books i read in january and thoughts on medicine and literacy
i have written previously about getting back into reading again. when covid quarantine went into effect, one of the things i stopped having the attention and appetite for was reading books. but since fall, i have been chipping away at a pile that had been waiting for me since 5 years ago, and i am intentionally trying to read at least 2 books a month. in january i read fuzz by mary roach, and natural causes by barbara ehrenreich. i'll write about fuzz and my thoughts about and journey in divesting from specieism another time. today i want to talk about natural causes and, especially, barbara ehrenreich's impact on my outlook on death, wellness, and how i have navigated those topics before and going into the trump administration.
it's hard to believe in what you never see, and what i never saw, until well into my thirties, was a healthy perspective on death and wellness. my mom died of aids while reagan (derogatory) was president and my dad shortly after married us into a violent, authoritarian home built on a foundation of religious psychosis, addiction, bigotry and the so-called "fiscal republicanism" that even as a kid i knew was stupid because the laundry basket full of pantry food items that i and my ccd classmates put together every holiday often ended up on my own family's doorstep. if you didn't know that already, well, that's my villain origin story, so a lot of what this current violent, authoritarian state built on religious psychosis, addiction, bigotry and so-called "fiscal republicanism" comes as no surprise to me - it doesn't make anything going on any less devastating, but it's built resilience into me and the ability to have hope.
barbara ehrenreich's villain (against systemic oppression) origin story was a dehumanizing childbirth experience that set her on the path towards exposing and fighting against the criminalization of the poor, mistreatment of women by the healthcare industry, and the wellness cults that orbited around her as she went through treatment for breast cancer. in natural causes, she taps into that experience, as well as her background in cellular immunology (which she had a phd in, queen), to examine how our society obsesses over and catastrophizes health, wellness, our bodies, and death. and it's more often profitable to the people who created our problems than it is to our well-being and mortality.
the main thing i took from natural causes was validation in how i navigate my own wellness and health journey. while i have the most prevalent autoimmune disease in the united states, it is a very lonely experience unless you buy into the wellness cults that i imagine ehrenreich herself experienced during cancer. and i don't fully blame people who do, especially in moments of hopelessness and lack of answers. a lot of us were raised to believe medicine is either "whatever the doctor says" or some kind of governmental control tactic, with no nuance taking into account the breadth and youth of science and techology as well as capitalism and authoritarianism.
medicine is a philosophy. i am the one who make choices about my body, but those choices are informed because i confer with medical professionals. i and they are humans who do not know everything and can make mistakes, but there's no deep state involved here keeping us all from some seed-oil-free magic potion to help peter thiel live past 120 years - and yes, ehrenreich mentions him and the other oligarchs terrified of their own mortality as they band together to make the rest of us face our own. this book was published 7 years ago, by the way, and a couple of years prior i was pleading with my colleagues not to accept the billionaire chase for immortality as something that wouldn't lead to what we're experiencing today.
what we're experiencing today, especially these last couple of weeks, is an authoritarian takeover of our health and well-being. these aren't changes that have been happening overnight, they are systems being built over time and what feels broken is by design - i highly recommend you read my mentor and friend anil dash's post about this because he goes into it in a really approachable way.
education is next, a system deeply coupled with our health and wellness despite what the powerful (and often uneducated and illiterate) want to make it seem. if it were not for my love of reading as a child, i would not have seen that there was a world outside my violent, authoritarian home. i simply would not have any kind of lifestyle to hope for and power through the violence to get to. as an adult, it gave me access to experts instead of turning to influencers, like rfk.jr (derogatory), who parade as experts and are presented to us on a silver algorithmic platter by platforms created by ceo's who look like the bottom of the canned wet ham donated to my family by the church that said my mom deserved her ending. outlawing education and reading is not far back in america's past and we are experiencing today that oppression tactics can have trend cycles much like fast fashion.
"Freedom to read is essential to our democracy." -american library association.
snake oil is back, babes, but these days we have way too much access to experts through technology to fall for it, and we have too much well-documented history of politics killing our loved ones and friends. it's okay to turn to alternative treatments or seek out diverse resources on your own health journey, but don't accept the teachings of people who are part of or celebrate an administration actively trying to disable, cruelly deport, and withold the power of literacy from us and members of our community. don't let influencers, artists or celebrities like and amplify rfk.jr and other grifters words because, among the bullshit, they say something you may agree with. it's that same poison as my dad's "fiscal republican" bullshit in the 90s that has strengthened and disseminated the rest of the poisons that come in the fascist playbook.
i'll close this out with words from barbara ehrenreich's son, ben, from when she passed away in september of 2020. they're words for us all to live by and hopefully truly embrace in both our health journey and fight against fascism:
“She was, she made clear, ready to go. She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell.”
xoxo jenn
