Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour

I read Black Buck on a trip, straight through in a few hours. It was everything I’m looking for in a good read: smart, entertaining, thought provoking, funny, both heart-breaking and uplifting, ultimately about love and full of Truth with a capital T. Mateo Askaripour quit his day job to write, which is super inspiring. This is his debut, and he notes it “was written just for Black readers, though white readers are welcome to ‘come along for the ride.'”

Black Buck opens with a note from the main character, Darren Vender, known as Buck. He tells readers he wants to teach us how to sell, but he particularly wants to teach Black people how to sell. To white readers like me, Buck says, “I want you to think of yourself as an honorary Black person. Go on, do it. Don’t go don blackface and an afro, but picture yourself as Black.” If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that a) that’s why I read, to put myself into another life for a few hundred pages and try to learn something about being human from their perspective and b) I’ve been working on being antiracist and one way to do that is to try to understand the experiences of people of color from their points of view. So I appreciated this invitation.

Buck is a delightful narrator. He is honest about himself and his own foibles. He’s a lot like most of us — good at some things, bad at others, mostly kind but sometimes hard-hearted, a good son, boyfriend, and friend . . . except when he isn’t. Askaripour makes it clear when the novel opens that Darren is also someone with untapped potential; he’s 22, was a valedictorian at a magnet school for science, but he’s working in a Starbucks, moving up, but not really fully fulfilling the promise others saw in him as a teen. And still see in him: Rhett Daniels, the charismatic leader of a tech startup called Sumwun that aims to upend the mental healthcare world, recruits him one morning in the Starbucks.

Rhett is wealthy, successful, narcissistic, and from their first encounter, seems brash to the point of being somewhat unhinged. Initially, Darren isn’t interested. Pressured by his girlfriend and mom to at least hear about the opportunity, Darren, nicknamed Buck during his sales training week at Sumwun, ends up getting drawn into the tech startup atmosphere — the swag, the free food, the partying, and frankly, the success he enjoys in sales. But he is also aware from day one that there are no other Black employees at Sumwun, and that Clyde, the man who trains him, and others at the company expect him to fail. Rhett, however, believes in him, even seems to love him, and Buck is flattered. Who wouldn’t be?

As you can guess, this is just the beginning of the story. As Buck spends more and more time with his Sumwun coworkers (which reminded me of this great article on why workplaces should not call themselves a “family”) he spends less with his mom and girlfriend and friends he grew up with. As in any coming of age story, Buck faces some trials — some bad things happen in those relationships — and then he has to show what he’s made of. Some reviewers called this “formulaic” to which I would say, go read The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell; human storytelling has patterns, which make storytelling and listening/watching a delight when done well, as it is in this novel. Anyway, in the process of realizing he could help a friend he nearly left behind in his precipitous climb to wealth and success, Buck ends up inadvertently starting a movement. Which, as sometimes happens in real life, makes him the target of some pretty nasty folks.

Anyway, I don’t want to spoil the plot for you by giving too many details, but I will say, what makes Black Buck uplifting even though it shines a light on all the excesses of capitalism, consumer culture, and gentrification, and the sins of racism, ableism, and other kinds of bigotry, is that Buck grows as a character. In the process, Askaripour examines the classic conflict of whether to take action against the forces of evil in our world with kindness or to fight fire with fire. His characters — and Buck is great but there are many terrific minor characters who advance the action in the story in different ways — make the social commentary happen, a la Jane Austen, which means you get so caught up in the story that it helps you understand the issues at hand. The ending is a bit wild, but unfortunately, probably not unrealistically so.

Ultimately, Black Buck is about a young man growing up in a world where inequity of all kinds stacks the deck against him and many of the people he cares about, who learns that what will really make him happy isn’t just doing well for himself, but being part of a community that can do well together. And that his own success will be richer for being part of something that helps others; Buck learns that there is no zero sum game when it comes to opportunity. (Yep, here is where I tell you again: read The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee). And as I mentioned, it’s also really funny, and a love story. If you’re looking for a good read, this is it. If you want something for your book club that is both a great deal of fun and also ripe for discussion, again, this is it.

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Books on capitalism and climate change

I started the new year off with some heavy duty nonfiction. My dad sent me a copy of The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here by Hope Jahren, and our elder offspring gave me Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism by Kathryn Tanner for Christmas. Both were tough in their way, but good reads.

Let’s begin with what everything in America (and most of the world) begins and ends with: capitalism. Tanner’s book examines the idea of the “protestant work ethic” and also looks at capitalism’s morphing into an entirely finance driven enterprise that causes both private and public sectors to cut costs (working fewer employees harder, outsourcing, etc.) in order to please investors by producing greater profit or yielding higher interest rates on bonds. If you’ve wondered why your taxes go up but your city isn’t really providing any more services — and in some cases is cutting them — this little book explains it pretty handily.

She gets into detailed explanations of the crazy financial investment products that led to the Great Recession (if you liked The Big Short, you’ll enjoy her lucid overview) and explains why workers, especially those with few resources, get caught in cycles of debt and employment insecurity. Basically, why most of us are the chaff in the financial elite’s fat harvest. I especially enjoyed the places in the book where she noted that this system actually undermines the long term sustainability of companies that are “succeeding” according to financial capitalism’s rules, because there is only so long they can squeeze out lower costs and higher profits before companies or governments reach unsustainably low staffing levels or simply can’t force suppliers or vendors to price materials and services any lower. And there reaches a point when monitoring and measuring employees limits rather than enhances their productivity.

I was with Tanner as she explained all this, and I understood, to a point, the ways that our relationship to time — our perceptions of past, present and future — are impacted by capitalism’s relentless push for financial gain at all cost. And I followed her lines of thought as she described why Christianity is not aligned with these theories of profit over people, and why God’s creation, including humans, is not enhanced by these systems.

As Tanner writes, “The materials upon which we work have value prior to our activity insofar as they form non-purposive ‘products’ of God’s creative activity. God created them for no purpose or end other than to be reflections of God’s glory. We are similarly not responsible for creating the value of what we are and will be through productive activities, whether on ourselves or other things. . . . With an anthropology of production in which human work is the source of value fundamentally undermined, the heightened work ethic of finance-dominated capitalism collapses. One can no longer expect personal fulfillment through work in any ordinary sense of that.”

Which is more or less the view I came to (without the analysis of finance-dominated capitalism Tanner engages in) last spring, when I had a kind of ah-ha realization that my satisfaction in life comes from my relationship with God and with my fellow members of creation (human and non) and that my satisfaction in life decidedly did not and would never come from work. Which a few months later was a factor in my decision to leave my job (more on that over at Nocturnal Librarian), albeit for another one.

But as I read Tanner’s book I was hoping for a clearer explanation of the ways Christianity can not only discredit the theory of work upheld by finance-dominated capitalism, but also help people unshackle themselves. Barring that — which after all is impractical when every good and service we need to live a healthy life is produced by the system we’re shackled to — I was hoping at least for more practical advice for how ordinary Christians can take heart in the face of a system so tirelessly devoted to grinding up workers and spitting out profit.

In fairness, Tanner was not out to write a how-to or self-help book. She’s an academic, and she wrote Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism to respond to the work of previous academics and to develop her own theories in a way that allows her to reach not only the students in her classroom but those beyond, including this ex-library director now hourly hospital worker. It is a challenging read, not to be undertaken at bedtime or after your evening glass or two of wine. And definitely one that required re-reading in places. But I appreciated wrestling with the information Tanner presented and I felt validated. I’d had a sense that my “ah ha” was a sign of spiritual/ethical growth and not just being fed up at work, and Tanner helped me understand that better.

Now on to the easier to read but no less challenging to think about book about climate change.

The Story of More takes a systematic approach to examining all of the changes in the world that led to climate change since author Hope Jahren was a child. She’s about my age so I found her data interesting since she’s talking about my lifetime, too. The data is staggering, and she uses a lot of imagery to bring it to life. One example I read aloud to the Computer Scientist that he actually asked me to send him the next morning because he couldn’t stop pondering it (to set the scene is, Jahren is flying from Newark to Minneapolis):

“If instead of flying, all two hundred of us escaped from the plane into two hundred separate cars and drove, individually, from New Jersey to Minnesota, we would have collectively burned 40 percent less fuel than we ended up using for that one plane by flying together. If instead of using separate cars we had boarded a single passenger train, the total journey would have required only half as much fuel as was required for the gas-guzzling airplane that saved each one of us fourteen hours of travel time.”

Vivid, right? The whole books is studded with these kinds of examples. Jahren is a scientist, so she is methodical and thorough. She covers all the things humans use and consume, like food and energy, as well as the impacts we’re having on what’s around us, including, air, water, weather, and our fellow inhabitants of earth (human, plant, and animal). The Story of More is very much connected to the story of capitalism, so reading them both at the same time was a lot.

My dad told me he liked the book because it’s hopeful. Jahren is hopeful, and is clear that the future is in all of our hands. She explains why individual actions to reduce our consumption — to get from more to less — are important, because they add up, especially if those who consume the most cut back. And she lays out a step by step plan for prioritizing, reviewing, taking steps, journaling, etc. so that readers can act on what they’ve learned.

The reasons I find it hard to wrap my head around this as a solution are:

1. if people can’t be persuaded that their personal actions can help end a pandemic, say by wearing masks, or getting vaccinated, why on earth should we expect that people will voluntarily choose to consume less? And,
2. see above. Finance-dominated capitalism is pervasive, overwhelms everything in its sight, and is the driving force behind the “more” in The Story of More.

Still, as The Sum of Us so beautifully explains (I still find hope in that book, months after reading it), there’s power in solidarity. Consuming less, like overcoming the most dehumanizing aspects of finance-dominated capitalism, requires working together. Jahren knows this too, and suggests starting a dialogue with others. I agree that talking about this is a place to start. And The Story of More may be a catalyst for those kinds of conversations that can lead to action. It’s definitely a good choice for book clubs, which is why my dad read it.

So what to do with all of this? I’m still processing, but here’s how I spent my day today. I have Wednesdays off at my new job. I chose work that only takes up 36 hours a week, where I can still get health insurance for my family but have a whole extra day for the things that DO bring me satisfaction. I caught up with an old friend on the phone. Got some COVID rapid tests so I can continue to test at the end of each workweek ahead of visiting with our older offspring and his rescue pup. Had a couple of Zoom meetings with new friends in an organization I’ve become involved with, NH Healthcare Workers for Climate Action. Attended a noonday prayer service with friends I’ve met from all over the country over the past two years who are my Companions in the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, where we caught up (I’ve missed seeing them for a couple of weeks because I was covering Wednesdays for a sick coworker), brought our gratitude and concerns to God, and laughed together. Took a walk with our younger offspring. Was amused by our two cats. Used up some leftovers to make a delicious dinner. Researched funds where I could invest my rollover of retirement funds from my previous job without supporting the prison industrial complex or fossil fuel extraction. And wrote.

Will any of this break the chains of capitalism or end climate change? No, not these small actions by themselves. But I spent my time on the relationships that do bring me satisfaction, and my small steps will add up with every other person’s small steps. So I guess Dad’s right, that’s hopeful.

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The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale

My son (former Teen the Elder, for longtime bookconscious readers) recommended I read The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale after he and his sister (former Teen the Younger) gently disabused me of the idea that police are basically good, and there are just “bad apples.” They recognized that I was conditioned to this idea by our culture and my schooling. They, having been freed from “schooled” thought by their unschooling, had no such illusions. I can’t take credit; other than choosing to unschool them, I had little to do with the amazing humans they became.

Forgive me for digressing. I’ve got to say that if you don’t have any twenty-somethings or teens in your life you should seek their counsel online or via friends. While I have long thought of myself as social-justice oriented, I have learned more in the past few weeks from discussing current events with my young adult offspring than I did on my own for a few decades. Case in point, I had no idea police are not, in their mission or intent, “good.” To be clear I’m not talking about individuals. I still hold that there are good people who unwittingly enter into a career in the police force believing they will bring about good in their communities. I (and Vitale) am talking about the institution of policing, which, as part of our overall elitist capitalist society, serves mainly to enforce the norms of power and wealth at the expense of the poor, people of color, and those with disabilities.

If you are not shocked, or just disagree, with the idea that capitalism is hurting more people than it is helping, then you will at least be shocked by Vitale’s illuminating discussion of how police at best do a disservice to and at worst, outright exploit, the disabled, especially those with mental illness. I was shocked and sickened by two cases described in the chapter on political policing by people who are mentally disabled who were coerced by police into “terrorism plots” that were just meant to ensnare Muslims, who are now serving lengthy prison terms. In our names, as Americans.

Reading The End of Policing in the week leading up to the Poor People’s Campaign “digital assembly” this weekend helped me connect the dots between the social justice issues that have concerned me and policing. Vitale notes that if we actually invested the billions spent on police budgets (including military gear like tanks and grenade launchers that are used in communities’ and even schools’ police presences around the country) in the communities that allegedly need the most policing, many of the criminal and disruptive behaviors the police claim ti be solving would be eliminated. He cites evidence that where housing, education, health care, or other basic needs are met, policing is much less necessary.

And if we’re all equal, whether you come to that belief via the founding documents of our country or the sacred scriptures of any of the major world religions, shouldn’t we all have access to safe, clean, secure, affordable housing? Clean water? Nutritious and affordable food? A living wage and paid time off to care for sick family members or just recharge? Health care? Quality education? The right to vote? The right to peaceably protest? No matter our race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, immigration status, or any other identity? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Vitale points out that “Our entire criminal justice system has become a gigantic revenge factory. Three-strike laws, sex-offender registries, the death penalty, and abolishing parole are about retribution, not safety.” That’s a lot to take in. But when you dive into these, it’s true. They don’t make us safer. They just make it harder for people to return to society, receive mental health care, and become healthy, functioning members of their communities. Vitale goes on to say “Real justice would look to restore people and communities, to rebuild trust and social cohesion, to offer people a way forward, to reduce the social forces that drive crime, and to treat both victims and perpetrators as full human beings.” Yes.

Another point Vitale makes better than I can paraphrase: “We don’t need empty police reforms; we need a robust democracy that gives people the capacity to demand of their government and themselves real, nonpunitive solutions to their problems. . . . Instead of asking the police to solve our problems we must organize for real justice. We need to produce a society designed to meet people’s human needs . . . .”

Vitale traces the history of policing, and then breaks down its failures, mostly in the U.S. but also in some international contexts, broadly and in particular areas such as homelessness, the drug war, sex work, the school-to-prison pipeline, the border, gangs, and political policing. I sped through the final chapters after tuning into the Poor People’s Campaign for a few hours yesterday, and it really all clicks. Bringing about a more just, equitable society will secure our future, and the future of our children and grandchildren. Anything less will mire us in the kind of fear, mistrust, misinformation, economic inequality and political paralysis that we currently enjoy.

I highly recommend you read this, and also that you read with care the Poor People’s Campaign’s moral budget. Maybe tune into the rebroadcast of their digital assembly. Think about what you grew up learning about policing and whether it jives with what you know of the world as an adult. And listen to the young people in your life. I have no doubt they will lead us, out the mess we made for them.

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A Natural Curiosity and The Gates of Ivory by Margaret Drabble

In my last post I wrote about The Radiant Way by Margaret Drabble, and over the last week I finished the trilogy, reading A Natural Curiosity and The Gates of Ivory. These books are the continuing story of Liz Headland, Alix Bowen, and Esther Breuer, friends since their late teens when they arrived at Cambridge, in their fifties by the end of The Gates of Ivory.

A Natural Curiosity also focuses on a few other characters who are introduced in The Radiant Way but don’t play a large part in the first book. For example, Shirley, Liz’s sister, and others who live in in Northam, where Alix has moved. Drabble also discusses one of her signature topics in this book — marriages, and how they work or don’t. We watch Shirley and her husband Clive as his business implodes and Esther, faced with a proposal after being single and mainly living alone her entire adult life. We see a middle aged lawyer in Northam whose wife starts a torrid affair, trying to carry on. And her girlhood friend, who is married to a famous archeologist, who are happily married even though they don’t seem to be at all suited. And Liz, seeming to grow closer to her ex-husband, Charles, who left her so dramatically in The Radiant Way but has come home from Washington and is in the process of a divorce.

There’s also a fair bit of politics in these books, which is one of the critiques of them that I’ve seen in reviews. Personally, I don’t mind. I also empathize with the characters, who find that their views shift a bit as they mature, but who are also disappointed, even disillusioned to see the world as it’s evolving. Unlike Liz and her friends I was never an apologist for communism, and as a young person I didn’t really have well thought out views. I parroted the views I’d heard as a child from adults, and it wasn’t until I had children that I began to think for myself about what I valued, and to try to understand what various political views meant practically in the world and whether any politicians or parties actually represented my views.

Drabble’s characters are surer from the start, and a few really live their views in accordance with their views — like Alix and her husband Brian, and Brian’s best friend Stephen Cox. In the second book, Alix is trying to help Paul, the serial killer, now jailed near her home in the north, who lived above Esther’s flat and killed one of Alix’s students in The Radiant Way. And almost the entire third book is about Stephen Cox trying to get to Khmer Rouge territory (which in the early 80s were officially out of power and not in charge in the cities, but still controlled parts of the Cambodian countryside).

Cox is a Booker winning novelist and we watched him grow closer to Liz in the second book. In fact it is at dinner with her that he says he’s going to go and see what happened, and why the communist ideal didn’t work in Kampuchea, and write a play about Pol Pot. Liz is a little alarmed, but doesn’t stop him. In the beginning of the third book she receives a package containing some finger bones and packet of fragmented writing — notes, sketches, journals. The novel bounces between scenes of Stephen making his way to Cambodia and meeting various people along the way (including the wonderful Thai business woman Mrs. Porntip), and Liz and others back in England.

She and Stephen’s other friends decide they have to determine what happened to him. Drabble introduces a character who narrates bits of The Gates of Ivory, at times addressing the reader directly, Hattie Osborne. She is Stephen’s agent and a former actress, and the night before he leaves they attend a friend’s 70th birthday dinner and a party and in the wee hours he suggests she stay in his apartment while he’s away. Hattie, it turns out, was also at the party at the very beginning of The Radiant Way, and is additionally an acquaintance of Polly Piper, Alix’s former boss.

It’s this social network — the myriad ways Drabble’s characters’ lives interweave — that made me think last night as I finished The Gates of Ivory that these books would make great television. I can see them adapted for a multi-season drama. These books together tell not only the story of three women and their friends and relations, but also of England, through the post-war years, the Thatcher years, the massive social, economic, and political changes. of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, and the art, theater, music, and media that Liz and Alix and Esther and their friends enjoy. In this way, Drabble’s books are like Jane Austen’s, social in more than one way — they examine the lives of particular families but also the life of a society, with all the layers that entails.

 

 

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