A slapdash attempt to address the very serious issues of gender identity and teen suicide.
A transgender teen, born as Mark but determined to live as Samantha, struggles for acceptance from her peers and family in this novella.
This drama opens with a haunting scene of a young woman en route to the emergency room at Boston Medical Center, the apparent victim of a suicide attempt. As medical staff perform CPR on the adolescent, Briones (Jane Doe: Gutted, 2015, etc.) takes readers back in time, introducing them to Samantha and her girlfriend, Victoria. Both girls have experienced adversity in their short lives. Victoria weathered her parents’ ugly divorce, battled depression, and struggled with self-harm. Samantha’s issues, meanwhile, are closely tied to her gender; for as long as she can remember, the anatomically male teenager has “loved dresses, makeup and always identified with the heroine in any story.” However, her decision to start living as a girl is met with hostility and violence. Samantha starts the transition slowly by shaving all her body hair, but when she goes to school with “makeup, earrings and an ever-so-slight new do,” a group of boys attack her and strip her of most of her clothing—a terrifying assault that throws the lives of both Samantha and Victoria into disarray. Transgender issues have been a particularly hot topic in recent months, particularly since former Olympian Bruce Jenner asked America to call him Caitlyn; indeed, Briones references that specific cultural touchstone in this final installment of her Jane Doe series. Overall, the novella is fast-paced, and it includes a few clever turns of phrase (“It was not that Mark and Victoria were students in trouble, but rather troubled students”). However, copy editing issues abound (“Victoria’s nuclear family was compact and mother, brother and herself”), and, at times, little attention is paid to character development; for example, both Samantha’s dad and a doctor’s father have the same background as Zamboni drivers for the University of Massachusetts hockey team. Characters also often sound as if they’re reading from the script of an after-school special; at one point, for instance, a suicide note improbably includes statistics about kids who take their own lives.
A slapdash attempt to address the very serious issues of gender identity and teen suicide.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5171-5299-4
Page Count: 122
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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