Joy Reads Books

Tag: inclusivity

  • All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep: A Review and Reflections

    I recently encountered “All the White Friends I Could Not Keep” by Andre Henry (I listened to the audiobook version he narrated). It is an uncomfortable, painful and necessary read as Henry explores race, activism, and the philosophy and action of nonviolent political protest and the growth he experienced during this journey. But it is also the story of the many painful ways his white loved ones chose to react to his awakening. 

    Andre Henry grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia, “under the shadows of Confederate Mount Rushmore”. He was studying theology, on course to a career in evangelical faith leadership when Philando Castille was unjustly murdered by Minneapolis police officers. This triggered a deep emotional awakening for Henry, one that saw him shed his Evangelical faith and lose friends and loved ones who were unwilling to accept the anti-racist, proud Black man standing before them, demanding they see and hear him and every other Black person crying out.

    If we know something we are doing is harmful and aligns us with racist views then we have a moral obligation to act and to change our behaviour. Reading “All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep is one of those actions I think we, as white people, can take to understand and change the way we are interacting in the world so that it is anti-racist and intentional. This memoir-manifesto is a vulnerable look into the innermost feelings and reactions of Henry to his white friends’ actions. It is a rare opportunity to learn and understand directly what performative allyship means and the impacts it has on people. 

    Some of it is going to be a difficult read. It should be. It’s hard and painful to hear that the way you are showing up in a relationship is not working and it’s hurting someone you care about. Not only that, it’s because of your deeply held beliefs. That’s hard, uncomfortable and frightening. I felt shame, understanding, frustration and sadness as Henry described, with grace and a lot of love, his relationship with the Stone family and the eventual breakdown of it. I grew up in similar evangelical circles and there is nothing a white Evangelical, happy clappy Christian loves more than a token project to fuss over and hold up as evidence of their moral superiority (Look! I helped a Black person! I don’t see colour! I’m very capital-g Good). 

    There’s my bias and frustration.

    Andre Henry describes and dismantles the relationship between formal, White Christianity (and White Jesus), much better than I can. He has a very different take on how he has reconciled his personal faith and how I have chosen to step out and away from the tradition. I don’t think a god is necessary to your spirituality, faith, or morality. Frankly, I wouldn’t typically have read something by a faith leader but I am actually happy I did. I have little patience for formal, Western religion, in large part because of the white supremacy and gross amounts of damage done to this world and directly to people I love. That is my unconscious bias. 

    But. 

    Henry tries to figure it out instead of stepping out of it. That’s an increasingly difficult thing to navigate but I think he comes to articulate and understand faith in a more realistic and just way than he did when he was in theology school.

    Henry’s musical voice shines through and it was a special pleasure to listen to him narrate “All the White Friends I Could Not Keep”. To truly engage and hear what Henry is saying, readers will have to drop their inner defences and be open to absorb and reflect. It is like a welcoming sermon from an old friend.

    Recommended Reading Level

    Recommended to a general audience, though Andre Henry discusses violence face by BIPoC people, it is not gratuitous or descriptive. I don’t think an academic background is required, but I do think there are chapters that would work very well in a classroom of upper level high school to college level (of note, Chapter 5: We Do Not Debate with Racists and Chapter 10: How to Be Hopeful).

  • A Call to Honesty and Love: Review of Trans Memoir “Calling My Deadname Home”

    A Call to Honesty and Love: Review of Trans Memoir “Calling My Deadname Home”

    Literary review of a memoir of a transgender man’s journey to find love and acceptance.

    Cover of the memori, "A Call to Honesty and Love: Calling My DeadnameHome" by Avi Ben-Zeev

    Dr. Avi Ben-Zeev’s memoir, “Calling My Deadname Home”, is an extraordinary and heart wrenching journey through time to reconnect and let go of his former, female self, Talia. Growing up in a working-class family in Israel, Dr. Ben-Zeev only just finished high school, yet now holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology, an expert in stereotype threat and implicit bias, he is a writer and professor.

    This is a beautiful, heart wrenching gift of a book. There are books that enter our life and lodge themselves directly into our heart with their brevity, love, and honesty. This was one of them. 

    “Calling My Deadname Home” is told in three parts – early transition, later transition, and Talia’s story. There is a sense that Talia was in constant flight from the imprisonment of her self and her past and only when Avi reconciles this sense of imprisonment and the sacrifice that Talia is safely freed. 

    At no point will Avi or Talia sacrifice their authenticity, the driving force within themselves to act in what seems to be a just way. We see this in Talia’s determination to avoid her mandatory service in the IDF. 

    Their journey is one that shows us we are not just one aspect of our personality, one traumatic event, or one action we regret. We are all of these things and none of them at the same time as there’s always an opportunity for forgiveness and love. “Calling My Deadname Home” is as unflinchingly honest as its writer as he moves in the world. There are themes of self-loathing, particularly in regard to the sexual assaults of young Talia and the lasting traumas. 

    A beautiful, heart wrenching gift of a book.

    Avi writes with such honesty that Talia’s loss of self and pain is palpable on the page. 

    There is sex, some of it kinky, and I feel like straight vanilla folks will view the sex as “graphic” simply because the bodies doing it are not cisgender. There’s no need to clutch any pearls and they’re in fact written a lot better than most sex you encounter in current books and most importantly, it’s between consenting adults. 

    Definitely recommend to readers interested in gender studies, trans experience, and the non-Western experience. There are a lot of books in the world about cis white dude’s experience, “Calling My Deadname Home” is the brutally honest opposite of that and I’m better for having read it. We should all listen to more voice’s like Avi’s.

    “Calling My Deadname Home” will be published 14 November 2024 by Muswell Press. Thanks to the publisher for providing early review copies to NetGalley.

    View of British Columbia's Sunshine Coast. Long grasses line a pebble beach covered in driftwood. Tall evergreens and a mountain are in the background, the sky is an incredible cerulean blue with white wispy clouds.

    A view of the Sunshine Coast, where I was visiting when I read this spectacular memoir.

  • Characters Take Flight in MONARCH: Literary Review of New Short Story Collection

    Dusty road background and book cover of Emily Jon Tobias' short story collection, Monarch.

    In Emily Jon Tobias’ new collection of short stories, “MONARCH”, we are confronted by realistically flawed characters who are given the space to form, make mistakes, and heal. An award-winning writer and  Pushcart Prize nominee, Tobias was raised in the American midwest and now lives in Southern California.  The way she captures and releases hard fought words has a feel of that hardscrabble grit you used to associate with an essential Americanism. It’s all the more poignant that the characters in MONARCH are imperfectly real – addicts and sad girls, overwhelmed mothers and people whose tether to sanity has loosened. 

    Tobias plays with language and voice to raise her characters into existence.The title story stopped my breath and as I read, I had the distinct sense that Tobias was gleefully playing with her words, stretching out each sentence to its limit, a fullness like the protagonist’s intentional weight gain. My first inclination – trim these sentences, they seem too full created the sense I was as quick to jump to conclusions as the people who brazenly stare at Georgia and judge her size. Such is the subtle brilliance of Tobias’ writing – the excess was an intentional weight and slowing down that ties us to Georgia.

    We see this again in “Vida”, the sentences short and choppy with Wiley’s anger. Tobias’ characters are confused and confusing – which is what I feel most days. Which is to say, each is fully formed in their humanity as its splayed on the page for the brief glimpse we have as a reader. We are like passersby, sometimes witnessing these characters’ worst moments and the way Tobias intends to pull them through and heal some of the cracks. 

    The book includes a reading guide that is straightforward to use, and I think this book works well for readers looking to include more diverse character sets in their reading. It depicts largely heteronormative experience, while also giving space and life to queer characters. Upper level English class settings, as well as guided reading groups – there is intention in the way Tobias has cultivated this collection and guided readers to know the characters in their complete selves, regardless of identity or partner. The writing is accessible with beautiful prose, worth a read because of that alone. 

    Find MONARCH via Emily Jon Tobias’ website or visit your local bookseller.