it’s sarah > Recent Status Updates

8,000ish years ago, private property was born, and patrilineage, or woman living with their husbands families and property passing to sons, became the norm. This made land and heredity commodities, and destruction of whole male lineages for their land became common. We know this because of a dip in genetic diversity of Y chromosomes while women’s remained scattered but stable. Great mix of hard and social science!

On regions where nomads herded livestock between locales whose water and food ebbed and flowed with the seasons, and women’s movement had to be restricted to keep them from seizure by other tribes: “women in parts of the world with a greater history of nomadic pastoralism experience the greatest restrictions on their participation in wider society”, including higher gender violence and sexual repression.

On the invention of heavy plows moving women from farm labor to housekeeping: “History casts a long shadow. In regions which have historically made greater use of the plow, the gender gap is largest today.”

This section on how cooking fibrous food to a mush liberated women from excessive chewing, farting, and breastfeeding makes me wonder why the Netherlands doesn’t ask meat farmers to feed cattle cooked food instead of shutting down their farms in effort to reduce methane emissions.

There are approximately 49 characters across four countries and seventeen time periods to keep track of but damn it’s worth it

Damn dude, if I was what the author calls “an externalizer,” who she basically describes as demon babies who suck all the life out of everyone in attempt to deal with their own and others’ needs, I would feel like I deserved all the hell wrought upon my life by parents who were too self-involved, lassez-faire, or volatile to teach me better coping skills.

Someone put this on the “audiobooks that are better than the book” list. Extremely for real. When read aloud, this is a modern day Faulkner. But if I were reading this on the page, I’m pretty sure I would be having my usual “goddammit does ‘show don’t tell’ mean nothing anymore” meltdown.

Has me thinking about how angry-scared my mom was that I would get pregnant as a teen, how I graduated unscathed, how she got what she wished for and then some, and wondering if my dad secretly mourns he’ll never have a grandchild to swaddle, but knows better than to say anything.

I imagine this is an enormously gratifying read for someone who just discovered they have to behave differently at work.

Second attempt at this book. Still think the audiobook reader sounds about thirty years too old to be the protagonist.

“He lifts his fingertips briefly off the steering wheel and backs out of his driveway.” Hesitation, regret, acceptance. After a long string of authors who think “show don’t tell” being a cliché means they don’t have to do it, this is such a relief.

This book has me so so glad I turned down the dudes in my college writing courses. Young Sarah you did good never signing up to be someone else’s heartbreak/muse/intellectual punching bag.

Easy, poetic, sweet, but I find myself longing for Allegra Goodman’s “Sam”.

What do we think alien girl’s alienness ISN’T a metaphor for?

Alien girl’s burgeoning misophonia really resonates with me

Omg the author has finally figured out show don’t tell. How to express ideas through a character’s thoughts instead of “I always think” followed by an essay. How to move a plot forward with dialogue and action. How to build intrigue with a character’s dawning understanding instead of a (not-)galvanizing speech.

81% of the way through and I finally discovered how old the protagonist is. 33. “The same age [her ex] was when [she] broke up with him 10 years ago.” ...10 years ago? The catalyst of this is book is her breakdown over the assumption her ex killed himself because she broke up with him 10 YEARS AGO? No wonder the audiobook reader gave her the voice of an insufferable self-absorbed brat. It’s an act of protest!