The Other

March 1, 2022

In The Mamas, Andrews-Dyer--a senior culture writer at the Washington Post and author of Bitch Is the New Black --relates her experiences as a Black mother in a predominantly white mommy group and asks whether Black and white mothers can truly be not just mom mates but real friends. Productivity expert Forte explains that as we deal with all the information swamping us, we can think, work, and live better by Building a Second Brain (75,000-copy first printing). Journalist Mariani draws on personal experience with chronic fatigue syndrome to show how people deal with life disruptions by creating new identities in What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us. Author of the New York Times best-selling The Impossible First and a multi-record-holding explorer, O'Brady explains how to push beyond self-imposed limits and become a better you in The 12-Hour Walk (125,000-copy first printing). Well connected in both English- and Spanish-language media, MSNBC reporter forMorning Joe Pierre-Bravo can identify with feeling like The Other in business meetings, and she gives women of color and children of immigrants advice on overcoming that head-down feeling (50,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2022
An undocumented Chilean immigrant uses her personal experiences to advise other marginalized young professionals about their careers. Pierre-Bravo, a reporter for MSNBC's Morning Joe and contributor and producer to NBC's Know Your Value platform, begins with her childhood, which she and her family spent in "survival mode," trying to eke out a living while avoiding deportation. Due to this situation, she was not only constantly working; she lived in constant fear. In one particularly poignant example, she remembers hitting a parked car while working as a delivery person for Mary Kay, a job she took on to help defray the costs of college. Although she desperately needed her summer wages--as an undocumented student, she was ineligible for scholarships or loans--she spent most of her money paying the owner of the damaged car in cash so she could avoid a confrontation with law enforcement, which might have forced her to reveal her immigration status. After this level of childhood trauma, Pierre-Bravo says it took years to stop making decisions from a place of fear. Following these revelations, the author encourages young people to learn from her past hesitancy by rejecting survival mode, setting boundaries, taking risks, embracing vulnerability, and asking directly for things like promotions and raises, among other strategies. The author's conversational tone and hard-won experience lend her voice a compassion and clarity that readers will find both useful and comforting, and her advice is practical and well reasoned. "It's time for you to stop waiting for anyone's permission," she writes. At times, though, Pierre-Bravo's insistence on self-advocacy feels disconnected from the real structural barriers faced by women of color and other minority communities. This leads to analysis that is sometimes overly simplistic and puts an unfair amount of pressure on individuals to single-handedly overturn centuries of oppression. An inspirational professional guidebook for women of color that occasionally misses the bigger picture.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.