Janine Peterson Wonnacott

The Baby Lottery

admin — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 14:47:00 +0000

Kathryn Trueblood takes on the weighty issues of motherhood in the age of abortion in her first novel, The Baby Lottery. (Trueblood is also the author of a book of short stories, The Sperm Donor’s Daughter.) Her characters are a circle of friends who have stayed together from college into their thirties. One is preparing for an abortion and coping with an overbearing husband. One is a nurse working with abortion providers. Two have young children of their own. One, a single mother, is struggling to raise a drug-free teenager despite her and her friends’ history of (and in some cases, current) drug use. And one has lost thousands of dollars and a husband in a fruitless quest to conceive; she hopes to adopt her friend’s child before the imminent abortion.

The characters are fascinating, the situations realistic, and the supporting characters are all appropriately self-motivated and interesting. The problem? The method of storytelling.

Each chapter is written in third-person limited, with the lead character’s name as a subtitle. This scattershot of perspectives can be effective, but the author spends most of her narration talking about what each character thinks, how she feels and what she does - usually something solitary, like laundry, attempting to write a novel or washing up for a medical procedure. Easily half of the novel, and probably more, has a single character alone with her thoughts and tasks that feel like they exist simply to provide a venue for this introspection. The women think about their futures, their thoughts on abortion and motherhood, the role of feminism and their friends. The book feels full of quotes that a woman’s study program would love and indeed are beautiful and insightful, but the author tells her story through eavesdropping on thought. Nothing happens, but plenty is thought about: even a potentially dramatic trip to an abortion hospital is presented to the reader as a passing memory.

This author has a great mind for language and for stories, and I hope that she is able to combine them in her next novel to write a story that rises above this good but not great novel.

Written by: Janine Peterson Wonnacott, September 2nd 2007

She's Such a Geek: Women Write about Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff

admin — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:40:00 +0000

Edited by Annalee Newitz, Charlie Anders

Seal Press

A collection of essays by women geeks? What can self-professed geeks share with the rest of women about what it means to be female? A heck of a lot, whether you measure it in decimal or binary.

She's Such a Geek is a wonderful affirmation of what it means to be a geek and to be a woman (sometimes even feminine!) without falling into the trap of sounding bitter or obnoxiously over-assertive. I loved it. From essays like Kory Well’s “Really Good for a Girl” to Violet Blue’s “The Hacker’s Guide to What’s in Her Own Panties,” these essays explore the beginnings of geek culture with hard drives that had less memory capacity that floppy disks to the growing field of teledildonics – with musings on how cool it would be to have a vibrator that plugs into your USB port for cybersex.

These women think about logic and intuition and how male/female stereotypes apply to the worlds of geekiness. But geeks, of course, aren’t defined by computers. “To me, a geek is someone who is passionate about something,” Jessica Dickenson Goodman says. These geeks are obsessed with computers, chemistry, astronomy, history and (I would add) life. There are worse ways to live than being passionate about learning. Let these women introduce you to obsession, or validate your insecurities about your own passions.

Written by: Janine Peterson Wonnacott, March 9th 2007

Life Skills: Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 20:00:00 +0000

By Marian K. Volkman

Loving Healing Press

Life Skills serves as a great introduction to the nebulous field of metapsychology, a variation on the newly popular field of positive psychology. The book attempts to use the tools of psychoanalysis to provide a guide for emotional self-improvement. And it succeeds. With chapters focusing on broad quality of life issues, treatment of traumatic stress (not the diagnosable Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which really should be treated by a professional, but the everyday trauma we all have faced), understanding emotion, improving relationships and enhancing life awareness, this book provides a broad approach to life-improvement without feeling like anything is missing.

Every psychological term is well defined for a lay audience. The layout, with bullets, boxed quotes, and effective use of bolding, is interesting and engaging. Frequent exercises are also engaging; this reviewer couldn’t help but work several as I attempted to read the book cover-to-cover. This book is worth your time and is worth taking time to really explore the exercises.

Written by: Janine Peterson Wonnacott, March 7th 2007

Global Sense: Awakening Your Personal Power for Democracy and World Peace (An Update of “Common Sense”)

admin — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:02:00 +0000

By Judah Freed

Media Visions Press

Judah Freed has opinions about government that seem inline with progressive thought. The government is corrupt. People in government are too removed from the people – both through the need for security and from a reliance on special interest money over common people’s votes – to be appropriately representative. Representative democracy is flawed from its inception, checks and balances are a pipe dream, and direct democracy is the only hope for liberty.

If this had been all he wrote in Global Sense: Awakening Your Personal Power for Democracy and World Peace, then he might have had a decent book, but he tries to link his thoughts to popular Western political philosophy, primarily Thomas Paine. His one-sentence summaries of the philosophies of these great thinkers are oversimplified, at best, and erroneous, at worst. What’s more, his effort to hold himself as the logical extension of Western political thought merely reveals that his theories to be contradictory, a little shallow and, more importantly, extremely different from those of the men he uses to convince us of his legitimacy.

For example, Freed encourages democracy. Though he uses the word to mean different things, in his critiques of representative democracy (citizens vote for representatives who, in turn, vote for laws) over direct democracy (citizens vote directly for laws). His critiques of representative democracy contain many excerpts of “Common Sense,” which I infer as an argument based on a plea to the authority of Thomas Paine. But Paine does not even use the word “democracy” in “Common Sense,” and based on my own readings of Paine’s writing, I am doubtful he differed that dramatically from the other “founding fathers” in near-universal skepticism of Greek-style democracy and the risks of the tyranny of the majority.

He includes the story of his own self-doubt and awakening to self-actualization in his political theorizing. I don’t doubt his sincerity, and I think his ideas warrant consideration, but cloaking his whole message in the authority of Paine diminishes his impact. Yes, citizens today face challenges to civil liberties from unjust laws, as we did before the Revolution. But Freed’s fury at the abuses of government is the only thing he has in common with Paine. He’d be more believable if he had the confidence to let his ideas stand alone, and if his subtitle actually alluded to “Common Sense” rather than “The Crisis.”

Written by: Janine Peterson Wonnacott, February 10th 2007

Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation

admin — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 18:43:00 +0000

By Steven Levenkron

WW Norton

Cutting isn’t just about cutting. It’s about burning, fainting, fingernail scratches, hospital visits, and apparent suicide attempts. It’s about what the author calls self-mutilation (though many sufferers prefer the term "self-injury" as "mutilation" implies that the goal is the scar, which isn’t always the case). These girls (and they are mostly girls) act out their anger or sadness on their own skin, inflicting pain but not attempting suicide. The author has worked with girls and boys who hurt themselves for years as a therapist, and he has written this book for both therapists and loved ones. He understands why some people choose to hurt themselves, something that is often a repulsive mystery to others. Self-mutilation, he says, is a "barrier" that keeps us from seeing someone in honest psychological pain. Self-mutilators, who are predominantly, but not exclusively, adolescent girls, have no way to express their anger or pain, whether because of socially imposed norms or because they simple haven’t learned the words. Anger is turned inward and expressed on the self. The girls feel alone, with no one to trust. Often physically or verbally abused, the girls have severe attachment disorders. The book is never too technical for the lay reader, though therapists can learn from it as well. Full of dialogue from his own practice, Levenkron really gets into the minds of these girls and boys. While he discusses treatment, however, he also argues for the recognition of self-mutilation as a psychological disorder in its own right, not merely as a symptom of disorders like borderline personality disorder or depression with anxiety. Though self-mutilation can stem from these, he argues, it can manifest itself without. Just as he argued for anorexia nervosa to be recognized as a disorder, so he argues for self-mutilation. This is an excellent book on a little-understood phenomenon.

Written by: Janine Peterson Wonnacott, November 22nd 2006