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14+ oeuvres 404 utilisateurs 67 critiques

A propos de l'auteur

Eileen Pollack is the author of the novels A Perfect Life, Breaking and Entering (a New York Times Editor's Choice selection), and Paradise, New York, as well as two collections of short fiction and an award-winning book of nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays and Ben American afficher plus Short Stories. She is a professor on the faculty of the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. afficher moins

Comprend les noms: Eileen Pollack, Eileen Polllack

Œuvres de Eileen Pollack

Oeuvres associées

The Best American Short Stories 2007 (2007) — Contributeur — 826 exemplaires

Étiqueté

Partage des connaissances

Nom canonique
Pollack, Eileen
Nom légal
Pollack, Eileen
Date de naissance
1956
Sexe
female
Nationalité
USA
Lieux de résidence
Michigan, USA
Études
Yale University

Membres

Critiques

The description for this book is a bit misleading. The first half is Pollack's memoir of her own experiences as a student from childhood in public school in a predominantly Jewish area through college at Yale as one of the few female physics majors. The second half of the book is more in line with what I had been expecting given the description, and includes anecdata from other women who Pollack had known or interviewed from her own generation and the later generation of female science majors and scientists, as well as recaps of interviews with her former professors and teachers who we had met in the first half of the book.

This is a deeply personal story for Pollack, but at the same time it is also deeply personal for every girl who thought she wasn't smart enough, or every woman who decided to drop out of a science major, or every student who didn't even try for a science degree in the first place. This book was deeply personal for me.

Pollack's experiences are not every woman's or minority's experiences, but they are similar enough that many can relate. One of my criticisms of this book is Pollack's weakness in connecting women's experiences with the similar experiences of minorities and economically disadvantaged students. She does mention that several times, but it is definitely a message that can be strengthened. Towards the end of the book, Pollack noted that some students, even if they enter into college at the top of their high school graduating class, find themselves floundering and behind other students because they were not privileged enough for their schools to offer certain courses. I wish Pollack had highlighted that more because it's a problem that systemically places students from under-served, poorer schools at a disadvantage in college.

I write this review the day after a 14-year-old Muslim boy with brown skin was detained by his school and arrested for bringing in a homemade clock to show off to his science teacher, which another teacher reported as a bomb. That is an extreme case of the educational culture discouraging a minority from entering a STEM field, but it highlights the challenges that some students face by virtue of their sex or ethnicity.

Pollack's story is an important one, and both its strength and weakness is its reliance on anecdotes (what I referred to as "anecdata" earlier) from her own experiences and gleaned from interviews or missives with other women or minorities. She does mention the results of a few studies of bias against women in STEM, but the bulk of the book are anecdata rather than empirical controlled studies. The anecdata bring the problems to life in a way that pure numbers don't, yet at the same time anecdotes are easy for those in the sciences to discount because they are not data (hence why I have been referring to them as "anecdata"; because, well, it can be argued that the plural for anecdote is data).

Given the larger conversation that has been on-going for the past few years of women in the sciences, and the blatant misogyny that I keep running up against from big names (Google "Richard Dawkins women"), The Only Woman in the Room is an important book, and very timely. Remember in June when Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine Tim Hunt said at a science conference in South Korea, "Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry"? Or last November when European Space Agency Rosetta Project scientist Matt Taylor gave public interviews after the Philae space probe landed on a comet while wearing a shirt covered in nearly naked women? It is heartening, I guess, that all of these incidents have lead to huge public outcries and public apologies (in the case of Taylor) or firings (in the case of Hunt). A decade or two earlier, they would have been the status quo.

I hope that Pollack's book inspires change in STEM education at all levels, and I hope that it also inspires women to pursue STEM educations and careers.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
wisemetis | 47 autres critiques | Jul 21, 2023 |
Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.
This is a delightful collection of essays. They spoke to the heart of the matter and were honest and emotional in their approach. It was also an enlightening experience to step into the author's shoes and live out her true life experiences.

I really highly recommend this book.
 
Signalé
dwcofer | 9 autres critiques | Nov 12, 2022 |
Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.
This is a very nice essay collection from an author who in many ways was well before her time. Pollack was one of the first women to graduate from Yale, and with a BS in physics no less, which is very much a male-dominated field. She's also Jewish, which was common in her part of upstate New York but very much an anomaly in many of the other places she's lived. These essays are largely biographical, and they paint some interesting portraits of what it's like to be a woman in a man's world, and to reflect on her long and storied career. Would recommend.… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
Shadow123 | 9 autres critiques | Oct 25, 2022 |
Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.
In this collection of essays, the author exhibits three modes: being preachy, self-pity, and navel-gazing. Not being particularly interested in any of these, I found very little to appreciate about this collection of essays, well-written though they were.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.
 
Signalé
mzonderm | 9 autres critiques | Oct 4, 2022 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
14
Aussi par
2
Membres
404
Popularité
#60,140
Évaluation
½ 3.6
Critiques
67
ISBN
38

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