Illuminating, encouraging reading for anyone who has felt stymied by rejection.
A collection of interviews with distinguished career women about how they managed rejection on the way to success.
In this follow-up to Mistakes I Made at Work (2014), Bacal, director of reflective and integrative practices at Smith College, argues that professional rejection often conceals gender inequities and stereotypes that have long dogged career-minded women. “Rejection,” she writes, “can reinforce a message that many of us are receiving all the time in small ways: You don’t belong.” This book offers stories and tips about rejection from female academics, lawyers, entrepreneurs, journalists, and artists who have succeeded in professions dominated by men. In the first of four sections, Bacal shows how women like psychologist Angela Duckworth and Harvard Business School professor Laura Huang transformed their many rejections into opportunities to transcend disappointment and synthesize what they learned in order to overcome systemic barriers. The second section includes stories about women such as queer writer and performance artist Michelle Tea, who used rejection to find creative ways to bring her work into the public arena. In the third section, comedy writer Emily Winter sagely advises that “being told you need to strive" is far better preparation than being told on a routine basis, as many male professionals are, that "everything you do is great.” The fourth section includes contributions from Los Angeles Times staff reporter Carolina Miranda and chef Unmi Abkin, both of whom show how rejection can actually help someone “pivot” from an ill-suited job to one that is a better fit. Bacal supplements the essays with exercises designed to help readers "generate a new story about yourself.” This affirming book is sure to provide career women with the courage to not only move forward from rejection, but also mount necessary challenges to the masculine bias in the professional world. Other contributors include Roz Chast, Tara Schuster, and Loretta Ross.
Illuminating, encouraging reading for anyone who has felt stymied by rejection.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18765-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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