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shaun_dh 's review for:
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
by Arlie Russell Hochschild
I decided to read this book post-presidential election, hoping to gain understanding of why Tea Partiers and far-right Republicans would vote for the fascist Donald J. Trump.
The book is very well-written and the thorough research Hochschild conducts is admirable. Though liberal herself, she is very unbiased during her discussions and mostly serves to relay the subjects' stories.
That being said, the first half of this book did little to garner within me the empathy I was hoping to and really just pissed me off. It reinforced all of the assumptions I have made about people who vote Republican.
Finally, during the third and fourth parts of the text did I finally start seeing the other side. I was still frustrated, however, because so much of the opinions people have are steeped in fiction. Hochschild does a great job fact-checking the opinions she encounters and giving the correct information in the endnotes for readers. I am left wondering if she ever relayed these facts to her "Tea Party friends," as she calls them. Perhaps that was never the point; her goal was to listen, not educate.
All in all, my greatest takeaway from this book was taking a good, hard look in the mirror. Name calling and waiting-for-your-turn-to-talk listening will never bridge the wide divide that is currently happening in our country. I want to listen, really listen, to people who feel forgotten, because, I think, we all feel that way. The "American Dream" doesn't look the way it used to, and it's not even the same for everyone, but that's okay. At the end of the day, we all just want to love and be loved; so we aren't really all that different. We just need to be willing to listen.
The book is very well-written and the thorough research Hochschild conducts is admirable. Though liberal herself, she is very unbiased during her discussions and mostly serves to relay the subjects' stories.
That being said, the first half of this book did little to garner within me the empathy I was hoping to and really just pissed me off. It reinforced all of the assumptions I have made about people who vote Republican.
Finally, during the third and fourth parts of the text did I finally start seeing the other side. I was still frustrated, however, because so much of the opinions people have are steeped in fiction. Hochschild does a great job fact-checking the opinions she encounters and giving the correct information in the endnotes for readers. I am left wondering if she ever relayed these facts to her "Tea Party friends," as she calls them. Perhaps that was never the point; her goal was to listen, not educate.
All in all, my greatest takeaway from this book was taking a good, hard look in the mirror. Name calling and waiting-for-your-turn-to-talk listening will never bridge the wide divide that is currently happening in our country. I want to listen, really listen, to people who feel forgotten, because, I think, we all feel that way. The "American Dream" doesn't look the way it used to, and it's not even the same for everyone, but that's okay. At the end of the day, we all just want to love and be loved; so we aren't really all that different. We just need to be willing to listen.