Book Review: Family Abolition

Image: The cover of the book is a gradient of pink at the top fading down into purple and then blue at the bottom. In large letters stretching the entire page, dark over the lighter parts of the background and light over day, is "family abolition - capitalism and the communizing of care" and at the bottom, "M.E. O'Brien"

Anyone who has followed my reviews likely knows by now that I have mixed feelings about academic texts, especially queer theory and the like. I often find them to be deliberately inaccessible, often discussing communities with the least access to the kind of vocabulary one needs to understand a single sentence. Sometimes a book comes along that straddles the line between academia and accessibility quite well. I found Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care by M. E. O'Brien to be one such text. The book will be rewarding to academics or others who frequently immerse themselves in nonfiction reading while also being readable both stylistically and regarding vocabulary. Someone unfamiliar might need to google here and there, but overall, the book emphasizes the arguments therein rather than the biggest most obscure words that can be used to make those arguments. This book challenged the way I thought about some things, validated others in ways I did not realize I needed, and offers a great deal of imaginative praxis in terms of reaching the goals set out by the author. The book is also very well organized.

This review is years after the publication date because this book and I got off to a rough start. My attempts at the PDF ARC version (I usually get hard copies or ebooks) made reading too impossible and I abandoned it for a while. I am glad I was able to return to it in another format later as it is one of the better and more original nonfiction texts that I have read.

I am actually quite estranged from most of my blood relatives, though that is something I am working on changing at the moment. Still, I did have a slight knee jerk reaction to this subject that many people may have. The Family is something woven deeply across cultures and holds great power almost everywhere in its own way. One may think of abolishing such a structure as to mean taking away the very foundation many need to survive and have relationships. O'Brien acknowledges this inevitable reaction early on. She then effectively argues that abolishing the family does not involve taking away safety, security, cooperation, nurturing, etc, but rather adding them (or creating them for the first time in some situations.) O'Brien exemplifies this through an excellent and well researched history of the intersection and interplay between the Family and Capitalism as well as other forms of oppression. 

Aside from teaching me many things I did not know about this history, one thing that stood out to me most in this book was the criticism of communities. I have always sort of blamed solely myself for my isolation, yet O'Brien discusses the phenomenon of older organizers/activists/counterculture community members etc becoming isolated through age, disability, etc as a very common problem. I still believe I could have done a much better job working on relationships in my past, but it was interesting to read that there is more to it. The argument is essentially that communities fail because capitalism causes them to and the family helps capitalism in this task. When community always ends up secondary to the family, even for those without one, communities will fall apart socially, financially, distance wise, or any other number of ways. Without fighting capitalism and other oppressions including the family, things disintegrate and fall apart. Using (antiauthoritarian) Marxist and other arguments- including also criticism of Marx and others' oppressive flaws and prejudices- the author discusses how the focus needs to be on the commune rather than the community.

O'Brien offers extensive descriptions of what the commune is, why it is important, what it and its components look like, and how they could be implemented. To tackle a rehashing of said arguments would make this review far too long. I can say that I was already on board with some things and became convinced about the others that I had not been aware of yet. I hate to admit it as an anarchist, but I am terribly misanthropic and pessimistic at times. I have a difficult time believing in utopias where everyone cooperates that do not- at best- fall apart. O'Brien's discussion of both the failure of community and an all-inclusive commune, ripe with strategies for  tackling harm and conflict, felt much more realistic to me than many things I have read. I might have found a disagreement here and there, but they were far fewer than other such proposals. 

It is clear that O'Brien created a very complex but believable whole with this book. She covers the past, present, and future in honest and accurate ways. I won't pretend that I cease to be pessimistic, as that is generally my baseline. But, this book made many things I think about and desire actually seem possible. All of this is to say that Family Abolition isn't just about critiquing and dismantling "The Family." It is about creating something better and more enriching it its place- something critical texts often fail to do properly. While critiques alone definitely have their place, this one won't leave you thinking, "Well, then what? Now what?" when you reach the end. It did not surprise me to find an optimistic speculative fiction about a future commune in her repertoire when I looked into the author. Needless to say, I look forward to giving that a read as well, hoping that O'Brien is one of the few whose academic writing skills are not at odds with her fiction ones.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: The Gull Guide

image: the cover of the book is a grey, white, and black bird in flight with a blurred blue sky in the background. Across the top in white letters is "the gull guide: North America," and in the bottom left corner is the author "amar ayyash."

Even master birders with decades of experience will often concede that they struggle with identification of gulls. These birds are so diverse yet so similar, have so many different phases where they look drastically different, yet very similar to one another in similar cycles, and sometimes telling them apart is a matter of the edge of a single feather or something equally ridiculous. As a result I was excited to get my hands on a copy of Amar Ayyash's The Gull Guide: North America.

I myself am not a master birder. While I am not a complete amateur since I have some years of experience under my belt, I only very recently started venturing out into interactions with other people who can teach me new things outside of my own reading and studying. As a result a guide like this is exceptionally valuable. The reason this book works so well, in my opinion, is that it does not fall into the trap that some guides do and trying to simplify something complicated. The author discusses this in how some people do not want to teach the different feathers and parts of the bird so as not to confuse someone new. However, with gulls as well as some other species, being able to tell these minute differences apart is critical. Ayyash also critiques the "x winter" labeling style since it's inaccurate given the differences in molt and breeding months between species and instead uses a far more accurate "x cycle" labeling structure. 

The information as well as the many charts and labels are indeed somewhat intimidating, but I found myself completely engaged. I was not intimidated in the way one can feel like they're drowning in information that's impossible to parse. There are copious amounts of photos showing each bit of information from a different angle. All of the photos have clear descriptions that help to learn things by sight quite well. Each section on an individual species has tons of photos and many different ways of identifying and thinking about the birds. There is even a section on aberrant birds such as leucistic and melanistic gulls. 

Ayyash also offers general birding tips on when to step back and when to hyper focus. He gives examples of confusing identifications that were made in error. The only criticism I have of the book's structure is that the multitude of images in an average sized book means that it's tough to see some of the details in smaller images. But, I'm not sure this could have been created any other way because making the images large would make the book so massive and heavy as to be unusable. I'd rather have this structure than fewer images.

Approaching the material this way not only helps one see the whole bird and learn more, it gives the reader multiple ways to focus on the birds. What I mean by this is that people learn and perceive things in different ways with different traits dominating their minds. This gives enough information on each identification type to be used by each person. Because it is full of photos and the print is high quality, it is a heavier guide. Sort of like a medium-sized Bible. So, to use in the field, I imagine this guide would be better for something like a stationary birding session. However, as someone who uses both apps in the field and print guides at home, don't let this deter you. There's something about book guides in hand that aid identification in ways that are different than those on electronics, including the wonderful pages available on Cornell's website. I can't even describe what this is, I just know that there are many times that I've been stumped only to open a book that makes everything clear to me. This book is indispensable as one of those on my shelf. None of my other guides, of which I have many, managed to make it possible to more confidently identify gulls. 

I still have a lot of practicing to do. Recently a group of ring-billed gulls in multiple cycles stood in a nice little line for me. Thanks to this guide, I was able to pick out the features and cycles of each which was a great exercise with an abundant species I'm somewhat familiar with. The next time a rare bird alert goes out for a gull, I'll be much more confident in my ability to find that needle in a haystack. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.