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A review by mateitudor
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
5.0
As far as memoirs go, I enjoyed the nonlinear style, mixed with natural history, philosophical musings and inner thoughts.
Between the high expectations to overcome as a woman in science, the patriarchal gender norms, the stress of gathering funds alongside her male lab partner with whom she has a special relationship (which had several pressure points, for that relationship to be defined, or to "progress" in a direction she didn't want, even though the expectations were there as well).
Really loved reading about her relationship with her mom. How she had to overcome the imposed upon her housewife status. How she inspired her love for not just reading but exhaustively reading a book.
Also loved her relationship with her husband, how in spite of people telling her, at various points, that she was too inexpressive or too expressive, their relationship had the right chemistry.
Two quotes I really loved:
"People don't know to make a leaf, but they know how to destroy one."
„Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-hundred-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood. In our relentless and ever-intensifying obsession with obtaining a higher volume, potency, and variety of these three things, we have devastated plant ecology to an extent that millions of years of natural disaster could not.”
The one thing I disliked — the fact that she cared so deeply about plants, about the planet, but in several instances described eating beings. Wish she applied her way of thinking to what's on her plate as well. Or, rather, who is on her plate.
Between the high expectations to overcome as a woman in science, the patriarchal gender norms, the stress of gathering funds alongside her male lab partner with whom she has a special relationship (which had several pressure points, for that relationship to be defined, or to "progress" in a direction she didn't want, even though the expectations were there as well).
Really loved reading about her relationship with her mom. How she had to overcome the imposed upon her housewife status. How she inspired her love for not just reading but exhaustively reading a book.
Also loved her relationship with her husband, how in spite of people telling her, at various points, that she was too inexpressive or too expressive, their relationship had the right chemistry.
Two quotes I really loved:
"People don't know to make a leaf, but they know how to destroy one."
„Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-hundred-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood. In our relentless and ever-intensifying obsession with obtaining a higher volume, potency, and variety of these three things, we have devastated plant ecology to an extent that millions of years of natural disaster could not.”
The one thing I disliked — the fact that she cared so deeply about plants, about the planet, but in several instances described eating beings. Wish she applied her way of thinking to what's on her plate as well. Or, rather, who is on her plate.