Scan barcode
rebecanunez's review against another edition
4.0
Leer este libro, cuando en Uruguay estamos teniendo también una situación parecida de crímenes contra las mujeres es removedor. En nuestro país estamos empezando a llevar la cuenta, porque la verdad es que si los casos de feticidios y violaciones y crímenes contra las mujeres, se siguen tratando como hechos aislados, la sociedad patriarcal va a seguir teniendo una excusa para mirar para otro lado. Desafortunadamente me identifico con varias de las situaciones que la autora relata. Lo recomiendo, para las mujeres y para los hombres, creo que puede generar una discusión muy constructiva y abrirles los ojos.
libraryam's review
3.0
Listened to this one. The information was fairly interesting but I really disliked the reader’s interpretation.
mayawinshell's review
3.0
2.5 ⭐️. i’m feeling partial on this one. it was published in 2014 as a collection of essays (written between 2008 and 2014) and the feminism is pretty 2014, a kind of intro-level feminism i remember well from getting into it online in my early teens. what it did well: i loved where it was more personal, where she analyzed a piece of artwork, where she waxed poetic about virginia woolf and walking and the creative process of solitude. i also think it was a good reminder that,,..people still very much hate women in this world, and i sometimes feel like such a non-victim of misogyny due to a combo of identity-based privilege and good luck that i forget the ways misogyny has shaped my life. and the lives of everyone i know. i don’t really ever *forget* it, per se— i’m in the worst comments sections of instagram far too often to overlook just how hated women/femininity are— but it’s actually righteous to feel SOME indignation, some personal gripes, with the role i’ve been handed. that’s what i felt was good about the book. but i *don’t* think that this book would be good for someone beginning their feminist journey, for one main reason. i felt right away that it wasn’t very intersectional— and it seems other reviewers here had the same moment as me at one line early in the book (pulling this from goodreads user Emily May’s review that i agree very much with):
“…That's just the first essay, but the rest feel like Feminism 101, too. They are mostly statistics that learned feminists will have already heard of, and Solnit doesn’t give any additional insight. The book lacks intersectionality, which, you know, fine, I get writing about what you know, but then don't make absolutely ridiculous statements like this:
"violence doesn't have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender."
The author highlights her ignorance with this statement because violence has been shown repeatedly to have all of those things.”
i think i said a little “what??” out loud reading that on the bus lol. for context, solnit included it after providing a few anecdotes of man-on-woman violence in various places around the globe (as in, “violence against women is a universal thing in our world”), but i found this argument/sentence to be terribly careless for the reason this review pointed out—that differences between victim and perpetrator in race, class, religion, and nationality are just as important of variables as is the difference in gender. and quite often it’s these intersections of identity that make societal patterns of violence clear. she argues that admitting there’s a societal illness, a pattern to this violence, is key to stopping it— but i think she stops far too short, and as a result, hardly gets to the root of it. she brushes on ideas about intersectionality briefly in various essays (for example, when she points out the status/power differential between the white, wealthy, male head of the IMF and the poor, African immigrant woman who he assaulted, or when she points out that many shooters in america are white men), but they’re more like side notes to the greater #yesallwomen argument she aims to make. and when that’s the main point, we end up skipping right over stats that show, for example, that women who are Black and/or indigenous and/or transgender tend to be the primary victims of violence by men, and we fail to explore the nuances of gendered violence— for example, the ways white women’s specific intersection of their race and gender has lent them a power within the hierarchy of womanhood, and has historically been leveraged against (and thus endangered) Black men. maybe someone might argue with me that feminism had to make its 101 strides in order to open up the conversation further (like, “we have to first find the largest common denominator—women—before we explore more specific experiences”), but i think that approach only serves to re-enforce the hierarchies we don’t examine. (reminds me of the way many of 2014-feminism’s fave first-wave suffragettes actively excluded and sidelined the Black feminists who tried to make their voices a louder part of the movement because they believed their inclusion would be too radical and off-putting and undermine white women’s chances at securing the vote). it’s lame white feminism to pretend the experience of violence against women is the same across the board, and slows down liberation if you truly believe that none of us are free until all of us are free
this book isn’t BAD but it’s not that good either; i appreciated its more sensitive, art-focused meditations, but when it came to the chapters on violence or politics, i kept hoping it would go deeper and it just never did. not the way i hoped
“…That's just the first essay, but the rest feel like Feminism 101, too. They are mostly statistics that learned feminists will have already heard of, and Solnit doesn’t give any additional insight. The book lacks intersectionality, which, you know, fine, I get writing about what you know, but then don't make absolutely ridiculous statements like this:
"violence doesn't have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender."
The author highlights her ignorance with this statement because violence has been shown repeatedly to have all of those things.”
i think i said a little “what??” out loud reading that on the bus lol. for context, solnit included it after providing a few anecdotes of man-on-woman violence in various places around the globe (as in, “violence against women is a universal thing in our world”), but i found this argument/sentence to be terribly careless for the reason this review pointed out—that differences between victim and perpetrator in race, class, religion, and nationality are just as important of variables as is the difference in gender. and quite often it’s these intersections of identity that make societal patterns of violence clear. she argues that admitting there’s a societal illness, a pattern to this violence, is key to stopping it— but i think she stops far too short, and as a result, hardly gets to the root of it. she brushes on ideas about intersectionality briefly in various essays (for example, when she points out the status/power differential between the white, wealthy, male head of the IMF and the poor, African immigrant woman who he assaulted, or when she points out that many shooters in america are white men), but they’re more like side notes to the greater #yesallwomen argument she aims to make. and when that’s the main point, we end up skipping right over stats that show, for example, that women who are Black and/or indigenous and/or transgender tend to be the primary victims of violence by men, and we fail to explore the nuances of gendered violence— for example, the ways white women’s specific intersection of their race and gender has lent them a power within the hierarchy of womanhood, and has historically been leveraged against (and thus endangered) Black men. maybe someone might argue with me that feminism had to make its 101 strides in order to open up the conversation further (like, “we have to first find the largest common denominator—women—before we explore more specific experiences”), but i think that approach only serves to re-enforce the hierarchies we don’t examine. (reminds me of the way many of 2014-feminism’s fave first-wave suffragettes actively excluded and sidelined the Black feminists who tried to make their voices a louder part of the movement because they believed their inclusion would be too radical and off-putting and undermine white women’s chances at securing the vote). it’s lame white feminism to pretend the experience of violence against women is the same across the board, and slows down liberation if you truly believe that none of us are free until all of us are free
this book isn’t BAD but it’s not that good either; i appreciated its more sensitive, art-focused meditations, but when it came to the chapters on violence or politics, i kept hoping it would go deeper and it just never did. not the way i hoped
cgluck's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 not sure why but I expected it to be funny short stories not a long form essay. Very interesting and informative, maybe a bit dense for my smooth brain
lindseylanham's review against another edition
it’s 2024 we gotta leave white feminism behind
marieintheraw's review
3.0
There were some essays that I liked more than others and when your favorite piece is one of the firsts, it's kind of hard to give it a higher rating.