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the original image and transmutes it into a multigenerational saga
or, as with Gish Jen’s Tiger Writing: Art,
Culture, and the Interdependent Self a
far-reaching philosophy of composition.
Indeed, Jen provides some of all three
in this “intellectual autobiography,” in
which she traces a sometimes painful
progress—“how I broke from my family
to become a writer”—through three
linked essays, originally delivered as the
2012 William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in
the History of American Civilization
at Harvard. But Jen’s guiding interest,
while particular in the telling, is
in larger questions of narrative style
as developed in the two cultures that
informed her upbringing, broadly generalized
as Eastern and Western, interdependent
and independent. Her sources
are various, from cross-cultural linguistic
studies to literary
quotations to Chinese
landscape painting and
an unpublished memoir
by her father. Although
Jen writes of her awareness
of how a writer
in such circumstances
“might be in conflict with oneself,” the
search for resolution finds natural form
in expansive novels like Jen’s, capable of
sustaining apparent opposites in mood
and perspective: witty and wise, propulsive
and profound.
Lean In: Women,
Work, and the Will
to Lead
by Sheryl Sandberg
’91, MBA ’95
Alfred A. Knopf,
224 pp.
Don’t
just talk
about it. Read
it! Sandberg
may leave vast
portions of the
adult female
population
out of her equations; she may focus
more on women’s interior lives than on
the external factors–work hours, child
care–that are in such desperate need
of remediation. But for those women
who “aspire to leadership” in business,
politics, or any arena, Sandberg’s
thoughtfully argued case that women,
even those with young children, must
“lean in” rather than opt out will serve
as a well-timed polemic delivered in an
attractively confiding tone.
“Guilt management can be just as
important as time management for
mothers.” It may not be Sandberg’s
Rule Number One, but the warning
resonated with this working mother,
along with Don’t overwork to overcompensate.
Some of the
Facebook COO’s advice
can be read between the
lines. She admits to missing
most of her children’s
medical appointments
and parent-teacher
conferences, but never a
ballet performance. Is it wise to favor
our children’s moments in the limelight
when the attention we give must be
limited Perhaps, if our intention is to
raise future leaders while “leaning in” to
become them.
Blindspot: Hidden
Biases of Good
People
by Mahzarin R.
Banaji AM ’02, RI ’05,
RI ’08 and Anthony
G. Greenwald AM ’61,
PhD ’63, RI ’05
Random House,
272 pp.
One of the
most powerful
contributions
of Mahzarin
Banaji
and Anthony
Greenwald’s
synthesis of the
latest research
on subconscious
bias is
the terminology
the authors offer to readers—the
“good people” of the book’s subtitle—
who might otherwise reject the notion
that they unknowingly discriminate
against certain groups. Social or visual
“mindbugs,” defined as “ingrained habits
of thought that lead to errors” in the
way we perceive those around us, can be
identified and resisted. The “blindspot”
of the title refers to the
portion of our minds in
which such mindbugs
are stored. With the aid
of these names, we can
combat the pernicious
influence of mistaken
habits of mind, even if we can’t rid ourselves
of them at the source.
Banaji and Greenwald, social psychologists,
rely on 15 years of research
on subconscious stereotyping using the
Implicit Association Test (IAT), which
provides the evidence with which they
delineate still further complications—
“in-group favoritism” and “self-defeating
mindbugs,” for example. After
the 2008 presidential election, many
believed, or at least hoped, that we’d entered
a postracial society. Blindspot lets
us know that may never be. Yet armed
with a clear understanding of how our
minds work when it comes to sorting by
difference, we can hope to “outsmart”
the mindbugs that persist in threatening
the dream of an equal society.
The Woman
Upstairs
by Claire Messud
RI ’05
Alfred A. Knopf,
253 pp.
Despite—or
because
of—her best
intentions,
Nora Marie
Eldridge has
given in to the
“reign of the ordinary.” Unmarried and
childless in her late 30s, she has yet to
discover how angry she is about having
let herself become a “good girl,” putting
aside her artistic ambitions to teach
at Appleton Elementary School and
to care for her mother
through a long terminal
illness. Maybe she isn’t
even angry yet. She allows
herself hope by way
of an infatuation with
the family of a new boy
in her class, Reza Shahid,
and his Italian artist (“a real one”)
mother and Lebanese historian father, at
Harvard on a one-year fellowship.
Accepting the mother’s offer to share
a studio where she begins to practice
her art again, and gradually insinuating
herself into the rhythms of this exotic
family’s life, Nora experiences “a sort
of awakening” that she had not thought
possible in midlife. She has been “visited
by love”—the love, she believes, of all
three Shahids. Until it turns out that a
“real” artist, along with being “someone
who embraces the colors and textures,
the tastes and transformations—someone
who embraces, period” must also be
“a ruthless person.” The stage is set for a
chilling denouement.
Summer 2013 radcliffe magazine 31