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A review by daniel_b_martin
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown
3.0
This book is an interesting exploration into the mechanisms of shame and vulnerability.
Most of the praise I would give to Brown it is in its ability as a pep talk to step into vulnerable situations and find more fulfillment in life from doing so. Personally it has helped to make my romantic relationship much better by engaging in vulnerability with my partner and engaging in conversations about things instead of sweeping problems and issues under a rug in hopes that they will disappear from being out of sight out of mind. Before you find my review too scathing know that I recommend it and would recommend it to others as a series of thought exercises and perspective approaches toward conflict alleviation and dealing with life traumas in a progressive manner.
However, my three star rating is mainly due to some philosophical problems which arise, and which I think Brown tries to resolve without actually resolving them. She pulls a great deal from her research participants and her own life, however, throughout the work that becomes a distraction from some of the aspects of paradoxes of shame which I am not sure she is aware exist within the textual development of the book. In that, there is an innate shame invoked for those who do not dare greatly, or those who inflict shame and participate in a shame culture. While she does make an effort to attend to this in the later segments of the book, ultimately she has not convinced me that guilt and shame are all that far apart and that in certain sections she seems to absolve herself from essentially shaming people for feeling or inflicting shame. This paradox is not invented by Brown, but unfortunately this text does not fully resolve these issues either.
If it were written by a layman I would perhaps be more forgiving. There are also some instances in this book in which I appreciate her admissions that she is not perfect, but that isn't exactly an excuse for not following the research or the argument to its due end, or even admitting that some things are simply unresolvable and we can only do out best. There is a partial remedy in the final anecdote about her daughter swimming the 100m breast stroke and how you need just show up, but she doesn't really fully wrap that back into some of the overall themes of this journey as sufficiently as I, a rather picky reader, would have liked to have seen and instead falls back on it being 'personal experiences' while at the same time attempting to pretend that there is some form of blanket universal subjectivity which can easily all be solved if we just take off our armor, engage in vulnerability and chose to focus on strengths rather than weaknesses while not inflicting shame on ourselves or others for shortcomings.
One last point is something that is not a unique criticism to this author, and I might take some heat from it, which is okay if you want to disagree with me but its a matter of personal preference. Though the history of literature has assumed a male audience, flipping the dichotomy of oppression is hardly an actual lasting remedy. I think that speaking of humans in the general sense as 'they' is more engaging than is writing in the 'traditional' "he" or passive aggressively replacing it with "she". If we want to live in a fair world then we should drop these kinds of practices and just write for all humans. Unless the point isn't to make progress but to pretend to while taking little jabs, though this has been the result of some liberal endeavors with good intentions but which, like this book are not thought out fully to the end of their own road.
Most of the praise I would give to Brown it is in its ability as a pep talk to step into vulnerable situations and find more fulfillment in life from doing so. Personally it has helped to make my romantic relationship much better by engaging in vulnerability with my partner and engaging in conversations about things instead of sweeping problems and issues under a rug in hopes that they will disappear from being out of sight out of mind. Before you find my review too scathing know that I recommend it and would recommend it to others as a series of thought exercises and perspective approaches toward conflict alleviation and dealing with life traumas in a progressive manner.
However, my three star rating is mainly due to some philosophical problems which arise, and which I think Brown tries to resolve without actually resolving them. She pulls a great deal from her research participants and her own life, however, throughout the work that becomes a distraction from some of the aspects of paradoxes of shame which I am not sure she is aware exist within the textual development of the book. In that, there is an innate shame invoked for those who do not dare greatly, or those who inflict shame and participate in a shame culture. While she does make an effort to attend to this in the later segments of the book, ultimately she has not convinced me that guilt and shame are all that far apart and that in certain sections she seems to absolve herself from essentially shaming people for feeling or inflicting shame. This paradox is not invented by Brown, but unfortunately this text does not fully resolve these issues either.
If it were written by a layman I would perhaps be more forgiving. There are also some instances in this book in which I appreciate her admissions that she is not perfect, but that isn't exactly an excuse for not following the research or the argument to its due end, or even admitting that some things are simply unresolvable and we can only do out best. There is a partial remedy in the final anecdote about her daughter swimming the 100m breast stroke and how you need just show up, but she doesn't really fully wrap that back into some of the overall themes of this journey as sufficiently as I, a rather picky reader, would have liked to have seen and instead falls back on it being 'personal experiences' while at the same time attempting to pretend that there is some form of blanket universal subjectivity which can easily all be solved if we just take off our armor, engage in vulnerability and chose to focus on strengths rather than weaknesses while not inflicting shame on ourselves or others for shortcomings.
One last point is something that is not a unique criticism to this author, and I might take some heat from it, which is okay if you want to disagree with me but its a matter of personal preference. Though the history of literature has assumed a male audience, flipping the dichotomy of oppression is hardly an actual lasting remedy. I think that speaking of humans in the general sense as 'they' is more engaging than is writing in the 'traditional' "he" or passive aggressively replacing it with "she". If we want to live in a fair world then we should drop these kinds of practices and just write for all humans. Unless the point isn't to make progress but to pretend to while taking little jabs, though this has been the result of some liberal endeavors with good intentions but which, like this book are not thought out fully to the end of their own road.