Reviews for Crucial conversations

The average rating for Crucial conversations based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-04-27 00:00:00 Lili Dellinger A tedious start slowly wound itself up to somewhat interesting and "huh" producing by page 80 or so. The first two chapters (66 pages) should really be condensed. This book was disconcerting in that she really covers much what I did in my masters project, discussing womens' autobiographical writing. The difference is that while I was examining graphic narratives she inspects textual writing. Braham uses similar language as I did at parts, but her focus is so broad - it really seems that anything goes in the category of "contemporary American literary autobiographies by women" - including journals, letters, diaries, memoirs, and creative nonfiction. I had to keep reminding myself that when this was written, in 1995, much of the theory about autobiography was relatively recent, and her work might have been groundbreaking. I just wish someone had poked her with a stick now and then while she was writing, to insert some life into her prose. Much of the book reads like Braham stringing together quotes of other womens' writing, and replicating her conclusion at the end of every chapter with variations on the language she used at the start. Forty seven different works are examined, by forty-three different female authors. Her passion for May Sarton and Adrienne Rich are clearly evident, and the repetition on their works I readily enjoyed, as I've always wanted to read Rich, and I now very much want to read Sarton. There really could have been more on Joan Didion (♥), Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldua, but that's my preference. The book is broken into five chapters. The first, Caregivers Redefined:the Mother Bond is broken into three sections: Moving Away From Good Mother/Bad, Mother Stereotypes, and Portraits of Mothers and Nurturers). In this chapter alone, Braham discusses thirteen authors, some for mere paragraphs, some for multiple pages. The confusing thing about her prose is the way one section segues right into the next, with sophomoric transitions "If Steinem and Walker's essays provide a kind of "truth value" around which and against which childhood autobiographical memory revolves, Maya Angelou in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Maxine Hong Kingston, Women Warriors arrive at a personal sense of self by flexing an outsider consciousness" (22). Ok, that's not sophomoric, but it is tedious when every. single. solitary. time we transition between writers we're treated to first a revision of where we've been before a preview of where we're going. The second, Memory and Metaphor, contains the most powerful and detailed analysis of the entire book. I suspect this chapter was born from a dissertation, and that the following chapters dovetail with the subjects explored in here. Patricia Hampl, A Romantic Education provides the epigraph to the second chapter, which I believe captures the spirit of Braham's passion: "We do live again in memory . . . in history as well as in biography. And when these two come together, forming a narrative, they approach fiction. The imprecision of memory causes us to create, to extend remembrance into narrative. It sometimes seems, therefore, that what we remember is not -- could not be -- true. And yet it is accurate. The imagination, triggered by memory, is satisfied that this is so." Sigh. Exactly! In "The Site of Memory", The Caught and Connected Reader, and the final chapter, Self-Authorization, the pace of Braham's writing picks up considerably, and she moves between authors more deftly, while managing to continue exploratory threads across various types of womens' writing, as I was expecting from the title and subject of the book. Published in 1995 by Teachers College Press, founded in 1904 as the "bureau of publications," TCP has focused primarily upon putting out pedagogical texts since 1965 and has only recently (within the past 20 years) expanded to publish critical theory. I just wonder what this work might have been like had it been put out by Routledge. It might have received a more thorough scrubbing by editors to remove some of the redundant and mind-numbing prose.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-05-18 00:00:00 Daniel Osullivan This was an easy and enjoyable read in the 'mind expansion' category. I had never heard of Char Margolis, but I have an interest in psychic/intuitive/manifestation practices, so I liked that this book was part memoir, part guide for accessing and using your intuition. I found her to be relatable and authentic. Recommended for those who are fans/followers or interested in the topic.