Category Archives: Non-fiction

April 18, 2015 · 7:35 pm

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life: What Happens When a Nun Quits Religion

I’ve started going to *church. Don’t panic. I’m still an atheist: it’s a Unitarian church, so my minister is an atheist, too. If you thought all us athesists were just running around eating babies you might not have realized that I (certainly don’t want to speak for all athesists) do believe in things – I just don’t believe in God, an afterlife, divine-whatever. Instead I believe in community, in our collective and individual need to make meaning. Anyway, this year the congregation has been reading Karen Armstrong’s The Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life and many of the sermons have picked up on themes from the book. Wanting to be the best at church (and earn a gold star at the optional book group discussion) I overcame my instinctual resistance to non-fiction and to a book that appeared – at first – dangerously self-helpy (a post for another day on my objections to self-help books) and gave it a go.

The twelve steps can be neatly summarized (and are by Armstrong) in “do unto others as you would have done unto you.” What makes it an interesting read from a religious studies perspective is the lengths at which Armstrong goes to include a diversity of religious perspectives (though no Unitarians?) on the “Golden Rule”. Her attempt to illustrate the similiarities among not just religions, but a sort of common humanity that has, as part of its nature (she argues), compassion, empathy and care, leads her to close readings of a range of religious, political and literary texts. Each chapter offers a “step” on the path to a more compassionate life. Steps like “empathy,” “self compassion,” or “understanding the limits of our knowledge” and “learning more about others.” With each step she offers daily exercises for extending compassion (indeed she makes a repeated comparison between training for a race or a ballet, and training compassion – that is, she suggests compassion is both an inherent quality and one that needs to be cultivated) like meditating on an enemy and extending to that enemy care and empathy. Of all the steps I found the chapter on ’empathy’ most resonant, and probably because it urges reading literature as a possible means to grow empathetic understanding (a repeated argument I’ve made here on the purpose of reading).

So what did I think of the book? Would I recommend it? I think Armstrong’s belief that we can learn to be individually – and collectively – better at caring for one another is a powerful, if only partially persuasive one. I found the first chapter that provides an overview of how Confusianism, Buddihism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism have understood and practiced ‘compassion’ a potent reminder (and a flashback to first year religious studies) of the similarities among these faith groups, the consistency in their fundamental belief in communal care. I did find that many of the later chapters – five or six pages in length – slipped into something of pat directives to be kinder to other people, to not assume you know everything. I would say that as a non-believer the book was both accessible and non-preachy. I don’t know. Read it if you find yourself frequently overcome with frustration at work: when you can’t stand another meeting, or your boss has just finished explaining the difference between a word document and a pdf for five minutes. You might find then that some of the calls to compassion are helpful, even healing. You may also find lobbing the book at the wall an equally restorative exercise. You be the judge.

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December 28, 2014 · 7:48 pm

The Empathy Exams: On reading (essays)

My bff S. and I have a long standing joke that we have an “ET” connection. Having never seen the movie (I know, I know) I’m not entirely sure what the alien does to form the connection, but the way we understand it there are moments that we just ‘get’ one another, or ‘get’ what the other is going through.

The idea that we can ‘get’ one another, or the idea that there are – and should be – limits to what we imagine we can ‘get’ about one another, or the idea that we can only ever reach towards this kind of understanding, are ideas explored in Leslie Jamison’s excellent collection of essays, The Empathy Exams. [I admit I don’t read many essay collections – though with M.’s prodding and with this experience I suspect I’ll seek out more – and so my commentary will be a welcome counterpoint to the last post on historical fiction.]

One of the threads running through the collection is that of the writer-as-observor or witness, and the parallel role we all take in our connections and interactions with one another. That much as we might like to imagine that we can ‘get’ the other and those we love, we are – in the end – witnesses to and for one another. That we could be witness for one another is one of the ideas I found most engaging in the text. Until reading I had sort of thought of empathy as somehow selfish: let me share my pain or joy with you – selfish for both giver and receiver. But what the opening essay opens up is the notion that in asking questions, in witnessing and listening, we can reveal parts or feelings of the other to herself that she didn’t know she had or felt. The collection weaves this idea – and many others on the theme – through a range of places and people in ways that brought fresh perspective and nuance. Each felt focused on a particular story, but threaded to the wider theme and question. With the exception of the last essay, which I found a bit wearing, each gave, shared, asked and offered.

If my idea of reading has been this sort of sharing of experience, broadening of perspective, temporary adoption of identity and history that changes and shapes the reader, what Jamison’s collection did for me was to nuance my idea that reading is just about expanding and deepening my capacity for care and might equally be a call for conversation – with the author and others – about what and how the reading (re: the experience, the sharing) has changed or is changing.

There’s good evidence – if we believe Science – that reading literary fiction strengthens the readers ability to empathize. Even more so than popular fiction or non-fiction. And so while I might want to take this evidence as vindication of my reading habits, I do think reading this essay collection has affirmed that I need to read more non-fiction for the lens it brings and the questions it explicitly asks.

And so S., I’ve sent you a copy of The Empathy Exams as your late Christmas present. And as a tether across the world to know just how close we are.

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June 5, 2014 · 10:27 pm

Say Her Name: Lessons in (Im)permanence

I heard a story last night while at dinner with P. and E. about a young woman who died suddenly and seemingly without cause. While running this morning I listened to Radiolab’s podcast on “Things” that explored (among other things) how it is that we, human beings, are able to devote ourselves to objects – but more importantly, to other people – when we know, and are constantly reminded, of the impermanence of both.

The two stories helped me make more sense of (or maybe complicated?) Francisco Goldman’s Say Her Name, a memoir that follows Franscico – Frank – as he grieves the death of his wife, Aura, after she dies in a “freak” or “random” accident. While these two threads in the book – grief and the apparent senselessness of her death – weave together (his grief is magnified, he thinks, by the accidental nature of her death; the senselessness of death is magnified by its material influence on those who continue to live), their separation is important – I think – in allowing all readers (and certainly this reader) to put loss into, and out of, scale and perspective.

What do I mean? I mean that because the book thinks about death as both loss *and* impermanence, it lets the reader see the ways we must continuously convince ourselves of the permanence of those we love (and the ways we love them), even while we are confronted, also continuously (and often violently) with the awareness and experience of their (imminent or inevitable) loss.

The book looks at this experience in the grand displays of grief, the bureaucratic consequences of death (lawyers, estates), but also in the mundane and material experience of trying to live in the space formerly occupied by the loved, now dead. It explores the capacity of others to recognize – at the most basic scale of seeing and the more complex of empathy – grief; the urge of others to “fix” and “finish” grief for the grieved; the incapacity of others and society to make space and time for the continuation of loss and the fundamental change to the grieved.

But more than a book about how Frank grieves – much more, really – it is a book about and of Aura. Her life – her liveliness, humour, potential and warmth – “live” on the page (in one of my more cliche descriptions) as character: a superbly drawn, wrenchingly humanized and believable character. The book presents no photos of Aura directly – though it does offer a few traces (shadows) in a way that shows the extent to which the book is not interested in “fixing” Aura in place, not of making her – here in the book – permanent in a way she – and none of us – can ever be, but instead lets her fill the pages and the reader’s imagination with the full force of description, action, belief and dialogue. We know her through the fragments of her writing contained in the book, but what we really know is the Aura Frank experienced. We know her through him and through text and the rendering he offers is simply beautiful.

It is a book worth reading not only for its beautiful writing, its expression of love and its exploration of character, but for its explicit evocation of “relative” scales of grief. Frank knows his loss is not empirically greater, nor his reaction or feelings. What he describes is the absurdity of trying to make such comparisons. Instead the book gives a portrait – a briefly permanent representation – given to each reader, of love, loss, Aura and Franke. It gives to each reader a sort of assurance that here – in words and in the reading of them – we find for the duration of reading a groping towards sense and permanence.

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April 18, 2014 · 11:34 pm

Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking: Am I an Introvert?

My physiotherapist – an introvert – recommended this book to me. I see her twice a week (mostly) and I love her, so I took on reading non-fiction (gross) so that I could tell her about what I thought in one of our many sessions attempting to fix my [unfixable?] feet. This desire to talk-books is, most often, why I read books recommended: I want to read the thing that is important to the people I care about so that I can share it with them, talk to them about it, compare notes. (The exceptions, of course, are when N. or my mum recommend books. I trust their judgement implicitly. Though I’m stumbling my way through Gravity’s Rainbow right now in ways that make me think N. might be wrong for the first time ever. I suspend judgement.).

Right. Enough on books recommended (though  I do extend the offer again to tell me what I should read and why) and more on Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. I was telling my friend M. that I was reading Cain’s book and that on reading it I’d come to think that I might be an introvert. She laughed at me and told me that anyone who reads as much as I do has to be an introvert. Having finished the book I’m not more certain of “what” I am, though more sure of the circumstances that make me more and less likely to behave as if I am an introvert. Certainly more ideas about how I might approach the idea of introverts in my classrooms (more on that in a minute).

What I liked about Cain’s book is the way she allows that people cannot be reduced to a personality trait. That in particular situations we can behave and act in whatever way the context requires. We might just have a preference or an inclination one way or another. The idea of how introverts and extroverts gain energy – time alone and time with others, respectively – also resonated. Her message that our cultural preference for extroverts has reduced introverted behaviours to shameful or apologetic activities also appealed to me on an instinctual level “you’re right! I shouldn’t have to feel guilty for wanting to stay home and read in the tub on a Friday night!” Though I’m suspicious of the science – or at least her presentation of the science – which was as more anecdotal than it was peer reviewed.

But here’s the thing with such books – people read them (and boy are they reading this one) because it explains something people feel. There’s a difference among people – the people person, the shy one, the whatever – and that such an argument presents a comforting explanation for when things don’t go the way we wanted or anticipated “well of course she didn’t hire me, I’m an introvert.” These sort of pat assurances reduce our sense of ourselves to a predetermined or unimpeachable excuse. Cain does make useful distinctions among introvert, shy and sensitive that were refreshing and nuanced. She, too, takes care to argue that being an introvert provides great benefit. But I’m wary of the explanatory power of such books. That students – or others – will explain away their behaviour – of their lack of acting – because “I’m an introvert.” Like learning styles (no actual evidence for learning styles, btw) the idea of introvert-extrovert can be taken to an extreme where it forgets that there are circumstances wherein reflection is required – and everyone should learn how to do it – just as there are circumstances where being engaged with other people (ew) is required – and everyone should learn how to do it.

All this to say the book was helpful in making sense of some of my partner, S. (an clear Cain introvert)’s behaviours. Just as it was helpful in thinking about incorporating more taught-reflection and taught-introspection into my classes. I’m just wary of grand declarations of who we are that explain away behaviour that really does deserve – an introverted! – consideration.

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