Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

It is always great to read a book that makes you say, “yeah, very true, I guess there are things I need to do”… such was the case in Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.  Sandberg worked for Larry Summers, former President of Harvard, in the Treasury Department for the Government, key VP Operations at Google, and currently COO of Facebook.  And after many years of watching women “regressing” from the world she learned about from women in the 70s/80s, she now speaks up to remind women a series of lessons to “lean in” and don’t go quietly into the night.  The lessons she shares are directly from her work experiences, beginning with what are you afraid of and what would happen if you weren’t afraid?  Some of the other lessons include: why you should sit at the table, knowing who your mentor is, seek and speak the truth, and don’t leave your job before you really need to do so (such as when you plan on having children).  One of my favorite stories is her discovery that sometimes in your career it is beneficial to make a lateral move into a whole new field and it is not a bad thing to do, such as her move to Facebook from Google.  She entered a whole new industry and calls the move, careers are not necessarily about climbing ladders, they can be jungle gyms, that allow us to move around (most people have 9 jobs before they are 40!).  Don’t think you have to do it all, smart people use the tools and others in their organization when they have to do so.  Sandberg provides significant personal challenges in her career and gives the “forks in the road” that allowed her to reflect on the rationale for the choices made.  The data on the lack of growth of women in the CEO position within the Fortune 500 is startling, meaning not good.  Sandberg is a smart woman.  For more on her thoughts and speech, take a view of her TED Talks speech:  http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few_women_leaders.html.   This is an inspirational woman who leads by doing.  For every male with a sister, mother, cousin, aunt, female best friend it is time to ensure that your female colleagues have a chance to share her thoughts, give equal time to females, it is something we need to do.  A great read which I would recommend for all organizations to pass the book around to their team.

Madame Bovary

It’s time for a classic in realism… Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.  The story of the “plain Jane” person, in this case “plain John” guy named Charles Bovary.  Bovary is a rather non-descript gentleman who grows up under the very careful eye of his mother, Madame Bovary #1.  She gets him married and ready for a life in the world of medicine, though not a doctor.  He does provide medicines and advice to people for their ailments.  Unfortunately, Bovary’s first wife dies fairly soon into their marriage and he is smitten with another woman, the daughter of a farmer, whom he meets while setting the father’s broken leg.  He waits the “proper time” after the death of his first wife and then goes after Emma Rouault, the new Madame Bovary!  This Madame has an expansive taste for everything and soon makes her decision to marry Charles, thinking he is a rich doctor.   Emma will be sadly reminded over the course of their marriage that she has limited means, though she has no reason to stop her splurges on herself.  Over time Emma realizes that Charles is “a bore” and she falls for a young law student, Léon Dupuis.  Though she has strong attachment, she recommits to her marriage with the birth of a daughter.  Emma doesn’t lose her wandering eye and next falls infatuated with a rich land-owner, Rodolphe Boulanger.  The two have a long term extra-marital affair.  Emma is so smitten with Rodolphe that she decides to leave her husband.  Rodolphe becomes aware that being attached is more than he bargained for and leaves Emma on the eve before the two are to leave town.  Emma is completely destroyed by his departure and eventually turns to religion to take away the loss of Rodolphe.  But wait!  Guess who is back in town?  Léon is back, now a lawyer, as they meet at the opera.  Charles is still unaware of his wife’s affairs, and this time Emma goes about trying to buy Léon’s affection as they meet weekly at the local hotel for their rendezvous.  Leon too eventually grows bored of Emma’s ecstatic connection and he leaves her.  Emma is now being called by the merchant whom supplied her with all of the gifts she bestowed upon her lovers to “pay up.”  She is so distraught she sees only one way out of all of this, to poison herself with arsenic she finds at her home.  She commits suicide and after her death Charles finds out what his wife was doing during their marriage!  Charles dies of an unfulfilled heart and broke!  He has nothing to leave for the upbringing of his daughter and she is sent away to live with an aunt, with no money she ends up having to work at the mill!  Wow, this book is the advent of the movement to realism.  Jodi Piccoult, I now see where you get your stories from!  This is the beginning of the movement we read daily in our novels.  Flaubert’s characters and story are representative of the life of today.  A great classic read.  Highly recommend!  Flaubert’s story is well crafted with intricate character development.  You learn how to hate the ones you should!  

Walden

I think every person should have to live in nature for some period of time during your life.  Exactly what Henry David Thoreau did and writes about in his classic top 100 NY Times book, Walden, written in 1854.  What is it like to transcend into wilderness and be changed and affected by it?  I mean truly, deeply… there is so much in this text worth quoting and reflecting on every day.  To be contemplative, to experience the raw elements, winter, spring, summer and fall.  Building your home from the land, making your dinner from the land, interacting with the squirrels, the rabbits, and the ants.  Thinking about what to read, the economy, the solitude, the ponds, the village, the farms, and your neighbors. 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

If you don’t get moved by this, you will never be moved.  Someone who is really engaged in true serenity.  As he states; “things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.”

How about this one:

It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again.  It seemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into the element which was scarcely more dense.  Thus I caught two fishes as it were worth one hook.

He concludes with: 

Such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn.  The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.  Only that day dawns to which we are awake.  There is more day to dawn.  The sun is but a morning star.

As my favorite story concludes…. “are there any questions?”  ... and for those who understand and immerse themselves in this world, there should be enough to last a century or two.  Nature brings pure and rich expression and emotion for those who allow it to affect them.  When I got up before the sunrise and watched the sun wake up the nation, as it does every day, I was one with nature.  Can you think of when you were immersed in nature?  That is our challenge in life.  Not to get so caught up in the consumerism of our lives.  Thank goodness for authors like Thoreau who invites us into his journey, bearing his soul and showing how the little moments in nature make life simple and yet complex at the same time.  I had only read small sections of Walden previously.  I would encourage everyone to escape the crazy days of our lives and journey to your own Walden, whether it be at the ocean, in a forest, or in the country farm land, we all deserve to be moved by the solitude and freedoms that nature provide us.  Thanks for suggesting the journey of Walden.  

El Bronx Remembered

A really nice read today while visiting my Mom in upstate NY.  I was able to read the short stories of Nicholasa Mohr in El Bronx Remembered.  The book highlights the author’s remembrances of her time growing up in the Bronx as a child emigrating from Puerto Rico.  Many of the stories illustrated the challenges of being “different” and how family members began their journey as an “outsider.”   The book captured many emotions from joy, to sorrow, to humiliation.  Imagine graduating from high school as your class valedictorian and having to wear “orange” dress shoes as your family saved all of its money to have a party for you.  Well it happened to Hector and he lived to tell.  Or the story of the family who struggled to make ends meet (family of six kids) and the mother decided to kill the family chicken for dinner, but guess what happened in the midst of the chase?  The young children caught Mom….  Guess who got to live to see another day?  Or the story of a young 15 year-old girl who gets pregnant, much like her mother had at that age, and ends up marrying a 40 year-old gay male in the hopes of “covering up” both of their internal struggles.  My favorite story was of Mr. Mendelsohn, the neighbor of a Puerto Rican family, who invites them into his life when he is alone and unable to connect with others.  It is a heartwarming story of unexpected connections when one opens their hearts.  In all, there are twelve short stories that provide an in-depth insight into the lives of immigrant life in the US.  The author is “spot on” and invites us to meet characters who are real, the situations are real, and I loved it.  Having spent some time in the Bronx, during my Fordham days, I saw a little of this life first hand, having taught catechism class on Sundays, though the book is set in the late 1940s-50s, the family heritage and drama rings true even today.  Great book to share with a young adult.  Good read!

Sister Citizen: Shame, Sterotypes, and Black Women in America

An in-depth sociological and philosophical view on the experience of African American women in the US is presented in Melissa Harris-Perry’s Sister Citizen.  Harris-Perry is best known for her work as a political commentator on MSNBC and as a scholar, author, and teacher at Tulane University.  Harris-Perry examines how the African American woman has been viewed and why we have the connotation that many have, which is based on centuries of stereotyping.  She draws many of her examples from texts, which are RA Favorite books, such as Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,  Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Ntozake Shange’s play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. She goes deeply into the culture of “shame” that exists among African-American women and how it has developed over time.  She notes that:

By studying the lives of black women, we gain important insight into how citizens yearn for and work toward recognition.

Besides looking at the historical perspective based on characters in books, Harris-Perry introduces real life issues from the Duke lacrosse rape case to Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill and the Tawana Brawley case.  She draws upon these real-life situations to re-enforce her claims.  She ends with her thoughts on how many don’t understand the importance of Michelle Obama when her husband was elected President and that we don’t know how important she is to the black woman as a role model, and yet the media and others laugh at her for focusing on being a good mother and wife, rather than being seen as a leader and role model for black women.

There is so much perspective gaining for me in this book.  As someone who is always trying to understand the challenges and struggles of a group people, I appreciate and learned a great deal from this book.  I strongly encourage all to open your minds and think through the hypothesis and links Harris-Perry makes throughout the book.  She is a very smart and well-read author.  Add this one to your list as you think about why the world is so disagreeable and why we need to empower and give strength to those who have never been given a voice.