This was a rough book to kick this list off with. The poetry inclusions were great, and I enjoyed a lot of the figurative language that Walela used, but I didn’t love this book overall. It felt like too much, and I found myself having to take a lot of breaks while reading it. I thought it was insane how her girlfriend bragged so much about her caretaking position, but she was a terrible caretaker and incredibly abusive. I thought her reaction to Walela trying to break up with her after they were clearly not happy at all together was even crazier. I’ve also never really thought much about the differences in hospital treatment quality based on who people are. I thought that hospitals were required to treat everyone the same, and I never really challenged the presumption that they followed that guideline strictly. This book helped to open my eyes to the mistreatment of hospital patients. Overall, this book was extreme in a ‘take a step back’ way. I’d recommend it because it’s interesting, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it a fun read.
This was a rough book to kick this list off with. The poetry inclusions were great, and I enjoyed a lot of the figurative language that Walela used, but I didn’t love this book overall. It felt like too much, and I found myself having to take a lot of breaks while reading it. I thought it was insane how her girlfriend bragged so much about her caretaking position, but she was a terrible caretaker and incredibly abusive. I thought her reaction to Walela trying to break up with her after they were clearly not happy at all together was even crazier. I’ve also never really thought much about the differences in hospital treatment quality based on who people are. I thought that hospitals were required to treat everyone the same, and I never really challenged the presumption that they followed that guideline strictly. This book helped to open my eyes to the mistreatment of hospital patients. Overall, this book was extreme in a ‘take a step back’ way. I’d recommend it because it’s interesting, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it a fun read.