In Telling Stories Out of Court, Ruth O'Brien has compiled 12 fictional stories depicting situations in which various men and women experience workplace discrimination. Each story is a compelling piece of fiction. They are grouped together by topic—gender roles, unfair treatment, sexual harassment, and hidden obstacles—with each set of stories followed by commentary by legal scholar Risa L. Lieberwitz.
With so many compelling and fascinating legal cases of workplace discrimination, readers might initially wonder why O'Brien chose to use fictional stories instead of discussing actual data. However, O'Brien explains that she did this for several strategic reasons: (1) to give “readers room to relate to the characters without being distracted by the law” (p. 5); (2) to provide the writers with the freedom to create without the confines of legal accuracy, and, thereby, creating more interesting stories; and (3) to be “subversive” by “bring[ing] ‘moral conflict to the forefront’” (p. 5). In creating this blend of fiction and fact, O'Brien hopes to “evoke an emotional response from readers” (p. 6) in order to inspire greater activism. This is a wonderful and creative concept, especially for a lay audience that might eschew fact-heavy reading.
Lieberwitz's commentaries illuminate the shared legal themes and apply a scholarly discussion of the federal courts' interpretation of Title VII. Sometimes the commentary is closely confined to the facts of a story, while at other times it explores issues not raised within a story. Lieberwitz, a professor of industrial and labor relations at Cornell, while not a fiction writer, has a clear style of writing that complements the short stories.
The legal commentary by Lieberwitz, bringing facts and legal analysis to the stories, is particularly useful for a lay reader in determining what the law would say about each case. The repetitive nature of Lieberwitz's commentary makes the book seem intended to be used piecemeal, so that readers of one section might never need to read other sections of the book. While this makes reading the book from cover to cover a bit tedious, the repetition is an insightful strategy for a book that professors might want to use in separate pieces.
These short stories for the most part provide detail and circumstances that might not otherwise be found in court cases or social science data. Unfortunately, in some of the accounts the discrimination is not as clear, and the legal commentary sometimes seems to glean more from the story than the reader might. This is especially true for the very first piece, entitled “Dream Man,” and later in “Be Who You Are.” For example, “Dream Man,” a story of a mother who found her son's girlfriend in his bed, is told as though the mother is writing a letter to the girl's mother to explain the situation. While not obvious, the legal commentary pulls out information about the relationship the mother has with her husband, which is apparently where the inequity occurs.
In other pieces, such as “Hwang's Missing Hand” and “Artifact,” the misdeed is almost too obvious. “Hwang's Missing Hand” is a story of a young woman who begins a relationship with her teacher, who later becomes her boss when she takes a job at the insurance company for which he moonlights. In “Artifact,” the female EMT depicted in the story faces prejudice from several patients who believe that she is not as qualified as a male EMT because she is a woman.
While each story is entertaining and well written, some might be questionable choices for the purpose of instruction and legal discussion. “Plato, Again,” with its constant references and analogies, might be unnecessarily confusing for someone less familiar with Plato. In “Be Who You Are,” the narrative constantly changes perspective, which needlessly complicates the action in the story. Moreover, the story “Be Who You Are” contains so much gratuitous profanity that some professors might hesitate to assign it to undergraduate students, who might find it both offensive and distracting.
Although the pitch of the book is less appropriate for an advanced academic audience, it might be well suited for an undergraduate audience or perhaps even as a reader for workplace professional development. In the latter case, employees might find the fictional style followed by legal commentary a useful format for better understanding the nuances of discrimination. Even if one chooses to skip the commentary, the book presents an interesting array of short stories all sharing the theme of workplace discrimination.
