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anom1712's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
5.0
ktxx22's review
3.0
Parts of this are moving and profound. But overall this is like someone through a lot of the same research at a table and just typed it up how it fell. It’s scattered. And while it is all eventually tied up and concluded. You are made to weave your way through multiple various tales and histories. It’s incredibly scatter brained and I desperately wanted this to make the point it ultimately made WAY more succinctly. Meh.
kindledspiritsbooks's review
4.0
Halfway between memoir and essay, Who Gets Believed? poses fascinating questions about the nature of truth and belief and the seemingly small and irrational things that render someone ‘credible’. Nayeri draws on her experience of the asylum system, consultancy, childbirth and more to put the spotlight on the unspoken social codes that regulate who we as a society choose to trust. What I found particularly interesting about this book is that Nayeri is no less critical of herself than she is of the rest of the world, spending a significant amount of time interrogating why she struggles to give credence to her brother in law’s mental health struggles and the significant amount of guilt and shame she carries around the judgements she made on that topic. This thought-provoking book should prompt all of us to take a closer look at who we trust implicitly and who we still feel distrustful of, in spite of what’s right in front of our eyes.
violetandirises's review
4.75
Big content warnings for suicide, suicidal ideation, and graphic discussion of torture
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Torture
lizshayne's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
I have got to stop reading books that upset me on Shabbat, I'm beginning to suspect that it's assur.
This book is not so much intentionally upsetting, but inevitably upsetting because it talks about our failures to perceive truth, the need to perform truth in the way that best matches the other person's idea of what your truth ought to look like, the way we as a western society have turned the gotcha into an art form and what happens to people who are disbelieved.
It's a really hard book, for all that it's a very difficult book to stop reading. It's a book that leaves me simultaneously energized and depleted; I want to support those pushing for change and I want us to talk and think about what is invested in presenting the other as a con man trying to take what is ours rather than a fellow trying to convey their unknowable soul.
I feel like I'm spending a lot of time this Elul thinking about obligation and I wish I knew where it was going.
Also, shout out to Nayeri for the way she talks about autism and her own suspicions about her neurotype. It makes a lot of sense to me that it takes an autistic person to unpack the ways that natural behaviors...aren't and how our assumptions about the culture that taught us how to express emotions and convey stories can absolutely hinder us when the things we assume are "what humans do" turn out to be socially constructed.
This book is not so much intentionally upsetting, but inevitably upsetting because it talks about our failures to perceive truth, the need to perform truth in the way that best matches the other person's idea of what your truth ought to look like, the way we as a western society have turned the gotcha into an art form and what happens to people who are disbelieved.
It's a really hard book, for all that it's a very difficult book to stop reading. It's a book that leaves me simultaneously energized and depleted; I want to support those pushing for change and I want us to talk and think about what is invested in presenting the other as a con man trying to take what is ours rather than a fellow trying to convey their unknowable soul.
I feel like I'm spending a lot of time this Elul thinking about obligation and I wish I knew where it was going.
Also, shout out to Nayeri for the way she talks about autism and her own suspicions about her neurotype. It makes a lot of sense to me that it takes an autistic person to unpack the ways that natural behaviors...aren't and how our assumptions about the culture that taught us how to express emotions and convey stories can absolutely hinder us when the things we assume are "what humans do" turn out to be socially constructed.
comet_or_dove's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.75