PositiveBrooklyn RailHe uses his personal experience to demonstrate the ways women suffer from subordination and masculine domination; and political attacks on his family to show the ways legislation can further denigrate the poor. In essence, Louis’s intimate narrative creates a pathway to understanding the complex, symbiotic nature between systems of power ... There are some sections of this introspective account, however, that could have benefitted from more flesh. While what he does for his mother—encouraging her to leave his father, taking her to fancy French restaurants, and arranging an encounter with a celebrity she admired—is shown, his feelings for her are sparse and somewhat simplistic ... Even though as a fan and ravenous reader of his work I desired a bit more, the slightness of Louis’s book can be seen as radical in itself. Towing the powerhouse that is male privilege, he makes himself smaller than those around him on the shelf and in doing so, we have to work to find him there. Although one could argue that the story of a woman should be much larger than those of her male counterpart, I appreciate and acknowledge the act of solidarity. It remains clear, by this work and others, that Louis is in service to those overlooked by the privileged and an excellent role model for how men can become better allies to women ... In the end, we learn a crucial lesson, one that many might already suspect or know, the message beating from the heart of this book, that male supremacy, ultimately, serves no one.
