Areva Martin

In August, I spent a frantic week creating a home away from home for my two daughters as they began their journey as students at Columbia Law School. After navigating New York’s crowded streets and elevators with bulky bags, boxes, and furniture, we quickly unpacked and then celebrated with dinner on our final evening together. I gave my daughters a pep talk about the importance of working hard, of reading every case and completing every assignment, and being not just prepared but overprepared.

As I read Coco Gauff’s tweet announcing that a positive COVID test had ended her 2021 Olympic dream, I remembered all too vividly the dashed hopes of two other young women.

BookLife Book Review: AWAKENING “In this galvanizing manifesto, Martin (Make It Rain: How to Use the Media to Revolutionize Your Business and Brand) returns to take aim at society’s discrimination against women, specifically in the workforce, and at how to solve the problem.”

KIRKUS Booke Review: AWAKENING “A passionate, statistics-based argument for women’s equality in the workplace.”

Areva Martin’s new book Awakening: Ladies, Leadership, and the Lies We’ve Been Told is refreshingly brash in its observations and assertions. For Martin, there is no time to sit around and play nice. The tone of the book isn’t about focusing on a set of concerns and statistically-backed observations passively, it’s about action based specifically on the existence of those concerns and backed observations. “I cannot…(wait) for changes to be made in the workplace. In 2021 and beyond, we must awaken and rise together.

The latest developments in the Britney Spears conservatorship case, with Ms. Spears accusing her father of abusive and threatening behavior and telling the court she fears him, leave me perplexed and disturbed—and underscore the crisis point this country has reached in its handling of mental health issues.