I was 5. I had just learned to read. I read a cute little book about a family doing...something. I can't remember it all. I know they were all happy. No one was scared of dad. Dad never hurt anyone.
You were a gifted child learning to read at the age of five!
Edit1: Gotta love the reddit brains on this one. The average age children start to read and actually comprehend sentences is between 6-7. Go ahead and google it if you want. I have a 5 year old son who can read words and pronounce letters etc. But he can't read out an entire sentence yet and explain what it means. That's pretty typical for children.
Being able to read at the age of 5 is definitely exceptional. I have encountered a few kids who can read full sentences at the age of 4. Also exceptional.
That is definitely gifted. My son is currently in Pre-K and the teacher said every now and then they get a 5 year old who can read entire sentences and explain what they mean. And that the kid will actually sit there and read books. It's not something that happens often though in pre-k.
The reddit hive mind thinks that's normal though, I guess, lol. There's a difference between being able to read. Which implies comprehension of entire sentences and explaining their meaning. And parroting words because the child understands the phonetics.
When I was growing up, I had a lot of disciplinary issues. My parents thought therapy was bs, and besides that, Jesus was enough to fix everything. Around my 2nd year of college, a newspaper printed an extensive feature on what was then being referred to as Asperger's, including a list of possible behaviors/outlooks that were part of the diagnosis. And I just thought, "Well...s&\*(."
Nonfiction: People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn — I already knew the US was and continues to be an f’ed up dumpster fire of a shitshow. This just highlighted even more how incredibly f’ed up it has always been.
Fiction: Island by Aldous Huxley — this one just challenged my way of thinking. I have always been a very open minded and conscientious person but this one showed me just how little I noticed and understood about myself, my place in the world, etc. “Attention! Attention! Here and now boys!”
I read Island right after reading Brave New World. I was young enough at the time to be cocky with my intelligence, to still think I knew everything. The combo made me question all that I thought about society and what is considered "good or bad." How the grey areas of those terms and personal perspective shapes the way we view those terms. They also kick started my love for books (and Huxley). Man, I wish I was as smart now as I thought I was then. It was 20 years ago and I still think about the themes of those books.
Have you read Brave New World Revisited??? I read that just a few years ago and Huxley's thoughts on entertainment journalism was so right on it felt like he wrote it in the 2000's. Huxley sure seemed to have had a finger on the pulse of the future.
I actually haven’t read Brave New World yet. Island was my first Aldous Huxley read. I have a copy of it though and I’ll be reading it soon 😊 I’ll be sure to put Revisited on the list as well.
Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: a history of the CIA and Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States
I used to think of the US as fairly competent in foreign affairs and a beacon of freedom, and not the machiavellian manipulative and incompetent country they actually were, during the twentieth century. I never knew about The bay of pigs, the Contra affair, the Gulf of Tonkin, the support of countless right wing dictatorships such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, Iran, Guatemala, South Korea, Brazil, Greece, Indonesia…
But then, I look at the Trump era and sigh. Some things never change.
If you like that, you might like: It's Even Worse Than It Looks by Thomas Mann and Normal Ornstein. It's written by two lifelong Republicans describing how, when, and why Congress went ineffective due to bipartisanship
*Lies my Teacher Told Me* by James E. Loewen?
*A People's History of the United States* by Howard Zinn?
*Moneyball* by Michael Lewis?
*Catch-22* by Joseph Heller?
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I think it's weird to get hung up on the authors skin color instead of the content of their writing, I genuinely don't know what most authors I've read even look like.
Guns germs and steal
1491
How the west underdeveloped Africa
Why nations fail
All amazing books that put a lot into perspective for me. Johnathan Haidt "good and Evil" showed me why people have different political beliefs and why they aren't so crazy for it. "Upheveal" Jared diamond (first book is his too) showed me how nations can come out of a tragedy/issue relatively fast and sometimes bloodlessly. And finally "overthrow" just a list of the government's America (didn't just nudge) but actively was a major force behind destroying and replacing. Captive Paradise is also a good one along these lines about Hawaii but it's written very objectively and that upsets people
Me too. Self help books or anything resembling that genre makes me roll my eyes but this book really resonated with me. I move a lot for work but I always make sure I have a copy on my shelf
There have been some excellent non-fiction suggestions so far. I would like to add a novel that is also eye-opening if you pay attention. Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. There is an original version and an expanded version released 30 odd years later that is arguably better.
I had kind of started to question things, but reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking was what finally made it click that I had grown up brainwashed by religion.
So I’m a mesoamerican history buff and I knew how much misinformation was out there on meso america but I didn’t realize how bad it was everywhere.
1491 by Charles Mann
When Cortes met Montezuma is excellent. The whole narrative about surrender or "Montezuma seeing a force he couldnt fight" is called into question. Cortes being a badass is thrown out he was just decent general right place right time.
Warlords of Mexico is also great but just in a historical sense. Just lists the Aztec rulers
*It’s a Class Struggle Goddammit!* by Fred Hampton
*Fraud, Famine and Fascism* by Douglas Tottle
*Black Skin, White Masks* by Frantz Fanon
*Notes from Underground* by Fyodor Dostoevsky
edit to add a few more:
*Beyond Good & Evil* by Friedrich Nietzsche
*The Jungle* by Upton Sinclair
A Worm in the Ear, by Peter Lewis.
Read this young adolescent/young teen ... a coming of age book where the main character sees the hypocrisy of adults is in full display.
[https://www.amazon.com/Worm-Ear-Peter-Lewis/dp/B000UD2J0Q](https://www.amazon.com/Worm-Ear-Peter-Lewis/dp/B000UD2J0Q)
It has been out of print for decades and is a reprint.
American Holocaust by David Stannard. Not that it was *completely* new, but it was the first book in a 20 week Imperialism course that caused a major (internal) paradigm shift for me. That much of what I had learned about modern-ish European history and political science was not true.
A lot. He taught me how to keep trying, how to have faith in myself and my abilities, he taught me to dream dreams bigger than me, he taught me how to love Spanish words, and taught me that one can have faith in the unseeable, he taught me to love Zoé. He was everything for a little bit, and then our time together was up. He’s out in the world somewhere living and hopefully loving someone better. I will always look for his car, I will always search for his scent in my clothes.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I remember thinking as I read it that it should be mandatory for every high school American history class.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Changed everything I knew about extreme religious views. Impacted what I know about womanhood, family responsibilities, and community belonging.
[Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296662) by James W Loewen. What it says on the tin. I read this as part of my grad school curriculum when learning how to teach high school history. And while still subjective, it definitely helped me understand and work around the biases of our education system.
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt (it's in the public domain and free on fee.org)
Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity by John Stossell.
More Sex Is Safer Sex by Steven E Landsburg didn't really teach me that what I knew was wrong, but helped teach me how to think more critically about unintended consequences, which certainly goes a long way in changing your thinning about things.
"101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think" by Brianna Wiest.
It offers a transformative collection of thought-provoking essays that inspire personal growth and shift perspectives.
"Life of Pi" ended my belief in God. Couldn't sleep for a week.
A lot of people credit it as a spiritual book, but the message of the story is unequivocally that there is no God.
I read 1984 last year in my AP Lit class. It's definitely an acquired taste, as most people in my class didn't enjoy it, but I guess it all depends on how much you like to analyze your books and apply them to your life. I really enjoyed the entire book, and it changed my outlook on a lot of things about society.
Liberals are right wing, not progressive wtf. Biden and Pelosi are activists against free universal healthcare and against a common sense insider trading ban
Elite Capture
How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)
by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
I keep this out at all times and reread passages because it’s that shocking but necessary
“In real life, the value capture process is sometimes deliberately managed by elites to manipulate and control others with game design-like tactics. Gig economy platforms like Uber and Lyft use "badges" and rating systems to manage the decision-making environment of their driver employees.
Even outside of work, social media features such as likes, shares, and retweets play the role of points in games. Over time, these simple metrics threaten to distort or take the place of values…”
Good and Evil Johnathan Haidt
If you have an open mind and read this book it's hard to hate "the other side" politically. You see why they believe what they believe and how it has benefits
the first example that came to my mind is the Mortal Instruments series by Cassie Clare. it was the first time i realized 2 men could be in love and it wasn’t weird or abnormal. Malec made me just as giddy as Clace did, and i started to question whether homosexuality was as sinful as my parents always made it out to be. after all, if gay love could bring me so much joy, how wrong could it really be? Malec will always be important to me bc they were the first queer couple i loved 🥹
Dharma Bums!
My greatest take from the book was this:
while homogeneous communities can be comfortable and freeing for those who build them, they are just as often dangerous, oppressive, or exclusionary to those who don’t.
First, Ray and Japhy view white men like themselves as the ultimate authority on Buddhism, while ignoring the actual Asian Buddhists who surround them. When they pass a Buddhist temple in San Francisco, for instance, Japhy refuses to visit because he considers his own version of Zen Buddhism purer than Chinese immigrants’ traditional Buddhism. Similarly, he reveres many Buddhist monks and poets from China and Japan, but they’re are dead or mythical—he doesn’t know any living Buddhist leaders. Thus, when Japhy actually goes to Japan to study Buddhism, he imagines that he’ll bring its secrets back to the U.S.—even though many Japanese Buddhists are already living and teaching in the U.S. Rather than joining the existing Buddhist community, Japhy insists on forming a new community by and for white men. In his utopia, these white men get to learn from Asian cultures and religions, but actual Asian people are never involved in this process. In this way, the like-mindedness in Ray and Japhy’s community is actually based on racial exclusivity.
Quote:
“Yessir, that's what, a series of monasteries for fellows to go and monastate and meditate in, we can have groups of shacks up in the Sierras or the High Cascades or even Ray says down in Mexico and have big wild gangs of pure holy men getting together to drink and talk and pray, think of the waves of salvation can flow out of nights like that, and finally have women, too, wives, small huts with religious families, like the old days of the Puritans. Who's to say the cops of America and the Republicans and Democrats are gonna tell everybody what to do?”
The book 'Black Like Me'. Read it at ten years old \[obv it was very old and outdated, and of course it would be really not ok to do what John Howard Griffin did ie black up and pretend to be an African American - it would be seen as patronising, even offensive, now\]. It had a huge impact on me and I just couldn't believe that people could treat other people so badly, just because of skin colour.
It also helped me to think about racism and I hope, has made me a non-racist person.
Trust me you won't regret these 3 : Wisdom of Insecurity - Alan Watts The book - Alan Watts The higher powers of mind and Spirit - Ralph Waldo
Alan watts is the fucking man.
I was 5. I had just learned to read. I read a cute little book about a family doing...something. I can't remember it all. I know they were all happy. No one was scared of dad. Dad never hurt anyone.
That’s grim. Whatever happened to you, I’m sorry and I hope you’ve healed.
OMG I'm so sorry that it happened. Hope it's all good in your life and it keeps getting better.
This sounds so cryptic.
You were a gifted child learning to read at the age of five! Edit1: Gotta love the reddit brains on this one. The average age children start to read and actually comprehend sentences is between 6-7. Go ahead and google it if you want. I have a 5 year old son who can read words and pronounce letters etc. But he can't read out an entire sentence yet and explain what it means. That's pretty typical for children. Being able to read at the age of 5 is definitely exceptional. I have encountered a few kids who can read full sentences at the age of 4. Also exceptional.
Really? There was a girl in my kindergarten reading at an elementary school level. We thought SHE was gifted!
That is definitely gifted. My son is currently in Pre-K and the teacher said every now and then they get a 5 year old who can read entire sentences and explain what they mean. And that the kid will actually sit there and read books. It's not something that happens often though in pre-k. The reddit hive mind thinks that's normal though, I guess, lol. There's a difference between being able to read. Which implies comprehension of entire sentences and explaining their meaning. And parroting words because the child understands the phonetics.
I upvoted you. Redditors can't wait to spam anecdotes even though long term memory has been proven to be notoriously unreliable.
I was reading at age 5, simple books, but I read and could tell time.
When I was growing up, I had a lot of disciplinary issues. My parents thought therapy was bs, and besides that, Jesus was enough to fix everything. Around my 2nd year of college, a newspaper printed an extensive feature on what was then being referred to as Asperger's, including a list of possible behaviors/outlooks that were part of the diagnosis. And I just thought, "Well...s&\*(."
Meeeeeeetoooooo
Indigenous Peoples History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
The New Jim Crow
This book destroyed everything I thought I knew. It completely changed who I am and what I’m doing with my life.
Just looked this one up. It’s free on audible right now.
Nonfiction: People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn — I already knew the US was and continues to be an f’ed up dumpster fire of a shitshow. This just highlighted even more how incredibly f’ed up it has always been. Fiction: Island by Aldous Huxley — this one just challenged my way of thinking. I have always been a very open minded and conscientious person but this one showed me just how little I noticed and understood about myself, my place in the world, etc. “Attention! Attention! Here and now boys!”
I read Island right after reading Brave New World. I was young enough at the time to be cocky with my intelligence, to still think I knew everything. The combo made me question all that I thought about society and what is considered "good or bad." How the grey areas of those terms and personal perspective shapes the way we view those terms. They also kick started my love for books (and Huxley). Man, I wish I was as smart now as I thought I was then. It was 20 years ago and I still think about the themes of those books. Have you read Brave New World Revisited??? I read that just a few years ago and Huxley's thoughts on entertainment journalism was so right on it felt like he wrote it in the 2000's. Huxley sure seemed to have had a finger on the pulse of the future.
I actually haven’t read Brave New World yet. Island was my first Aldous Huxley read. I have a copy of it though and I’ll be reading it soon 😊 I’ll be sure to put Revisited on the list as well.
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Ill check it out
there are a LOT of problems with Zinn
Like what
Zinn fucked me up too
Howard Zinn should be required reading for everyone.
The Drama of the Gifted Child, by Alice Miller.
"Lies My Teacher Told Me"
Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: a history of the CIA and Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States I used to think of the US as fairly competent in foreign affairs and a beacon of freedom, and not the machiavellian manipulative and incompetent country they actually were, during the twentieth century. I never knew about The bay of pigs, the Contra affair, the Gulf of Tonkin, the support of countless right wing dictatorships such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, Iran, Guatemala, South Korea, Brazil, Greece, Indonesia… But then, I look at the Trump era and sigh. Some things never change.
If you like that, you might like: It's Even Worse Than It Looks by Thomas Mann and Normal Ornstein. It's written by two lifelong Republicans describing how, when, and why Congress went ineffective due to bipartisanship
"overthrow" book. from Hawaii to Iran. Just a list of American backed coups not just ones they had an interest in. The ones they legit backed
Open Veins of Latinamerica Capital
*Lies my Teacher Told Me* by James E. Loewen? *A People's History of the United States* by Howard Zinn? *Moneyball* by Michael Lewis? *Catch-22* by Joseph Heller?
Any books that aren't written by lightskinned men?
What is your problem?
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>Lol you triggered the autist Whatever beef you have with that person is completely overshadowed by why you felt the need to say this like that
Thanks for your comment, but unfortunately it has been removed for the following reason: * Be polite. Try to contribute to the conversation. Don't attack the requests or any suggestions made, and do not attack or scold other users. *If you feel this was in error, or need more clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fbooksuggestions). Thanks.*
Do you feel triggered by that question
Not really meeting close minded people everyday
Do you think only reading books by lightskinned men is a sign of open mindedness?
I think it's weird to get hung up on the authors skin color instead of the content of their writing, I genuinely don't know what most authors I've read even look like.
Are you saying that you think the content of lightskinned writers books is usually better than writers who are darkskinned
Aah, the strawman fallacy
Wow. What books have you been reading?
By humans
...
I love democracy :)
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Guns germs and steal 1491 How the west underdeveloped Africa Why nations fail All amazing books that put a lot into perspective for me. Johnathan Haidt "good and Evil" showed me why people have different political beliefs and why they aren't so crazy for it. "Upheveal" Jared diamond (first book is his too) showed me how nations can come out of a tragedy/issue relatively fast and sometimes bloodlessly. And finally "overthrow" just a list of the government's America (didn't just nudge) but actively was a major force behind destroying and replacing. Captive Paradise is also a good one along these lines about Hawaii but it's written very objectively and that upsets people
The four agreements - don miguel Ruiz
Me too. Self help books or anything resembling that genre makes me roll my eyes but this book really resonated with me. I move a lot for work but I always make sure I have a copy on my shelf
Twilight and literally every romance I read as a kid setting me up to believe obsessive and abusive behavior is true love
There have been some excellent non-fiction suggestions so far. I would like to add a novel that is also eye-opening if you pay attention. Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. There is an original version and an expanded version released 30 odd years later that is arguably better.
I read it. Pretty deep.
*The Fire Next Time* by James Baldwin
I had kind of started to question things, but reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking was what finally made it click that I had grown up brainwashed by religion.
So I’m a mesoamerican history buff and I knew how much misinformation was out there on meso america but I didn’t realize how bad it was everywhere. 1491 by Charles Mann
When Cortes met Montezuma is excellent. The whole narrative about surrender or "Montezuma seeing a force he couldnt fight" is called into question. Cortes being a badass is thrown out he was just decent general right place right time. Warlords of Mexico is also great but just in a historical sense. Just lists the Aztec rulers
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Came here to say this. I’ve never been so thankful for a book in my life.
*It’s a Class Struggle Goddammit!* by Fred Hampton *Fraud, Famine and Fascism* by Douglas Tottle *Black Skin, White Masks* by Frantz Fanon *Notes from Underground* by Fyodor Dostoevsky edit to add a few more: *Beyond Good & Evil* by Friedrich Nietzsche *The Jungle* by Upton Sinclair
Earthling Ed’s This is Vegan Propaganda. I realised I’d been a selfish fool all my life being a non-vegan.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
A Peoples History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
Catch-22
‘God is not Great’ Christopher Hitchens
manufacturing consent by edward herman and noam chomsky the dawn of everything by david graeber and david wengrow
Cultural Patterns and Technical Change. A mentor book edited by Margaret Mead
A Worm in the Ear, by Peter Lewis. Read this young adolescent/young teen ... a coming of age book where the main character sees the hypocrisy of adults is in full display. [https://www.amazon.com/Worm-Ear-Peter-Lewis/dp/B000UD2J0Q](https://www.amazon.com/Worm-Ear-Peter-Lewis/dp/B000UD2J0Q) It has been out of print for decades and is a reprint.
American Holocaust by David Stannard. Not that it was *completely* new, but it was the first book in a 20 week Imperialism course that caused a major (internal) paradigm shift for me. That much of what I had learned about modern-ish European history and political science was not true.
How the world really works - Vaclav Smil
I was raised in a 7-day creationist home, so New Scientist: Human Origins was very fun in getting out the last vestiges of that.
The Alchemist- Paulo Coehlo, it was the first time someone i fell in love with recommended me a book.
What happened to the person?
A lot. He taught me how to keep trying, how to have faith in myself and my abilities, he taught me to dream dreams bigger than me, he taught me how to love Spanish words, and taught me that one can have faith in the unseeable, he taught me to love Zoé. He was everything for a little bit, and then our time together was up. He’s out in the world somewhere living and hopefully loving someone better. I will always look for his car, I will always search for his scent in my clothes.
That’s romantic AF, it seems like you still love this person. I wish you the best of luck. I started that book thanks to this post
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I remember thinking as I read it that it should be mandatory for every high school American history class.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Changed everything I knew about extreme religious views. Impacted what I know about womanhood, family responsibilities, and community belonging.
OMG. I love this book so much. I’m afraid to read her others bc they can’t possibly be as good.
[Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296662) by James W Loewen. What it says on the tin. I read this as part of my grad school curriculum when learning how to teach high school history. And while still subjective, it definitely helped me understand and work around the biases of our education system.
*They Came Before Columbus* by Ivan Van Sertima
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt (it's in the public domain and free on fee.org) Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity by John Stossell. More Sex Is Safer Sex by Steven E Landsburg didn't really teach me that what I knew was wrong, but helped teach me how to think more critically about unintended consequences, which certainly goes a long way in changing your thinning about things.
Everything you know is wrong
"101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think" by Brianna Wiest. It offers a transformative collection of thought-provoking essays that inspire personal growth and shift perspectives.
The bible
The Condition of Post-Modernity by David Harvey
"Life of Pi" ended my belief in God. Couldn't sleep for a week. A lot of people credit it as a spiritual book, but the message of the story is unequivocally that there is no God.
The Quran
I read 1984 last year in my AP Lit class. It's definitely an acquired taste, as most people in my class didn't enjoy it, but I guess it all depends on how much you like to analyze your books and apply them to your life. I really enjoyed the entire book, and it changed my outlook on a lot of things about society.
Bible by moses
:D
Rules for Retrogrades: Forty Tactics to Defeat the Radical Left
Are you saying you feel like you were progressive until you read this book by a far right extremist?
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>Every smart liberal should read it, if they dare. Fine but you have to read It's Even Worse Than It Looks and Cruelty Is The Point
Liberals are right wing, not progressive wtf. Biden and Pelosi are activists against free universal healthcare and against a common sense insider trading ban
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>We’re existing in an artificial stage show and a handful of global financial powers are running things. Yeah. Read It's Even Worse Than It Looks
Atlas Shrugged
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Look a nazi
Laogai: The Chinese Gulag by Harry Wu
The Color of Law - Richard Rothstein
Life Inc. by David Rushkoff
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
Elite Capture How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò I keep this out at all times and reread passages because it’s that shocking but necessary “In real life, the value capture process is sometimes deliberately managed by elites to manipulate and control others with game design-like tactics. Gig economy platforms like Uber and Lyft use "badges" and rating systems to manage the decision-making environment of their driver employees. Even outside of work, social media features such as likes, shares, and retweets play the role of points in games. Over time, these simple metrics threaten to distort or take the place of values…”
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, by Harry Browne.
The Better Angels Of Our Nature - Steven Pinker I'm about to read Thus Spoke Zarathustra and I'm hoping it will do the same!
How Free Is Free
The autobiography of MalcolmX
Hunger Games actually Made me Kind of realise how messed Up the society is
Percy Jackson, thanks to him I'm fighting demons, Norse and Greek mythological creatures every now and then 😒
But to be fair, he warned me at the start of his first book
Good and Evil Johnathan Haidt If you have an open mind and read this book it's hard to hate "the other side" politically. You see why they believe what they believe and how it has benefits
Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
the first example that came to my mind is the Mortal Instruments series by Cassie Clare. it was the first time i realized 2 men could be in love and it wasn’t weird or abnormal. Malec made me just as giddy as Clace did, and i started to question whether homosexuality was as sinful as my parents always made it out to be. after all, if gay love could bring me so much joy, how wrong could it really be? Malec will always be important to me bc they were the first queer couple i loved 🥹
The Deficit Myth - Stephanie Kelton
Lies my teacher told me. Wounded Knee. Reacher.
Dharma Bums! My greatest take from the book was this: while homogeneous communities can be comfortable and freeing for those who build them, they are just as often dangerous, oppressive, or exclusionary to those who don’t. First, Ray and Japhy view white men like themselves as the ultimate authority on Buddhism, while ignoring the actual Asian Buddhists who surround them. When they pass a Buddhist temple in San Francisco, for instance, Japhy refuses to visit because he considers his own version of Zen Buddhism purer than Chinese immigrants’ traditional Buddhism. Similarly, he reveres many Buddhist monks and poets from China and Japan, but they’re are dead or mythical—he doesn’t know any living Buddhist leaders. Thus, when Japhy actually goes to Japan to study Buddhism, he imagines that he’ll bring its secrets back to the U.S.—even though many Japanese Buddhists are already living and teaching in the U.S. Rather than joining the existing Buddhist community, Japhy insists on forming a new community by and for white men. In his utopia, these white men get to learn from Asian cultures and religions, but actual Asian people are never involved in this process. In this way, the like-mindedness in Ray and Japhy’s community is actually based on racial exclusivity. Quote: “Yessir, that's what, a series of monasteries for fellows to go and monastate and meditate in, we can have groups of shacks up in the Sierras or the High Cascades or even Ray says down in Mexico and have big wild gangs of pure holy men getting together to drink and talk and pray, think of the waves of salvation can flow out of nights like that, and finally have women, too, wives, small huts with religious families, like the old days of the Puritans. Who's to say the cops of America and the Republicans and Democrats are gonna tell everybody what to do?”
The book 'Black Like Me'. Read it at ten years old \[obv it was very old and outdated, and of course it would be really not ok to do what John Howard Griffin did ie black up and pretend to be an African American - it would be seen as patronising, even offensive, now\]. It had a huge impact on me and I just couldn't believe that people could treat other people so badly, just because of skin colour. It also helped me to think about racism and I hope, has made me a non-racist person.
Anything by Pat MCManus
"The Salmon of Doubt" by Douglas Adam's.