A review by wrighkl1
The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison

1.0

The author throughout the book tries to empathize with pain that other around her experience. Through her empathy, she also wants to experience the attention associated with their experience to fully embrace and understand. While it’s commendable to want to develop this full understanding to be empathetic, it comes across as self-aggrandizing. The author frequently takes someone else’s experience to show that she too has suffered, but her suffering does not translate into the way she is trying with comparisons of cancer to a scraped knee. This book seems very much attached to a privileged, white female experience and perspective of empathy, that as a white female, I’m sure I cannot relate. I really wanted to enjoy this book, but it was difficult because I might have expected too much from the author. The way she mentions attending Harvard almost flippantly, but as if you should notice and be impressed is too egotistical. As well as her constant need to center someone else’s pain in reference to her own. Sometimes, it’s okay to just acknowledge another’s trials without bringing yourself into it. Overall, the book seems narcissistic and self-serving rather than enlarging the scope of empathy.