The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“In my multifold years of life, I have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don’t intend to hurt anyone. It is merely a terrible by-product of surviving.”
Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours

It's hard to put into words what sometime you pick up in the ether, the quiet, cruel nuances of not belonging—the subtle cues that tell you to not risk anything, to find your people and just stay put.

Becoming
~~Michelle Obama

Since reluctantly stepping into public life, I've been held up as the most powerful woman in the world and taken down as an "angry black woman." I've wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most — is it "angry" or "black" or "woman"?

Becoming
~~Michelle Obama

“They’d been afloat now without food, water, shelter, or sleep for over forty hours. Of the 1,196 crew members who’d set sail from Guam three days earlier, probably no more than 600 were still alive. In the previous twenty-four hours alone, at least 200 had likely slipped beneath the waves or been victims of shark attack. Since the sinking, each boy had been floating through the hours asking himself the same hard question: Will I live, or do I quit?”

In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
by Doug Stanton

“It was actually pretty common for women not to scream or call the cops in rape cases I prosecuted,” Roe said, “at least partly because women aren’t wired to react that way. We are socialized to be likeable and not to create friction. We are brought up to be nice. Women are supposed to resolve problems without making a scene—to make bad things go away as if they never happened.”

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer

Where does a man go when there are no more corners to turn, when he's running out of hope, out of luck, out of time?
In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
by Doug Stanton

“I know that it's hard to believe that the people you look to for safety and security are the same people who are causing us so much harm. But I'm not lying and I'm not delusional. I am scared and I am hurting and we are dying. And I really, really need you to believe me.” 
Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race

Before Shiloh, Grant had nursed hopes for a titanic battle that would triumphantly crush the rebellion. Now, stunned by the combative spirit of his foes, he knew there would be many more bloodbaths in a long, grinding war of attrition. This began his conversion to a theory of total warfare in which all of the southern society would have to be defeated. 

Grant
~~Ron Chernow

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.”
Edward Said's Orientalism.

Avoiding any show of celebration, he refused to shame defeated soldiers and vetoed any ceremony in which they marched out of Fort Donelson and stacked their arms. "Why should we go through with vain forms and mortify and injure the spirit of brave men, who, after all, are our own countrymen," he asked. In treating the sick and wounded, he made no distinction between federal and Confederate troops and prevented the indignity of having souvenir hunters scavenge trophies from the battlefield. 

Grant
~~Ron Chernow

“Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges.” 
James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name

Whatever may have been my political opinions before I have but one sentiment now. That is we have a Government, and laws and a flag and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now, Traitors and Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter.

~~Ulysses S. Grant discussing his conviction to fight for the American Union

Grant
~~Ron Chernow

“How can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?” 
James Baldwin'sThe Fire Next Time

Although many individual caregivers and teachers intuitively grasp the need to form a connection with children, it is not rare for such persons to find themselves at odds with a system that does not support their approach.

Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers - by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate

Those white stars are cracked and the stripes bleed. Until America is ready to turn the mirror on itself and address the giant, pink, racist elephant in the room, we cannot fix any of this.

I'm Judging You
~~Luvvie Ajayi

There are seven billion of us on this earth, and we are all different. But one thing is clear: humans excel at using our differences as excuses to act like assholes and torment one another. It is highly unfortunate that we use these innate, integral, and often uncontrollable things to mistreat others. We have created rigid, yet often invisible, systems that keep some people at the top, on the backs of others at the bottom, based on their identity markers. And we refuse to fix these systems of inequality because being at the top of the food chain is the place to be, so who would want to lose those perks? The air up there is so nice, who cares about those in the gutter?

I'm Judging You
~~Luvvie Ajayi

Doug, Lindsey, and Pete are all dyslexic, and they're also exceptionally good at what they do. as we'll show you in this book, these facts are neither contradictory nor coincidental. Instead, Doug, Lindsey, and Pete - and millions of individuals with dyslexia just like them - are good at what they do, not in spite of their dyslexic processing differences, but because of them.


The Dyslexic Advantage, by Brock L. Eide, M.D., M.A. and Fernette F. Eide, M.D.

Another symptom documented by research to be associated with ADHD is inconsistent and highly variable work performance. Because most children with ADHD are of average or greater intelligence, their inability to produce consistently acceptable work often perplexes those around them. On some days or at certain times, these children seem able to complete their assigned work easily, without help. At other times or on other days, they finish little if any of their work and may not get much done even with close supervision. Over time, this erratic pattern creates the impression that a person with ADHD is just lazy. As a child psychiatrist once said, "Children [with ADHD] do well in school twice and we hold it against them the rest of their life."






Taking Charge of ADHD: The Complete, Authoritative Guide for Parents by Russell A Barkley, PhD

This wholesale diminishing of high intelligence as some figment of a past generation's imagination is among the most corrosive ideas to permeate education and psychology in quite some time. Try as we might to say that "everyone is gifted in some way," it is simply not true - political correctness be damned!



Dumbing Down America: The War on Our Nation's Brightest Young Minds (And What We Can do to Fight Back)  by James R. Delisle, Ph.D.