gwcoffey's reviews
520 reviews

What She Said by Deanna Templeton

5.0

I saw Deanna Templeton’s arresting photographs of young women at the Kinship: Photography and Connection exhibit at SFMOMA a few weeks ago, and took a note to seek out her book. (I found it for sale online from Setanta Books.)

I devoured this book today from beginning to end. Powerful, intimate, redemptive, and beautifully illustrated. It brought me to tears. I admire Templeton’s unashamed vulnerability in revealing this to the public. Her teenage diary entries are lightly edited, if at all, and they reveal so much— pain, self-hatred, hope, fear, small joys, acts of kindness…

I left the house crying. 1 part of me felt like saying “Fuck You!!” I don’t Need any you!!" Another part felt like fuck’n everyone, I wish I was dead. The 3rd one felt like I got stuff to live for, I can’t give up. And the 4th is alone, left confused, mad and sad with no answer but to go to sleep and see what the next day brings.

Sometimes I grow weary of big stories, big stakes, big events. The events of What She Said are small, and they remind us that even small lives are deeply lived. What She Said is in the tradition of Marie Bashkirtsef and Mary MacLane. I was struck by this remarkable passage from Templeton’s diary entry from November 30, 1986:

Well here I lay listening to Pink Floyd, with M.AS.H. on the tele, with a splitting headache, eyes hurting, my whole self is tiring me out.

And could not help thinking of this from Mary MacLane's I Await the Devil's Coming:

I am weary of self—always self. But it must be so. My life is filled with self.

To this intimate diary style I love so much, Templeton adds her beautiful natural photographs of girls. The effect is mesmerizing. I don’t know these girls, and they cover the spectrum. But placed next to Templeton’s diary entries, they take on “lives like loaded guns.”

Finally I’ll add that the physical book is beautifully produced, including gorgeous photographic reproductions of handwritten diary pages. I’m so glad I found it.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Drug use, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts

Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser

4.0

I decided to read this because it is the basis of one of my favorite films, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. And because the cover is gorgeous. But it is also a very timely read. Maria Antoinette is in some sense the ultimate symbol of eat-the-rich, and understandably so. At the same time, but perhaps less understood, she’s an emblem of our still-pervasive cultural hatred of women. This is the Marie Antoinette explored by Coppola in her film. I could try to explain it in my cumbersome way, but I don’t have to because Roger Ebert captured it perfectly in his review:

Every criticism I have read of this film would alter its fragile magic and reduce its romantic and tragic poignancy to the level of an instructional film. This is Sofia Coppola’s third film centering on the loneliness of being female and surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how to value and understand you.

I can see why Coppola was inspired by this book. It shows a side of Antoinette that is entirely missing from popular conception. And it all feels so current:

As Marie Antoinette wrote with truth to Yolande de Polignac, she did not fear poison: “That does not belong to this century, it’s calumny which they use, a much surer means of killing your unhappy friend.”

None of this is to say that the revolutionary spirit of 1790s France was bad, although it was indisputably flawed. I empathize with the ethical complexity of such a transformation, and of the centuries of suffering that had, in some way, to be expunged. It was not an easy transition. Perhaps Marie Antoinette the symbol had to give up her head, even if Marie Antoinette the woman didn’t particulary deserve it. This well-written, well-researched book makes it possible to take both positions and feel justified.

Poor little girl, you are not what was desired, but you are no less dear to me on that account. A son would have been the property of the state. You shall be mine.

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

5.0

I first read this book as a child. I’d guess I was twelve. But I hadn’t thought about it in years, until I watched the recent film adaptation. It was so delightful I decided to read the book again.

It’s a funny thing, reading a book in middle age that you last read when you were a child. In my vague memory, Margaret was so grown up. She was dealing with “girl” things I didn’t know much about, which felt very mysterious. And she and her friends seemed wise and confident. I’m sure my image of Margaret and her friends was influenced by my own “big” sisters, who were (and to some degree still are) mythical to me.

Reading the book on the far-far side of childhood — my own children are now adults — these girls seem so small. Of course Margaret is still wise and at moments she and her friends are confident. But they’re children, with childhood fears. And so unsurprisingly the book feels entirely different to me this time around. I always find this kind of thing interesting. Like a bracketing of my life.

Anyway, the book is beautiful. It is full of real emotion, written in a frank intimate style. And Margaret is such a wonderful character. I love love love stories with small stakes. John Green once wrote:

Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.

“The foundational assumption of our species.” I like that a lot. He was talking about how people often ask him if his stories are based on something “true”. But I feel this same way about small stories. They matter. The fact that a story about a wise little girl getting her period can matter so much gives me hope because it means every one of us is living a life worth telling.

Are you still there God? It’s me, Margaret. I know you’re there God. I know you wouldn’t have missed this for anything! Thank you God. Thanks an awful lot…

Thanks an awful lot to you too, Margaret.

Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen

4.0

Several years ago I read 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. I found it fascinating and eye-opening. But it also made me curious to read about these topics from the perspective of indigenous authors. All that to say: don’t be confused like I was. Indigenous Continent is not written by an indigenous author. It wasn’t until I was halfway through the book that I looked up the author out of curiosity. And then I discovered he is a white Finish man. This is an embarrassing admission. I feel somewhat excused in this mistake because it was shelved under “Indigenous Voices” at the book store in San Francisco where I first found it. Trust but verify I guess.

I don’t say this to disparage the book at all. It was very good. In the introduction, the author talks about language:

I call Native men and women involved in war “soldiers,” not “warriors.” The settlements of more sedentary Native nations are “towns,” whereas the more mobile nomadic settlements are “villages.” Rather than “chiefs,” I use either Indigenous terms for leaders or simply “officials” or “officers” because they were Indigenous administrators.

This linguistic approach has a really powerful effect on the way the stories are told, placing the wars between colonial powers and indigenous powers in congruent terms and helping to eliminate the white-supremacist baggage I carry in my own head. Of course this is more than a linguistic trick. Hämäläinen writes about indigenous sovereign nations with respect, and works hard to erase eurocentric framing and assumptions. The overall effect is powerful. Over and over I heard historical accounts I’m sure I’ve heard before (although not in so much detail) but with a totally different feel in the telling.

There’s another thing here that was eye-opening as a european-american, steeped in american hagiography and slowly coming to terms with the rot at the core of my culture. There’s a grade-school interpretation of american history that tells a story of a people at peace. Europe was the continent of unending wars, and Americans separated themselves from that, creating a continent at peace where people can live in freedom. And yet, as Indigenous Continent makes so clear, this country was in a constant state of war. From before its founding until the early 20th century, the United States was actively at war with its sovereign neighbors. This war was often fought by civilians, and involved atrocities and genocides, often carried out by bands of individuals. (And of course also carried out by official government policy.)

How does the American psyche square this with its own self-image? I can’t help but think developing a deep subconscious sense of white supremacy is essential to this. It also probably has bearing on gun culture, and a dozen other cultural illnesses that infect us to this day.

Of course I’m not describing anything new here. But the steady drumbeat of violence described in Indigenous Continent, put into terminology that is not so tainted by white supremacy, made all this very bare.

There’s so much more to this book. It’s fundamental premise is that indigenous peoples bested European powers for centuries and this is erased by modern telling. And it brings a tremendous amount of detail to this topic.

I’m still on the lookout for an academic history of the continent from an indigenous author, but meanwhile I’m glad I read this one.

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

4.0

I’ve been fascinated by Cleopatra since I first read Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra a decade ago. The play is remarkable, but of course it is built around a mythical Cleopatra who only vaguely resembles the real person. This is the second Cleopatra biography I’ve read, and for my money a much better one. Schiff does such a good job illuminating the source material and putting what has been said about Cleopatra into historical and cultural context. The result is perhaps a less certain story than other books offer, but one that feels grounded in rationality and research.

I admire the Cleopatra this book reveals. She is inventive and bold, if not successful. I’ll let it speak for itself:

Two thousand years of bad press and overheated prose, of film and opera, cannot conceal the fact that Cleopatra was a remarkably capable queen, canny and opportunistic in the extreme, a strategist of the first rank. Her career began with one brazen act of defiance and ended with another. “What woman, what ancient succession of men, was so great?” demands the anonymous author of a fragmentary Latin poem, which positions her as the principal player of the age. Boldly and bodily, she inserted herself into world politics, with wide-reaching consequences.

This book also left me fascinated by Cleopatra’s young half-sister Arsinoë. I’d love to read more about her, but material seems sparse. Anyway, what a family.

The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts by Loren Grush

5.0

I’ve been reading Loren Grush’s space coverage for several years, first at The Verge and more recently at Bloomberg. Like most people I normally read sites, but she’s on the shortlist of journalists I look for by name wherever I can find them. Everything she writes is clear, interesting, and shot through with enthusiasm for what the exploration of space really represents. So when I saw she had a book coming out I put it on my list right away, and as soon as it appeared I devoured it in a few short days. I was not at all disappointed.

This book is so well constructed. Even though you probably know many of the events, Grush unfolds them for us beautifully. I found the book strangely moving well before we got to heavy-weight Challenger part. Take for example the handling of Sally Ride’s queerness. Grush finds a perfect line here, reveling this part of Ride’s life without making it her life. I suppose you could say that about all six women. We run the risk of labeling them discretely, as our culture and media have done for years in one way or another. Somehow Grush addresses all this without ever falling prey to it. This is a feminist book without actually trying to be a feminist book: It just treats is subjects as the remarkable people they are, and that feels like a rebellious accomplishment.

You should have kleenex on hand for the final act. I am old enough to remember the Challenger disaster vividly. In my memory, Christa McAuliffe came to speak at my middle school when I was in sixth grade. I can’t really be sure it was her; that I’m not remembering wrong. I know for certain “NASA” came and talked about the Teacher In Space Project. And I know one of the speakers was a woman. And I clearlyremember they picked one boy and one girl at random to come on stage and “try on” a space suit. I remember this part with certainty because my brother was that boy, and I was so jealous. (If I remember right, Wendy Clark was the girl.) Some day I’ll have to try to find microfiche archives of the Zionsville Times to see if McAuliffe was really there or if it was someone else.

At any rate, a few months later my sixth grade teacher greeted us all after recess by telling us there had been an accident with the Space Shuttle. I had watched the news the night before, and knew that the door had malfunctioned. I wondered why she was being so solemn about such an insignificant problem. Shuttle launches were commonplace by then, and I didn’t even know for sure there had been a launch that day. Then she told us the Shuttle had exploded. We were all led into the gymnasium where we watched news coverage and our principal spoke to us. This was the first “big national tragedy” of my life, and it was clear to all of us by the way our teachers spoke, the way our parents reacted, and by the way the news cyclically obsessed over minute details, that it was A Very Big Deal. That big explosive cloud with its divergent booster trails still persists in my memory as one of the defining images of my childhood.

Grush had a tough task on her hands. Challenger is the elephant in the room here. And once again she manages to detail that disaster with care, and without making it what this book is about.

I’m not sure what else to say except if you have any interest in space, in the history of America’s fitful acceptance of women outside the home, or in powerful true stories well told, this book is for you.

The Eight Mountains by Paolo Cognetti

4.0

This was a recommendation from my father, who absolutely loved it. It’s a beautifully written book about that friction between the world we sometimes imagine we want, and the world we really possess. It’s about friendship, and about mountains. I can see why my father loved it. It’s a contemplative book, well suited to reflection. I tihnk what I liked best was its reverence– for nature, for the mountain, and for a pastoral world that no longer exists and perhaps in some sense never really did.

A Brief History of Black Holes: And Why Nearly Everything You Know About Them Is Wrong by Becky Smethurst

5.0

What a delight this book is. It’s deeply engrossing, perfectly balanced for a non-scientist with genuine interest, and wonderfully structured. Smethurst combines history and science to both teach me her subject, and show me something beautiful about science itself. Suddenly I realize that our scientific understanding of black holes isn’t just the collaborative effort of so many dedicated and enthusiastic individuals. It is a collaboration that spans centuries. From Chinese astronomers in 1000 ADE to PhD students in 2020, Smethurst draws a bright through-line that I find thrilling.

Smethurst reads the book herself. Normally this is a red flag for me. With a few glorious exceptions (I see you, Daniel Handler), I find authors to be poor readers. I’ll add Smethurst to the allow-list. She has clearly honed her craft through her work producing popular Youtube videos. And she’s blessed with a great, clear, expressive voice. This is especially great for a science book, where readers can sometimes get a little lost in the sentences. Smethurst knows exactly what she’s talking about, she knows what beats she’s meant to hit, and she knows how to hit them. This is one of my favorite non-dramatic audiobook readings.

If you love space, if you love the history of science, or if you’ve always wished for a science book with a sprinkling of Taylor Swift fangirling, then I have good news. I loved this book and immediately recommended it to my kids. Fascinating, awe-inspiring, funny, and beautifully read. What more could you want?

The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin by Lisa Yaszek

3.0

This collection of sci-fi short stories by women authors is, unsurprisingly, a mixed bag, but also a lot of fun. It’s arranged chronologically, starting with a 1928 story with a twist that is completely unsurprising, and ending with Ursula K Le Guin’s 1969 classic novelette, Nine Lives.

I think the tastiest treat was C. L. Moore’s surprising, creepy, imaginative and passionate The Black God’s Kiss (1934). I won’t spoil it with description, but I loved every page. It turns out it is the first of six stories around the same protagonist, all collected in a 1969 book also called The Black God’s Kiss. You can be sure I added it to my list.

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

5.0

What an engrossing and possessing book this is. I stayed up way too late finishing it. And still it took longer than I expected because, for someone like me who knows next-to-nothing about Puerto Rico (née Borikén), it sent me to Wikipedia a lot. But this isn’t a history lesson. It’s a powerful story of identity at the micro- and macro-level.

Perhaps the most wonderful thing about literature is that it invites us to experience worlds, lives, ideas that are foreign to us. I can be a woman, a Puertorriqueña, member of a big Brooklyn family, daughter of a revolutionary, even though I am none of these things. But even so, I did not expect to identify directly with Olga in the way I did. Despite the vastly different circumstances of our lives, we both have complicated parents. And Gonzalez put to words things I’ve never really been able to articulate to myself before. She tells us Olga’s mother made her children feel “like dolls in a rich kid’s toy chest—occasionally played with, largely neglected, sometimes abused.” And how she and her brother could never show their true selves to their mother because the mother “found their inner selves insignificant.” Phew.

I bought Olga Dies Dreaming after reading Gonzalez’ very vulnerable story about her aging body. I had no idea what to expect. I just liked her essay and assumed I’d like the book too, whatever it might be about. And I did.