Jessica Valenti is one of a select group of Generation X feminist bloggers who have cemented their careers online – She is a force to be reckoned with, after publishing a litany of feminist tomes ( Full Frontal Feminist, He’s a stud she’s a slut ) Sex Object is her brutally honest, darkly funny memoir. By retelling a series of formative events in her life, Valenti describes what toll everyday sexism takes on a young woman’s life. The events that helped shape her confident persona […]
“Some women get erased a little at a time, some all at once. Some reappear. Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear.”
I do not really do New Year’s resolutions, but my informal one this year was to read more about topics I should be more informed about, and specifically more feminist reads. As with most of the good things I read these days, Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit was already on my radar thanks to Cannonballers. I was familiar with the eponymous essay’s conceit: that Solnit was treated to an older gentleman explaining her book to her without realizing that she had written […]
“‘Because you are a girl’ is never a reason for anything. Ever.”
I’m not a parent and not planning on being a parent any time soon, or really, ever. That means I’m probably not the ideal audience for this book, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a few years ago and my favorites parts were the essays woven throughout the narrative. For this reason, I’ve been meaning to pick up some of Adichie’s nonfiction as I figured it would resonate with me. Dear Ijeawele was originally a letter written from Adichie […]
Making a Complicated Topic Easier to Understand
Best for: Readers interested in learning more about the history of the women’s movement from a race and class perspective (it’s right there in the title). In a nutshell: Brilliant academic and activist Angela Y. Davis provides a thorough history of the women’s movement, with a focus on the contributions of Black women and men and a deep analysis of the ways that white women in particular failed to support the needs of their Black sisters. Line that sticks with me: “Yet there were those […]
Yes All Women
It’s been a long time since a book I’ve read doubled as a personal journal, but my copy of Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me is about as marked up as my high school copy of Emerson/Thoreau’s Nature/Walking. The book, a collection of essays about the individual and shared experiences of womanhood and issues of gender, power, and feminism, takes its name from the lead essay in which Solnit narrates an infuriating experience of an older gentleman oldwhitemansplaining one of her own books to […]
Happy African Feminist
I have been meaning to read We Should All Be Feminists for some time and then finally, today, on International Women’s Day of all days, my sister lent me her copy. And, because it’s only 52 pages including the Introduction and the About the Author section, I read it with my morning granola. And it is brilliant. I will say that one of the personal reasons it appealed to me is that my fiancé is African. Not from Nigeria, but from a small, West African […]
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