Archives de catégorie : London 2022 Nonfiction

THE ROUTE de Molly O’Toole

An immersive reporting and investigation into the illicit criminal networks that give rise to the smuggling of human beings across the world.

THE ROUTE
by Molly O’Toole
Crown, 2024
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Each year, thousands of refugees hailing from far-flung origins in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa pay anywhere from $20,000 to upwards of $60,000 a head to traverse the Western Hemisphere, using the Americas as a cross-continental land bridge to the U.S.-Mexico border. They all follow a nearly identical path: Beginning in Brazil; then on to Peru; then Ecuador; followed by Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala, to reach Mexico. Last stop—the United States. A broken U.S. immigration system and the largest displacement of people in modern history, with some 50 million more migrants today than even just a decade ago, have together birthed this billiondollar black market of smuggling human beings across the world to the United States’ doorstep. This is “The Route.” No journalist or writer has covered “The Route” from start to finish—Molly O’Toole will be the first to do so. THE ROUTE will tackle the inter-continental, cross-cultural, and ethical complexities of this migration phenomenon as a whole, start-to-finish—not in a vacuum, but in the context of an international system inadequate to addressing it, and Molly will take “The Route” with her own two feet, testifying to the ingenuity and resilience of the migrants who are defying the politics and the odds. By bringing readers along on THE ROUTE, Molly hopes to better inform the public about the complex intersection of U.S. security and immigration policy around the world, and by revealing the mechanisms and motives behind the migration route, to better inform more humane, sustainable solutions than each country closing its borders, building its own wall and repelling those who seek refuge.

Molly O’Toole is an immigration and security reporter based in the Los Angeles Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau. Previously, she was a senior reporter at Foreign Policy covering the 2016 election and Trump administration, a politics reporter at the Atlantic’s Defense One and a news editor at the Huffington Post. She has covered migration and security from Mexico, Central America, West Africa, the Middle East, the Gulf and South Asia for The Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New Republic, Newsweek, the Associated Press and others. She was awarded the firstever Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting in 2020 with the staff of This American Life and freelancer Emily Green for the “Out Crowd,” investigating the personal impact of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy on asylum officers and asylum seekers. She was also a 2020 finalist for the Livingston Awards for excellence in international reporting. She is a graduate of Cornell University and NYU, but will always be a Californian.

EMOTIONAL LABOR de Rose Hackman

The deeply researched and definitive account of the invisible emotional work and mental load so often shouldered by women, and the economics of how it is devalued monetarily and socially, as it relates to the workplace, relationships, sex, family life, and much more – providing a new framework and language for a 21st-century feminism, and ideas for how to better share the load.

EMOTIONAL LABOR
by Rose Hackman
‎ Flatiron/St. Martin’s Press, March 2023

“Emotional labor.” The term might sound familiar, but what does it mean exactly? Originally used to describe the unacknowledged labor flight attendants did to make guests feel welcomed and safe—on top of their actual job description—the phrase has burst through to the national lexicon in recent years. The examples, whispered among friends and posted online, are endless—a woman is tasked with organizing family functions, even without volunteering; a stranger insists you “smile more,” even as you navigate a high stress environment or grating commute. Emotional labor is essential to our society and economy, but many are asked to perform this exhausting, draining work at no extra cost. In this ground-breaking, journalistic deep-dive, Rose Hackman traces the history of the term and exposes common manifestations of the phenomenon. She describes the many ways women and girls are forced to edit the expressions of their emotions to accommodate and elevate the emotions of others. But Hackman doesn’t simply diagnose a problem—she empowers us to combat patriarchy and forge pathways for radical evolution, justice and change. This is a must-have for any feminist reader.

Rose Hackman is a British journalist based in Detroit. Her work on gender, race, labor, policing, housing and the environment – published in the Guardian – has brought international attention to overlooked American policy issues, historically entrenched injustices, and complicated social mores.

SURVEILLANCE STATE de Josh Chin & Liza Lin

A groundbreaking work of investigative nonfiction on life in China’s burgeoning surveillance state.

SURVEILLANCE STATE:
Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control
by Josh Chin and Liza Lin
St. Martin’s Press, September 2022

People living in democracies have for decades drawn comfort from the notion that their form of government, for all its flaws, is the best history has managed to produce. SURVEILLANCE STATE documents with startling detail how even as China’s Communist Party pays lip service to democracy as a core value of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” it is striving for something new: a political model that shapes the will of the people not through the ballot box but through the sophisticated―and often brutal―harnessing of data.
On the country’s remote Central Asian frontier, where a separatist movement strains against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. Across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where tech giants help optimize the friction out of daily life. Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take readers on a journey through both places, and several in between, as they document the Party’s ambitious push―aided, in some cases, by American technology―to engineer a new society around the power of digital surveillance.
China is hardly alone. As faith in democratic principles wavers, advances in surveillance have upended debate about the balance between security and liberty in countries around the globe, including the US. Succeed or fail, the Chinese experiment has implications for people everywhere.

Josh Chin is Deputy Bureau Chief in China for The Wall Street Journal. He previously covered politics and tech in China for the newspaper for more than a decade. He led an investigative team that won the Gerald Loeb Award for international reporting in 2018. Born in Utah, he lives in Taiwan.
Liza Lin works as the journalist covering data use and privacy for The Wall Street Journal from Singapore. Liza was part of the Journal team that won the Loeb in 2018. Prior to the WSJ, Liza spent nine years at Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Television.

TINY T TRAUMAS de Meg Arroll

A guide to “tiny t” trauma and how to overcome it so that we can thrive, not merely survive. Based on 20 years of professional research and practice, this book will change the way we look at, understand and deal with trauma, and the common problems that unresolved tiny t creates such as anxiety, perfectionism and low mood. Includes techniques and exercises for dealing with tiny t.

TINY T TRAUMAS:
Take Control of Your Past, Present and Your Future and Live the Life You Deserve
by Dr. Meg Arroll
HarperCollins UK, publication date TBD
(via Dorie Simmonds Agency)

Do you feel just a bit crap, most of the time? We’re not talking major depression here but rather that constant underlying feeling of being underwater, struggling beneath the surface of life. It’s because of your tiny t – the small, everyday traumas that you’ve endured all your life which have led you to living on autopilot, slightly numb to the world. This book will show you how to come alive once again – and flourish, rather than languish, in a life less lived.
Mental health is now finally being recognised as having as important a part to play in our overall sense of well-being and understanding the role of tiny ts in our lives is crucial for mental well-being. Tiny t trauma happens to everyone, so the book is for anyone that feels they’re sleepwalking through life – or banging their head against life’s brick wall. This book will bring value to readers as it finally tells people why they feel so underwhelmed and under-fulfilled when nothing in particular is ‘wrong’. This is the hinterland in between mental wellness and illness, where you’re not quite symptomatic enough to receive a diagnosis or mental health care, but certainly aren’t flourishing or bossing life – all caused by small yet cumulative everyday traumas.
There are an inexhaustible tiny t traumas and everyone has their completely unique constellation of experiences and circumstances, so it can be difficult to express them clearly – it’s that tip of your tongue phenomenon where you know something’s not ok, but because we usually talk about mental health in terms of the Big T traumas such as abuse or critical early life trauma, we’re struggling for the words to even understand it. Tiny t is almost intangible and there’s a huge gap in the evidence base because of the way we conceptualise trauma – we look at the big, the bad and the ugly, not so much at the subtle, insidious and everyday that affects us all

Meg Arroll (PhD, CPsychol, CSci, AFBPsS, FHEA, MISCPAccred) started her career in academia, focusing on medically unexplained conditions that leave people feeling lost, neglected and at sea in a world of symptoms, stigma and pain. This passion for finding answers to questions that no doctors seem able to treat came from her own personal experience – which gives her that rare combination of subjective personal experience and objective professional skills. Her aim is to guide people through their journeys, so that they have the confidence to move forward independently.

WHAT WE DON’T TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT FAT d’Aubrey Gordon

From the creator of Your Fat Friend and co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast, an explosive indictment of the systemic and cultural bias facing plus-size people.

WHAT WE DON’T TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT FAT
by Aubrey Gordon
‎ Beacon Press, November 2020

Anti-fatness is everywhere. In WHAT WE DON’T TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT FAT, Aubrey Gordon unearths the cultural attitudes and social systems that have led to people being denied basic needs because they are fat and calls for social justice movements to be inclusive of plus-sized people’s experiences. Unlike the recent wave of memoirs and quasi self-help books that encourage readers to love and accept themselves, Gordon pushes the discussion further towards authentic fat activism, which includes ending legal weight discrimination, giving equal access to health care for large people, increased access to public spaces, and ending anti-fat violence. As she argues, “I did not come to body positivity for self-esteem. I came to it for social justice.”
By sharing her experiences as well as those of others—from smaller fat to very fat people—she concludes that to be fat in our society is to be seen as an undeniable failure, unlovable, unforgivable, and morally condemnable. Fatness is an open invitation for others to express disgust, fear, and insidious concern. To be fat is to be denied humanity and empathy. Studies show that fat survivors of sexual assault are less likely to be believed and less likely than their thin counterparts to report various crimes; 27% of very fat women and 13% of very fat men attempt suicide; over 50% of doctors describe their fat patients as “awkward, unattractive, ugly and noncompliant”; and in 48 states, it’s legal—even routine—to deny employment because of an applicant’s size.
Advancing fat justice and changing prejudicial structures and attitudes will require work from all people. WHAT WE DON’T TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT FAT is a crucial tool to create a tectonic shift in the way we see, talk about, and treat our bodies, fat and thin alike.

“Few writers approach the realities of living in a fat body, the pernicious nature of fatphobia, and what it would take for our culture to radically reimagine our relationships to our bodies than Aubrey Gordon. . . . Gordon has crafted a manifesto on unapologetic fatness and fat justice. Her cultural criticism about bodies is timely, elegant, searing. This book is required reading for absolutely everyone. The wisdom Gordon offers in these pages is going to irrevocably change fat discourse, and it comes not a moment too soon.” —Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist and Hunger

Aubrey Gordon writes under the pseudonym Your Fat Friend, illuminating the experiences of fat people and urging greater compassion for people of all sizes. Her work has reached millions of readers and has been translated into nineteen languages. A columnist with SELF Magazine, her work has been featured in Health magazine, Vox, and Gay Mag, among others. She currently resides in the Northwest.