Social justice book reviews
I wasn’t going to write a blog post today.
I am still grieving my loved one, but this month has given me more to grieve than I know how to handle. But I write this to remind myself, and all of you reading, that this is not the time to stop fighting.
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Read moreAll his life, Carl Sagan was troubled by grand dichotomies—between reason and irrationalism, between wonder and skepticism. The dichotomies clashed within him.
. . . In the final analysis, he was the dichotomy: the prophet and the hard-boiled skeptic, the boyish fantasist and the ultrarigorous analyst, the warm companion and the brusque colleague, the oracle whose smooth exterior concealed inner fissures, which, in the end, only one woman would heal.
Keay Davidson, Carl Sagan: A life, p. 1
On May 2nd, 2022, I had the honor of being a featured writer with an above-the-fold story on OnlySky Media. While I was proud to be featured, I could not have been less proud of the subject of my article: my alma mater, Grove City College. (The Roe v. Wade draft opinion leaked later that same day, so my fame was short-lived. But it did happen.)
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One of the most notable traits of the white evangelical church today is the rampant, toxic patriarchal sexism. It is one of the many reasons that so many people, including women, are leaving the church. Notably, many women who leave their toxic churches stay religious or spiritual, but I’m not talking about them today. I’m talking about women, men, and atheism.
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I believe that reading is a form of activism, that knowledge is power, and that an open mind makes for a better world. This applies to the topic of abortion just as it does for everything else. Thus, I’ve compiled a list of what I think are the best books to introduce you to what people actually mean when we say that abortion is a good thing and a necessary human right.
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Everyone knows that access to abortion is a critical human rights issue. The potential overturning of Roe v. Wade is more than unconstitutional, it’s inhumane. An unjust human rights violation. But the worst part? As many activists have said, it’s the floor, not the ceiling, of reproductive justice. That’s where Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger’s Reproductive Justice: An Introduction becomes crucial to understanding what that ceiling might look like.
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For years I have proudly identified as a pro-choice feminist. As Roe v. Wade is effectively being overturned state-by-state, I’ve begun to educate myself more on the history of abortion while I’ve become more outspoken in defense of women’s rights. Ironically, it has been this journey that has made me begin to question whether pro-choice is the right identity for me.
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I have made a horrible mistake.
I allowed Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh to sit on my bookshelf for three and a half years, unread. After finally reading this thrilling, enlightening, and entertaining book, I now know that all these years I was missing something great. And holographic.
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On September 21st, 2021 at 10:42 pm, I received a text from a friend.
“Do you want to see the new Tammy Faye movie sometime?”
I had no idea who or what that was, so I Googled it and immediately texted back, “Yes!”
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If you’re like me, your eyes are opened to more and more of the injustices in our world every day. And if you’re like me, you wish that there was something that you can do about them. I read a lot of books on social justice, but the books always warn, “Just reading isn’t actually doing anything. You’ll have to take what you’ve learned and put it into action.” It’s always scary. I have no idea how to do that.
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