Part II: The Canon According to Me, Nonfiction

Part II: The Canon According to Me, Nonfiction

(For clarity, I will subdivide.)

Life

Male or female, you must read Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. It explains women as a class, women as a movement, and exactly why feminism as a movement failed.

If you're a young woman between 17 and 35, read The Go-Girl Guide. It's a funny, quick read, and a great reference on how to manage your money, how to decorate on the cheap, how to find a good doctor, how to get ahead at work, and how to manage relationships.

It's a social science book, ostensibly, but more than that, it's a guide to intuition. Read Blink, then read Malcolm Gladwell's other book, The Tipping Point. And related to intuition...

The Gift of Fear. Some of us are afraid, but in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. This book helps us discern where fear is warranted, and how not to be anxious.

History

Want to understand the current situation in Southwestern Africa? You must read King Leopold's Ghost. Then go read one of my favorite fiction books, The Poisonwood Bible.

The Devil in the White City is a fantastic book about the Pinkertons (precursor to the FBI), the 1919 World's Fair, and the first truly "American" serial killer.

Want to know why the Scots hate the English? Want to understand why the name Campbell still makes my gran spit? Read The Highland Clearances.

Health/Sexuality

What's Happening to My Body: Book for Girls. Ironically, this is also a banned book for most libraries. It gives a frank, objective, informational and non-scary look at what the transition from girl to woman is like. My mom got it for me when I was about 7, and it has been an invaluable guide. I referenced it so many times that our original paperback copy fell apart. There's another version for boys.

Related to that, I highly recommend Our Bodies, Ourselves to anyone who wants to understand how the female body works and more about female sexuality. It's very informative, and the personal stories are a great addition.

I find it odd that many online book catalogues consider weight loss manuals "women's health guides." The best books I can recommend regarding women and food are When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies and Fat is a Feminist Issue.

Religion

Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church. The big difference between faith and religion.

The Myth of Certainty. An invaluable reference for those who question religion and struggle with the concept of blind faith.

Sociology/Criminology

Being my field of study, I can't just recommend a few books. Likewise, criminology was my focus for years and continues to fascinate me. So I'll do my best to cover just what I think is particularly noteworthy.

Death's Acre is a great book, but not for the squeamish. It looks into the forensic investigations at the legendary "Body Farm" near the University of Tennessee. If you want to know how the doctors on CSI know so much about what happens as you decompose, this is the book for you.

Another book not for the squeamish: Whoever Fights Monsters. Robert Ressler is one of the premier profilers at the FBI. His tone is a little self-congratulatory, but it's a fascinating book in terms of what psychology can do to help policing.

War Against the Weak. I heavily relied on this book throughout my thesis. It looks at eugenics (sterilization policies) in America, and compares them a bit to Nazi-era Germany. An interesting, if often missed, portion of American history and sociology.

Interracial Intimacies was written by a Harvard Law professor. It covers master-slave "relationships," mammies, antimesigination laws, marriage, and adoption. A heavy book, but a quick, fascinating read.

Race and the Education of Desire. A brilliant book that covers colonial studies, Foucault, and a slew of race-related questions. I used it for several papers and part of my thesis, so it has to be said that it's a multi-layered text with all kinds of possibilities.

Willfull Virgin. Some of the essays drive me nuts, and for different reasons. I disagree with about half, including her theory that one cannot be in a heterosexual relationship and also a feminist. Other essays maddened me because they clairified ideas that I had been spinning my wheels on for years in such a simple way that I thought, "Ah! Of course!" The great thing about this book is that it's incredibly easy to read.

Stigma. Symbolic interaction is my theory, and Goffman is my boy. This is a great jumping-off place to understand social deviance of any kind, including substance use, eating disorders, abberant sexuality, or anything that's labeled, really.

Labeling Women Deviant: Gender, Stigma, and Social Control. Women are particularly subject to social control and are more frequently labeled than men. If you don't believe that, this book will change your mind. If you do believe it already, this book will help you figure out why it is so.

Nickeled and Dimed is a great book if you're having a conversation about "the American Dream." I fully believe that the American Dream is a myth used to placate low-income individuals. If they believe they can "make it" through hard work and determination, it causes them not to question the gross inequality between the haves and the have-nots.

I've got tons of other recommendations, but right now, these will have to do. Look for a full Sociology Canon at a later point.

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Oh, my...check out my site after it's been Gizoogled. I'm still laughing.

Literary Canon: Fiction

The Canon According to Jenny

(That would be me. And since this is a "Canon according to me," don't bitch about what I didn't put in here, or what I panned. Make your own list.)

Ann Pachett. The Patron Saint of Liars and Bel Canto are two of my favorite books. The prose is gorgeous, the characters are fully fleshed, and, what's more, there isn't a moment where I've stopped and thought, "Okaaaay. Move on." I think her strongest point as a writer is that she writes about people who have done/are doing morally questionable things, and does it in a way that makes you see where they're coming from.

Harper Lee. I didn't read To Kill a Mockingbird until I was out of graduate school, but I'm glad I waited to read it. It's one of those books that I never want to end--I can read it over and over again and still get the same happy "(sigh) Yes" feeling. It reaffirmed my faith in humanity. And speaking of...

Pearl Cleage. What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day and I Wish I Had A Red Dress fall under the Oprah Book Club heading, which I am generally tired of. But the prose is masterful, and the tone is luscious and perfect. Both books surround sisters Ava and Joyce Johnson, who I always think of when I consider who I would be friends with from literature. There's some very poetic social activism here in Joyce's belief that people basically want to do the right thing for themselves and their kin, it's just that sometimes they don't know how.

Aldous Huxley. Not a fan of Brave New World? Look at Huxley's After Many A Summer Dies the Swan. I generally dislike science fiction--I find real life to be strange enough for endless fictional permutations. But Huxley is so satirical in his science fiction that it doesn't even seem like sci-fi to me.

F. Scott Fitzgerald. As I've mentioned before, I hate him. Hate. Read him if you must, but definitely read Zelda Fitzgerald's Save Me the Waltz. F. Scott's Tender is the Night is a plagiarism of Zelda's first draft of Save Me the Waltz. Likewise...

Ernest Hemingway. Meh. I didn't like his books before I found out that he was a mysogynistic drunk. There's just something about them that bores me. His complete inability to write women is usually what throws me off his books, though I have to say that I love his short story Hills Like White Elephants and recommend it to anyone who's attempting to write using a large conflict. The fact that he never addresses the big issue directly makes it even bigger, which is masterful.

Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind Likewise, I recommend was her only published fiction work until 1995. I think it's awful that her estate didn't burn her letters as per her request in her will, so I'm going to go with GWTW as the only legitimate Mitchell work. I recommend it to anyone who is trying to figure out how to write an unlikable character without going overboard.  Likewise, I recommend Nuala O'Faolain's My Dream of You.

Douglas Adams. Read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the pop culture, then read everything else he ever wrote. Go back and read everything again, but this time for the satirical social commentary. Read it again for the lighthearted humor, and then again for the strangely uplifting "none of it matters anyway, so why not have a good time while you're here?" philosophy.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Love in the Time of Cholera is another one of those "(sigh) Yes" books. Read it both before and after you understand that love isn't easy, but sometimes loving someone difficult is worth it. I think to really understand Marquez you must read at least a few Surrealist Spanish short stories, plays, and some poetry. Miguel de Unamuno is a great starting place, and his play San Manuel Bueno, Martir (Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr) is an excellent work overall.  There's an anthology of Spanish poetry called Roots and Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975. While I haven't read it, I've read most of the poems in it. Also consider Fedorico Garcia Lorca's plays, especilally Blood Wedding. After you've read a few short stories, read Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. And related to that...

Pablo Neruda. Oh my God. How could you not love Neruda. His poetry is sexy, evocative, and rolls like water. Some of it is quite funny. What's amazing to me is that his poetry is so linguistically beautiful in either Spanish or English, though he wrote the poems in Spanish. It's either a great deal of credit to his translator or to his ability to craft words in any language.

Jeffery Eugenides. I haven't read The Virgin Suicides, so I can't speak to the merits of it, but Middlesex is one of the best books that I've read in a long time. The characters are absolutely amazingly drawn, and the book rollicks along in an amazing fashion.

Michael Chabon. I don't know how I lived so long without knowing his name. Wonder Boys is so bittersweet, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay haunts me every time I hear mention of a comic book. Multi-faceted characters are his strong suit, which explains why he appeals to me.

Amy Tan. I know, I know. But it's so hard for me to reference other books without talking about the conflicts in The Joy Luck Club or the pace of The Kitchen God's Wife or to think about family or folklore without referencing The Bonesetter's Daughter. For all of those who complain about the drama in her books--it is drama that is handled well, with a completely dispassionate tone that makes horrifying violence and human misery all the more horrifying.


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Note: I began this project at 1:30 pm. I'm finishing sometime around 3:30. I could go on and on, but I feel it's best to stop here and rest for a bit. Tomorrow, I may reconsider and update the list with things I've forgotten.

Pharmacists and Emergency Contraception

From Savage Love:
STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: There were two disturbing developments in the battle over straight rights last week. First, we know that Target fills its ads with dancing, multi-culti hipsters giving off a tolerant, urbanist vibe, and runs hipster-heavy ad campaigns positioning Target as a slightly more expensive, more progressive alternative to Wal-Mart. Well, as John Aravosis revealed on americablog.org last week, Target's politics are as red as their bulls-eye logo. The chain allows its pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control and emergency contraception to female customers if the pharmacist objects on religious grounds. What's worse, the company claims that any of its employees have a right to discriminate against any of its customers provided the discrimination is motivated by an employee's religious beliefs. Read all about it at americablog.org and plannedparenthood.org.

Second, more troubling news from Tucson, Arizona, where a 20-year-old rape victim called dozens of pharmacies in town before she found one that stocked emergency contraception (EC). "When she finally did find a pharmacy with it, she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections," reported the Arizona Daily Star. Emergency contraception, the story continued, "prevents pregnancy by stopping ovulation, fertilization, or implantation of a fertilized egg. The sooner the emergency contraception is taken after intercourse, the more effective it is."

Don't just sit there, heteros. Defend your rights! Don't shop at Target, and write 'em and tell them why you're going elsewhere. (Go to target.com and click on "contact us," then "Target Corporation.") As for Fry's Pharmacy in Tucson, the shop that wouldn't dispense EC to a freakin' rape victim, the fundamentalist pharmacist claims it's her "right" to not do her fucking job. Well, you have a right to free speech. Call Fry's at 520-323-2695 and ask them why the fuck a pharmacy that won't dispense EC keeps the drug in stock. Do they do it just to torment rape victims? ("Oh yeah, we've got EC—but you can't have any. Don't you know that Jesus wants you to bear your rapist's child?") Rise up, straight people, and demand your rights!

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Begin rant:

I never thought I would become more conservative with age. In fact, I swore that I wouldn't. But as I get older, I realize that life is fraught with difficult conundrums. Just like the abortion debate isn't that easy, neither is EC and the pharmacist problem. So here we go:

1.) The Bill of Rights protects freedom of religion. This would be freedom to practice as one sees fit, which would include refusing to participate in actions that one's religious sensibilities deem inappropriate. (See Conscientious Objection and the Quakers.) It seems that the pharmacists who refuse to dispense EC are doing so based on religious/moral convictions.

If we stand up and say that it's okay for someone to protest prayer at a graduation ceremony because it offends their beliefs, we need to stand up and say that it's okay for someone to refuse to dispense a prescription based on their beliefs.

(As a side note, I would also say that it's okay for a pharmacist to refuse to dispense Viagra to a male patient without the express permission of his partner and evidence of couples counseling. Also, using this logic would allow for an ascetic to deny a person his or her pain medications, because life is pain and one should learn to deal with it.)

2.) Pharmacists are hired to do a job. (Un)fortunately, their job holds them to a high legal standard, including the fact that they must verify and sign off on all prescriptions.  If there's not a pharmacist there to do it, the prescriptions don't get filled. Likewise, if the pharmacist on duty refuses to fill a prescription, there's no way it's getting done on that pharmacist's shift. This makes things incredibly difficult for patients, especially patients receiving time-sensitive medication like EC.

So I propose a solution. If you have a pharmacist on staff who you know will not fill a certain type of prescription, you must have someone available at any time who can fill that prescription for them. Alternately, medication laws should be revised to permit any trained personell (pharmacy technicians, registered and practical nurses) to dispense emergency contraception or any other medication a pharmacist refuses to fill, while making the pharmacist legally liable for any harm that comes from his/her refusal to fill the prescription.

End rant.