Attic Book Club Discusses Bright-Sided

Following Howl's Moving Castle and continuing our theme of alternating between a lighter, more uplifting read and something somewhat more "serious" or tragic, July's book is Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, by Barbara Ehrenreich.

SUMMARY: In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to "prosper" you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of "positive psychology" and the "science of happiness." Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis.

With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

(Goodreads link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452749-bright-sided )

Attic Reads is intended to be a fairly relaxed chance to discuss books through a feminist lens, featuring a mix of newer works of fiction and non-fiction and parts of older feminist "canon" as well as some lighter YA featuring female characters and authors.

One room in the space will be reserved for quiet reading and we will be discussing Bright-Sided in the other room.