In this captivating and radical look at "work-life balance," Lara Bazelon reframes our understanding of working women-and shows how prioritizing your career benefits mothers, kids, and society at large.
In this singular cultural moment, mothers have unparalleled opportunities to succeed at work while continuing to face the same societal impediments that held back our mothers and grandmothers. We still encounter entrenched gender bias in the workplace and are expected to shoulder the lion's share of labor and burdens at home while being made to feel as if we're never doing enough. All the while we're told that the perfect work-life balance is possible, if only we try hard enough to achieve it.
It's time to change the conversation-about work, life, and "balance." Work and life are inextricably, intimately intertwined. We need to celebrate what we do give our children-even and especially in moments of imbalance-rather than apologizing for what we don't. In this way, we can model for our children how we use our talents to help others and raise awareness about the issues closest to our hearts. We can embrace the personal fulfillment and financial independence that pursuing meaningful work can bring as a way of showing our children how to live happy, purpose-driven lives. Bazelon argues not only that we can but that we should. Being ambitious at work and being a good mother to our children are not at odds-these qualities mutually reinforce each other.
Backed up by research and filled with personal stories from Bazelon's life, as well as that of her mother and the many other women she interviewed across the cultural and financial spectrum, Ambitious Like a Mother is an anthem, a beacon for all to recognize and celebrate the pioneering women who reject the false idols of the Selfless Mother and Work-Life Balance, and a call to embrace your own ambitions and model your multiplicities for your children.
A powerful argument for adopting a model of restorative justice in wrongful conviction cases as part of legislative efforts towards criminal justice reform and community healing
At the age of seventeen, Thomas Haynesworth was arrested on multiple rape charges in Virginia. Despite his pleas of innocence, five rape victims, including 20 year-old Janet Burke, ID'ed him as the offender. Only after over two decades of legal wrangling was he exonerated by DNA evidence. Conventional wisdom points to an exoneration as a happy ending to tragic tales of injustice like Haynesworth's. However, even when the physical shackles are left behind, invisible ones can be profoundly more difficult to unlock.
In Rectify, former innocence project director and journalist Lara Bazelon takes stock of the massive damage inflicted by wrongful convictions. Despite a record 375 exonerations in the last three years, Bazelon argues that the criminal justice system has not done enough to rectify the devastation left in their wake--the suffering experienced by not only the exoneree, but their families, the crime victims who mistakenly identified them as perpetrators, the jurors who convicted them, and the prosecutors who realized too late that they helped convict an innocent person.
In the midst of her frustration over the blatant limitations of courts and advocates, Bazelon's hope is renewed by the fledgling but growing movement to apply the centuries-old practice of restorative justice to wrongful conviction cases. Using the stories of Thomas Haynesworth, Janet Burke, and other crime victims and exonerees, she demonstrates how the transformative experience of connecting isolated individuals around mutual trauma and a shared purpose of repairing harm unites unlikely allies in the common cause of just reparations. Poignantly written and vigorously researched, Bazelon takes to task the far-reaching failures of our criminal justice system, and offers a window into a future where the power it yields can be used in pursuit of healing and unity rather than punishment and blame.
