A review by goosegrimm
Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich

informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

I love Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickeled and Dimed was a very important book for me and Brightsided was just as impactful. Ehrenreich starts small with her personal experience dealing with toxic positivity in the Breast Cancer community then shows how positivity has escalated in scale and impact in American culture. Toxic Positivity is now a growing buzzword online, but Ehrenreich was dissecting the movement in 2009, right after the housing market crash. Her perspective is even more telling now, especially with the normalization of freelance work and "grind culture" dominating online spaces. If you want to better understand the historical nature of "positivity mindsets" and how it came to dominate American culture, Brightsided is well worth the read. 
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