Brooke Bowlin > Recent Status Updates

Getting back on my reading grind with a 500 page book on AI. Prepare to be sick of me. 😅

PSA: You can be a good person by societal standards but still further injustice!

“It is possible, even likely, that some people can rightly claim that their individual interactions with other people are impeccable, and that at the same time they contribute a great deal to the production and reproduction of structural injustice because of the social position they occupy and the actions they take within it.”

“It is not without reason that the most powerful nations on earth won’t intervene to stop a genocide but will happily bomb one of the poorest countries on the planet to keep a shipping lane open.”

Love a book about a writer because of all the indulgent literary references! Here for it!

Imma need everyone to disregard my 2025 reading 😭 it’s for research. I promise to return to my existentialism, utopias, feminism, and weird stuff soon

“There’s nothing feminist about having so many resources at your fingertips and choosing to be ignorant. Nothing empowering or enlightening in deciding that intent trumps impact, especially when the consequences aren’t going to be experienced by you but will instead be experienced by someone from a marginalized community.“

“I think this tradition of writing, of drawing out a common humanity, is indispensable to our future, if only because what must be cultivated and cared for must first be seen.”

🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻

Ending a novel about the emptiness of a life spent fruitlessly chasing material comfort and status with a Marx quote is so cold. 😂 here for it.

Me 🤝 These 60s French experimental novels on materialism.

“Too often, what they liked in the things they called luxury was only the money behind them; they loved wealth before they loved life.”

“The vastness of their desires paralyzed them.”

“Most often, however, all they felt was impatience: they felt ready; they were available; they were waiting to live, they were waiting for money.”

Dang.

Everyone 👏 should 👏 read 👏 indigenous 👏 writing!

Very into this!

The way utopias really make current culture look so silly 😭

“John Rawls suggested that a just society would be the one that was agreed upon by people unaware of which rung they would occupy, from behind what he called a "veil of ignorance." . . . My intuition is that upper middle-class adults would be more supportive of redistributive policies and institutions if they were less certain where their own children—and by extension, grandchildren-were going to end up.”

Lovely

Fem Lit Fall 3 👯‍♀️📖🍂

“Do you mean to tell me that it is a ‘law of nature’ for men to arrange their working and paying so that half the people shall be unhealthy? Do you really believe for a minute that this has to be so?”

👀

Fem lit fall!! 👯‍♀️📖🍂

As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out.
-Alice Walker, "Am I Blue?"

We are back, baby!!

“Who loves this horrible thing called War? Probably the meat eaters, having killed, feel the need to kill. . . From cutting the throat of a young calf to cutting the throat of our brothers and sisters is but a step. While we are ourselves the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth?” - Isadora Duncan

👀

Only a couple chapters in and Wendell Berry does not mince words!!! 🤩

The prose 🤌 Also this:

“These new single-family homes have ravenous souls that feed off of your own little human soul— sucking dry your freedom, your independence, and all trace of your passion. You shut yourself in every night and bolt the door, convinced it’s safer that way, when in reality you’re betraying yourself: you pull up the blanket and rest your head in the pillow, offering up your jugular.”

“Both feminists and vegetarians are accused of negativity because they appear to require that something be given up (the most obvious trappings of femininity; the meat on the plate) as opposed to their own perspective in which they are emphasizing the positive choice (aspiring to emancipation and liberation; choosing vegetables, grains, and fruits).”

The story about the woman who wouldn’t get back with her ex because he worked for Big Streetcar and refused to make the trolleys safer to limit pedestrian deaths in favor of cutting costs — may have been written in late 1800s/early 1900s, but I am the target demographic!!!

Incredibly long book about trees (not complaining)

Prepare to be sick of me and my newfound data linking patriarchy, meat-eating, and oppression.

“Lisa Leghorn and Mary Roodkowsky surveyed this phenomenon in their book Who Really Starves? Women and World Hunger. Women, they conclude, engage in deliberate self-deprivation, offering men the "best" foods at the expense of their own nutritional needs.”

Not me on the J.D. Salinger Wikipedia page at midnight. Why the favs always gotta be problematic?! 😭

About to be an egalitarian menace to my family

“What you can’t give away you must carry with you, / it is always heavier than you thought.”

This book is fascinating but frickin long. How many time will I have to recheck this out from the library???