Tag: dystopian

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The School For Good Mothers

“𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘢 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥.” —𝙅𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙖𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙣, 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙤𝙡 𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝙂𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙈𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙨

Heavy. Haunting.

The School For Good Mothers, though dystopian fiction, really highlights the ways in which motherhood can be judged and dismissed. Mothers are expected to be perfect all the time, but the reality of motherhood can be isolating, exhausting, and overwhelming.

In this story, our MC Frida is deemed a bad mom by social services and her 2 year old daughter is removed from her care. Frida is placed in a year-long motherhood training program where her decisions and actions are monitored and scrutinized alongside a group of other bad moms. They are degraded and dehumanized, forced to relearn how to feel in talk circle, graded on their parenting styles, and ultimately denied the right to be with their own children.

The book focuses on the pressure mothers face to give up their identity to be “good moms”, and I think it is an unfair expectation that hits too close to home. A country that doesn’t support motherhood should not have the right to control it.

As a mother, this book really resonated with me and left me feeling disturbed and outraged. It’s a scary idea that the government can step in to decide what makes you a good or bad mother. This book demonstrates the danger of letting government draw that line for us.

Good literature makes you feel and think, and this book definitely did that. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐

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The Employees by Olga Ravn

It’s hard to describe this work because it is so meta. It is a really little book that tackles a really big topic: Existence. Less than 135 pages encapsulates the human experience and asks what is it that really makes us alive.

“Is it a question of name? Could I be a human if you called me one?”

“I have never not been employed. I was made for work.” Literally, because employees on the Six Thousand Ship are basically robots that were created for work, humanoids coexisting beside real humans who have been in space for so long they have forgotten their humanity. Both seem to be adopting traits of the other: the humans are becoming more like the employees, and the employees are learning how to be human. And what happens when a humanoid begins feeling emotions? Crying? Showing desire, fear, and anger?

“I feel a similar longing to be human.”

“‘I hate interface,’ my humanoid co-worker said the other day.” But how can a humanoid have feelings that were never programmed into their being? And still, the employees are seen developing “strategies in dealing with emotional and relational challenges,” raising questions like can computers learn to program themselves?

“Am I human or humanoid?”

And for the crew, when the lines of reality blur, they begin to question everything. “I started to wonder who I actually am here. An employee, a human, a programmer, Cadet 17 of the Six Thousand Ship.”

“I don’t know if I’m human anymore. Am I human?”

This is an extremely relevant message for today’s world, where the lines between reality are beginning to blur with technology and social media.

“Tell me, did you plant this perception of me? Or did this image come up from inside me, if it’s own accord?”

In a larger sense, this work poses a metaquestion — is it ethical to play god over our creations? Where is the line drawn between human and inhuman? Can computers and robots learn to gain consciousness, will they eventually become human? And what happens if they can, or when they do? On the flip side, are humans becoming more robotic, and how will it impact our future?

“There’s humans, and then there’s humanoids. Those who were born and those who were made. Those who are going to die and those who aren’t.”

If you like Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Anthem, you should read The Employees.

Thank you to Book*hug Press for sending me a free Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) of this title. All opinions are my own.

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Internment

Amazon.com: Internment (9780316522694): Ahmed, Samira: BooksSilence is Violence was the theme for this emotional book. “If we stay silent, whats next?”

This was a crazy read. It is eerily relevant and totally frightening to imagine. Set in a dystopian future where Muslims are herded into internment camps because of the racist president’s Islamophobia, our main character fights for freedom using the only thing she has left: her voice. I liked so much about this book, because it was very realistic and illustrate the consequences if we as a people become complacent and stop fighting for our rights. Continue reading “Internment”

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The Handmaid’s Tale: Comparing The Novel To The Series

Image result for the handmaids tale book huluI read The Handmaid’s Tale in high school, and I didn’t ‘get’ it, TBH. I understood it, of course, but it didn’t resonate with me in the way my teacher had hoped it would. It wasn’t until watching the new Hulu adaptation that I was really interested in the story. But I couldn’t understand why my memories of the book were so far from what the show was saying, so I dug out my old copy, still covered in post-its and margin scribbles, and forced myself to give it a second chance. Image result for the handmaids tale hulu

With my first reading, for whatever reason, I had a very obscure picture of the world Atwood was writing about. I wasn’t able to imagine what it would be like. But, after watching the series, I was able to really picture the world of Gilead, and it made me want to understand it better. So I decided to revisit the book, and I re-read it while watching the show. It completely changed my opinion of the novel, and now I love a book that I once hated.

Although I loved both the book and the series, I can’t ignore their differences. Though both are important and relevant, they have different missions and different lessons. The ideal would be for audiences to read and watch both; they inform each other, each provides what the other lacks.  Continue reading “The Handmaid’s Tale: Comparing The Novel To The Series”

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