Vox by Christina Dalcher

In a week after we were told that “Truth isn’t truth,” publication of the new book VOX by Christina Dalcher seems chillingly apt. It is a dystopian novel set in the near future where women must wear a counter bracelet and are only allowed to say 100 words a day (versus the 16,000 which is the estimated current average).  They and their daughters are not allowed other activities which we would take for granted: to travel out of the country, to read a recipe or the mail (or any book other than a women-only version of the Bible), to work outside their homes (of course, that means essentially no female political representatives). Dalcher even has a character asking: “How could this happen in less than a generation?”   

Yes, her premise does stretch credibility; plus, there is an uncomfortable element of religious zealotry (with members of the Pure Movement in power) and the ending reads more like a spy thriller. On balance, though, the beginning of VOX is both relevant and well-done and the “zingers” that appear near the end of almost every chapter are very clever, cynical, and even shocking:

“What do they study now, our girls? A bit of addition and subtraction, telling time, making change. Counting, of course. They would learn counting first. All the way up to one hundred.”  

“Signing defeats the purpose of what we’re trying to do here. … there are people researching the new – you know – devices. They’ll be more like gloves.”

Looking for some near-term real world connections? In addition to the #MeToo news, review the recent Pew Research poll on attitudes towards more female Congressional candidates where 12 percent of Republican men are opposed although most Americans (61%) think it is a good thing. New York Times has also just published a video (some graphic and offensive language) about difficulties which women candidates face. Or look at this scholarly analysis which was summarized in The Washington Post showing which states are most sexist.

Dalcher’s debut, VOX, is a LibraryReads selection and received a starred review from Library Journal.

Exploring Freedom ...

THE BILL OF RIGHTS by Linda R. Monk is a fabulous resource (as are Monk’s other works in our collection: The Words We Live By and Ordinary Americans).  This new version of THE BILL OF RIGHTS: A User’s Guide has a foreword by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the initial section, Monk provides a brief history of the Bill of Rights, including its philosophical underpinnings. Each section then describes one of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, giving the actual text and an interpretation, plus examples of its application with case studies and excerpts from legal opinions. There also is a chapter devoted to the Fourteenth Amendment which addresses citizenship and equal protection of the laws. Finally, Monk comments briefly on rights in the future: should they be “positive” (a right to education, health care and/or employment) rather than “negative” (forbidding government intervention)? 

Images (photographs, political cartoons and other items) are dispersed throughout and a glossary, bibliography, endnotes and case index are helpfully included.  Students will really value the information in this easy to read text. 

SPEAK FREELY by Keith E. Whittington looks more specifically at the right to free speech on college campuses. Whittington, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, presents a reasoned discussion in which he says, “The argument I want to develop here is that we should understand free speech as central to the mission of a modern university.”  He goes on to discuss the connections between the mission and free speech, to offer reasons for protecting free speech, to then apply those to some recent controversies, and to explore worries about "viewpoint diversity" on campuses. Whittington provides extensive footnotes and his introduction begins with an eyewitness account of a protest at the University of California, sounding as though it took place recently when in fact it was a 1903 reaction to an appearance by Carrie Nation. This text is filled with valuable examples and will certainly interest students curious about concepts such as trigger warnings and safe spaces, although it seems a bit dry for many others. Kirkus called SPEAK FREELY “a timely defense of intellectual debate and critical thinking.”

Some New Titles from University Presses

EXCEPTIONAL AMERICA is written by Mugambi Jouet who teaches at Stanford Law School. In the description for this book, the publisher (University of California Press), notes that “Anti-intellectualism, conspiracy-mongering, a visceral suspicion of government, and Christian fundamentalism are far more common in America than the rest of the Western world—Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.”  It honestly was a surprise at first to see America described in such anti-intellectual terms relative to other countries, but then I realized how aptly that descriptor fit with recent calls and emails about the need to preserve library funding due to current budget cut proposals.  Jouet explores the growing radicalization of conservative America and what divides us from each other.  This , too, fits with the news: note, for example, the demonstrations being called for the six month anniversary of the election and a Wall Street Journal article (“When the CEO Met the CEO President”) quoting a business leader who says, “if we don’t do something fundamentally different soon, we are going to have class warfare, and that’s a scary thing.”

In the extensively researched and footnoted EXCEPTIONAL AMERICA, Jouet includes a quote from Tocqueville describing Americans as having “a grasp of public affairs, a knowledge of laws and precedents … and an ability to understand them [which] is greater there than in any other place on earth.” Jouet then questions whether this is still true, saying, “in vast segments of modern America, its people are arguably the least informed of all Westerners and the likeliest to ignore the greater good.” Even if they only spend time on a relatively short excerpt, this book will prompt some critical thinking and great discussions for our students.

In BATTLES FOR FREEDOM, Pulitzer Prize winning historian Eric Foner explores some different aspects of American radicalism. Available from independent publisher I.B.Taurus, this book contains 24 pieces written by Foner and published in The Nation over the past forty years. He particularly focuses on the politics of history and the politics of race.  The first piece (“The Men and the Symbols”) deals with the controversy surrounding American “justice” as applied to two immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. In the last (“Letter to Bernie”), Foner acknowledges Sanders’ role in forcing “the questions of economic inequality and excessive corporate power to the center of our political discourse.” As a side note, our Advanced Placement US History students examining nineteenth century events frequently consult other texts by Foner:  Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men and The Fiery Trial.

From Yale University Press, SOUL OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT provides an overview of freedom of speech and is written by legal expert Floyd Abrams, who has taught at Yale Law School and litigated cases such as the Pentagon Papers and Citizens United. Abrams, too, contrasts, America with other Western democratic states, noting that the First Amendment (his “rock star of the American Constitution”) contains only 45 words, including nine which prohibit the government from “abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”  Abrams divides his argument into sections which provide some historical context, compares the legal protection in the US to other countries, explains the importance of Bridges v. California, examines the right to be forgotten and the funding of political campaign spending and then concludes with a discussion of ongoing issues like those concerning classified materials. It is that last section which is particularly interesting, since Abrams begins, “having sweeping First Amendment rights does not begin to answer the question of how to use them.” Much to ponder here.
  

 

WE ARE DATA by John Cheney-Lippold was published this week by New York University Press and deals with privacy and the right to be forgotten. As the subtitle notes, Cheney-Lippold is writing about “Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves.”  The cover is very cool, right? And the first chapter explains “algorithmic knowledge production” or “how computers create categories through patterns in data.”  Much of the content, though, is fairly detailed and involves complex ideas and new vocabulary (measureable types, soft biopolitics, dividual privacy, datafied subject relations and so forth). Consequently, WE ARE DATA will have most appeal for those students beyond our high school group.