This is another book I found out about on Book TV. You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War by journalist Elizabeth Becker is about three groundbreaking women journalists who covered the Vietnam War. I was intrigued by this book because I don’t remember learning about any of these women in journalism school.
I even took a foreign correspondence class and the history of women journalists was very limited. While I never wanted to cover war, I briefly had an interest in becoming a foreign correspondent when I was in college. At that time, there weren’t many female correspondents who covered war, except Christiane Amanpour.
I ended up taking a slight detour into marketing communications for international NGOs.
So, it was really cool to read this. If I had known about these women in school, I might have had a different career trajectory!
I found out about this book while watching author Julia Cooke on Book TV. I’m so glad I read it because I learned a lot about the airline industry. Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am follows the many stories of female flight attendants during the height of the airline’s popularity in the 60s and 70s. It truly is a feminist story because being a flight attendant at that time was both restrictive and revolutionary at the same time.
I don’t read a lot of fiction, but when I do, I prefer historical fiction. I like this genre because it is based on real people and events. Island Queen follows the true story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a Black woman from the West Indian island of Montserrat during the 18th century who bought herself and her family freedom from slavery and became one of the richest and most powerful landowners in the Caribbean.
I was initially attracted to the book because I am interested in learning more about slavery in the Caribbean and books that are not centered on Black trauma. Yes, slavery itself was a traumatic experience for Black people. Thomas goes through some horrific events throughout her life, including being raped twice by her white owner/stepbrother. But she was able to rise from these horrors and build a successful life for herself.
Clocking in at nearly 600 pages and through many decades, Island Queen is not only a sweeping epic about Thomas’s life but also the lives of free women of color at that time who were both enterprising in their own right. Thomas earned enough money during her enslavement to free herself, her mother, and her sister and build a housekeeping and hotelling business.
However, most of the book focuses on Thomas’s many romantic relationships with wealthy white baby daddies. She had ten children with at least three men during her life. Readers might think Island Queen is an epic “romance” novel. There is a huge market for romance novels. However, I personally have a hard time with any depictions showing a Black woman and a white man during slavery as “romantic.” Most Black women during slavery – both enslaved and free – were not in consensual relationships with white men. Many readers might come away from this book and think of Thomas as a “bed wench.” But as the author notes in the epilogue, her choice of men had less to do with race and more to do with the power and influence white men had to help her grow her business and protect her family.
With that said, I wish the author spent more time discussing how Thomas specifically ran her businesses. She eventually became a slaveowner solely to protect other enslaved people from the horrors she suffered. I would have like to have seen how she interacted with her slaves.
Also, the book is too long! I don’t think it needs to be 600 pages. The book could have easily have been edited down to under 400 pages, and it still would have been effective in telling the story. I felt like there were whole chapters that could have been rewritten in two or three sentences. Cutting down the pages would have been most useful in the last quarter of the book because Thomas had ten children and their numerous spouses, children, and grandchildren, whose names were hard to keep up with. I only wished the editor would have put a diagram of the family tree in the book for reference because I became confused about who was who!
However, the book being 600 pages doesn’t take away from the quality writing. I prefer to read books that concise and to the point. However, some readers might not mind the book’s length. Island Queen is also full of drama and mess! I can totally see a Shondaland adaptation of this book soon.
This book comes out at the beginning of the summer season. This is a great read for people who are maybe vaccinated and now have the freedom to go away on a long summer vacation, and they can only take one engaging book with them. This book will definitely keep you entertained.
One other recommendation: instead of getting the 600-page hardcover book, get the e-book!
Island Queen by Vanessa Riley. Published by William Morrow on July 6, 2021. Buy the book here.
This year, I made a New Year’s resolution to read more books about subject matter I don’t know much about. I saw this book on sale during the holidays and bought it. Revolting Prostitutes looks at the current issues facing the sex workers’ rights movement.
I found this book really interesting, accessible, and informative because it was a book about sex workers written by sex workers. Because there is so much stigma around sex work, many of the issues sex workers face get clouded with moral indignation from right-wingers and religious fundamentalists and scapegoating from so-called progressives and feminists. I don’t have a strong opinion about sex workers either way, so I read this book with an open mind. After reading it, everything about this topic made so much sense to me from the sex worker perspective.
One big thing I took away from the book is that instead of moralists always attacking sex workers, why not attack the conditions that force people to pursue this kind of work in the first place? Most people have a limited perspective of who actually does sex work. Most Hollywood portrayals of sex workers are usually privileged, cisgender white women working as high-end escorts who live a lavish life and most likely have other career options. Some people would call them the Happy Hooker or the Pretty Woman stereotype, the latter referring to the blockbuster film starring Julia Roberts.
However, the truth is far from this. The vast majority of sex workers worldwide are usually the most marginalized in society – low-income, immigrants, people of color, LGBT (specifically trans), and people with addiction and mental health problems – and their financial options are extremely limited because of stigma and discrimination. I did appreciate that the two authors, who are both white women, made it clear that they are not representative of most sex workers, and they have the privilege to write such a book when most others can’t, like a Black trans worker. Because of the stigma and discrimination, it is easy for society to look at sex work as moral indignation rather than a workers’ rights issue.
Sex work is work!
The book goes deep into many workplace issues that come up for sex workers, like police brutality, client violence and harassment, health care, housing, and the myriad of unfair labor laws worldwide. For example, it is illegal for two or more sex workers to live together in some countries because that home would be considered a brothel. Many times, sex workers find it more economical to live together. It is also safer for a worker to bring a client home so the other sex-working roommates can look out for each other if a client becomes violent. If a client does turn violent, there is no legal recourse because you can’t call the police. There is also a concern that the visiting client is an undercover cop who will arrest all the residents for brothel-keeping. The worker gets fined, but they can’t afford to pay for it. The police are usually racist, transphobic, homophobic, and xenophobic and threaten harassment, assault, and deportation. Workers will not disclose health conditions and possible assault or rape because of this fear.
The book also discusses how sex work is regulated in different parts of the world and the differences between legalization and decriminalization. The Nordic Model, or the Sex Buyer Law, basically criminalizes the client and apparently protects the worker, but most workers believe this model does more harm than good. The authors argue that when the state makes solicitation illegal, clients and workers will find other ways to get around it. It is the same argument around abortion. Just because it is illegal, that doesn’t mean women will stop getting abortions. It just means women will take more dangerous and illegal means to get them. In regards to solicitation, clients don’t stop seeking out sex workers if it is illegal. The client can take the worker far away from any potential police surveillance to a seedier location to do the transaction (like a forest or on the side of a quiet highway). The client is more likely to commit violence against the worker. Again, the worker has no legal recourse in this situation because they don’t have other financial means and fear deportation or racist cops.
Because of this, the authors argue that there should be clearer laws around full decriminalization for workers, not legalization. Legalization heavily regulates sex work, and it doesn’t prioritize the welfare of workers. In comparison, decriminalization makes sex work the default position and worker right. While it is difficult to come up with one solution to a very complex issue that is viewed differently depending on what region or country you are in, the authors conclude that there needs to be a general movement towards decriminalization, as well as better welfare and safety net provisions, freedom of movement, affordable housing, support for single mothers, better health care access, better labor rights, and access to services, work, and employment alternatives without the threat of deportation and bigotry. Most importantly, a need for rights in general, not a rescue.
“If everybody had the resources they needed, nobody would need to sell sex,” they say.
Sounds fair to me!
I highly recommend this book if you want a clear, easy-to-understand perspective from sex workers who just want respect.
This is another book I found out about on Book TV. You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War by journalist Elizabeth Becker is about three groundbreaking women journalists who covered the Vietnam War. I was intrigued by this book because I don’t remember learning about any of these women in journalism school.
