Book Review: Turn This World Inside Out - The Emergence of Nurturance Culture

Image: The cover of the book depicts the outline of two people hand in hand viewed from the shoulder down to the wrist and into the centers of their bodies. They are depicted using a light skinned tone. Behind them and weaving through their arms is a watercolor style depiction of blue-green ivy over a background of light earth tones. The top half of the book has "Turn This World Inside Out" in orange, painted cursive letters. Below that in a slightly darker red orange is "The emergence of nurturance culture." Across the bottom in orange is the author's name in painted, capitalized letters.

Turn This World Inside Out by Nora Samaran is a quick read that expands upon Samaran's widely read essay: The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture. The book's expansion on the topic is carried largely by Samaran's interviews with others. I am guessing, though I did not count the pages, that more of this book is interviews that Samaran did with various people than it is her own personal writing. I believe this was a smart move by Samaran. It is always a smart move to consult a wide range of people for a topic, but with this book in particular, I found Samaran's personal writings to be limited quite heavily by her personal experience. I assume she is a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman. If I am incorrect in assuming that identity, it is because her personal writings center this kind of experience.

That is not to say that there is nothing to be gained from the chapters written only by Samaran. There is great information about attachment theory, the importance in addressing conflict in nuanced ways, the seriousness of gaslighting as an abusive behavior, how to make a good apology and accept responsibility, and others. Samaran is also very good at holding onto others' humanity in her analyses. She expresses information in a gentle and accessible way often lacking in discussions of topics within this book. The book is well written, efficiently organized, and contains a ton of important information in a very small space.

Where Samaran falls short is in including a more intersectional approach in terms of her writing. The way she discusses attachment styles is as if all (cis) men without a secure attachment are avoidant and all (cis) women without one are anxious. This is not true as studies show that expressions of attachment styles are similar across genders (though they affect genders differently.) All interactions and relationships seem to center a heterosexual framework as well. She does throw in a "masculine people" in place of the word "men" and "women and femmes" in place of "women" here and there in what I assume is an attempt to be more inclusive. However, she lacks understanding of how masculinities function outside cis heterosexual white men and seems to misunderstand the definitions of and the problems with the phrase "women and femmes." It shows in some of her writing.

The inclusion of interviews by trans women and/or women of color such as Serena Bhandar, Ruby Smith Diaz, Aravinda Anada, and others do well to combat this lack of insight. This is what separates Samaran's book from other white hetero cis women's literature that is lacking in these areas. Those books also often have something important to offer in terms of the author's personal experiences and so on. The problem with this book lies in the fact that the interviews seem to have been done after the rest of the book was written and thus, the learning gained from the interviews is not implemented in her own essays. The ordering of things is often, essay-interview-essay-interview, but when we get to the essays, the information within reverts back to the same singular perspective.

Another issue I had with Samaran's personal essays was how she tackled the topic of gaslighting using her own experiences. The beginning of the chapter, which discusses how severe the effects of gaslighting can be, is a great start. The end of the chapter, which exemplifies the harmful and extreme ways gaslighting exists in community and abuse dynamics is an excellent end. But, in the center, Samaran waters down the definition of gaslighting, basically using it to mean, "this person disagreed with me and said it in a mean way." This is specifically evident in her second example in which a male friend disagreed with her about seeing rent signs in her neighborhood and she labeled this gaslighting because he said it "like she was an idiot." It is misuses like these of the term that make its existence taken less seriously and hides the fact that we all experience the world in different ways. There is a reason that eye-witness testimonies are extremely flawed. Later in the book, Samaran details some of the abuse her family endured with her father and I am not sure why she didn't draw on that for her examples of gaslighting. Every misunderstanding, expression of false information- especially out of ignorance- or irritated response is not abuse. It can be problematic behavior or a stressful conflict that absolutely needs to be addressed without being treated as abuse.

Because of these limitations, analyses that should have been included such as conflicts within same gender romantic and other relationships, white woman tears that are used to silence people of color, the complex nature of trans peoples experiences with gender vs how they are read in the world, the complexities of different masculinities when they co-occur with other marginalized identities, the existence of masculine women and feminine men, the experiences of sick and/or disabled people with, and so on. Luckily, the interviews do address many of these things beautifully which is why I still consider this to be a worthwhile read. In conclusion, my recommendation is to approach this book as a great collection of interviews interspersed with the author talking about her own experiences.

This was also posted to my goodreads.