Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged oppression

Tolerant Oppression: Why Promoting Tolerance Undermines Our Quest for Equality and What We Should Do Instead

On the surface, tolerance seems like an innocuous concept. We’ve heard it before in relation to diversity, acceptance, and other key words that denote something positive. However, a deeper look into the idea reveals a mess of conflicting messages and confusion. For those who have never considered the concept of tolerance from this perspective before, Dr. Scott Hampton provides a handbook of sorts that critically assesses tolerance.

Written on the Body of The Erasable Woman

When did you start writing poetry? At a very young age—probably when I started writing with chalk on my bathroom door or adding my own two cents to my parents’ biology textbooks they tell me I always furiously flipped through. I experienced a lot of racism, (hetero)sexism, and different kinds of regulation at a young age too, and I think what that did was make me really quiet and closed up in a lot of ways.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

In Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn lay out a powerful argument about the importance of development work paying heed to gender. Since both Kristoff and WuDunn are well-known and respected journalists, this book will undoubtedly be widely read and influence policy and practice. Skillfully composed of narratives of women’s plight and resistance in Africa and Asia, the authors incorporate scientific and policy research to support their argument.

I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody

Sinan Antoon’s novel I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody brilliantly portrays the complex impacts of political repression on humanity. It takes the form of a fictionalized compilation of interpreted handwritten prose of an Iraqi college student as he is held and tortured in a prison during the reign of the Ba’th regime in the 1980s.

The Last Empress

An ancient sage once foretold, “China would be destroyed by a woman.” Historians described Empress Tzu Hsi of the Qing Dynasty as an evil leader hell-bent on the usurpation of power. This much-documented image later served to affirm the age-old prophecy. The Last Empress by Anchee Min is the sequel to the acclaimed _Empress Orchid _(2004). Set towards the end of Imperial China, Min continues the heartbreaking tale of the country’s downfall at the hands of merciless foreigners.

Legacy

Legacy is a captivating book both sour and sweet. The placement of women puts an ugly taste in readers’ mouths, forcing a need to step back and savor just how decent we live. Sweetness comes in the form of poisonous flowers and a well needed rebellion. The opening line “My mother died before I was born,” followed by an overwhelming “She was fifteen when I was born, the first in a long line of unwelcome daughters,” already expresses the strict starved environment Shannon lives within. In the town village of Legacy this is the case with all child bearing women.
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