Reviews

Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths by Helen Morales

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seolhe's review

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challenging informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

kichicki's review against another edition

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hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

3.5

chloe_s_'s review against another edition

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challenging hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

Not a book to be read in one sitting but rather something to keep around for when your in the mood for a short yet detailed essay discussing ancient myths connection to the way we view the world.
Just because one essay doesn't agree or resonate with you doesn't mean you won't find another within the collection that does.
The mythology references throughout are very accessible as they are pretty surface level (although this is not a retelling so that is to be expected)

min_grachi's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

nathanaracena's review against another edition

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4.0

A well researched and written study of the subversive power of ancient myths. Whilst I’ve loved Greek, Roman and Nordic myths all my life, it’s never been quite so evident how these have shaped modern day thinking until reading this. I’ve known how the words and phrases of modern language have derived from these tales, but quite how the impact of the actions of their “heroes” has shaped our culture has always escaped me. I’ve read many chapters of rape, degeneration and more and never really paused to think about the impact of this on not only women, but sexualities, dieting, homophobia and race. Morales doesn’t point fingers at myths and blame them however, but instead looks at how we can educate and learn from myths instead. She doesn’t look to hide and cower from our history but instead how we can use the positive messages from them to better our culture.

rhensie's review against another edition

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informative inspiring sad medium-paced

3.5

I read this as a book club pick; it's definitely far outside of my usual stomping grounds. But I had a good time - this is easy to read and informative. Though, as someone not super familiar with Greek/Roman myths, I find the notion that the book doesn't rely on knowing the stories beforehand a bit unfair - there were some parts that were just a bit lost on me because I don't know the original stories, I think. The sections on trans identities and fatphobia were probably the most interesting (and cutting) to me.

There was a strange moment in the foreword where autism is described as a 'pathology' (and indeed, it's even called Asperger's instead of autism), which I didn't.... love? It's a pretty throwaway comment and I'm not sure that it really reflects the writer's beliefs, but it is a bit careless. So a small TW for ableism there.