Well, last night I finished “Godland” by Lyz Lenz. Immediately before that, I read “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah.
Reading them back to back was not really by design, but it seems a fortunate coincidence. I liked both books—both authors have interesting stories to tell, and are worth your time if you enjoy memoirs. And I see some parallels between these works by a African late-night comedy show host and an opinion columnist at my local newspaper.
One uniting theme is that, for an old white man (today is by 61st birthday), both books have interesting insights into the lives of women. That may be obvious in Lenz’s book and less obvious in Noah’s. But Trevor Noah’s memoir is very much a rumination on his relationship with the single woman who brought him onto this globe—his mom, who was shot in the head by his stepfather.
The book is very accessible—the fact that Trevor grew up in another culture on another continent somehow makes the stories of his misspent youth resonate more. Weren’t we all young and awkward and struggling to understand our moms? But the book left me angry at the universe, in a way, partly because the man who shot Noah’s mother suffered very little in return.
The patriarchy strikes again.
Speaking of anger, there is a fair amount of it in “Godland,” but mostly there is a yearning for completeness and a quest for it. Lenz wrote about the time when her marriage broke down and she was left adrift, seeking a new spiritual home as she rejected the male dominated churches she had been at home in.
The end of “Godland” is pretty powerful, and sneaked up on a me a bit, just because I had not looked ahead and didn’t know the number of footnote pages there would be. I was reading last night, and thought that this chapter, about her experience in a new church, not only seems pretty powerful, but is bringing the themes of this book together.
Although both Lenz and Noah have very different religious attitudes and different faith backgrounds, God is a potent character in both books, too. Across time and continents, Jesus can provide some pretty universal themes, which I guess is not really a surprise, but was interestingly on display in these books.
One contrast between these two books is that Lenz does a lot more reporting, while Noah is sticking with his personal experiences. Yet, Noah’s book, which roams over his childhood, high school years and early career, felt “broader” to me. It stretches over more time in his life, while Lenz wrote a tighter personal narrative on a narrower snapshot of her life.
Still, my own personal journey was, in some small measure, enriched by these two writers. And as an old man, I don’t feel that I understand women—but then again, they don’t understand me. In fact, I often don’t understand most men, either—in this life, gender is significant, but not the full story of our joint and severed humanity which makes all of us complicated individuals.
And I consider myself a feminist. I want all humans to be unfettered by biology in their personal journeys—life will throw enough barriers in our ways, we don’t need assumptions or ideas about masculinity or femininity to add to our burdens.
Yet, as demonstrated in both books, women have challenges that are weighted differently. Being heard. Being accepted as leaders. Being paid. Being acknowledged as full-fledged adults. And also, not being shot in the head by angry significant others—those are all human struggles, but they fall unfairly on the XX chromosome-bearing members of my species compared to those of us who express XY traits.
I don’t know why. The reasons are complicated.
And although answers may be elusive, the injustice is simple to see. And both of these books help with that.
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