The Vagina Bible by Dr. Jen Gunter, MD

Source of book: I own this

 

So, to begin with, I do not have a vagina, so this book may seem like a peculiar choice. However, people dear to me do in fact have vaginas, and a bit of better knowledge about them seemed like it might be useful. This book is all about medical matters, from STIs to menopause and a lot of other stuff. It also has the advantage of being science based, not woo based, which, well, I’ll talk about that a bit in this post, including in the postscript about my birth family and “alternative medicine.” 

 

First of all, why is it so important to have science-based information? Besides the obvious that better information is, well, better, there is also a lot of misinformation out there. 

 

I think it is fascinating the sources of this misinformation. Dating back to possibly the dawn of humanity, there have been a lot of really toxic beliefs about the female reproductive system. One can pretty much chalk this up to the fact that males have written the books on medicine for a long time. In other words, patriarchy. There are two facets to this. First of all, humans tend to fear what they do not understand, and for males, the female reproductive system is a mystery, hidden inside the body, and bleeding periodically. The sexual act leads to a fully formed infant in about nine months, but the process is carried out mysteriously. 

 

So, understandable that males might find females a bit fearsome, perhaps. But there is also the fact that females are necessary in a way that males are not for reproduction. (Technically, reproductive rate is limited by female biology - and one male could in theory be all that is necessary.) So, males have always sought to control females, and, being larger, could do so physically, then justify said control with a variety of religious, philosophical, and taboo rules. Oh, and also by the association of female stuff with dirt, disease, filth, and grossness. Hey, sound familiar. 

 

So, while we call them “old wives’ tales,” it seems likely that old men were every bit as responsible for them. 

 

What this leads to is such a plethora of harmful misinformation floating around that tends to drown out the important science-based information that women need. 

 

Dr. Jen Gunter is a gynecologist who wrote this book in order to put the important science-based medical information women need in one place, with citations to the research, and with tips for how to find and evaluate medical information. 

 

Because the book is science-based, one thing you will not hear much of is “100% success rate.” In fact, if you ever see this claim in advertising, that is a good chance the product is a total scam. Humans are complicated and diverse, and a 60% success rate is often as good as it gets for a truly successful treatment. Would it be nice if it were better? Of course. But pretending that full success exists is in itself harmful. 

 

Gunter addresses the various topics by giving useful information, debunking misinformation from old wives’ tales to the claims of Big Natural™ as she calls the “alternative medicine” movement, and encouraging women to understand their own bodies better. 

 

Obviously, trying to summarize this book would be both impossible and silly. But there were some bits that I want to highlight. 

 

While sex is a fairly small part of the book, Gunter does dive in there after some basic anatomical and physiological information, perhaps to try to hook the reader. (Sex sells!) What I love most about this section - which wasn’t really new information for me: I did my research using reputable sources before marriage - is this line, which would be my number one bit of advice for any couple: 

 

A good sexual encounter is not about optics that make a man (it’s usually a man in this scenario) feel as if he has achieved something. A good sexual encounter is about pleasure. As long as you are having an orgasm or two, who cares about anything else? 

 

This runs contrary to a number of advice books commonly given to young couples, particularly within the Evangelical subculture. I myself was given The Act of Marriage by Tim and Beverly LaHaye, and, while it wasn’t the absolute worst advice I received, it wasn’t particularly useful. The worst part was the insistence that the goal of sexual technique was a simultaneous orgasm through intercourse alone. Which is, simply put, not possible for most couples. Considering over 80% of women do not orgasm through intercourse alone, let alone simultaneously with a partner, this is setting couples up for disappointment and frustration. 

 

Gunter’s advice is far better. It doesn’t really matter how you get to an orgasm, as long as you are getting there. It is about pleasure, not optics or checking a box. Just have fun, and make sure you learn how your partner gets to orgasm, so that he or she is fulfilled. It’s so much less pressure that way. 

 

With those chapters out of the way, most of the book is all about health for the vagina and vulva. How to stay healthy, how to fix problems, and so on. There is a recurring theme, which I alluded to before: there are a lot of charlatans promising cures out there. Don’t believe them. Find quality peer reviewed research. Here is an example of Gunter’s approach, as applied in this case to yeast infections. 

 

If diet could reduce yeast infections, we would already know. A doctor selling a special diet and supplements who has never published research in the area does not have the secret answer to the question of how to reduce yeast colonization.

 

And don’t give me the crap of “research is expensive.” There are trillions of dollars in the supplement industry - they can afford research. They just choose not to, because research would prove their supplements were worthless. 

 

Gunter is plenty snarky about cleanliness. The idea that vulvas and vaginas are dirty is wrong, and also misogynistic. But our society sure pushes the idea that normal vulvas are dirty and need expensive products constantly to keep them “fresh.” 

 

The only parts of your body that medically need regular cleaning are your teeth and your hands. When we open doors or shake hands or prepare food, we are at risk of transferring virus or bacteria from our hands to our nose, mouth, or eyes. We don’t shake hands, eat, or cut raw chicken with our vulvas. Also, the vulva evolved to cope with semen, blood, feces, and urine long before the Romans mixed a paste of fat and ash to create the first soap. 

 

And that leads to another personal story. So, my late paternal grandfather was kind of the MLM equivalent of a jack-of-all-trades back in the day. From Amway to Herbalife, he tried it all. He never made much, but, hey, he was retired and it kept him out of trouble. It also gave family a way of keeping him out of poverty without direct charity. Not very efficient, but it worked in its own way. 

 

One that comes up in this book is Tea Tree Oil. Ah yes, I can still smell it. This stuff was supposedly a cure-all, better than an antibiotic when used topically, and a great addition to literally every home care product. Gunter mentions it because it is a serious irritant, and tends to dry skin out. Oh, heck yes it does. Don’t use it anywhere, but particularly never on mucous membranes. 

 

Gunter’s biggest target, though, is douches. No, not the kind that drive giant brodozers with Trump flags and Truck Nutz. The kind to wash out one’s girl parts. Don’t use them. The vagina isn’t dirty, doesn’t need cleaning, and can be seriously harmed by this interference. 

 

One random thing I did not know before this book: lice are dependent on the spacing and texture of hair, which is why pubic lice cannot live on the head, and vice versa. Talk about a very specialized evolution. If humans go extinct, we may take two species of lice down with us…

 

While douches are actively harmful, a number of other products are neutral. They don’t harm, at least, but they have no medical benefit. That doesn’t mean they are useless.

 

When using any product, it is important to be mindful of your reason. There are medical benefits, and then there is joy. It is not wrong for pleasure to be a motivator; I just don’t kid myself that my fancy shoes are good for my feet. 

 

And, on a related note to the question of cleanliness and joy:

 

I’m currently a bath bomb aficionado, as one of my sons is an addict. I’m amazed that society focuses on the nonexistent smells of the female genital tract while largely ignoring the greasiness of the male adolescent, many of whom seem as averse to water as the Wicked Witch of the West. If bath bombs are what get my teenage son to rinse the testosterone-fueled sebum-fest off his skin, then bath bombs it is!

 

Cannabis gets a chapter, not because it has any positive effect (very limited data, no firm conclusions), but because there is a lot of misinformation out there. I once again loved her insistence on good evidence. 

 

The lack of information doesn’t stop wild claims. One company claims their product is “proven effective at delivering longer, stronger orgasms in 8 out of 10 women.” If your data has not been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal for everyone to read, it has not been proven effective. 

 

Peer review isn’t perfect, and some studies are junk. But if you don’t have peer reviewed data, then your claim is shit. Period. 

 

The chapter on probiotics was pretty eye opening. As with pretty much everything in the supplement and woo industry, you have literally no idea what you are putting in your body. 

 

Finally, you simply don’t know what you are taking. A recent study found that 33 percent of probiotics contain fewer colonies than indicated on the label, and 42 percent were incorrectly labeled, with either mislabeled species, missing species, or species not included on the label. Mislabeling and unknown ingredients are unfortunately common in the supplement industry. The New York Attorney General commissioned an investigation in 2015 that revealed only 21 percent of the dietary supplements tested (not probiotics, but regulated the same way) contained the ingredients that were on the label. Unlisted contaminants were often the only ingredients. Another 2013 study also found contamination and substitution were common with herbal supplements. As the ingredients, purity, and doses for supplements - including probiotics - in the United States are on the honor system, it is very much buyer beware. 

 

This is why we need full regulation and inspection of supplements, in my opinion. Right now, they are no different from snake oil of 150 years ago. 

 

Gunter also gets pretty huffy at cosmetic procedures for the vulva or vagina. Here is a great passage. 

 

I have read about plastic surgeons who do labiaplasty so women can look “sleeker in so-called athleisure wear.” I know some people who call this look “camel toe” but I prefer “labial cleavage,” and the answer is not surgery - it is better-fitting athletic wear. I’ve stared at more male butt cracks (gluteal clefts) than I care to remember, whether it was just some guy bending over or gravity-defying pants that appear to hover like magic just above the anus without a belt. What I never hear is that men should seek out plastic surgeons to get their gluteal clefts sewn shut. I also can’t imagine a similar industry for men that products from surgically trimming penises so they look better in tight jeans. 

 

Mic drop.

 

I’d like to finish up the main review with two bits of complementary advice that Gunter gives for evaluating potential treatments. 

 

The first is this: you often hear “well, it can’t hurt.” Which is sort of true. But there is a cost to low-risk interventions. 

 

Every time we make a woman jump through a useless hoop to get better, we add a burden, be it financial, or emotional, or the exasperation of doing so many things and yet realizing that you are running very hard but not getting anywhere. 

 

This is so true. The waste in time, money, and frustration is real. As I note in the postscript to this post, the endless chasing after the “well it can’t hurt” ideas in diets and supplements did have lasting negative consequences for my birth family. 

 

The other one is a pushback against a toxic characteristic of marketing. 

 

Does the site use words like “detox” and “cleanse”? If they do not know those are dubious concepts, what else escapes them? Do they use words like “pure,” “clean,” and “natural”? Women are constantly fed lies about toxins in their periods or that the vagina is dirty. “Pure,” “clean,” and “natural” are just modern riffs on that destructive messaging. They also do not mean anything medically. You want sound hypotheses and clinical evidence, not patriarchy’s dog whistle. 

 

Those words of advice are worth heeding, not just when it comes to vulvas and vaginas, not just when it comes to medicine, but in every facet of life. The words “pure,” “clean,” “natural,” “detox,” and “cleanse” are not neutral. They have no medical meaning, but they appeal to an emotion in a way that has negative consequences for everyone. It isn’t that far from seeing the vagina as dirty to seeing racial minorities or immigrants as dirty. It isn’t that far from seeing certain [expensive] foods as “clean” and others as “toxins” to refusing to eat with the impoverished, and eventually considering low-income people themselves to be unclean and toxic. I have seen this happen many times. 

 

The Vagina Bible has such a wealth of information, I definitely recommend it to anyone who wants a better understanding of the female body. 

 

***

 

Note on transgender issues:

 

Major points to this book for addressing transgender health head-on, and in a logical, scientific, and compassionate way. Gunter devotes a chapter to transgender health, with specifics for both trans men and trans women. For example, when do trans men need a pap smear? What are the specific health concerns after a vaginoplasty? Gender and sex are complex, but the specifics of medical needs can be addressed clinically and compassionately - it isn’t that hard, and Gunter demonstrates that. 

 

***

 

My own story: 

 

I have talked about this here and there, but perhaps not in great detail. My mom was always into woo, in various ways, some more benign than others. As the book notes, women have been abused and neglected by male-dominated medicine, and by the 1960s and 1970s, women were pushing back on a number of fronts. 

 

One key area was that of obstetrics. On the one hand, modern medicine has greatly reduced infant and maternal mortality, but on the other, it has tended to dehumanize women, and treat pregnancy less as a potentially dangerous natural event, and more as a pathology in itself, needing constant treatment and correction rather than just monitoring for problems. Particularly in the past, it was a male-dominated field - a huge change from the original midwifery profession, which was all female. It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss how the change occurred, and the connection between the change and the rise of anti-contraception and anti-abortion movements. 

 

In my own case, me and my siblings were born at home, with the assistance of a midwife. Since we were uncomplicated pregnancies, nothing went wrong either for us or for our mother, which is probably somewhat lucky. My mom’s choice of homebirth in turn led to her buying in to the idea that modern medicine was (mostly) a scam, and a conspiracy to suppress the treatments that actually worked in order to make money. 

 

Now, was there a point to be made about obstetrics? Yes. Did that mean it was a scam? No. Should we be encouraging the return of midwives as a norm for uncomplicated pregnancies? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly, other first world countries have moved in that direction, and, for other reasons, their maternal and infant mortality rates have continued to decrease, while the United States is going backwards. This is primarily due to poverty and inequality (which in turn is strongly driven by racism.) 

 

Because of this embrace of “alternative medicine,” I had some strange things about my childhood that people who grew up in mainstream families will never quite understand. 

 

I tell people about the fact that I was a sickly kid. This led to my being homeschooled - I missed a lot of school, and the principal suggested we just do it at home since I was taking all my work home anyway. It also led to my parents feeding me ground up cow adrenal glands and a bunch of other “glandular therapy” stuff, mixed in applesauce. We also took vitamins and other supplements most of my childhood, and used garlic capsules as our primary “defense” against getting colds and other contagious bugs. 

 

This is not to say that my parents rejected all modern medicine. I certainly did enough antibiotics over the years, which undoubtedly kept me alive. We saw the doctor, got our vaccinations, and got interventions as needed when we were sick or injured. It was more of a soft-alternative sort of thing. 

 

The other thing we did was try to control (or at least have the illusion of control) over our health through our diet. As a kid, that meant that for years we avoided sugar, put honey on stuff for sweetening, and ate hippie food. In retrospect, most of this was probably not any healthier - carob is not better for you than chocolate, for example - but it probably didn’t hurt us either. 

 

The things that were really good about our diet were the large quantities of vegetables, food cooked from scratch and thus without all the processed crap and extra sugar and salt, and the emphasis on regular exercise. 

 

But those things are actually recommended by mainstream medicine too. Because they are science-based recommendations. 

 

So, really, from my childhood, I mostly remember things with a bit of amusement, and gratitude that I learned how to eat and cook vegetables. 

 

Things took a bit of a less pleasant turn in my teens. I really am not sure what all triggered my parents to have an existential crisis of sorts, but let’s just call it “middle age” as the pop culture term. 

 

This manifested in several ways, and made my teen years far harder than it should have been. 

 

The first was the spiritual crisis - we left both John MacArthur’s megachurch, and later a small church led by a Master’s Seminary graduate, so basically the same thing on a smaller scale. We explored a few different alternatives, spending some time in a Charismatic church, even visiting a Catholic small group, and a few other departures from where we had been. Unfortunately, this also included (like I swear it did for every white Boomer Evangelical in the early 1990s) a phase of obsession with end-times theology, which in turn led to conspiracy theory thinking - trilateral commission, masons, Jewish bankers, and other forms of “the antichrist.” So we bounced around a bit, but I noticed that what was not included was any form of progressive Christianity or social justice minded work. 

 

Finally, we ended up with the “dead woodchuck” scenario: Bill Gothard. (That’s a reference to Dilbert, by the way…) 

 

Yeah, the thing that lingered was the cult group. 

 

Along with this, though, came a bunch of other upheavals. The throwing away of any secular music (unless you count classical), the burning of our Lord of the Rings books, the decision that none of us children would be allowed to date, and so many other things that I tried to believe in at the time, but have later realized were toxic. 

 

But there was one more: the death of one of my dad’s cousins from cancer seems to have triggered a renewed obsession with diet and “alternative medicine” fads. It wasn’t helped by my mom making friends with a bunch of women who were really into it, and, in those pre-internet times, passed around books and articles. 

 

This then led to our going through a set of fad diets during my teens. We were vegans for a while (but with no idea how to cook or eat a balanced diet, let alone a flavorful one.) We went high protein (before “keto” became a thing.) We cut out this, we cut out that, we ate mostly this, we ate mostly that. Things were constantly changing depending on whatever new article my mom read. Again, most stuff was harmless, but particularly for the vegan fad, I was hungry all the time, and frustrated at being jerked around with little say in my own life. 

 

If it had just been this one thing, it would have been frustrating enough, but combined with the other fads we were following, and particularly my being enrolled in a cult over my own objection, well, my teen years were tough. I’m sure I was moody and difficult and all that, but instead of taking a look at all the upheavals I was experiencing, and the lack of a clear future (regular college was off the table for Gothard followers), my parents bought Gothard’s lie that my normal teenage response to my life and normal human development were “rebellion” - literally opening up my heart to Satan every time I pushed back. So of course I tried my best to believe it all, to be the good kid - I’m a natural authority pleaser - but I just couldn’t.

 

The thing that broke me when it came to “alternative medicine” was at age 16, when I took chemistry in high school. And then, I read one article my mom was all enthused about, and saw that it was claiming that “sodium bicarbonate is different from sodium carbonate because it has a second carbon atom” - which is horseshit on a stick, something any person who passed high school chemistry would know. At that moment, I realized that all of this stuff was just snake oil. They weren’t even trying to be scientific. Rather, because they could sell anything without regulation, just by saying it worked, even if it harmed, nobody even bothered to try to prove it. Just say a bunch of lies, and watch the money roll in from gullible people. 

 

I wish I could say that things got better, that my parents wised up. But they didn’t. Last I heard (they cut me out of their lives a few years back), they had gone deeply down the Covid conspiracy rabbit hole, apparently believing that the mRNA vaccines me and my family got will kill us all of autoimmune diseases in a few years, and that ivermectin is a miracle drug suppressed by Big Pharma. (Um, who sells ivermectin anyway? It isn’t being mixed up in a bathtub along with the gin…) It is really sad to see, but once you start listening to charlatans, you become an ever greater mark for all the others, from “alternative medicine” to cult leaders, to Donald Trump. 

 

This is particularly saddening because they could literally have asked my wife - ICU nurse on the front lines of Covid for the last nearly three years - about all of this. Did she give ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to patients? (Answer: yes. And a bunch of other experimental stuff they tried in the early days of the pandemic based on limited data.) Did either of those work? (Answer: No. They did not have any positive effect, and sometimes negative side effects.) Did she see adverse vaccine reactions? (Answer: Yes. A small number of myocarditis reactions, which were treated, with full recoveries.) Did the vaccines make a difference in hospitalizations and deaths? (Answer: Yes. A HUGE difference. In particular, the overwhelming majority of deaths of younger patients were unvaccinated. Vaccination was the single biggest step a person could take to improve their odds.) 

 

But rather than believe my wife, they would rather believe the claims of a charlatan and traitor who tried to overthrow democracy in America. 

 

I do not want to give the impression that my childhood or teen years were horrible. They weren’t. As with most dysfunctional relationships, there were a lot of good times, and my parents did a lot of things well for a long time. But you can see the seeds of the eventual destruction of the relationship in the embrace of false information. Do that long enough, and you will lack a common way of understanding reality that enables relationships with others outside the misinformation bubble. 

 

Beware the Cat by William Baldwin

 Source of book: I own this

 

This book comes with a whole story, so let me give some background. 

First, this book is considered by many to be the first English language novel, although the borderline between a novel and a story is a bit blurry here. Also blurry is the question of what precisely constitutes a novel. Morte d’Arthur predates Beware the Cat, but is considered to be a legend, and a retelling of previous material, rather than a work with a novel - completely new - plot. 

 

The text is pretty short, particularly compared with the longer novels which would come out in subsequent decades. It does have, however, have sophisticated dialogue for its time - it was written in 1553, before Shakespeare’s works - and also has a complex framing story. 

 

The book is in large part a satire of Catholic ritual, although it also has ribald sections, and some of-their-time jokes at the expense of women. This was, of course, the time in which England was still undetermined as to its religion. Henry VIII broke with Rome and established his own church, with him at the head, naturally. But it was still very Catholic-ish, just with a different pope. After his death, the nation went through a series of reversals, with the brief reign of Edward VI giving way to the Catholic Mary, then the Protestant Elizabeth. 

 

In fact, these changes played a significant role in the history of the book itself. It was written during Edward’s reign, but could not be published once Mary took the throne. It is believed to have first been published in 1570, and then again in 1584. 

 

The basic framing story is a discussion among certain persons, most academics, about whether beasts can talk in their own language. This leads to a tale of the death of Grimalkin, an Irish cat that may or may not have been a witch in feline form. Then, Master Streamer asserts that he has heard cats talk, through the aid of a magic brew which enables him to understand their language. His account of how he found the recipe and what he heard constitutes most of the book. 

 

In the last part, the cats have a sort of a trial of one of their number for alleged violation of promiscuity laws, and this allows for a good bit of satire of Catholic rituals. Here is one delicious line in that vein:

 

“[A]lthough the Pope, by exactions and other baggigical trumpery, have spoiled all people of mighty spoils, yet (as touching his own person) he eateth and weareth as little as any other man, though peradventure more sumptuous and costly, and in greater abundance provided.”

 

“Baggigical trumpery” is so fun to say.

 

The book is a bit weird, in that sense, as it seems to be less of a narrative arc and more a series of complex frames used to hold the satirical bits together. But it also is pretty imaginative. 

 

The work ends with an “exhortation” from the author, warning of cats. Specifically, they are a threat because they see sins committed in secret, and share them around to their fellow felines. This may in fact be true, for all we know…

 

I would counsel all men to take heed of wickedness, and eschew secret sins and privy mischievous counsels, lest, to their shame, all the world at length know thereof. But if any man, for doubt hereof, do put away his cat, then shall his so doing testify his secret naughty living, which he is more ashamed his cat should see than God and His angels, which see, mark, and behold all men’s doings. 

 

So that is the book itself. 

 

The story behind it and how I found it is interesting as well. Regular readers of the blog will know that my wife has been a huge fan of the Utah Shakespeare Festival for years. She attended it with friends for a while, and occasionally with the kids and me, although a job change meant she didn’t get there this year. (Cross fingers for next year…) 

 

So, in 2021, we all went together. Between the afternoon and the evening plays, we often have a bit of time to kill, and at least once per trip, we hang out at Main Street Books to read, and usually end up with a pile of used books to bring home. 

 

Indeed, that is precisely what happened. One of the books that I noticed on the classics shelf was this slim hardback entitled Beware the Cat. Since I had never heard of it, I took a look. 

 

Well, it turns out that the book was a modern-spelling update of Baldwin’s original, put together by William Ringler and Michael Flachmann. 

 

Flachmann - that’s a name familiar to any theater lover from Bakersfield. He was a beloved professor at California State University Bakersfield for decades. He also served as dramaturge for the Utah Shakespeare Festival. He was one of those guys that everyone loved, and it was a huge shock when he passed suddenly in 2013. I myself remember his post-play discussions, and I know many who took classes from him at CSUB. 

 

Apparently, in the 1980s, he worked with William Ringler on this book, and he completed it after Ringer’s death. 

 

So, obviously, I had to buy this book. In addition to the text, there is a tremendous amount of background information - the story of Baldwin’s life and his writing of the book, an analysis of the themes, a history of early English fiction, and summaries of the plots of contemporary books. It’s quite a lot packed into one volume, and a literary history lesson in itself. 

 

This particular copy appears to have been a gift from Dr. Flachmann in 1989, to what I believe is “Professor S. S. Mooty.” (I was unable to find anything about him or her online.) I assume that 32 years later, the recipient had passed on, and the library sold or donated, which is how it ended up in a used book store. In any case, it does appear to have been read at least once, which makes me happy. Now I have read it, along with one of my kids. 

 

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

I enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible last year, and put a few other Kingsolver books on my list. Unsheltered was one of our book club books a couple years ago, but it was for a month I was unable to attend, so I didn’t read it then. Since my wife read it and recommended it, I decided to go with it for my commuting audiobook. 

Unsheltered is really two stories in one. There is the modern-day story of Willa Knox and her family. And then, there is historical fiction about naturalist Mary Treat and the crazy goings on in Vineland, New Jersey, in 1875. 

 

Kingsolver sets both stories in the same place - a particular Vineland lot next door to Mary Treat’s house. The two stories are told in alternating chapters, with the final word or words of each chapter forming the chapter title for the next chapter. 

 

First, about the modern story. Willa has recently lost her job as a journalist when the magazine she works for folds; her husband, Iano, a college professor, has had a similar shift - the college he finally got tenure at went bankrupt, and he is back to working as an adjunct for starvation wages, while Willa attempts freelance work. 

 

They inherit a decrepit old house in Vineland from Willa’s aunt, and move in, only to find out it is literally falling down around their ears. In order to try to repair it, Willa contacts the local historical society to determine if there is any historical significance that will allow her to tap into preservation funds. As a result, she discovers the stories of Mary Treat, Charles Landis (the founder of Vineland as a sort of utopia), Uri Carruth (the journalist Landis eventually murders), and the fictional Thatcher Greenwood (a teacher who runs afoul of Landis for teaching Darwin’s theories.) 

 

Willa’s family situation gets more complex really fast as the story unfolds. Iano’s bigoted father Nick lives with them, having been too much for any of his other children. He is in the process of dying - very loudly and unpleasantly. Her adult daughter, Antigone (“Tig”) returns from Cuba with a broken heart and dreadlocks. But at least Tig has a job at a local restaurant, and, as it turns out, a lot of mad skills at everything from cooking to making do with next to nothing. Then, her son Zeke’s partner Helene kills herself soon after having their child, and Willa and Tig are essentially left to care for an infant while Zeke tries to find a way to support himself in a hostile job environment. 

 

Then, there is the historical story. Some parts of it - the most shocking parts - are actual history. Charles Landis did found Vineland as a utopia, and actively recruited immigrants from eastern Europe to come work the vineyards and factories. Vineland was (ironically) an officially alcohol-free town (but we all know…), and its vineyards were used to produce Welch’s Grape Juice. Landis was also accused of being an exploiter of labor, and a retrograde when it came to science. 

 

But the big event was his murder of Carruth, after Carruth ran a piece questioning Landis’ wife’s sanity. Landis was tried for the murder, but acquitted on grounds of temporary insanity - this was a case that was mentioned in Law School, although it did not result in an appellate opinion. It made headlines around the world. 

 

Likewise, Mary Treat was a real person, and her correspondence with Charles Darwin and other famous scientists of her day from around the world has become better known recently. 

 

Thatcher Greenwood and his family are fictional, but his public debates about Darwinism are drawn from actual events that took place throughout the United States at the time. Before movies and television, lectures and debates were often the most popular public entertainment. 

 

The historical story corresponds to the modern one in a number of ways - the questions surrounding immigration, education, and science, as well as the way that a powerful personality (Landis and Trump) can win loyalty by promising shelter from new ideas and cultural change. Like 19th Century America, our own time is about to be turned on its head, no matter what the reactionaries demand - reality has a way of doing that. 

 

The title serves both as a theme - both Thatcher and Willa struggle to keep a roof over their heads - and as a metaphor. In a time when existing structures are crumbling, we find ourselves “unsheltered” by our existing paradigms, and need to embrace the open sky. For those of the Gilded Age, the agrarian existence was giving way to factory exploitation, which would in turn require a significant restructuring of society. Existing religious frameworks would no longer suffice to explain reality and origins. For our own time, climate change and growing inequality along with income insecurity will require different solutions - something that those like Nick are unable or unwilling to see. 

 

The book has been criticized for a few perceived flaws. The first is that it assumes a liberal value system - I think this critique is correct as far as it goes, but I think it also misses the reality that the characters that Kingsolver chooses would in fact think and talk the way they do. If I think about my educated friends who work in academia or journalism, Willa and Iano are pretty typical folk. One could complain about some degree of lecturing, I imagine, but it isn’t a stretch that a family with these people would have these exact same arguments, and the same responses to unwelcome changes in their world and their lives. 

 

The other criticism I think is naive. Specifically, some critics have bristled at the supposedly one-dimensional portrayal of Nick and the bigoted townsfolk of Thatcher’s time. He is, to be sure, a thoroughly horrible person by the time we meet him, with not a heck of a lot to redeem him. (Although the other characters try to be gracious about him.) 

 

If I had read this book 10 years ago, I probably would have had the same critique. But the book was written in 2018, during the shock of the election of Trump and the reemergence of Fascism in the US. Back then, I thought I knew my conservative family and friends. And they would never say, as Nick does, “It’s all the fault of those wetbacks.” 

 

But….fast forward to 2018…

 

My own father, who raised me to be a compassionate, empathetic person, to respect and embrace immigrants as the hardest working people we knew. After all that, when the Trump Era came around, I was told straight up, without any embarrassment, “I don’t like Trump’s style, but at least he is finally doing something about the Hispanic problem.” 

 

Ooof. 

 

Or a leader at our former church saying without any hesitation that we should treat undocumented immigrants as “fugitives from justice” and brutally punish those who shelter them.

 

Yeah, so maybe saying “wetback” is just a tiny bit far for my parents’ generation? Or maybe not. You can mean the slur without saying it, and good god have I heard the stereotypes that haven’t changed in 150 years. But for someone like Nick, in his 70s or 80s? Totally realistic. And a person consumed with toxic talk radio to the point of making it his identity? I know people like that, and have watched them descend further and further into conspiratorial thinking. 

 

I think there are a lot of us who still are experiencing trauma at what we have seen and heard in the Trump Era - how much the open hate drives so many we know and love. How deeply the fear of people different from them consumes them. How much the fear of change leads them to advocate for preventing their own grandchildren from having a voice in the future of our country. And, of course, how much they rail against “socialism” while they are kept alive by socialized medicine for senior citizens. 

 

What is clear is that, no matter what the future holds, unbridled consumption and the expectation of endless exponential growth of profit is not in any way sustainable. Hence, it is Mary Treat and Tig who have it right: it ultimately doesn’t matter what you believe, because reality doesn’t give a fuck about your ideology. Evolution happened and is happening, whether you believe it or not. Climate change is happening (and we are causing it) whether you believe it or not. We can either embrace reality and act accordingly, or we can stuff bricks from our crumbling shelters in our pockets (as Tig describes it) and try to keep our worldviews intact. 

 

In other words, while we can try to be like Nick - letting our fears of change and irrelevance and our own mortality lead us in the direction of becoming venomous and hateful and vicious - reality doesn’t care, and our descendants are more likely to be like Tig, compassionate, but ultimately relieved that we are going to be dead soon and they can get on with the task of living in the present and preparing for a different future. 

 

Kingsolver is a skilled writer, and makes both stories compelling. In this case, the audiobook was also narrated by her, and she does a great job - not all authors are good at reading, but she does a fine job of keeping the voices separate and making her vision come alive.