the empathy exams. leslie jamison (270)

i wish i could remember where i heard about this collection of essays.  i feel like it was on some feminist list of must read books, but when i searched online trying to find the post that recommended this to me, i couldn't  i wish i had because then i would know the reason for my reading the empathy exams.

i have mixed feelings about this collection of essays.  on one hand, some of the essays were really interesting and insightful.  and on the other hand some of the essays were #whitegirlproblems.  and not the funny white girl problems, i feel that i can related (see: hbo's girls) but more like the omg enough with the whining already.

but let's start with the good:

the opening essay, "the empathy exams" was really interested.  i enjoyed learning about jamison's time as a medical actor.  a medical actor, i learned, is a person that acts as a patient for medical students.  they are given descriptions, the test is for the med students, they must ask questions and demonstrate empathy so that the patient reveals what is wrong with them. it was interesting to read about her experience as one and the patients that she portrayed.  to be completely honest, i didn't really care about her whole talk on empathy but that could be because i am kind of heartless and therefore am rarely empathetic.  she use the medical actor situations as a means to discuss an abortion and heart surgery, placing herself as a medical actor situation was an interesting way for her to explore what had happened to her.

"devil's bait" which focused on morgellon's disease, which i learned (i learned a lot) is not accepted by the medical world as a disease.  its a skin condition were fibers and bumps appear on the skin.  for the most part, the people who have it seemed crazy and unfortunately, i agree with the medical world as to whether or not it is real.  it was sad to see how people were suffering and it seemed more psychological to me than anything kind of physical condition.  and like jamison, i do feel bad because the suffering of the individuals with the disease is very much real though the disease isn't.  i will say i kind of wanted to call bullshit on jamison for trying to act like she wasn't exploiting these people, gaining their trust by saying she believed them though she had her doubts.  but yeah she did exploit them, the proof is in the fact that she wrote and published this chapter.

"la frontera" about mexico and its drug woes, reminded me of my friend dan as i read.  the only thing i really took from this chapter was the art piece she discussed at the end.  one of the individuals she met, Marco shared about a piece did:

it was designed to resemble his local yellow pages.  it listed all the stores and services named for the gulf:  siderufgica del golfo, el restaurant del golfo, transportes linea del golf.  in the sport wehre el cartel del golfo would have fallen, the line read:  puded anunciarse aqui.  addressed to the cartel, to it's rivals, to it's victims:  you can advertise here. 

demonstrated that all of this violence is unnecessary to advertise their power.

"pain tours" made me uncomfortable because i can not believe that there is a gang tour of los angeles.  but there really is, i googled.  i couldn't believe that people really wanted to go on a tour of hood life.  i live in a community that has been ruined due to gangs, and i can't imagine every wanting to tour and learn about gangs like some disneyland attraction.  its horrible to think that people are that ignorant and revere a type of lifestyle that causes so much violence.  white people really have no idea how scary it is to live in a community in which gangs run the streets.

"the immortal horizon", i enjoyed learning about the barkley marathons.  if you have never heard about it, google it.  it's pretty cool.

"pain tours (II)" because of course my girl, frida Kahlo was discussed.  it just reminded me that i need to read her diaries.  i checked them out once but they felt too chaotic.

"lost boys" it was interesting to learn about that "west memphis three" case.

now for the bad:

"morphology of a hit" this essay kind of ruined my positive outlook of this collection.  and i started to notice that jamison was a bit of a drama queen.  in it, she described an incident using some old author's outline for how to write a story.  the issue i had was what i felt was her intent to have the reader imagined that she was raped verses what actually happened.  she was punched in the face.  and really i mean she was punched in the face.  that is a very scary experience and i am not sure how i would handle it, but i know i wouldn't try to liken it to sexual assault.  i mean i know all violence towards women is wrong but it was awkward that she attempted to frame her punching as a rape.  i felt like it did not demonstrate empathy towards rape victims.

"grand unified theory of female pain". as a feminist, i hate to betray my people but this essay was annoying.  i loved all the women that she mentioned bjork, tori amos, etc. but instead of being an article that created a space in which women can suffer and embrace pain without being a stereotype, she instead reinforced the stereotype with her whining. 

overall, here is the issue that i had with jamison.  at the end of the day, she is a privileged white female and though she may have suffered in life, the empathy she tries to express towards others is insulting instead of comforting.  it's total white woman's burden.  everything she discussed was turned towards how it affected her which i feel really isn't example of empathy but selfishness.  i don't know, maybe i am being too judgey. 

i enjoyed the random little facts that i learned about as mentioned in the good section, but for the most part, this taught me nothing about empathy.

love me back. merritt tierce. (237)

i saw merritt tierce's love me back on a book riot post and due to its cover, i decided to check it out.  you have to admit that the cover is quite intriguing, the neon lights, the sad yet hopefully sentiment.  i must admit that i am pretty good about judging a book by its cover, because i enjoyed this work.

i had no idea what love me back was about, when i picked it up.  i must have read a blurb about it on book riot but it didn't stick with me.  upon skimming the inside sleeve, i discovered that it was about a single mother and her work at restaurants.  i also learned that tierce was a "5 under 35" honoree and since i enjoyed molly antopol's the unamericans, i had high expectations for this work.  unjustly so, i know, but i did.

i have to say that love me back was beautifully written, i could not put it down, even though at times i was disgusted by what i read.  i guess that would be a testament to how well written it was. love me back is the story of marie, a young woman and her life working in restaurants.  marie, a single mother, though her daughter did not live with her, worked in a handful of restaurants, and spent her free time (the little time that she had, since she worked all the time) drinking, doing drugs, and sleeping with everyone she met at work.  marie's back story, which is revealed to us throughout the novel, and some details not until to the very end, was that marie's life was not so tragic, in fact, it was once filled with promise.  she was yale bound, but a church trip to mexico when she was seventeen, resulted in her being pregnant.  she ended up marrying the baby's father, and they lived together, but she ended up cheating on him, with everyone she worked with.  he learned of her cheating, after marie gave him chlamydia, which she contracted from one of the three men she was sleeping with at the time.  they separated, and he ended up with custody of the child.

throughout the novel, there are sections in which marie's stories are directed to her daughter, in which we learn of how her daughter came to be.  in her narrative, marie constantly spoke of wanting to do better for her daughter, or loving her daughter so much but it's just words.  in the end, one of marie's co-workers call her out on it, explaining that if they really wanted to be with their daughters, then they would be.  marie does love her daughter, but she does lie to herself about wanting to be there for her.  i am sure she loves her daughter, but as she admitted once she did not have that motherly instinct.

instead, the priorities in marie's life are drugs, alcohol, and sex.  i was disgusted and appalled by marie's actions.  i am all for one feeding their sexual appetite, but marie abused her body.  she was on self-destruction mode, she did drugs and had sex to distract herself from the pain she felt.  the pain that marie felt was never explicitly described, there didn't seem to be a specific source, other than life itself.  sure, her parents were overbearing, but they were initially helpful with the child, and she ran away from them.  her husband also seemed to be a good man, he was a responsible father and loved marie.  yet, it wasn't enough for marie.  i understand that yes, she lost her future, though never directly addressed, being unable to attend yale had to have had a negative effect on her.  however, instead of making her daughter the focus of her life, she instead sought ways to destroy herself.  and boy did she.  and i can understand the substance abuse to a certain extend, even the cutting and burning makes sense given her dealing with pain, however i could not believe what she allowed herself and others to do to her body sexually.  marie described situations in which she would do drugs and then let guys take turns with her in one night.  her last escapade before the novel closed, she had sex with brothers, in a moving truck?!?!?  it was disgusting to read about, and i couldn't imagine how someone can allow that to happen to themselves.  and i guess the frustrating part was that marie was better than that.  she was smart, but made bad decisions.   there was a handful of times in which she got herself clean, normally motivated by a man, but still she could clean.  she could have escaped the life she had but continue to life it. it was a very dark place that marie was in and i am grateful that i did not understand her.  

and in all honesty, i am not sure what to take away from this other then life is suffering.  and sometimes life deals you a shitty hand and instead of trying to make the best of it, you can just say fuck it and do what you want.  

regardless, of my approval of marie's life,  i do approve of tierce.  she is an amazing writer and i love forward to reading more from her.

oh and before i close i just have to add.  there was a part in which marie discussed how sometimes she will judge customers.  how they will come in, in jeans and order soft drinks and she thinks that there are going to waste her night and tip her poorly.  however, they end up asking for a bottle of champagne and wine and the next thing she knows they are leaving her a big tip.  this made me laugh because i feel like this happens to my friend larry and i when we go out to dinner.  he is a gm and is limited on his days off and sometimes we will go out to lunch or dinner and he will wear a sweatshirt and i look like i'm twelve.  and i'm pretty sure people are like why are these kids wasting my time.  and then we start ordering and it's majority of the menu and the servers realizes that we are going to get a good tip and that server's demeanor towards us totally changes.  lol

the secret book of frida kahlo. f.g. haghenbeck (78)

this book is another example of library kismet. while amazoning for a frida kahlo doll, i came across this book and made a mental note. later that day i went to the rabobank arena in bakersfield to buy tickets to barry manilow. since we were by the beale library, i decided to visit it. and i kid you not, this book was waiting on a shelf right where i walked it. it seemed too perfect. so i checked it out.

though i dressed up as frida kahlo for halloween:

and i have seen her art at the lacma. both from their permanent collection and their recent exhibit on women surrealists, "in wonderland". i would not call myself a frida expert. in all honesty, most of what i know about her i learned from her biopic starring salma hayek. i didn't even know about her accident until the movie. i am a bit of a whimp when it comes to blood/injuries so i skipped that part of the book because it made me nauseous. the idea of her accident made me so squeamish that had to be down the book when i started reading about it. also after reading this book and the bits of her real life, i now want to read a proper biography or autobiography (i requested her diaries from the library.)

so in addition to this being a novel, it is also a cookbook. each chapter contains frida's "favorite" recipes which related to the story that was told in the chapter. we all know i can't cook but i plan on trying some of the recipes like horchata and pumpkin tamales. (so look for a post about that in the future).

and it doesn't stop there! the book also
had book club questions at the end! i think it would be cute to read this as a book club and have each person make a recipe for the meeting, maybe i can convince the PDC dance moms! we'll see.

since there are book club questions i thought i would utilize them for this blog. there are 13 but i chose my top 3. so here we go:

1. the novel begins when frida is close to the end of her life. why do you think haghenbeck chose to order the narrative this way? how does beginning the story with death affect the rest of the novel?

when i first started the novel, i thought that haghenbeck decided to start off with frida's death because it was more theatrical than starting with her birth. however, when her death did arrived at the end, i saw that he did it to give some "it's a wonderful life" flair actually more like "click" flair (yes the adam sandler movie). because you realize what you had read did not actually happen but was a peek into the future, a session with the ghost of christmases to come. and though it is very cliche (see: twilight breaking dawn part 2) in this novel it worked. i thought it was very clever, i was not expecting it. it reinforced the idea of life as suffering.

2. after the accident frida must convince her godmother to allow her to continue living. what is frida's deal with death? what would you do if you were offered a similar deal? discuss what you think about the warning frida's godmother gives before she wakes up: "you will always wish you'd died today. and i will remind you of this every day for your life." (61). at the end of her life, does frida regret living past this first death?

frida's deal with death is that she will paint a self-portrait (which explains her painting of self-portraits in real life), that will hold her place in the afterworld so she can return to life. however, death can still take her, she is not immortal. i would strike the same deal. i don't believe in an afterlife so once i die i will be worm food. since i think death is the ultimate end, i would make the same deal with death. better to be alive and suffering than dead. frida's godmother's warning just demonstrated that no one can truly cheat death because you will always be haunted by the fact that you could have died. in my opinion, death did not make frida suffer more, what magnified her suffering was that it was now filtered through a "if i died this would have never happened to me" lens. also wishing for death is not something limited to just frida (we see in this in the story with the section about dorothy hale). when times get tough most people probably do wish for death to end their suffering. death as a relief is nothing new, suicidal tendancies is more than just a band. and euthanasia does exist. frida did not regret living past this first death. if she did, she would have committed suicide earlier in the story.

9. frida is in a constant struggle to continue living her painful life. why does she choose this painful life over an easy death? think about the words "have the courage to life, because anyone can die." (7, 95, 129) how do you interept this maxim?

i think this is kind of a dumb question. why does anyone choose a painful life over death? because death is forever and life is short, so thus more valuable. she didn't chose to have a painful life, she simplt chose life. no one is exempted from pain in life, jesus, buddha, krishna, mohammad, all founded religions as a means to escape pain and suffering of their lives. why should we mere mortals be any different? and isn't that the goal of all religions, to stop the pain of life? i do believe in the maxim, anyone can die but not everyone can live. in the novel, death explains to frida that it is a true communist because regardless of class, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and age, death will take you, it is blind to your status. also death is easy it takes much more effort to life that it does to seize being.

sorry, just realized all of my questions were about death but those questions were the most interesting one.

one last enhance activity:

1. look up one of your favorite frida kahlo paintings and find a passage in the novel that you feel relates to the painting. discuss how the aesthetic of the painting aligns with haghenbeck's reimagining of frida's life.

one of favorite kahlo painting is "two fridas":

i saw it this summer at the lacma. and i
originally wanted to dress up as the frida in white for the halloween (bleeding heart included) but it didn't happen. what i love about this painting is the heart. it reminds me of the glowing crowned heart that is in jesus paintings. also as a gemini, i get the whole twin thing. i do feel like i have two personas, so i enjoyed seeing frida pay homage to hers.

to be honest, as i read about the godmother and frida, i had a feeling that "two fridas" would be referenced. and i was right! in the end, the veil of the godmother is removed and the painting of "two fridas" is described:

"the women removed her veil. frida the tehuana took the hand of her godmother, who was frida the death and connected the atery to her heart so that it would beat again."

i think the later half of this question is not well thought out. all and every kahlo's paintings are capable of being described as aligning with haghenbeck's reimagining, because they are art and opened to intereptation. however, i do believe that this painting does align well. since this is a favorite of mine, i was ecstatic when it received a shout out. it was interesting how he interepted one of the fridas as death especially since she did have that early brush with death. i am not sure of the actual motivation behind the painting. and though i think of the two fridas more as a discussion on how we as
individuals some contain binary options within ourselves i.e. lover/hater, virgin/whore or just different titles i.e. sister, daughter, one's occupation, etc. we are all so complex, it's like the Fiona apple song, "i'll make the most of it, i'm extraordinary machine".

there were other paintings that were alluded to and i had to google because i did not know them. though i have seen the dorthy hale painting in person it was interesting to learn the history of it via the book (wikipedia backed up the story though there was some embellishment).

the book was very enjoyable and i look forward to learning about her life in her diaries than reading it again. i feel that there are probably a bunch of inside jokes that went over my head because i am not as familiar with frida's life.