Sameer Vasta

If there's one thing I learned from reading Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths' Algorithms To Live By, it's that my mind does not operate like a computer, at all.

This, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing. While computers are excellent at finding the best possible answers for our most complex problems, they are (at least, not yet) able to imbue those solutions with context, empathy, and an understanding of the human emotional condition.

That said, using computer science to guide decisions in our lives can be useful, and Mr. Christian and Mr. Griffiths' book is illuminating in that respect. What Algorithms To Live By offers, more than simply advice on how to live like a computer, is a deeper understanding of computer science as a practice, and why it is so important to the way we live today.

Despite working in the digital realm, my knowledge of how computers work is limited to very basic programming skills and a superficial understanding of hardware architecture. What I didn't realize until reading this book is that computer science isn't simply a way to find a correct answer, but a constantly-evolving process of finding the best answers to questions that have no perfect solution. Like humans, computers must make quick decisions; unlike humans, their capacity to process incredible amounts of information to drive those decisions is formidable.

My habits of sorting and filing, of making pro-and-con lists—these are all contrary to the way computer science would suggest I live my life. I am re-evaluating these habits after reading Algorithms To Live By, but more than simply taking the advice at face value, I am constantly asking myself, now: what would an algorithm do? I may not know the answer, or even like it, but this book has at least opened my eyes to a new way of thinking, and given me a new tool in my problem-solving kit.

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)

I think a lot about movement as I read A Boy in Winter, about being herded together and being displaced. I think a lot about how conflict—war, racism, othering—forces people to move, whether through fleeing or through forced migration or through the rounding up a group of people who are forced to work, or perish. I think a lot about what it means to be displaced, and what it means to not know where home will be next, if there will be any. I think a lot about how some things don't seem to change, and how heartbreaking that really is.

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)

Barton Swaim's The Speechwriter reads like a novel, a piece of fiction spun from the brain of a gifted storyteller with an astute sense of the American political system. That Mr. Swaim's book is not a novel but instead a memoir is its greatest strength, and is the greatest indictment of political communications that has been published in years.

The current state of politics in America is troubling—heck, politics all over the world, including in our own country, is a mess—and much of that handwringing about the political system is focused on how leaders, and aspiring leaders, speak of their policies and tell narratives to guide that work. Most of us know that the words we hear and read from a politician are meticulously-considered and expertly-written by a team of professionals, but we don't always remind ourselves of that when we engage in the political sphere.

The 2016 American election is particularly interesting because of the conflict between carefully-crafted messages and the raw, often ridiculous statements that can be published and circulated, unfiltered, in digital spaces. (Donald Trump's twitter account is a poignant example of how giving a voice to the candidate, rather than the candidate's staff, can be both entertaining and horrifying.) If President Obama's rise to presidency was built on the convening power of digital tools, whoever wins the upcoming election will be dependent on those tools less to convene, but instead to convince.

Mr. Swaim, who spent four years working in the communications staff of Governor Mark Sanford (yes, that South Carolina governor, who enjoyed “hiking the Appalachian trail”), provides an incisive look at how political messages are considered, crafted, and delivered in an era where what you say is often more important than what you do. His memoir is engaging, entertaining; it lulls you into thinking that the story is fiction because it is so wrought with conflict and beautifully told. The narrative is engrossing and sometimes salacious, but not without its insights on the nature of political communication: “Using vague, slippery or just meaningless language is not the same as lying: it's not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you're saying something instead of nothing.”

In an election season when we are quick to make fun of a candidate for sounding too rehearsed while also gasping in disbelief at the gruff, off-the-cuff remarks of someone from whom we expect more polish, The Speechwriter is an illumination on how those decisions—what to say, when to say it, and how to be heard—are made, and how those same decisions can become much more important that the act of governing itself.

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)

There was a moment during my time living in Washington DC that I will remember for the rest of my days; it was, perhaps, the most discomforting moment of my life.

My old knee injury, when it flares up quite badly, often requires me to walk with a cane. At the time of the discomforting incident, I was young, in my late 20s, and relatively healthy; the sight of me hobbling with a cane was definitely odd.

I had decided to take the metro home that fall afternoon, instead of walking to and from work as was my usual custom, and found myself returning to Northern Virginia on a very full train. A protest in front of the White House had just wrapped up, and many of the protestors were riding the metro back to their homes outside the city.

The nature of the protest, I don't quite remember, but I noticed very quickly that none of the protestors looked like me—my darker skin stood out, obviously, among many hostile glares—and I was glad that I was only traveling a few stops before alighting. As I got on the metro, a young boy who was seated next to his father right near the door noticed my hobbling and my cane and offered me his seat. Before I had the chance to thank him and gratefully decline, his father grabbed him by the arm, pulled him back into his seat, and loudly proclaimed so that everyone on the metro car could hear:

“We don't offer our seats or do nice things to people who look like that, okay? He's different than we are.”

The boy, who couldn't have been more than eight years old, frowned and returned to his seat. The rest of the train stared at me, and I spent the next few minutes in extreme discomfort until I limped off the train at my stop.

I'm reminded of that train ride, of that exchange, often. Being a minority in many of the places where I live, I'm often reminded that others may feel like I don't belong. It is an alienating feeling, a discomforting one.

I was reminded of that discomfort in the early pages of Paul Beatty's The Sellout, when he describes his journey into the District of Columbia for his Supreme Court hearing. I think of my discomfort traveling through DC that day, and I realize that in the end, Mr. Beatty's novel is inherently about discomfort as well.

There is discomfort in being from a place that no longer exists on a map. A discomfort from being seen as not-enough, or not-anything-at all. The reader is discomforted with the ease and with used when speaking about uncomfortable issues like slavery and segregation. Nobody and nothing in The Sellout is comfortable, and that is its greatest triumph.

“That's the problem with history, we like to think it's a book—that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn't the paper it's printed on. It's memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.”

(The preceding was an overview of the notes I took while reading Paul Beatty's The Sellout in January 2017. Originally published on inthemargins.ca.)

I was in tears as I read Becoming, the memoirs of former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Becoming is a reminder that, for eight years, we had caring, compassionate, and competent people in the White House. Comments on the current administration notwithstanding, it was heartening to remember that for two presidential terms, the residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue were people who really and truly cared about the people they were there to represent.

More than just a reminder of the goodness we miss, Becoming is a story of adaptation, learning, change, and growth. It is, as Mrs. Obama mentions often, a book about “swerve.”

I know this notion well: all through my childhood, I was a “box checker” like the former First Lady. I made lists, real and mental, of things that I needed to do in order to be successful, in order to be who I wanted to be. Like Mrs. Obama, I was buoyed by “consistent love and high expectations,” and because of this, I grew into the person I am today.

But I also realized, as I grew older, that the world is not governed by the “code of effort-result” but instead by forces that are sometimes out of our control. I grew to learn to swerve, to go against my natural proclivity towards rigidity and move in the direction the world was taking me. Like Mrs. Obama, I have learned to balance my box-checking with swerve, and I cherished the stories of how she had learned this balance, too.

—

The first part of the memoir, prior to heading to the White House, was my favourite part of Becoming. It was a reminder that powerful people are people just like us: that in some cases, their experience of growing up—the stories of working through hardship, and of being the recipient of the grace of those who saw potential in us, of people who opened doors to opportunities that were closed to so many of our more-deserving peers—are so emotionally similar to our own that we see ourselves in their success.

There is a moment in Becoming when Mrs. Obama, then young and in school, doesn't tell her parents about the class trip to France because she knew they didn't have the money, and that she was already immensely grateful for the love, home, and opportunity they could provide. Eventually, her parents find out, and the future First Lady is sent to France with her class on an experience the likes of which her parents could only dream of having.

I can't help but think of my parents, as I was growing up, who always seemed to be able to ensure I had access to every opportunity that came my way even when I knew they didn't have the money. (I think, too, at the things I did not ask them for because I knew the pain that would come from them having to say no because of our limited resources.) I think of how, now that I have grown up, I better understand just how hard it was for them, how much they scrambled to never make me feel like I was wanting. I think of their unending sacrifices and I am so thankful. I am ever so thankful.

—

Becoming is a story of reckoning with the challenges but also the graces of the past, but it is also a memoir loaded with hope for the future. It is a reminder that, with compassion and caring, we have the power to change the world in our small ways. Mrs. Obama reminds us that we all come from somewhere, and that somewhere will shape who we are—but also, that we have the opportunity to shape those somewheres right back.

This is a memoir that reminds us of what it means to lead with grace and kindness; it is a memoir that will make you weep in gratitude for having been able to experience that grace and kindness, in many ways, for eight years now gone by.

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)