This week i finished...
So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo
Widespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy--from police brutality to the mass incarceration of African Americans--have made it impossible to ignore the issue of race. Still, it is a difficult subject to talk about. How do you tell your roommate her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law take umbrage when you asked to touch her hair--and how do you make it right? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend?
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, by Kate Moore
The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.
Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.
But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.
So You Want to Talk About Race did not really teach me any facts that i had not learned reading
Between the World and Me. The author also provided tips on how white people should discuss white supremacy with each other and i am going to have to assume those tips work on a time delay and do not bear fruit until the conversation has been over for a few months. My white people do not listen to me at all.
The Radium Girls was really good but very sad. Those "girls" were eaten alive with radium poisoning, with their bones crumbling inside their bodies, in constant pain, and they dragged themselves-- or had themselves carried-- to courtroom after courtroom seeking justice and compensation that was never going to help them even if they won. Eventually their bones were so brittle and their skin so weak that the court had to come to their homes. Even when they could not open their eyes or raise their heads from the pillow they testified, because they knew thousands of girls weren't sick yet, but would be.