Reviews tagging 'Rape'

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

60 reviews

ameeth's review against another edition

challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.75

A luminary and necessary journey. This book may start with how the cosmos appears to work, but more importantly, it expands into a guide and call for how we should restructure our way in the cosmos. Prescod-Weinstein shares with unflinching clarity how Black and Indigenous feminist theory not only applies to the science of astro/physics, but is indeed necessary for its ethical future. I found it deeply inspiring, while devastatingly realistic, and that is rare to find.

P.S. Fair warning, the physics section in first 1/4 of book moves fast! But at least not with a density in equations.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape

Moderate: Sexual assault and Slavery

jojodasher's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

4.0

What a profoundly smart and lovely writer! It took me a while to get through the first of the four sections, or “phases”, as she calls them. I kept putting it down and picking it back up—some of the hard science was over my head, so had to re-read parts to fully grasp the physics.

But I quickly blew through the last three sections, which had more memoir and social science. I particularly loved and dog-eared the hell out of ch 5, 6, and 10. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Rape

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Classism, Colonisation, Sexism, Misogyny, and Transphobia

Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Slavery, Car accident, Antisemitism, Kidnapping, Sexual violence, Police brutality, Death, Murder, Medical content, Medical trauma, Ableism, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Chronic illness, Panic attacks/disorders, War, Child death, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Racial slurs, Cancer, and Suicide

Colorism. Eugenics, mentions of forced sterilization. Climate change. Rape and assault are discussed and frankly but not graphically described; a chapter centered around rape includes a content warning in the preface and is able to be skipped.

collins1129's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Rape, Classism, Homophobia, Racism, Car accident, Colonisation, Lesbophobia, Misogyny, Sexism, Slavery, and Transphobia

pipn_t's review against another edition

challenging funny informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

This book was really good.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape

4erepawko's review against another edition

challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

 “People need to know that we live in a universe that is bigger than the bad things that are happening to us.”
- Margaret Prescod 

The book weaves together a memoir and a science non-fiction genre in focusing not only / not as much on physics as just physics, but on Chanda’s own scientific story and journey into discovering physics. In the process, it covers topics from the universe itself, it's composition and our place in it to colonial history and present of science as well as its military and capitalist sponsorship. The book raises important questions such as  who gets to be a scientist, how the often invisible gendered labour has always made the science possible in the first place, or how rape and sexual assault can be a part of a scientific story and how to reckon with that.

Overall, it takes a look at physics as an inherently human process, and at our attempts to figure out the universe as humans. One of the best reads for me this year & I highly recommend it to everyone, especially those interested in physics, science, and/or social justice, feminism, and racial politics.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Rape and Sexual assault

keilah's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring reflective

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Rape

seemz's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Racism, and Slavery

Minor: Chronic illness

laserdiscreader's review against another edition

challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

Very interesting read, even if it took me a while to read. Starts out very focused on physics, and as someone who purposely did not take physics, it was a rough start. But the focus changes about a third of the way through and begins to focus on social topics. It was great to hear their perspective (cannot remember their pronouns but do know they're agender). 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Rape

Minor: Racism and Racial slurs

sarah984's review against another edition

challenging reflective medium-paced

4.0

The early chapters of this book lay out the author’s interest in physics with a palpable enthusiasm, while the later chapters discuss the ways that the dominant culture manifests in academia and the physics "community" that work to dim that enthusiasm. I hadn't really considered the ways that science as a discipline and idea are socially constructed so there's lots to think about.

(I did dock a star because I found the chapter on gender a bit reductive - I hate the narrative that nonbinary people exist because they are the only ones who object to traditional gender roles and this chapter skirts pretty close to that. Overall though a great read.)

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Slavery, Ableism, Antisemitism, Colonisation, Medical content, Racial slurs, Classism, Misogyny, Police brutality, Racism, Rape, and Transphobia

Minor: Chronic illness, Cancer, Child abuse, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts