An important look at how far women have come and still have to go in politics.
Hayashi offers a how-to guide for women seeking political office.
The author, a former California state legislator, award-winning health care advocate, and writer, presents a hard-hitting account of her experience as an Asian American woman in politics, using her personal history and the stories of other female politicians (both well known and less so) to provide actionable advice for women with similar ambitions. The book begins autobiographically, with an account of the author growing up as part of a Korean immigrant community and struggling to move beyond the “good girl” expectations of her culture: “being good meant keeping my thoughts and opinions to myself. Any direct communication—even direct eye contact—was discouraged, and avoiding conflict altogether was expected.” Hayashi broadens her focus to examine the structural challenges women face when running for office—and holding that office once won. She looks in depth at the intersectional issues involved in public office, comparing the challenges women belonging to different racial minorities face: “Racial barriers compound the many other obstacles faced by all women, making it even harder for minority women to achieve positions of power and leadership. This is the case with our ability to receive endorsements, raise campaign money, and win votes.” The book is a well-crafted and thoughtful guide for aspiring women officeholders, but it has some limitations; sexuality is not addressed, and the text only makes vague mention of “minority religious groups” who might be subject to social media hate. For example, Hayashi fails to acknowledge the Jewish identity of Jael Silliman, who’s written about the Indian Jewish community she hails from and proudly identifies with, identifying her as simply “a south Asian woman.” These reservations aside, this is a valuable guide for women interested in pursuing a career as an elected official.
An important look at how far women have come and still have to go in politics.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2023
ISBN: 9798989003907
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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