Review of “Angelina's Opinions” by Angelina Wang

Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)

Angelina's Opinions is a stunning and impressive debut book by Angelina Wang, a literary and intellectual prodigy.

Wang tackles a wide range of important and complex social issues with remarkable clarity and maturity. The book is divided into several chapters, each addressing a different topic such as mental health, body shaming, beauty standards, self-confidence, toxic relationships, making friends, fitting in, and the LGBTQIA+ community.

In the introduction, Wang shares her motivation for writing the book, emphasizing her desire to make a difference and inspire others. She recounts personal experiences that have shaped her understanding of the world, including instances of racism and sexism, and expresses her commitment to promoting equality and acceptance.

The first chapter ("Healthy Mind Is Healthy Body") delves into the importance of emotional well-being and the impact of stress on one's life. Wang narrates a poignant story of how she helped a friend who was considering suicide, highlighting the power of listening and providing support. She advocates for practices like meditation and exercise to maintain a positive outlook and manage stress effectively.

Wang tells us that there are different pathways or avenues to good health. We all need different kinds of foods and have different kinds of bodies. The idea of an “ideal body” or “perfect body” is a fallacy causing a lot of destruction in peoples' lives including body-image and eating disorders. The “ideal body” differs from place to place, person to person, and culture to culture. It is a societal construct.

In the chapter on ("Body Shaming”) Wang bravely shares her own struggles with body image and the hurtful comments she has received about her appearance. She emphasizes that body shaming is a form of bullying that can leave lasting emotional scars and advocates for body positivity and acceptance.

"Beauty Standards" discusses the unrealistic and harmful beauty ideals perpetuated by society. Wang critiques these standards and encourages readers to embrace their unique features rather than conform to superficial expectations. She shares her journey towards self-acceptance and the empowerment that comes from rejecting societal pressures.

These three chapters (“Healthy Mind Is Healthy Body,” “Body Shaming,” and “Beauty Standards”) were probably our favorites in the entire book. Wang may not like hearing this (because she discourages the separation of genders and ages), but these three chapters seem to speak specifically to women. Ignoring the idealism for a minute, these are issues that especially affect women (though not only women). The statistics show that three times as many women suffer from anorexia nervosa than men (0.9% women vs 0.3% men). Women are fives times as likely to suffer from bulimia than men (0.5% women vs 0.1% men). You can read about that here: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/eating-disorders.

Disordered eating and body-image issues are something that a lot of us have personally dealt with, so these are chapters that really resonated with us.

The chapter on "Self-Confidence" explores the challenges of building and maintaining self-esteem. Wang candidly discusses her own insecurities and the steps she has taken to develop a more positive self-image. She stresses the importance of surrounding oneself with supportive people and practicing self-kindness.

"Toxic Relationships" provides valuable insights into recognizing and addressing unhealthy relationships. Drawing from her own experiences, Wang outlines the signs of a toxic relationship and offers advice on how to handle such situations, whether through communication or distancing oneself from negative influences.

In "Making Friends," Wang offers practical tips for forming meaningful friendships. She acknowledges the difficulties of approaching new people and the importance of being genuine. She also touches on the significance of online friendships and the need for caution when interacting with people over the internet.

"Fitting In" addresses the struggle of trying to belong while staying true to oneself. Wang recounts her own experiences of feeling out of place and the realization that she doesn't need to change to fit in. She encourages readers to find communities where they can be themselves and feel accepted.

The chapter on the "LGBTQIA+ Community" serves as an informative guide to understanding different sexual orientations and gender identities. Wang advocates for inclusivity and respect for all individuals, regardless of their identity. She also emphasizes the importance of allies in supporting the LGBTQIA+ community.

Now, this chapter, while commendable in its aim, also bogs (slows) the book down a bit. This is where the pacing of the book starts to get disrupted with repetition and redundancy, something that continues on in subsequent chapters. For example, the term “LGBTQIA+” occurs a total of 54 times in this book, mostly crammed into a chapter that's only about 8 pages long! So, you end up reading the same term over and over and over again. Those 8 pages end up feeling like 40.

The book then leads right into a chapter on feminism, an ideology that has great merit and started with very good intentions, but that has gradually devolved into something unfamiliar to traditional feminists. Heck, we have some on our staff who'd be the first to tell you that modern feminism isn't recognizable to what the suffragettes subscribed to. If you want a good glimpse of extreme, radical modern feminism, you can read With Love, From Plant B in this contest. In that book, the radical feminists essentially call men a disease who are responsible for all of the world's problems including war, pollution, oppression, and climate change (the book's primary topic, which is also a major topic in Wang's book). While they admit that women can have problems too, we never see a counter-example proving that in the book.

It is kinda concerning to us that Wang says that she was inspired by a feminist speaker at a school assembly around 4th grade and immediately decided to follow the ideology for the rest of her life. You read that right: 4th grade! People are coming into impressionable 4th grade classrooms and teaching radical ideologies to your kids. Think about that. When you were like 10-year-old, were you intellectually and mentally prepared to decide whether or not to adopt Marxism, capitalism, socialism, or fascism? You are very vulnerable, impressionable, and susceptible to suggestion at that point in your life.

Furthermore, Wang calls for you to donate to feminist organizations, supposedly so that they can fight for social justice issues. Specifically, she says:

“...donate to feminist organizations! Donating to different feminist organizations will help different issues that feminism is trying to tackle in society.”

Gosh, girl, we really hope you're right cause a large part of us doubts these SJW organizations actually accomplish what you think they accomplish. We'll get to one such example in a moment.

There's also a chapter about racism, specifically against Blacks. There are some mentions of racism against other groups of people including Asians (like the author and many of our judges). In one of the saddest and most agitating examples, a boy comes up to her making fox eyes and says “ching chong.” Believe it or not, the Asians on our staff have experienced similar things. Racism is always wrong no matter who it's against. But what we're seeing a lot of these days is reverse racism. Whites are seen as oppressors and those who need to be punished and penalized for the real and perceive transgressions of the past. Hey, we're just gonna come out and say it: that's freakin' wrong too. There's a quote in this book that really rubbed us the wrong way:

“...let me just say this: Black lives haven’t mattered at all, whereas white lives have always mattered.”

Wait a minute... so we've had a US president, a UN secretary general, multiple billionaires, numerous millionaires, professional athletes (some of the greatest of all time in various sports), lawyers, doctors (including brain surgeons), astrophysicists, and actors who were Black... so, they haven't mattered at all? You see where these kinds of dogmatic thoughts and statements have a slippery slope? It's like Obi-Wan said, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”

And we wanted to briefly touch on BLM because, as the author says in the book: “I would like to talk about BLM vs. ALM and why it’s right to support BLM and not ALM.”

We support the core ideals of Black Lives Matter because they DO matter and they SHOULD matter Furthermore, Black people (and all races of people) shouldn't be treated as different or targeted by hateful, ignorant people. At the same time, we hate to tell you this, but the national, over-arching organization of Black Lives Matter (Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation) is actually led by some unscrupulous, corrupt, and selfish people who have taken advantage of a good movement and the positive intentions of their supporters and donors. They very clearly pocketed and misused millions of dollars that donors had intended to support Black folks, Black neighborhoods, and Black causes. Don't take it from us, listen to the YOUNG TURKS—the leaders of liberalism and progressivism on the internet: https://youtu.be/fIZ-ZoojpR8?feature=shared.

If there's one group that wouldn't want to admit to this bad news, the Young Turks would be it. They don't have right-wing bone in their bodies, yet they're forced to admit that BLM may not have the best of intentions or the best record for living up to their supposed cause.

There's a reason why they were removed from charitable programs like Amazon Smile for lack of transparency and violating ethics. Their national leaders appear to have been selfish, self-serving swindlers, not the philanthropists that many of us thought they were.
​
Yeah, and that's why we caution people to use their brains and to think critically. Don't just subscribe to every little ideology that pops up because it seems “good.” There are a lot of organizations that seem “good” but are taking advantage of peoples' kindness, especially college-aged and young people.

Speaking of young people, that's another source of contention we had with this book. There's a chapter about valuing young people and their opinions. To an extent, we support that. Heck, we were children too, believe it or not, and we were in student council, we attended progressive events, we advocated for all sorts of causes, we gave speeches, we met politicians to support certain bills, etc. Young people matter. Everyone matters. The issue that we have is the statement:

“I think that the best possible solution to this is to treat children like they are equals to adults."

Wait a minute... would you vote a 15-year-old into office as President of the United States? Would you let an 8-year-old be in charge of an surgical operation? Would you hand a 3-year-old the keys to a spaceship? Make them the general of an army? Give them control of a nuclear missile silo? Would you send a high school freshman quarterback into an NFL game?

It's not ageism or childism to have common sense. There are reasons why things are the way that they are. Contrary to popular opinion (and some of the opinions in this book), there is a natural order to things that you can't just ignore willy-nilly because you conveniently want to. Unless the individual suffers a tragic fate earlier in life, you get to be a kid, you get to be an adult, and you get to be elderly.

You can't have a baby in five months just because you really want to.
​Reality is still a thing that exists.

Ignore it all you want, but it eventually catches up to you.

Now, on the bright side of this, Wang advocates for holding kids accountable when they do something wrong. In other words, she seems to advocate for them being treated as (and potentially tried as) adults. To an extent, we agree. A lot of kids simply don't learn respect, a huge virtue that Wang talks more about in the next book. They don't learn how to act, how to behave, and how to treat others.

One thing we really liked was that Wang encourages parents to teach their boys how to view, treat, and respect girls/women. We're all for it. One statement that we resent, however, is that:

“Boys aren’t taught how to properly treat girls.”

This is an absolute statement, and Sean Martin (and his two twin boys) would beg to differ. If you've read Dear Liam and Noah: Letters from Daddy by Sean Martin, you'd know that Martin teaches his sons how to treat women and girls well. The implication that all boys aren't taught how to treat girls well is a gross overstatement and, by virtue of that, actually untrue. There are parents who teach their boys to treat girls well. We know quite a few of them.

Speaking of exaggerations and overstatements, there's another example of that in this book. In one scene, Wang describes being stuck at a stoplight while an old man stared at her for five minutes. While that stinks and is disturbing and all, it also got us thinking: what stoplight is red for five minutes?! Seriously! If Toronto stoplights are that bad, we don't want to live there. Maybe this was hyperbole?

The other thing that we found a bit off-putting was the book's somewhat oppressive tone. Similar to The Darkest Side of the Moon by M.C. Ryder, it kinda felt like the narrator was demanding, controlling, and insistent. The narrative voice is didactic, authoritative, and maybe even a bit preachy. Thankfully, the second book is less like this. Perhaps the author learned and matured through the experience of writing and being an author. Thankfully, there are passages, particularly in the end of chapters, in which the author reminds us that these are only her opinions, we can do our own research and come up with opinions of our own. That softens the blow a bit.

Overall, Angelina’s Opinions is an inspiring and thought-provoking book that showcases Angelina Wang's wisdom and empathy beyond her years. Her personal anecdotes and heartfelt messages make the book relatable and impactful, offering valuable lessons on kindness, acceptance, and self-love.

Check it out on Amazon!