There is a lot of anger among the leftists in the wake of the re-election of Donald Trump. Many of them are so afflicted with TDS that their anger often seems to bleed into blind rage. So what to do? Well, The Atlantic magazine has not the cure but what they claim is the prescription. Namely they suggest reading from a recommended book list. The problem is that their book suggestions seem to be like pouring high octane fuel on the TDS fire.
Ruth Madievsky made her book suggestions on Wednesday in “What to Read If You’re Angry About the Election.” The subtitle is “These seven books aren’t a cure for rage and despair. Think of them instead as a prescription.” As you will see her book suggestions seem more like rubbing salt in a wound rather than a prescription.
…For those who are despondent about Donald Trump’s victory and feel unable to make a difference, reading might be a place to start. This doesn’t necessitate cracking open textbooks or dense political tracts: All kinds of books can provide solace, and the past few decades have given us no shortage of clear-eyed works of fiction, memoir, history, and poetry about how to survive and organize in—and ultimately improve—a broken world.
Okay, let us take a look at Ruth’s suggested book list for angry TDS liberal voters and see if we can find the elusive “solace.”
Which Side Are You On, by Ryan Lee Wong
…It’s 2016, and spurred by the real-life police shooting of Akai Gurley, 21-year-old Reed is considering dropping out of Columbia University to dedicate himself to the Black Lives Matter movement. Reed wants nothing more than to usher in a revolution, but unfortunately, he’s a lot better at spouting leftist talking points than at connecting with other people. Like many children, Reed believes that his family is problematic and out of touch. His parents, one a co-leader in the 1980s of South Central’s Black-Korean Coalition, the other a union organizer, push back on his self-righteous idealism.
Yup! Just typical everyday problems that we all share… but only if we live inside a far left bubble.
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, by Rebecca Solnit
Solnit’s short manifesto about the revolutionary power of hope is a rallying cry against defeatism. She begins by critiquing the progressive tendency to harp on the bleakness of societal conditions, insisting that despair keeps oppressive systems afloat.
As soon as you see the word “manifesto” to describe a book you just know it is not even close to a prescription for election anger. Oh, and “revolutionary power” in the description only adds more fuel to the fire.
Women Talking, by Miriam Toews
The inspired-by-true-events premise of Toews’s seventh novel is literally the stuff of nightmares. In a remote Mennonite colony, women who have suffered mysterious attacks in the night learn that they’ve been drugged and raped by several men from their community. One woman is pregnant with her rapist’s child; another’s 3-year-old has a sexually transmitted infection.
And this is supposed to be a prescription for voter anger and depression? In what universe?
Good Talk, by Mira Jacob
Jacob, who was raised in the United States by parents who emigrated from India, gorgeously illustrates her formative experiences, touching on respectability politics, colorism within the Indian community, her bisexuality, and her place in America. She refuses to caricaturize the book’s less savory characters—for example, a rich white woman who hires Jacob to ghostwrite her family’s biography and ends up questioning her integrity and oversharing the grisly details of her 2-year-old’s death from cancer.
Four books in and all are shoving the potential readers down a deep well of utter despair and depression.
The Twenty-Ninth Year, by Hala Alyan
…A shallow read of the collection might be: I burned my life down so you don’t have to. But I return to the last line of the book: “Marry or burn; either way, you’re transfiguring.” There is always something to set aflame; more optimistically, there is always something left to salvage. The Twenty-Ninth Year is, in the end, a monument to endurance.
Struggling to see the optimism here.
Riot Baby, by Tochi Onyebuchi
Kev, a Black man born during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, California, spends much of his 20s in prison after a botched armed robbery. His sister, Ella, has more supernatural problems: She sees the past and the future and, when fury takes over, can raze cities to the ground—yet she could not protect her brother from the violence of incarceration.
At this point you might find it hard to remind yourselves that these books are supposed to be a “prescription” for voter anger.
Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993, by Sarah Schulman
…Part memoir and part oral history, Let the Record Show is a master class on the utility of anger and a historical corrective to chronicles that depict straight white men as the main heroes of the AIDS crisis.
Do we hear the collective scratching of heads wondering how reading a “master class on the utility of anger” is supposed to be a prescription for voter anger?
Perhaps Ruth Madievsky might want to reconsider her recommendations to treat voter anger. A good start would be the science fiction book “Venus on the Half-Shell” by Kilgore Trout. Here is a synopsis: “When a massive flood wipes out Earth and spoils his date, lone survivor Simon Wagstaff finds refuge in an abandoned Chinese spaceship, the Hwang Ho. Accompanied by three new companions—a dog, an owl, and a beautiful robot—and his electric banjo, Wagstaff sets off on an extraterrestrial adventure. He travels from planet to planet, seeking the definitive answer to the ultimate question: Why are we created if only to suffer and die?”
It makes about as much sense as Ruth’s recommendations but at least it will take readers minds away from the election… and their anger as well.
This post was originally published on here
