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kylieqrada's review
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
I read this in a day. Not what i was expecting, but absolutely stunning. This is more like a memoir interspersed with the author's personal philosophy of mothering as change-making. I was blown away and inspired by Angela's deeply vulnerable exploration of her experiences as a child and mother.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Body shaming, and Racism
Moderate: Fatphobia, Sexual content, and Xenophobia
Minor: Mental illness, Rape, and Medical trauma
deedireads's review against another edition
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.5
Essential Labor has been on my TBR for awhile, and when I was in the mood for a nonfiction audiobook recently I decided to download it. It’s pretty short, and while I didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong with it, I did feel like it stayed a bit more surface-level than I expected.
Angela Garbes is a Filipino-American writer and mother, and the pandemic’s focus on “essential labor,” combined with the acute challenges parents faced, inspired her to write this book. I thought the first half was the strongest; it was rooted much more in Garbes’ personal experiences and felt like a good combination of memoir and social justice writing. The second half reads more like individual lessons about different areas of social justice, and while there is a slight lens of relating these things back to motherhood, she stays very high-level.
I didn’t hate this, but I had expected a lot more out of it. She could have written a whole book on any one of those latter chapters and held my attention better — there is so much more to analyze and consider. I would recommend this to someone who feels like they’re just getting started with social advocacy or maybe wants a birds-eye view of how modern-day social issues intersect with parenting — but if you feel pretty well versed, maybe not.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Xenophobia, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Ableism, Body shaming, and Fatphobia
Minor: Sexual content
bootsmom3's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Body shaming, Death, Fatphobia, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Religious bigotry, Abortion, Pregnancy, and Colonisation
khymihr's review against another edition
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism, Body shaming, and Xenophobia
eslsilver's review
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Ableism, Rape, and Medical trauma