"If I Stay" by Gayle Forman

WAAAHHH.  This was the closest I've come to putting a book down in a long time.  Not because it is bad, it's actually kind of brilliant, but I haven't been this emotionally wrecked since I read "Code Name Verity."  For once, it was fortunate that I only have time to read in short bursts.  While I felt compelled to drive through it, it was helpful to take emotional breaks.  Get a full kleenex box out as moments in this tale are gut-wrenching.  In short, Mia has a decision to make.  She is at death's door, has lost so much of a life that was pretty good, and she must make a decision -- to stay or go.  This much, I kind of knew before I read the book.  What I wasn't prepared for were the graphic details of the incident which lands her at this point, the really personal, engaging writing which hits you in the heart with gentle, simple prose and stories which have a universality.  They say that life flashes before your eyes in the moments before death.  In this case, Mia sees many of her life "moments" crystallized as non-judgemental lessons, wrestling with a kind of subtle spirituality throughout. Ms. Forman gets a lot of things right.  Nurses are the humanizing factor in the antiseptic settings of hospitals, love often happens when you aren't expecting it, and the most painful funerals are the ones where the reality of a person's life is denied by their family.  The biggest lesson of all, stated by Mia, is that living can be much harder than dying, but the pull of life is very strong.  It's a page turner which will have you guessing until the very last sentence.  A powerful, poignant story, and one I'm glad I stuck with.   

"Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do" by Claude M. Steele

Even though I cannot make it to the book club this was selected for, I very much wanted to read it.  The premise of the book (and accompanying research) is that the stereotypes for our particle group (or groups) hold us back from achieving our full potential.  The idea is intriguing.  After reading the book, I can say I was impressed by the studies which were done, but as a book, my take is very mixed.  Much of this review is "on one hand, on the other hand". 

On one hand, the cover is very misleading.  This book focuses heavily on African Americans, women, and, somewhat, on white males.  There are passing references made about Asians, the mentally ill, and, in one instance, the different social classes in France.  Indians, teens, gays and Latinos, listed on the cover, are all but ignored.  In that sense, this book was very disappointing.  I have read heavily on the issues surrounding African Americans in this country, in terms of disadvantages and achievement gaps, but was really hoping to see something on Hispanics, which is a large and growing group who seem to be ignored in professional literature.  On the other hand, the conclusions Dr. Steele draws are powerful, and do lead the reader to believe that we may be looking at this whole thing wrong.  He doesn't dismiss the societal inequities blacks face, but he only raises that issue, and that of prejudice, in the final chapters.  If anything, he seems to act as an apologist for the avoidance behavior of whites around blacks, repeatedly showing how the expectation of saying or doing something which might confirm a racist attitude as the reason for whites being reticent in mixed groups.

The book itself is written by a researcher.  On one hand, it was infinitely more readable than "Diversity Explosion" which was almost nothing but numbers.  Dr. Steele humanizes his exploration by introducing each researcher in terms of how he met them, their background, even their physical descriptions.  I simultaneously found this to be odd and endearing.  In some cases, it seemed to break the flow of the narrative, but, again, when placed next to "Diversity Explosion" it did make the material more readable, which was important.  This is dense stuff.  It took me a long time to read through the book, as I had to review several sections over and over.  Most of the 11 chapters are broken up into subsections, with each subsection describing a different experiment.  This is where the book was challenging at times.  Dr. Steele doesn't just like the Scientific Method, he LOVES it, and, to some degree, each chapter kind of goes "down the rabbit hole" rather than rise to a climax.  On the other hand, he's not wrong.  He correctly asks question after question, drilling down after each run on a theory.  "If this worked in this setting, what would happen if ...", "and does that mean ..." are the kind of questions which clearly haunt him at night, and make his methodology pretty compelling, since he clearly is not a "one and done" guy.

Being picky -- because I am.  I fancy myself a minor wordsmith, and dislike the term "Stereotype Threat" which is used throughout the book.  While Dr. Steele clearly covers the decision making in using the term, I feel it belies the points he tries to make.  He states that people "feel a threat" which impedes their performance, but insists the threat is "out in the air" while simultaneously stating it is an "internal threat" linked to cultural identity.  The problem is that "threat" is a very loaded word, (much like "privilege") and people will connect to it on an emotional level, which means it can blot out the reasoning mind of the reader he is trying to reach.  Threat implies someone making a threat, so, for all of his research stating otherwise, the subtle message is that there is someone to blame out there making the threat.  I also disliked the overuse of "that" instead of "which", but this is an issue across the board these days, in everything I read.  Lastly, the side-path into telling the stories of Anatole Broyard and Amin Maalouf seemed off-point, in that they were not research based.  I think Dr. Steele was trying to provide more context to the research, but the chapter was awkwardly shoved into the middle of the book, making it more of a detour than a support.  The stated facts are also somewhat questionable -- Dr. Steele quotes a New Yorker article saying that "Broyard was black, that both of his parents were black, and that all of his ancestors were black as far back as the eighteenth century."  Everything I could find says that Anatole Broyard was Creole, with all of the mixed cultures one finds in that definition.  Which brings us to the one-drop rule -- which is far off base from the focus of the rest of the book. 

The bottom line is whether you accept his premise (for those who want to cut to the "...and What We Can Do" part, go to pages 181, 207 and the final chapter, although without context of the research, you lose the details needed to fully appreciate it).  On one hand, the research he does is unquestionably strong, so yes, he makes excellent points.  On the other hand, his assertion, near the end of the book, that our society is becoming less integrated in terms of diversity, is in direct conflict with research and statements in "Diversity Explosion" and "the Next America" so it makes me question how he shaped data around the result he expects to see.  It is a worthwhile read IMHO -- you read and decide.