33. In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America - Alice Kessler-Harris

The conception of law makers' (influenced by the overall societal attitude) views on gender roles in families affect how they distribute taxes for men and women who work, and also the development of social security. It is interesting to see how societal attitudes affect the rights of workers. [preconceptions that have shaped the experience of women]
The author shows the development of social policy from the New Deal to the 1970s, showing the deeply embedded set of beliefs that had distorted seemingly neutral social legislation to further limit freedom and equality of women. "Government rules generally sought to protect women from exploitation, even from employment itself; but at the same time, they attached the most important benefits to wage work. To be a real citizen, one must earn--and most policymakers (even female ones) assumed from the beginning that women were not, and should not be, breadwinners. Kessler-Harris traces the impact of this gender bias in the New Deal programs of Social Security, unemployment insurance, and fair labor standards, in Federal income tax policy, and the new discussion of women's rights that emerged after World War II."
-a lack of individual economic freedom for women and old assumptions up till the 1960s and '70s (but the break-down process is not complete yet)

P: I chose to read this book because of its title and even though it is quite a boring read for me as I am not knowledgeable in either US history, economics, or legislation, I found myself just reading over the names of policy makers and policies. The only part I could understand was the gender roles and their concerns about how wage-earning relate to the providence for families. I guess I was expecting more discussion about the actual settings in families and stories of real people in workforces rather than the process the policymakers went through.

1-9 October, 2017
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001

29. A Burnt-Out Case - Graham Greene

Querry is the protagonist in this novel. The story opens with him on a boat with a captain and a priest heading down the West Africa river to a leprosie, where Doctor Colin, an atheist among the Catholic priests treats the lepers. As the story moves along, we hear about Querry's reason for wanting to be down at the end of the river, where there is no more road to go, surrounded by lepers as he wanted to distract himself from the life he had gotten tired of. He needed a cure and this was where he sought a world where no one knew him. The outside world, however, did eventually find him in the form of journalist Parkinson, informed by plantation owner Rycker, whom we found at towards the end of the story needed a sense of significance. Querry had been a successful architect of Catholic churches and a former devout Catholic who believed in God and tried to know love in his own way until he could not live with his inability to make himself believe in the love that he did not know of and was trying to act out. He despised his fame and success and wanted to get away from himself--the life he has believed for himself or who he thinks he is. Marie Rycker, the young wife of Rycker did not enjoy her life in Africa and the non-existent love her husband gave her. At last, she latched on Querry for an escape and put him into a scandal as that was the only way she knew of to escape.

They all needed to be saved from their hearts and the lies they have been believing about themselves, manifested in different ways and made worse as time went on and they did not know how to get out of it. The result was self-destruction or others-destruction in a way that they could not control, as if swimming towards the end of the river without being able to return.

Greene's metaphors for describing things are so clever and the imageries so sharp and penetrating. The way he writes and switches between narration and different persons in conversations is so naturally clear as to who is speaking without having to put name: ".... ".
The way he describes the human condition, the condition of human hearts through these characters is really his form of art and what I love about stories. It will take a second read for me to appreciate the depth and layers he has crafted into each character, as well as the overall metaphor of a "burnt-out-case", as opposed to still being infectious, as first mentioned and explained on p.105 by Colin: "Perhaps Querry is also a patient, ....a burnt-out case," Anyway, it is ambiguous as to whether Querry is actually a burnt-out case or if he actually exudes more faith in his acts.

1-20 Sep 2017
New York: Viking Press, 1960