Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close, Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
If you couldn’t tell, I am catching up on some non-fiction reads these days. Because I already do so much non-fiction reading at work, I have been focusing on fiction for pleasure. But I have non-fiction books piling up, so I decided to knock out a couple. Big Friendship intrigued me because I, as most 30 somethings, have been realizing that the older you get, the harder it can be to make friends, as we are all wrapped up in our lives and every day busyness. Sow and Friedman talk about this and guide readers through their friendship and its every aspect, also taking readers through the fight they had that could have ended their friendship but didn’t. Spoiler: the key to maintaining friendships and making sure they survive fights is basically just to communicate. Sow and Friedman, for example, went to counseling together to save their friendship, and while that is certainly not necessary for every friendship, it was refreshing to see friendship given the importance and status that it should have, but hardly ever gets, in real life, especially compared to romantic and familial relationships.
The Body is Not an Apology, Sonya Renee Taylor
Sonya Renee Taylor’s book is all about the term “radical self-love” and why it will be the thing that helps humanity to course correct. While I 100% agree with this notion, as capitalism and the diet industry thrive when we hate ourselves and our bodies, Taylor’s book is rather unspecific and only gives a vague idea of how she thinks each individual should proceed. It is not enough to tell people “radically love yourselves more!”; people need depth and nuance to tackle something as large and daunting as ignoring the patriarchal society we have all grown up in and still live in. One aspect of her book that I did enjoy, however, was when she gave questions to uncover your internal biases for some of the most prominent “phobias”: and “isms”: fatphobia, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, sexism, racism, and ableism, such as “Do I believe it’s okay to be bigger, just not too big? Do I believe ‘healthier’ bodies are better bodies? Am i afraid of becoming fat?”, “Do I assume disabled people hate their bodies?”, and “Do I assume people’s gender without asking them, using he or she pronouns based on only my assessment? When I meet married people, do I assume their partner is of the opposite gender?” These questions, along with the rest she provides, give the opportunity for necessary and urgent self-reflection that we oftentimes avoid.