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pianorunner421's review
3.0
I appreciate this book for the way it connected many dots between women and literature I had heard of but was not familiar with. A very helpful and informative time.
deedireads's review
informative
slow-paced
4.0
All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.
I’ve had my eye on Still Mad since it came out, and grabbed a copy in B&N’s hardcover sale earlier this year. I decided to pick it up in March in honor of Women’s History Month, which turned out to be an even more fitting choice than I’d expected.
Based on the title, I think I’d assumed this was an essay anthology. It isn’t. It’s a much more academic analysis of feminist women writers and their work, opinions, and influence dating back from the 50s through today. Think Joan Didion, Sylvia Plath, Audre Lorde, Gloria Steinem, Ursula Le Guin, etc.
It turned out to be a perfect read for me, as I didn’t have time in college to take any women’s studies or many English classes. I’m always looking for catch-up materials, and this book really helped me place so many of these famous feminist writers in context in history. But I still think that you might like this if you do have some knowledge of these women’s work, because it was fascinating and super useful to have them framed together against historical events this way.
My only complaint here was that I feel like it was sparse on Black women in the 60s, when I would have expected a little more about women writing in the civil rights movement. I know that part of the problem is who was and wasn’t being published — and there were certainly many more Black women included in more recent history — but that felt like a big gap.
If you are a fan of more academic-style nonfiction that teaches you new things, pick this one up.
I’ve had my eye on Still Mad since it came out, and grabbed a copy in B&N’s hardcover sale earlier this year. I decided to pick it up in March in honor of Women’s History Month, which turned out to be an even more fitting choice than I’d expected.
Based on the title, I think I’d assumed this was an essay anthology. It isn’t. It’s a much more academic analysis of feminist women writers and their work, opinions, and influence dating back from the 50s through today. Think Joan Didion, Sylvia Plath, Audre Lorde, Gloria Steinem, Ursula Le Guin, etc.
It turned out to be a perfect read for me, as I didn’t have time in college to take any women’s studies or many English classes. I’m always looking for catch-up materials, and this book really helped me place so many of these famous feminist writers in context in history. But I still think that you might like this if you do have some knowledge of these women’s work, because it was fascinating and super useful to have them framed together against historical events this way.
My only complaint here was that I feel like it was sparse on Black women in the 60s, when I would have expected a little more about women writing in the civil rights movement. I know that part of the problem is who was and wasn’t being published — and there were certainly many more Black women included in more recent history — but that felt like a big gap.
If you are a fan of more academic-style nonfiction that teaches you new things, pick this one up.
sophronisba's review
informative
slow-paced
3.75
There's a lot of information packed into this book, but it can be fairly dry, and I didn't think it was particularly insightful.
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