BOOK REVIEW
Read First, Talk Later — the Story of my Life
3 books I recommend — so far — for anyone else trying to self-educate around the topic of #BlackLivesMatter
Here are the occasions when I’ve been actively criticised for trying to bury my head in a book instead of interacting with the world around me: at family breakfasts as a child; at big family birthday parties, also as a child; on work experience as a teenager, waiting for my chronically workshy supervisor to make his inevitable 11am appearance, and having nothing else to do (still fume at the injustice of that one); whilst allowing my baby to eat finger foods in her highchair, with half an ear cocked for choking sounds; and many times on a bench, at the park, while my small children played on the climbing frame and swings.
Leaving aside my own feelings on how fair or unfair these criticisms were (actually, no, I will rant briefly on this — I see plenty of mothers these days scrolling through their phones whilst feeding their babies or sitting at the park, and I see zero difference in our behaviour other than the fact that I was probably reading something more interesting than a Facebook weird trick to melt away belly fat, so yeah I wish I’d known we’d all be ignoring our kids at some point and stood up for myself more…
