Mama's Last Hug by Frans de Waal

 

A lot of the nonfiction I have read over the years is about animals. In particular, I like to read about animals that are intelligent, like chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants, and octopuses. There's just something about smart creatures that fascinates me. When I saw Mama's Last Hug on a display at Barnes and Noble, I knew that I had to pick it up. Like many, I had seen the viral video of the elderly chimp named Mama who perked up and embraced a scientist she had known for forty years as she lay dying. Her actions in the video seem to clearly express love and joy, emotions that are supposed to belong to humans. A few years ago, I read Beyond Words by Carl Safina, so I was already familiar with the idea that animals experience many emotions like humans do, but I was still interested to learn more. Accordingly, I made Mama's Last Hug one of the books in my True Books Challenge for this year. I decided to give it a try this month and see if it would be as interesting as I hoped.

Frans de Waal begins this novel by outlining his strong belief that animals and humans experience the same emotions. He explains that emotions are different from feelings; emotions are automatic responses to different situations and feelings are how we privately react to those emotions. Emotions are observable and can be studied. Thus, it is possible to recognize and analyze how animals show them.  The book is divided into several sections, each focusing on a different concept, including joy, empathy, guilt, and grief. In each chapter, de Waal discusses how both humans and animals display the emotions being discussed and backs up his assertions with examples from scientific studies and observations drawn from his own experiences. Throughout the course of his analysis, it becomes clear that animals live rich, emotional lives, and that they are not as far separated from humans as we may think.

Despite my interest in this subject matter, Mama's Last Hug was not a particularly fun read. It wasn't terrible, and Frans de Waal clearly knows his stuff, but something about it just didn't come together for me. Mainly, I thought that the chapters were a bit unfocused and too heavy on the philosophizing. I found myself wanting more detailed content on animals. Instead, most of the writing consisted of de Waal making his case about emotions. Information about animals was only lightly sprinkled in among his thoughts. I wish it had been the other way around. As it was, I was frequently bored while reading.

Also, there were a few instances where I thought de Waal's ideas were overly simplified, or outdated. For example, in a chapter focusing on power, he makes the claim that women in politics only become electable after they reach menopause. He states that, "women begin to appeal as leaders only after they have become invisible to the male gaze by leaving their reproductive years behind." He cites examples such as Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel to support this point, but he completely ignores the success of women like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jacinda Ardern, who are both younger, attractive, and successful leaders. As this book came out in 2019, there's no excuse for these omissions, and I think it's safe to say that the reasons young women are underrepresented in politics are more complex that he suggests. He goes onto say that women did not support John McCain in the 2008 election because they subconsciously perceived Sarah Palin as a sexual rival. I am a woman and it's true that I did not support John McCain in the 2008 election, but I'm pretty confident that it wasn't because I felt sexually threatened by Sarah Palin. This kind of assertion really sells women short and feels hopelessly out of touch. There were a few more instances like this that popped up and left a bad taste in my mouth. It was very clear that an older man was writing this text. 

So unfortunately, Mama's Last Hug was not my favorite read. Carl Safina's Beyond Words handled the same topic in a much more engaging way and I would definitely recommend that book over this one. Still, I did pick up a few interesting bits of information during my reading and came away from the experience feeling more connected to the animal world. It's too bad that I was left wanting more. This book is headed to my donate pile. Hopefully, someone else out there will enjoy it more than I did.

Challenge Tally

True Books 2020: 11/14


Total Books Read in 2020: 59