and public engagement program, we went to see the former Teen the Elder, now a postulant for holy orders in the Episcopal Church, at Yale Divinity School, and last weekend the Computer Scientist and I caught some exhibits at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and MFA, so I’ve been busy.

But last night the university where I work called a snow day for today earlier than usual — by 9pm, after letting us go home at 3 in heavily falling snow — so I stayed up late and finished The Power. It definitely deserved a longer reading and I enjoyed finishing it. I’ve been sitting with how I felt about it all day, and I’m still not entirely sure. First let’s get out of the way that I think it’s well written and compelling — deserving of the accolades (it won the Bailey’s Women’s Prize, was named by NYT as one of the ten best books of 2017, and was on President’ Obama’s favorite reads of 2017 list, among others).

Second, I should apologize in advance to my bookclub, because we were trying to pick a more uplifting read, and somehow this came up in my research as that, and it’s not. Yes, it imagines what the world would be like if run by women. But the results are pretty chaotic much of the time, and pretty ugly some of the time, because it turns out it’s not being male that makes people with power assholes, it’s power. That’s my greatly simplified summary of this novel.

Still, it’s an incredibly relevant thought experiment, and I found three of the main characters, Mother Eve/Allie, Roxy, and Tunde, equally fascinating in their way. The structure of the novel is also very intriguing and made the ending rather breathtaking, to me. The opening and closing pages of the book are correspondence between a male novelist and a woman he asks to read his draft of The Power, which he refers to as a historical novel. All we really know about these people is that they live thousands of years after the events of his novel.

So why do I have mixed feelings if I was blown away? Maybe the premise of the book, which seems to be that there will always be a gendered power imbalance even if it doesn’t look like our norms, is more than is easily digested with all that is currently going on in the world? Maybe it’s a truth I find too troubling to embrace? Maybe I just need more time?

I’m realizing I’ve given you very little to go on in this review — it’s speculative fiction, set in times that seem very similar to our own, and imagines that women have something called “the power” which is physiological, cause unknown, girls are born with it and can help older women realize they have it and wake it up, and is kind of like electricity. The realization that this is happening causes massive changes around the world, and the book centers on how it changes religion, political influence and military power, and social dynamics. I look forward to the book club discussion, which always brings me more insight into any book.

Speaking of which, I’ve been meaning to ask my blog readers — what is a book your book club really enjoyed reading and discussing recently? If it’s got a hopeful or uplifting theme, all the better, but anything that led to a great discussion is welcome. Leave a comment and let me know!

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