Career Books

Besides the YA novels, I've also been reading career books non-stop. I was interviewing for (and got!) a job with a lot more responsibility, including managing people. Here's a sample of what I've read:

One Minute Manager
I cannot describe the stupidity of how this book is set up. I was embarrassed to read it. Good tips, yes, but I don't need to be told this crap in the form of a "fable."

Influencer: The Power to Change Anything
I'm not sure how useful this will actually be. I picked it up because I wanted to a) influence possible employers to hire me and b) be a better fundraiser. It doesn't really help me with either, but as someone who works in public health (as a fundraiser) the discussion about we change people's behavior is still interesting.

The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch)
Obviously the title is terrible. I know I can be a boss without being a bitch, but I still want to know how to be a good boss. The vocabulary is demeaning ("chick-in charge"? Fuck you), but it does have useful information. It just constantly reminds you that you're female, as if you'd forget.

Do What You Are
Have you ever taken the Briggs-Myers personality test? I vaguely remember doing so in Junior English and scoring the same as the weirdo who sat next to me--I'm still convinced that he cheated off me. Anyway, I am an ISFJ. Although in high school we took the test to get an idea of what we would do when we grew up (my possible career path: shoe salesperson. Why shoes?), now I just wanted to be clearer on how to work with different personalities and how to express what my personality needs at a job. My current job is very influenced by certain personalities and I was recently criticized for not having that kind of a personality (trying to protect the innocent with my garbled desciption), and I have to say that having this book made me feel better about it. Not like I can't learn to do or act in a certain way, but I can confidently say now that I focus on work duties, not my coworkers personal lives, and that's fine. I know that with my new job, I can start out with this kind of confidence.

The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox by Jennifer Lee Carrell

The last course I took as a graduate student was on 18th century women's literature and was first introduced to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who is one of those historical women who makes you feel like you are definitely doing something wrong in your modern life. At a time when elite women's education meant dancing lessons and maybe some French, Lady Mary was an esteemed poet, travel writer, and champion of the smallpox innoculation. Even after her own experience with smallpox, which severely scarred the famous beauty, she continued to have a varied and controversial public career.

So, in short, the reason I picked up this book was Lady Mary. However, I was not aware that it would focus so exclusively on her. I was looking for something a bit more inclusive, although Carrell also focuses on Zabdiel Boylston, another innoculation champion from across the pond in Boston. Lady Mary and Boylston meet eventually, of course, and become friends. And that right there, is the problem with the book. I thought I was picking up a history book, but this is a weird marriage between history and historical novel. It's too dramatized for me to take entirely seriously as history (although most conversations are backed up by letters, contemporary journalism, and other documents), but it's not dramatized enough to be compelling as novel. Add in the precious references to Alexander Pope, Ben Franklin, and an infant Samuel Adams and you have a serious mess on your hands. An interesting mess, perhaps, but not one I can recommend.

Also, it should be noted that if you are afflicted with a delicate stomach, this is not the book for you. Smallpox is a horrific disease and Carrell's descriptions are detailed. I was fine reading at home, but nearly passed out during a particularly gruesome passage while I was reading on the subway.

The Female Thing by Laura Kipnis

I didn't read Kipnis' earlier book, Against Love, but I know her as a polemicist. So I was not surprised that she doesn't really hold back too many punches in The Female Thing. That is not to say that these literary punches aren't warranted or even, frankly, unusual--a third wave feminist critiquing Andrea Dworkin and Naomi Wolf? No!

However, Kipnis can be a bit flip about some of her subjects, like say, sex with minors. (Sorry, I thought it was part of the social contract that adult women should refrain from fucking 12 year old boys. I managed to do so my whole life and plan on going to the grave without indulging. And there is a very clear difference between a professor having an affair her/his 18+ student and an adult fucking a pre-teen.) And she leads us down some interesting paths, but then blocks the path with a joke, rather than insight. The book is, in her words, "an account of the female psyche at the twenty-first century mark..." (vii) and, true to form, is sometimes meandering, interesting, exhausting, and judgmental. It is The Feminine Mystique for femininity that is no longer only tied to family and home. But the thing is, although Kipnis does focus on the female psyche, there are hints at this being a much bigger "thing," that men are experiencing, say, dissatisfaction, and that it's not just about gender roles:

"Living in a society so cavalier about the basic needs of the majority does create a certain amount of emotional fallout. If only the polity of complaining women and fleeing men were issuing more ultimatums about the deteriorating conditions of collective social life, instead of confining them to the insufficiencies of the opposite sex." (33)

Word.

But is Kipnis' "female thing" or "thing about being female" my thing? Weeelll...kinda. Obviously every pysche is different (like snowflakes), but there are overarching cultural similarities. I definitely feel like I am missing "something" from my life (a state to which Kipnis assigns women), but I also fear being trapped--by a job, a family, a home (a state to which Kipnis assigns men). I am constantly upset by my partner's "dirtiness" and inattention to housewifery (mine and his), but my standards are much lower than my mother's and I am pretty happy in my dirty home. Am I sexually disatisfied? Can be. Whose fault is it? Mine, for not speaking up. And I am very nervous about vulnerability, but Kipnis does not mention the non-political pleasure of being vulnerable--being with someone you trust not to judge your for your vague jealousies, filthiness, and unassertiveness.

The Meaning of Wife (part 2)

Because The Meaning of Wife deals with the mainstream cultural constructions of "wife," it is very much focused on white, middle- to upper-class, educated, straight wives. And that's a shame. Because, as the author points out, real wives (and their partners) are creating their own ways of being married that may be independent of these cultural scripts and I would think that looking at wives who have historically or currently fighting for their right to be a wife would be really interesting. What does it mean to be an African-American wife, for instance, in a culture that rarely represents African-American marriage? And when you're contending with stereotypes like "the mammy," "the bossy black bitch," and "deadbeat black father"? These wives--their factual and cultural realities--do not appear in this book. Nor do lesbian wives, whose right to marry is challenged because marriage is seen to exist only between a "husband" and a "wife." And what about pressure to marry (or to want to marry) in the gay community?

All of this is perhaps outside of Kingston's thesis (although I would argue that her chapter on single women was extraneous as well), but I am getting a little tired of folks writing about "culture" in a way that keeps us thinking only about those with the privilege to be the "default."

Oh also, I might be amending my "no-nup" agreement soon based on some of these horror stories.

The Meaning of Wife by Anne Kingston

I decided in college that I would not marry, ever. I mentioned to my mother and she just said "Well, you're allowed to change your mind." (Note: most people do change their minds about marriage. Usually, when they're in one.) Years later, I told my recently-divorced boss that I did not ever want to get married and had not wanted to do so for a long time--"And you had the wisdom to make this decision at 19?" she jokingly asked. She married her first husband at 19.

My decision to not get married is the product of many things, not least of which is that I don't want to be a wife. My mother is a wonderful mother and wife, and generally happy with both roles. But I saw the way that my father relied on her in ways that she could not rely on him. She took care of the home, of my brother and me, fed everyone regularly, walked the dog, and participated in the financial support of the family. My father worked and mowed the lawn. This isn't to indict my parents for anything, it is just to say that I figured out pretty early on that I did not want my relationships to look like theirs. I would not want my partner's job/time/energy to be considered more important than mine and, if I had children, I wanted him to be more involved with them than my father was or was able to be.

It's semantics, but I see the crux of the problem to be the definition of "wife." Ellen, who does want to get married someday, says that she sees the same problems, but wants to reform "wife" to mean a full and equal partner, not a mere helpmate. I see the term as beyond reform, that we have to create new paradigms of relationships (heterosexual and homosexual) to achieve true equality.

That said, I am in a relationship now that is not a marriage and both of us agree that we do not want it to become a marriage. And yet...I am his wife. When I moved in to his place, I felt time and again (and still do, although to a lesser extent) that I needed to make him happy at the expense of my own happiness. My partner does not encourage my passive abegnation, but we all know that it's a good deal to have a wife, and he is as happy as anyone to not have to take out the garbage or clean the kitty litter.

So what does that mean for this book? Well, it means that it forces you to reflect on your own decisions and "wife"-related status. Which can kind of suck, you know?

The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton, the First Domestic Goddess by Kathryn Hughes

Oh, I love a biography about a forgotten famous woman! The great thing about this biography is that it doesn't stop at Mrs. Beeton's life and career (which was short--Isabella died at 28), but that it expands to look at how her book, Beeton's Book of Household Management, lived on well after her death. Isabella Beeton (nee Mayson) didn't really have a particularly interesting life (at least not yet, I'm only on pg 148), but Hughes manages to make the rather ordinariness of her life compelling. After all, who hasn't been annoyed with a loved one? Whose loved one doesn't hate your family? These are not fascinating events, but that they befall a purveyor of domestic bliss is, at least, touching.
And I am totally over-identifying with Mrs. Beeton's coping mechanisms--if only I make a list and "get organized" everything will fall into place (memo: this doesn't work). This is also why I love self-help and behavior guides (somewhat ironically); they break living down to a science, boring and predictable and incredibly soothing...