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Reviews tagging 'Deadnaming'
Women in Art: 50 Fearless Creatives Who Inspired the World by Rachel Ignotofsky
2 reviews
crownoflaurel's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Minor: Deadnaming
elizabethlk's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
2.0
Women In Art is a book that truthfully left me with mixed feelings. I loved Ignotofsky's Women in Science and while I had issues with Women in Sports I felt generally favourably towards it. After reading this one though, I feel like it's possible that Women in Science wasn't as good as I remember it, because while my opinion is mixed it veers negative here.
Let's start with the pros. I do like that about half the women featured as the main fifty were women of colour. I like that the book features women from across different time periods, from diverse backgrounds, and from various fields of visual arts. There were a good few featured that I wasn't familiar with, and it also featured some of the women I would have included myself. The art is cute. I love the statistics pages.
Now, the cons. I would be remiss if I didn't start with the biggest one, which is that the book deadnames the only trans woman included. It does not matter what a person's name was at birth and you do not need to deadname a trans woman to tell her life story. I've been fuming since I read that. I also thought it was super weird to frame it as "she always knew she was a trans woman" when she always knew she was trans or always knew she was a woman would have sufficed. The whole tone of it was bad. Wendy Carlos is an icon and she deserves better than the mess she was given here. Beyond this, I continue to find Ignotofsky's covering of disabled figures from history to be a little weird in tone, with the word "inspiration" thrown around, and while there wasn't anything really directly problematic, the tone was enough to throw me off. Additionally, I think there should be more Indigenous representation in general. There were also a number of figures I thought of that I felt should have been included and weren't, but I didn't really dock any points for that, just wanted to note it. I also thought what types of art were included and what wasn't was a little weird--they clearly wanted to stick to visual arts, but they included authors, musicians, and filmmakers, but only if they also did other types of art included even if they were better known for the types of art that were generally not included (Beatrix Potter, Shirin Neshat, Wendy Carlos, etc), which made it hard to tell if they were including those art forms or not (and I would say I hope not because then there are countless important authors, musicians, and filmmakers excluded for no good reason).
Basically, I think Women in Art is a great concept and it has redeeming qualities, but I was really disappointed in how it handled some of its subjects. I wish the book had employed sensitivity readers. As it stands, I wouldn't recommend it. I would hate to subject trans or disabled readers to the weird coverage, and I would hate to give children another problematic thing to unlearn. In my opinion, the book could be salvaged with a good edit. I won't avoid the author in the future, but I'll be much more wary about content she releases.
Let's start with the pros. I do like that about half the women featured as the main fifty were women of colour. I like that the book features women from across different time periods, from diverse backgrounds, and from various fields of visual arts. There were a good few featured that I wasn't familiar with, and it also featured some of the women I would have included myself. The art is cute. I love the statistics pages.
Now, the cons. I would be remiss if I didn't start with the biggest one, which is that the book deadnames the only trans woman included. It does not matter what a person's name was at birth and you do not need to deadname a trans woman to tell her life story. I've been fuming since I read that. I also thought it was super weird to frame it as "she always knew she was a trans woman" when she always knew she was trans or always knew she was a woman would have sufficed. The whole tone of it was bad. Wendy Carlos is an icon and she deserves better than the mess she was given here. Beyond this, I continue to find Ignotofsky's covering of disabled figures from history to be a little weird in tone, with the word "inspiration" thrown around, and while there wasn't anything really directly problematic, the tone was enough to throw me off. Additionally, I think there should be more Indigenous representation in general. There were also a number of figures I thought of that I felt should have been included and weren't, but I didn't really dock any points for that, just wanted to note it. I also thought what types of art were included and what wasn't was a little weird--they clearly wanted to stick to visual arts, but they included authors, musicians, and filmmakers, but only if they also did other types of art included even if they were better known for the types of art that were generally not included (Beatrix Potter, Shirin Neshat, Wendy Carlos, etc), which made it hard to tell if they were including those art forms or not (and I would say I hope not because then there are countless important authors, musicians, and filmmakers excluded for no good reason).
Basically, I think Women in Art is a great concept and it has redeeming qualities, but I was really disappointed in how it handled some of its subjects. I wish the book had employed sensitivity readers. As it stands, I wouldn't recommend it. I would hate to subject trans or disabled readers to the weird coverage, and I would hate to give children another problematic thing to unlearn. In my opinion, the book could be salvaged with a good edit. I won't avoid the author in the future, but I'll be much more wary about content she releases.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Deadnaming
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