Author: Radha Agrawal
Info: Copyright 2018. New York: Workman Publishing Company.
Rating (on a scale of 1-4 stars): ✮ 1/2
Where Acquired: Purchased at a Women's Health Expo in 2018
Category (ies) - Impulse buy and Potty books.
Synopsis: Agrawal, a self-proclaimed "community architect," offers strategies for getting out of your head and off your phone in order to build community. She walks the reader through exercises in self-awareness to help identify the most important characteristics of a healthy community.
- Her analogy about the "mean girls" of the mind producing nothing but comparison, perfectionism, and judgement is spot on. This is a true detriment to a healthy community.
- Agrawal puts great stress on getting away from the screen and making face-to-face connections with people.
- The cover artistry and the illustrations were innovative.
The Negative:
- After finishing this book, I feel duped. This tome isn't really about building friendships and bringing your strengths and talents to enhance a community It's about building your own little kingdom based on specific sought after benefits and sucking it dry. Agrawal's definition of community is a homogeneous group of people who look the same and think the same. In other words, she's teaching the reader how to build a gated community, not a beautiful diverse community.
- Her advice for building community is unnecessarily complicated. Her steps are more conducive to building a brand or a platform. Getting out in your neighborhood, meeting people, being friendly, genuine, and hospitable does not require building your own fonts, slogan, and language.
- The content reeked of too much "woo-woo," and not enough substance. For example, the author's main focus in selecting optimal candidates for the community is "energy." Do what now?
- I don't think the author considered how visually traumatizing all the font size and type changes would be to the reader. I appreciate what she was trying to do, but it was like being pinched one minute and slapped in the face the next.
- I understand the description of FYF (F--- Yeah Friends). We do need encouraging friends in our lives. However, Agrawal leaves out an absolutely necessary type of friend; HNF (the Hell No Friend). True friendship and healthy community requires accountability, not just dances and "energy."
- If I were a senior citizen, the chapter on "Belonging and Aging" would be a huge insult. Well, I'm not even 50 yet and it still felt like a huge insult.
Conclusion/Takeaway:
This book really rubbed me the wrong way. Like Uninvited and books of that nature, it felt backhanded: "You belong unless..." Good thing I was sitting on the toilet when I read through this because it was full of crap.
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