States of Knowledge

Death has always felt close at hand. My dad died when I was 13 from his fourth heart attack. This has haunted me as I reached the age of his bout with heart disease. My aunt died by suicide, so did a friend from college, and eventually my mom. This haunts me as I deal with trauma-induced anxiety (the cousin of depression) after my mom’s death. I still remember that last conversation with my grandfather (who lived with us for over 20 years) before he died, asking my wife and I to stay longer the next time we visited. I am one of those that Dr. Lydia S. Dugdale writes about in The Lost Art of Dying who is hyper aware of human finitude. What Dugdale tackles in this book, however, is both how to not only die well, but how to live well in recognition of our unavoidable end.

Dugdale is a physician who has seen plenty of death. Her stories of patients paint powerful pictures, particularly of not dying well. Of clinging to a rapidly declining quality of life. The book is easy to read, sometimes lingering longer than necessary on points, but generally quickly paced. Dugdale’s primary inspiration for this book, beyond her own career, is the Ars Moriendi, a medieval collection of literature that taught people how to die well. I read this with a Christian faculty book group that we have on campus and we chose it in light of the current pandemic. The Ars Moriendi emerged after the Black Death claimed millions of lives in Europe during the 14th century. The book took on new meaning as we reached over half a million COVID-19 deaths in the United States.

Dugdale draws from this literature to place in stark relief the drawbacks of our modern approach to dying. Namely, we push death away, into a hospital and away from community. This helps us ignore the inevitability of death and increases the likelihood that we will not cope with it well when it comes. Death is no longer as visibly a part of life in modern America as it was for much of human history. Both patients and doctors seek increasingly heroic interventions that can themselves exacerbate the horror of death. Dugdale argues that trying to ignore death, and all of the subsequently poor practices that then accompany our death, results in our not fully living life.

I will share one passage that illustrates these points. It comes from the final chapter titled Life:

In the end, these virtues – patience, hope, humility, faith, and “letting go” – lead to flourishing through life as through death. In reflecting on the themes of this book, the habit of letting go makes possible the acknowledgement of human finitude, and the habit of humility makes space for community – recognizing finitude and embracing community being the foundational elements of an art of dying. Exercising faith together with hope helps to mitigate fear of death, suggests answers to our deepest existential anxieties, and promotes the cultivation of peace. And nearly all of us could do with more patience – every day of our living and our dying.

I will agree with the endorsement of the front cover that this book is recommended for all who are mortal. If you want an overview of the book before reading it, see Dr. Dugdale’s interview at the Trinity Forum from Good Friday 2021: https://www.ttf.org/portfolios/online-conversation-lydia-dugdale/.

It has probably been over a month since I finished Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith’s excellent Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter. This review got caught up like so many things in the crush of a semester’s end. But I could not simply let a short review pass. As a white male, I cannot emphasize enough how important this book was for me and will be for others.

My journey to this book has been a long one and I will not share it all, so as to not be the center of this review. But some recent context is important in my perceptions of the book. Much like the origins of my interest in gender equity in political science, it was feelings of failure that woke me from a privilege-induced slumber on race. I had slowly been reading for some time on various aspects of racism, but it was experiences with a student that really shook me. I desired to figure out how to be a better support and ally, particularly for students of color. And I quickly came to know how little I knew.

Stay Woke emerged as a vital resource. I was so glad that I bought my own copy instead of my usual approach of borrowing books from the library. My copy up with ample underlining and dog-eared pages. This book is highly accessible and refreshingly honest. It in no way comes across as a stodgy academic read. Perhaps one of the most practical sections is a extensive chapter on defining “All the Words that People Throw Around.” This “dictionary” is far more than a set of Webster-like definitions, but it provides context and deeper understanding of the meaning of terms like anti-racism, dog whistle politics, colorblind racism, and more.

This work is sober, but also full of hope. It reveals in (especially white) readers their misconceptions, means by which they subtly support racism, and actionable methods for being part of positive change. As a state politics scholar, I deeply appreciated the recognition that much work has to occur at the state and local level. This is not only because these are the closest governments to us as people, but also because of the fragmented nature of American federalism, which can be both a vehicle for and barrier to racial progress. The book ends with an incredibly hopeful chapter of 21 affirmations for the 21st century. Considering the extent of racism in American can be overwhelming and knowing where to start difficult. Noting that, the authors present these affirmations as a means to push us onward toward action. This is a must read for anyone, especially white men, who wants to better understand racism in America, their place in it, and how to be part of the anti-racism movement.

Hear the authors speak about their work at the Democracy Works podcast by the McCourtney Institute of Democracy:

After reading Hamilton, I decided to take a break on non-fiction and work on a novel. This year, Penn State Harrisburg is reading Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You. This is an engrossing read. I read it in two weeks. The book covers the gamut – racism, sexism, bullying, and more – in a way that makes you feel the feelings of the characters. 

As a parent, the book grabbed my emotions from the very beginning: a  young girl is missing and then found drowned in a lake near her home. The rest of the book reconstructs the long and short histories that got her, and her family, to that moment. The book starts slow, as it builds the back story of the girl’s interracial parents. Her father is Chinese and her mother is white. Set in the 1970s – meaning their budding relationship was in the 1960s – this simple fact structures much of the conflict in the story. Her father lived the emotional abuse of being a minority in the United States. Her mother dealt with sexism as she tried to make her way in a “man’s world” of medicine. Or at least, in the preparation for entering that world, a dream that would be stunted. As the book progresses, the reader comes to understand why so many things are never said among the family of five (the girl has an older brother and younger sister). Each experiences their own forms of discrimination, but they do not fully understand the experiences of the others. Ng’s prose makes their personal feelings palpable for the reader.

I was left with a lot of questions about my own life and family. What are the things that I do not say? Both those hidden feelings of love and bitterness. The unsaid caused massive harm to this family, though they also paid the price for how the unsaid was revealed, with so many assumptions being wrong. What things do I say to my boys that undermine their self-confidence and scramble the message of how much I love them? And most hauntingly, how is my partnership like the clutch and gas pedal analogy in the book? The relationship of the husband and wife reveals a partnership where one necessarily diminished so the other could rise. I have that in my marriage. My wife gave up a lot professionally to be with our boys. It is a wonderful thing in many respects, but there is much loss there. A loss that I desperately want to make up, but it is not that easy. We are not the only academic couple that has navigated these challenges and Ng’s book brings the experiences of both partners, with all of their complex emotions, to the fore. I bet there are questions in this book for you to ponder.

This winter break I decided to tackle Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. To be honest, this read was inspired by my immense enjoyment of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical. I had known about the musical for years, but had not listened to it until spring of 2020. After listening to it constantly when we were on lock down for COVID, I jumped at the opportunity to watch the musical on Disney+ last summer. I love musicals, and Hamilton joins my list of top favorites that include Rent, Les Miserables, and Phantom of the Opera. I have enjoyed many more, but those are the top. 

Digging into the background of the musical, I knew that much artistic license was taken by Miranda to make the remarkable story of this often obscure founding father fit into a two hour show. I am not going to recap all of those differences or critique the musical, many of those choices make total sense given the challenge of balancing detail with length. The choices also serve to play up the relationship between Burr and Hamilton.

What struck me most when reading this biography was how well the musical captures the tone of Hamilton’s life. I have seen people post that their preferred act differs based on their mood. When in a good mood, the peppy and exciting Act I is on point. When pensive or sad, the melancholy and dark Act II makes sense. While Hamilton’s early life is full of much sadness, his glory days during the Revolution and as the first Treasury Secretary were captivating to read. Then, his life turned darker. A string of bad decisions, starting with the Reynolds pamphlet and ending with his foolish duel with Burr, made reading about the later portion of his life more difficult.

Hamilton was undoubtedly a genius of his time. His early death (compared to the other founders) robbed the country of much brilliance. He was also, as Miranda clearly picks up on, a poster for the American dream. While he struggled with the shadows of his upbringing (bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman…), his brain and tenacity took him to the heights of power in early America. He found a firm position among wealthier and landed peers like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. But, his fall from grace and power were driven by the dark side of his talents, ambitions, and insecurities.

This is a great read for developing a more nuanced view of the Founders, particularly this currently popular, but not well understood, Father.