Shame- Jasvinder Sanghera ***** (an update)

I read this book a year ago, see the original post here.

I don't feel I truly did this book justice with this review originally. I didn't want to over analyse it, or babble, and I ended up not saying enough.

This book has changed my outlook on the world at large. I've never thought of myself as a feminist, and I've never really focused on the fact that I am a woman in the world. But this book inspired me to read about women in other countries, with lives less fortunate than my own. It made me think about what it is to be a woman in a western country with little prejudice. We talk about the glass ceiling in the workplace and lack of paid maternity leave, but at the end of the day, we're treated with dignity and respect at all times (no when you're gyrating on a table in a haze of tequila induced "Sexyness" it doesn't count that you're not being respected).

I won't say that I've gone native and joined a commune, or that I ran off and joined Greenpeace, but I'm so much more aware than my middle class upbringing afforded me, than before I read it.
There is a whole different world that exists outside western culture, but I think we're all so comfortable we try to pretend it doesn't exist. I don't know if selling all my worldly possessions and moving to Africa is the solution, I don't know if donating 10% of my income to charity is the answer. How do we help in a meaningful way?