Here is the curse of motherhood: I am tired and dragging all day long, but at 2 A.M. I'm wide awake," says Sandra Tsing Loh. "Suddenly I'm pulling out my to-do list and I'm worrying about the world and I'm reading these books." Tsing Loh is the author of, most recently, Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting (Crown), a memoir about her emotional decision to send her daughter through the Los Angeles public school system, which has been all but deserted by Tsing Loh's friends in favor of private school. The authors she turns to for solace during waking hours don't just obsess; they present inspiring calls to action.
Looking for a Few Good Moms
by Donna Dees-Thomases (Rodale)
"This book is written in a very straightforward and funny style. Dees-Thomases was working in a high-pressure broadcast-news job, realized that it was too much, and decided to downgrade her workload significantly to stay home with her kids. This happens in basically one paragraph. I found that really refreshing. So many of the working-mother books spend all their time agonizing about the work-life balance—but I don't think that is the only thing facing us. Yes, the balance is a struggle, but I also think of it as a privilege. Anyway, after a few years at home (working one day a week), Dees-Thomases sees a news segment that absolutely terrifies her, about a shooting at a summer day camp in California. So she takes on nothing less than the National Rifle Association, and she rallies all these women, ultimately pulling off the historic Million Mom March. She puts everything on the line—she's flying everywhere; she is drafting speeches—and it's not to keep a Fortune 500 CEO job. She's actually losing money. But she's taking on such a powerful lobby, and she's winning! I just think that's so kick-ass. This book helped me go to a more heroic mode of thinking—thinking communally and volunteering and reaching out. It's an extraordinary example of what mothers are capable of."
Cool It
by Bjorn Lomborg (Vintage)
"For me, global warming had become a metaphor for everything wrong with the world. Every time the sun was shining, I would think, Oh, no, global warming! I began to feel it was everywhere. I have a science background, so I'm inclined to break things down and find out what we're actually talking about and then make a to-do list and take action. Cool It takes a really helpful, if sometimes unromantic, look at global warming. For example, we hear a lot about the polar bears that are drowning due to the melting ice caps. But Lomborg points out that more than three times as many polar bears are killed by hunters as by global warming every year—so if we're really upset about the bears, we should focus on hunting laws, too. Lomborg is not denying global warming: He acknowledges that it 'will have a serious impact on humans and the environment toward the end of this century,' but he is also asking that we put it in perspective. People should be clear about what their passions are and the actions they want to take."
If Women Counted
by Marilyn Waring (HarperCollins)
"This is not easy reading, but it can be parsed. Waring did this amazing analysis of the United Nations System of National Accounts, whose chief objective is to provide a standard for comparing economic activity among countries, and she found that it is based on how men operate, and not on how women do. For example, women's domestic work doesn't count (housewives and stay-at-home mothers are deemed 'inactive' and 'unoccupied'), but a male pimp selling drugs illegally in Italy is somehow a plus, because that country regularly includes some value for its hidden economy. Fruit off the tree is a zero. But a bag of corn chips is a plus (because it is 'economically consumptive'). According to Waring, women and nature are basically invisible in the economy. Waring heightens our awareness of how much our worldview is influenced by capitalism, as opposed to personal, community-minded thinking."
Ask a Mexican
by Gustavo Arellano (Scribner)
"This collection grew from a column Arellano wrote for The OC Weekly, an alternative weekly newspaper in Orange County, California. He takes any and all questions about Mexicans—and the ridiculous stereotypes of Mexicans—and answers them with irreverent honesty. Arellano reduces the constant conversation about diversity into something really specific. He's hilarious, but he's also raising amazing political points. As a writer and satirist myself, I like to see people walking that line."
The Trouble with Diversity
by Walter Benn Michaels (Henry Holt)
"Michaels's basic point is that our obsession with cultural identity distracts us from the more insidious problem of economic inequality. 'The fact (and it is a fact) that it doesn't help to be white to get into Harvard replaces the much more fundamental fact that it does help to be rich and that it's virtually essential not to be poor,' he writes. There is a lot of lip service paid to political correctness, as opposed to the real work we need to do: elevating children of all cultures and economic backgrounds."
Learning a New Land:
Immigrant Students in American Society
by Carola Suarez-Orozco, Marcela M. Suarez-Orozco, and Irina Todorova (Harvard University Press)
"Even with all the talk about immigration these days, we are rarely invited into the minds of the children of immigrants. This book offers the results of a five-year study that followed 400 children from China, Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico, all newly arrived in the United States. These kids' struggles are so poignant. The statistics are amazing, too: One of every five children in America is the child of an immigrant, and one in five immigrant children has only one native English-speaking friend. The other four have no English-speaking friends! The image of those four just starts all my oxytocin flowing. We're a first-world country, we're so lucky, and we have a lot to give. My own kids go to a poor public school in Los Angeles—my girls' friends are predominantly new immigrants and English learners, and aside from being a wonderful experience for them, dang it if it doesn't also make my heart feel good."
