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vaekay's review
dark
reflective
medium-paced
1.5
I found much of this text to be a worthwhile reflection on the asylum-seeking process. As someone born in the United States, I have lived a life that has not yet necessitated seeking asylum in a foreign country; and while I had heard much about the rigorous and traumatizing nature of this process (particularly in the United States and less so in Europe), I did not anticipate the sheer agony, the taught unprofessionalism, and such described by Nayeri. Unlike other reviewers, I did not think that Nayeri discussed the autism spectrum in a way that was offensive (coming from an autistic reviewer), but I understand that many thought that way. What I did find offensive was Nayeri's discussions surrounding her "brother-in-law's" mental health and his subsequent suicide . Some reviewers thought that it was hypocritical considering the issue of Nayeri's work, but I thought that that was intentional as a way of recognizing her own issues with disbelief. However, the way she chose to discuss his mental illness, his search for medicine and religion, his "lack of effort," and so on was truly repulsive. Implying that he was not trying enough and he was an entitled white man who only acted this way for attention and money from his parents (even going as so far as to say he was only trying to kill himself for attention, not because he actually wanted to kill himself, and that it must have been an accident) was just antithetical to the realities of mental illness, which her "brother-in-law" clearly suffered from. Nayeri never really resolves her disbelief although barely recognizing that she maybe could have done better by him but that that would have been inauthentic to her.
Additionally, Nayeri's sweeping assumptions of other people's empathy seemed stupid. Nayeri claims that no one's "empathy" means that they are able to feel another person's pain, but instead they are relieved that they were spared from the other's pain. What the fuck? What Nayeri is describing is literally NOT empathy. Not how empathy is defined, nor how empathy is practiced. Maybe it is "sympathy," but even then, that is a very cruel definition of sympathy. It was apparent to me by the time I finished this text that Nayeri is of low emotional intelligence and low empathy, and she just assumes everyone is the same because she is. What a shallow reflection of human nature for an author!
Additionally, Nayeri's sweeping assumptions of other people's empathy seemed stupid. Nayeri claims that no one's "empathy" means that they are able to feel another person's pain, but instead they are relieved that they were spared from the other's pain. What the fuck? What Nayeri is describing is literally NOT empathy. Not how empathy is defined, nor how empathy is practiced. Maybe it is "sympathy," but even then, that is a very cruel definition of sympathy. It was apparent to me by the time I finished this text that Nayeri is of low emotional intelligence and low empathy, and she just assumes everyone is the same because she is. What a shallow reflection of human nature for an author!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Trafficking, Xenophobia, Violence, Homophobia, Medical content, Misogyny, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Self harm, Sexual violence, Cancer, Grief, Hate crime, Addiction, Body horror, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, Gaslighting, Gore, Murder, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Ableism, Antisemitism, Blood, Bullying, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Excrement, Islamophobia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Drug use, Racism, Suicide, Vomit, War, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Sexism, Deportation, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, and Rape
Moderate: Colonisation, Drug abuse, Classism, Homophobia, Transphobia, and Alcohol
just_one_more_paige's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
2.0
This is another example of a recent book (just like Big Swiss), that I would not have really been aware of, nor planned to pick up, without it being offered as an ALC from Libro.fm. But conceptually, after reading the blurb, I was really intrigued. It is clear to anyone paying attention that certain groups or types of people get the benefit of the doubt (in almost any situation) and some absolutely do not (and even more extreme, are facing an uphill battle from that start). And so, other than the clear cultural and social biases that must make up at least part of that, what else is happening that causes that unevenness is who is taken seriously? So yea, this was very much a topic that intrigued me. I wanted to know what Nayeri's research found.
In this book, Nayeri explores the power of performance, persuasion, repetition and how those affect what people perceive as truth or lies, and whose stories/testimonies gets believed or dismissed. She uses personal examples, such as a family member with mental illnesses and deep religious belief (including more "extreme" examples, like speaking in tongues), time spent in high-powered business world consulting jobs, and childbirth. And she weaves those in with interviews with others who work in emergency rooms, justice systems and, at the heart of it all: asylum seekers and those tasked with defending them (lawyers) and deciding on the "truth" of their lives. Throughout, there is also quite a bit of research, examination of language and psychology, and philosophical thought exercises that work to pull all the disparate stories and examples and situations together into a more cohesive presentation.
Before I say anything about the book itself, or my thoughts on it, I need to make sure everyone is aware of how many content warnings this should have come with. I mean, this jumps in *hard* right off the bat with graphic descriptions of torture, and they are referred back to consistently throughout. Also, as one goes through, there are many other instances of graphic descriptions of mental illness and suicide, pregnancy/childbirth (and in general interactions with medical staff), other forms of violence against populations and bodies (like FGM), wrongful convictions and failures of the justice system, and just generally there is no sugar coating the traumas of dealing with being a refugee whether it be in adjusting to a new place or the myriad legal/procedural barriers and disbelief that they face. So yea, this is definitely a book that readers should be very careful about and sure they are prepared for the content before picking it up.
Alright, so now for my thoughts. Overall, this book felt like too much. It felt like an overwhelming stream of consciousness connections between theory and philosophy and real life examples and family stories just barely woven together in a followable way. And the thing is, I get that people are complex and contain multitudes and all these thoughts and personal experiences and interviews and explorations may be both a part of Nayeri's life and somehow have gotten woven together for her, but this just may have tried to get too many of those multitudes into one book. All throughout, I was waiting to see if everything would build to a bigger point, and, though the message is obvious, it just never came together as coherently as I would have liked. There’s also a lot of repetition, conceptually and at a sentence-level, and I think this could use some more stringent editing. And really, there were a number of times when I couldn't tell what was legitimate data/science and what was her personal logic path and reasoning, which ironically made it hard to know what to give the most credence to.
I will say, and I think that this is key, that the overall concept of this book, the idea that there are certain types of stories, ways of telling those stories, and categories of people that are more "believable" - for reasons that have nothing to do with the truth and everything to do with how a person performs/presents - is an undeniable truth that absolutely needs to be reckoned with, because otherwise justice will never be done. It was infuriating to read how "proper" storytelling, and a learned/taught performance of credibility (a combination of poise and language choice and external look that lends credence regardless of the actual knowledge/truth of the person), holds more weight than truth in whether a person is believed. Nayeri presents a number of examples to prove this, across industry and situation, and provides research and poses myriad thought experiments to back up those claims. Some of what she discusses was not a surprise to me (like the absolute lack of training, or follow through on using training, in understanding how trauma survivors and memory work - only used when the person with power individually decides to give "benefit of the doubt," but not universally/evenly applied), but some of it did add fascinating context and nuance to my understanding (like the power of repetition - how many times something is said or printed - in making it believable, even when there is nothing factual behind it/backing it up). I use the word fascinating because the exploration of human psychology and sociology really was, but again, it was also deeply enraging to be shown over and over how the truth is not enough if the systems/society are against you. I mean, what then, is the point of those systems? What will it take to change them to do what they are supposed to be doing (protecting the vulnerable, the one's currently least believed)??
A few final thoughts. Although this was a (much) more serious book, I think there was some real overlap, topically, with Cultish. The way language and the power of words/personality can lead to buy-in, as well as a look at how the differences among self-convincing done to nefarious/self-benefitting ends or as a more legitimate self-denial, or is it something that happens when the truth is too much (too terrible, too coincidental) to feel real or the repetition of terrible things becomes too much to handle and one has to self-distance - there was a lot of similarity there that, if you can handle the increased intensity here, you may be interested in if you liked Cultish. And I thought the cross-industry comparisons brought up some really interesting parallels, like how the “right" way to tell a story or present a need to get the result one wants works similarly in situations as vastly different as asylum cases and chronic pain/drug seeking (or other medical situations related to mental health) and religious belief. I appreciated the way that Nayeri was so willing to recognize and call out her own limitations in belief, where she got cynical, and these psychological traps that she has fallen into. I really did. And. I really struggled reading her outlook on her brother-in-law’s mental health, the way it seemed that (despite all her knowledge and research in this area), she appeared to lack any kind of empathy or even willingness to try to consider it a real illness/problem.
I am having so much trouble trying to communicate my thoughts on this reading experience. The evidence presented is sweeping, convincing, and drives home a deeply important societal reality about believability as/achieved by performance. And at the same time, it felt so choppy, so thrown together. So, for all that it is ambitious and salient and necessary, it also isn't executed to the level that I would have liked or that would have had the desired impact. Plus, there’s never even an attempt to suggest ways to address/fix the issues that are being argued. And that's really really too bad. (Has anyone else read this? What did you think? Am I wrong? Did you want it to hit harder too? Does this review make you want to, or do you plan to, read this anyways? I want to discuss!)
"It’s hard to be objective from inside this feeble human mind."
“To be believed is to know the signals.”
“But it’s risky to say something simply, concretely, to have it judged on its content and remembered as yours.”
“Before we decide how to listen to a story, we put people on a spectrum. Do they come to us with need or with potential? Should we listen with our guard up or our imagination on? Will aligning with this person benefit or drain us? How does the storyteller signal, even before that first interaction, that they are worthy of an unguarded, imaginative listen?”
“The code works; it’s just that only a few of us are trained in it.” (few = privileged and powerful and fighting to keep it that exclusive)
“Today's asylum officers are instructed to dig out inconsistencies. Trained to disbelieve, they demand a perfect performance...” (And isn’t that the opposite of what should be the point?)
“Most human conversation is inconsistent, and inexact. This is how the trap works. It takes discipline to repeat an answer again and again, the precise way you said it before. [For torture survivors], fear makes consistency even less likely.”
"Each culture has their own ideas of what a 'real' victim sounds like."
“Just as grief performance is shaped by culture, so is all storytelling. But it is also singular. Stories worth telling are created by our relationships with culture - they are strange, unrepeatable. That's what makes them worth telling.” (So how does this translate to situations of accuracy/believability?)
“It’s an age-old problem; every pain is only truly felt by one person. We are programmed to intuit our own suffering, to salve our own wounds.”
"Those who are systematically disbelieved always come out defenses first."
“Familiarity breeds empathy.” / “We want others’ pain to mirror our own; sensory recall removes our doubt.”
“Sometimes, in desperate moments, we are exactly the thing we’re pretending to be.”
“Fairy tale speech acts work if the powerful want them to work.”
“It can take decades to unwrite a story that was crafted in hours.” and the related “…once something enters the record, it's impossible to pry it out, and once there is any kind of narrative, the system from hunting near and far for truth, to proving or disproving that narrative, however silly it might be.”
“How do you know if you have a bad heart, when you’ve only had the one?”
“We’ve relaxed into our shortcuts, and we’re primed to be fooled.”
“We all look to verify what we think we know.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Blood, Genocide, Deportation, Gaslighting, Classism, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Islamophobia, Kidnapping, Medical content, Grief, Hate crime, Murder, Religious bigotry, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Pregnancy, Police brutality, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Violence, War, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, and Gun violence
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