Book 42: Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski

The subtitle of this book is "The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle," which gives the reader a pretty good sense of what kind of book it is. But unlike a lot of more classic self-help books, it actually acknowledges and references the systemic oppression and gendered expectations that so often lead to burnout in women (and non-binary people who are viewed by others as women). I read a lot of self-help in my early twenties, and stopped reading it in my late twenties when they didn't seem to make a difference other than to make me feel bad for failing in ways I hadn't even known I was before reading a book. But most self-help starts from the place of Personal Responsibility, the idea that if we just own our own emotions and reactions and so forth, we can overcome anything, no matter what the external obstacles may be. And that's a nice idea, kind of, in a world where we're not in control of the soup of misogyny and racism and homophobia and classism we live in and the way that all of those biases are built into our institutions and expectations of our personal relationships. But it's also gaslighting, and either incredibly naive or extremely manipulative to assert that we shouldn't be impacted by any of that. I found it extraordinarily affirming to have those issues actually addressed as real, and the chapters on the misogyny of burnout and where body image fits into that were both really affecting.

This book kind of splits the difference between being a book that examines the cultural conditions that allow for burnout, and a how-to guide for ways of processing our stress, identifying stressors we can control and ones we can't and formulating an approach to each, and doing the self-care that enables us to heal and live our purpose, not the catchphrase. I found it both really confronting and intuitive, and for once it was written by authors who felt like women I could know (or would want to know). There's a lot that rang true for me in terms of when I've felt the most satisfaction and fulfilled, and what I was doing for myself during those times, and it was also challenging in terms of pointing out that changing certain aspects of my life is long overdue, in both big ways and small. It also made me want to read two of the other books on my current list, Down Girl and Health at Every Size, both of which feel frightening to me for a variety of reasons. This year I've opened myself up to adding additional books to my reading list when I come across books that sound compelling, because I don't view reading as a chore but rather something I chose to do for a variety of reasons. And one of the results is how so many of the books I've read this year have been in communications with each other. This book in some ways is the practical version of How to Do Nothing, but I think it's more that they're approaching the same question of how to live a meaningful life from two very different angles. I recommend them both.

Grade: A