The Moment of Lift is half memoir, half level zero baby's first feminism for wealthy Christian white women. This being somewhat like a memoir is odd as it's supposed to be about "how empowering women changes the world," but Gates seems to be more concerned with making sure the reader knows that she is an advocate than actually advocating for anything. Much of the book presents an issue, gives an example of Gates being benevolent (because in case you've forgotten since her last personal anecdote, she is very benevolent), and then says, "We have to solve this issue!" rather than actually making an argument for a solution. Every assertion comes with a personal anecdote and details about her feelings and values. I know more about her relationship with her husband than I ever wanted to know and I can tell you all about Gates' feelings of horror and heartbreak at the issues other women face.

The book also lacks a lot of nuance as intersectionality is only part of the book for as long as it takes for her to say, "Those things are bad! I would never do that," and then the narrative moves on. She is hopelessly reductive in terms of gender and speaks only of the gender binary. And race and sexuality, for example, only come up when she's saying exclusion bad. Additionally, all of the random references to Catholicism felt very strange to me and generally were not pertinent.

As much as I think the author's intentions may have been good (i.e., she tries to acknowledge her privilege on multiple occasions), the book overall comes across as disingenuous because so much of it is about her. In the beginning, we hear a story about how she traveled to Senegal and sat among a group of women to discuss female genital mutilation and rather than addressing the issue at hand or talking about the feelings of the women who are actually involved, we hear about how Gates was horrified and immediately decided to quit being a feminist because it was just too much for her.

I'm not sure who Gates thought the target audience for this book was, but it seems to me that it was other rich white women who will applaud her. Tone deaf, reductionistic, and lacking any real argument for anything, almost any other feminist text would be more beneficial than this. Unless you're reading this for the brain boy badge, don't waste your time.

Maus is a transparent and personal account of the author's parents' experiences during the Holocaust. Spiegelman does not shy away from showing the truth, even if it makes him, his loved ones, or other Jewish people look bad. I appreciated that he did not try to paint his family as perfect victims and let the facts speak for themselves. For example, his father is a deeply traumatized man, and at least in his old age, he is racist and a terrible husband, but he's also portrayed as doing his very best to keep his family safe.

The use of comics to relay the story made the story all the more interesting, especially given the animals chosen to represent the people. Some may find the portrayal of Polish people as pigs objectionable, but the portrayal of Jewish people as mice and the Nazis as cats was spot on. While the topic is heavy and affecting, the images and story are not unduly graphic. If you're looking for a book that portrays real people and their experiences during the Holocaust in an easily digestible way, this may be the book for you.

This is an incredibly ambitious book. A deeply beautiful look at sisterhood, stories, community, and longing, with a winding and overlapping narrative that slowly spills out over it's 450 pages. The craft itself has me in awe of Mehta as a writer and a thinker. Super gorgeous writing and message.

Unfortunately for me, though, it kind of broke down in the middle. I was/am really invested in our opening characters, and just as I was truly falling in love with them and aching with and for them we shift focus, and I felt like we languished there for entirely too long before landing the proverbial plane. This might be an unkind criticism, as I don't have a ready list of what parts I think we could have done without. But I do know that there were several times I realized I was ready to be done, but then also realized I still had 100+ pages to go. Perhaps if there had been more blending to keep both strings at the forefront together? We also spend a good portion of the book being told instead of shown; quite literally most of this book is a (beautiful) summary of events, as opposed to sharing in the journey itself. It makes sense with the structure of the novel, but I was pretty consistently pulled out of the narrative due to the changing framing and perspective that reminds you you're being told a story instead of getting to experience the story. A contrast to this would When The Tiger Came Down The Mountain by Nghi Vo - both tell a story within a story, but When The Tiger is able to keep you in the story while it's being told, and effectively pulls you out of the inner story back into the primary story in a way that I didn't feel here. None of this should deter you from reading; I do think this is a remarkable work and I will absolutely be checking out what else Mehta has written.

The entire world is so lovely. It's fun and enticing, captivating and makes you long to be within it, while also posing danger and risk that you can't help but think would be worth it. Mehta's ability to introduce you to something that you immediately fall in love with is really impressive. As a result, I suspect I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.