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A review by leavingsealevel
My Own Country: A Doctor's Story by Abraham Verghese
3.0
This was an interesting read. Verghese recently wrote a successful novel, [b:Cutting for Stone|3591262|Cutting for Stone|Abraham Verghese|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255630895s/3591262.jpg|3633533], which means that this book, which was actually published in 1994, got some renewed attention as well. My Own Country is Verghese's story of his work as a straight small-town doctor during the AIDS epidemic. As such, it's also a story about solidarity with the Queer community in a place and a time when that was not a given...more with the solidarity/ally stuff, I know. You ever feel like a theme follows you around?
I thought the stance Verghese chose to take is inspiring and heartening, though I noticed a couple other Goodreads reviews that point out that he does spend a decent amount of the book talking about how it was hard for him to take that stance...not just how it was hard internally for him to examine and get past his prejudices, but also how he got shit from people for it. Totally valid things for allies to talk about...if I were to sit down and write a thing about anti-racism or international solidarity ally stuff, definitely things I would think about, and the former is a useful thing to examine publically. The latter though...I think by writing too much about how hard it is to be an ally or how much we risk as allies, we run into a dangerous chance of obscuring the point. In solidarity work, the struggles that privileged (in whatever way) solidarity activists/allies face are real, but they are SO not the point. I didn't feel like this ruined My Own Country by any means, but it was a little excessive.
I barely even really *remember* the 1980s, so reading this was educational. I should loan it to an actual grown-up, and see what they think...
I thought the stance Verghese chose to take is inspiring and heartening, though I noticed a couple other Goodreads reviews that point out that he does spend a decent amount of the book talking about how it was hard for him to take that stance...not just how it was hard internally for him to examine and get past his prejudices, but also how he got shit from people for it. Totally valid things for allies to talk about...if I were to sit down and write a thing about anti-racism or international solidarity ally stuff, definitely things I would think about, and the former is a useful thing to examine publically. The latter though...I think by writing too much about how hard it is to be an ally or how much we risk as allies, we run into a dangerous chance of obscuring the point. In solidarity work, the struggles that privileged (in whatever way) solidarity activists/allies face are real, but they are SO not the point. I didn't feel like this ruined My Own Country by any means, but it was a little excessive.
I barely even really *remember* the 1980s, so reading this was educational. I should loan it to an actual grown-up, and see what they think...