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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
Sultana's Dream meets Herland meets Plato's republic.
So there's two futures depicted in the novel, one is a hippy eco feminist wetdream, the other is a consumerist cyberpunk nightmare. We see both futures (and the present, now our past) through the eyes of a mexican-american woman at a mental institute in the 1970s. What I really enjoyed was Consuela's POV, she's been disempowered all her life because of her migrant background, her gender, her poverty, yet she is such a strong spirit. She's the emotional core of the novel and makes it human.
I really had to check twice to make sure that the book was written in the 70s. Most the issues are even more relevant today, and none of the ideas seem outdated. Either the book is way ahead of its time, or we are really still struggling with the same problems as 1970s.
So there's two futures depicted in the novel, one is a hippy eco feminist wetdream, the other is a consumerist cyberpunk nightmare. We see both futures (and the present, now our past) through the eyes of a mexican-american woman at a mental institute in the 1970s. What I really enjoyed was Consuela's POV, she's been disempowered all her life because of her migrant background, her gender, her poverty, yet she is such a strong spirit. She's the emotional core of the novel and makes it human.
I really had to check twice to make sure that the book was written in the 70s. Most the issues are even more relevant today, and none of the ideas seem outdated. Either the book is way ahead of its time, or we are really still struggling with the same problems as 1970s.
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
“We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.”
So What’s It About?
Connie Ramos, a woman in her mid-thirties, has been declared insane. But Connie is overwhelmingly sane, merely tuned to the future, and able to communicate with the year 2137. As her doctors persuade her to agree to an operation, Connie struggles to force herself to listen to the future and its lessons for today….
What I Thought- The F Word
Before I dive into the minutiae of this review, I do think the most important thing to do is take a step back and evaluate the matter that is at the heart of Piercy’s book: her vision for a feminist utopia. I’ll admit to trepidation on this front before reading the book- the 1970s were an incredibly important time for feminism, but I’d also argue that some of the radical/cultural feminism from that era is deeply dated at this point; I pretty much tune out as soon as people start talking about internal goddesses and separatism. With that in mind, I wasn’t sure how Piercy’s vision would withstand the test of 40 years.
As a whole, Woman on the Edge of Time holds up very well, I think. Some of the particulars of Piercy’s politics remain extremely relevant to issues that are at the forefront of feminism today. I was especially intrigued by Piercy’s exploration of gender neutrality: the people of the feminist future in Mattapoisett, while still aware of sex as a construct, do not extrapolate from biology any other sort of attribute or identity, and instead practice gender neutrality including the use of the neutral pronoun “per.”
Entirely contrary to my fears surrounding the use of gender essentialism because of the era of the book’s publication, the people of Mattapoisett have not found the solution to patriarchal control to be the essentialization of womanhood – instead of celebrating a divine female essence as so many cultural feminists did in the 1970s, Piercy argues that such practices simply etch the gender binary further into stone, and that our goal should instead be to eliminate that binary and allow each individual to shine through in their uniqueness. Connie’s reaction to this is rage at first, when she finds that motherhood is no longer a practice tied to gender – if motherhood no longer belongs to women, if they no longer have one thing that makes them special in a world that almost universally denigrates them, then what’s left? Luciente’s answer is simple: the further we entrench ourselves into false dichotomies, the greater our sorrows grow.
Luciente’s future is one where egalitarianism is painstakingly realized in every aspect of the world-building. I’ve already identified the points that were the most thought-provoking to me, but that’s not to say that Piercy has not also given equal thought to matters of economic and environmental justice, mental health, childcare, shared leadership and decision-making and sexuality. There are a few notable exceptions to my general appreciation for her vision, however. It’s apparent that Piercy views all sex work as inherently exploitative and violent, a position that I take issue with. I’m also uncomfortable with the young ages at which teenagers in the future seem to be sleeping with adults much older than them. Perhaps the hottest and bizarrest take of all is Piercy’s heavy-handed insinuation that Connie’s experiences of incest as a young child were totally above-board and harmless. Like, what???
I’d also be remiss if I neglected to explore Piercy’s examination of ableism and the horrific treatment of the mentally ill by the systems that are allegedly designed to help them. This part of the book anticipates intersectionality by depicting the manner in which poor people, queer people and people of color who are also neurodivergent experience heightened marginalization, dehumanization and violence in the mental health system. It’s a brutal, unflinching look at the way that those with mental illness are treated as though they are subhuman with invasions of privacy, the stripping away of basic human rights and -at best- humiliating infantalization.
Connie is a powerful choice for a protagonist for this book, because as a poor woman of color who has been deemed insane, who has been abused her entire life, she so powerfully contrasts the differences between the callousness of the present day world and the compassionate utopia of Mattapoisett. Perhaps most importantly, Piercy insists that though she is the most voiceless of the voiceless, the most denigrated of the denigrated, the most forgotten of the forgotten, she still matters. She still deserves the peace that Mattapoisett offers; she is still a human being with agency no matter how the world tries to strip it away from her, and she still has the capacity to make a difference and, potentially, change the course of the future.
If this is all sounding quite transformative and impactful, that’s because it is! Here’s the thing, though: while Piercy’s ideas are extremely powerful and resonant, I take issue with the manner in which she chose to communicate them. Put simply, I find her methods didactic in the extreme. For all that Connie comes to think of Luciente and the people of Mattapoisett as family, I really can’t say that I felt much of an emotional connection between any of them at all. Most of their conversations consist of Socratic-style info-dumps. I’m not necessarily saying that I could come up with a better way of conveying a vast amount of information about society-building over the course of a 400 page novel, but I AM saying that the impact of Piercy’s ideas is hobbled by the means of their conveyance.
I have a few other quibbles with the time travel aspect of the story. It seems bizarre to me that Luciente and per people had so entirely little knowledge about Connie’s world and how it functioned. Was there some kind of event that caused a loss of information about the world before it was restructured? If I traveled 200 years into the past I think I would have a much better understanding of how it functioned than Luciente did of Connie’s world. I was also frustrated by how bizarrely dismissive Luciente was of Connie’s experiences in the institution. On some occasions it felt like person more or less entirely ignored the horrific things that were happening in Connie’s life to jump right back into lecturing about per society. I additionally would have appreciated it if Connie had been a little bit more inquisitive about the future people’s vocabulary, because I struggled with some of their slang and vocabulary and having a few more explanations about that would have helped a great deal.
If I had more time I would dive down into how Piercy’s version of a gender neutral world contrasts with Le Guin’s take in The Left Hand of Darkness. I fear I’m already straining at the limits of my hypothetical reader’s patience, however, so I think I’ll leave well enough alone for now.
So What’s It About?
Connie Ramos, a woman in her mid-thirties, has been declared insane. But Connie is overwhelmingly sane, merely tuned to the future, and able to communicate with the year 2137. As her doctors persuade her to agree to an operation, Connie struggles to force herself to listen to the future and its lessons for today….
What I Thought- The F Word
Before I dive into the minutiae of this review, I do think the most important thing to do is take a step back and evaluate the matter that is at the heart of Piercy’s book: her vision for a feminist utopia. I’ll admit to trepidation on this front before reading the book- the 1970s were an incredibly important time for feminism, but I’d also argue that some of the radical/cultural feminism from that era is deeply dated at this point; I pretty much tune out as soon as people start talking about internal goddesses and separatism. With that in mind, I wasn’t sure how Piercy’s vision would withstand the test of 40 years.
As a whole, Woman on the Edge of Time holds up very well, I think. Some of the particulars of Piercy’s politics remain extremely relevant to issues that are at the forefront of feminism today. I was especially intrigued by Piercy’s exploration of gender neutrality: the people of the feminist future in Mattapoisett, while still aware of sex as a construct, do not extrapolate from biology any other sort of attribute or identity, and instead practice gender neutrality including the use of the neutral pronoun “per.”
Entirely contrary to my fears surrounding the use of gender essentialism because of the era of the book’s publication, the people of Mattapoisett have not found the solution to patriarchal control to be the essentialization of womanhood – instead of celebrating a divine female essence as so many cultural feminists did in the 1970s, Piercy argues that such practices simply etch the gender binary further into stone, and that our goal should instead be to eliminate that binary and allow each individual to shine through in their uniqueness. Connie’s reaction to this is rage at first, when she finds that motherhood is no longer a practice tied to gender – if motherhood no longer belongs to women, if they no longer have one thing that makes them special in a world that almost universally denigrates them, then what’s left? Luciente’s answer is simple: the further we entrench ourselves into false dichotomies, the greater our sorrows grow.
Luciente’s future is one where egalitarianism is painstakingly realized in every aspect of the world-building. I’ve already identified the points that were the most thought-provoking to me, but that’s not to say that Piercy has not also given equal thought to matters of economic and environmental justice, mental health, childcare, shared leadership and decision-making and sexuality. There are a few notable exceptions to my general appreciation for her vision, however. It’s apparent that Piercy views all sex work as inherently exploitative and violent, a position that I take issue with. I’m also uncomfortable with the young ages at which teenagers in the future seem to be sleeping with adults much older than them. Perhaps the hottest and bizarrest take of all is Piercy’s heavy-handed insinuation that Connie’s experiences of incest as a young child were totally above-board and harmless. Like, what???
I’d also be remiss if I neglected to explore Piercy’s examination of ableism and the horrific treatment of the mentally ill by the systems that are allegedly designed to help them. This part of the book anticipates intersectionality by depicting the manner in which poor people, queer people and people of color who are also neurodivergent experience heightened marginalization, dehumanization and violence in the mental health system. It’s a brutal, unflinching look at the way that those with mental illness are treated as though they are subhuman with invasions of privacy, the stripping away of basic human rights and -at best- humiliating infantalization.
Connie is a powerful choice for a protagonist for this book, because as a poor woman of color who has been deemed insane, who has been abused her entire life, she so powerfully contrasts the differences between the callousness of the present day world and the compassionate utopia of Mattapoisett. Perhaps most importantly, Piercy insists that though she is the most voiceless of the voiceless, the most denigrated of the denigrated, the most forgotten of the forgotten, she still matters. She still deserves the peace that Mattapoisett offers; she is still a human being with agency no matter how the world tries to strip it away from her, and she still has the capacity to make a difference and, potentially, change the course of the future.
If this is all sounding quite transformative and impactful, that’s because it is! Here’s the thing, though: while Piercy’s ideas are extremely powerful and resonant, I take issue with the manner in which she chose to communicate them. Put simply, I find her methods didactic in the extreme. For all that Connie comes to think of Luciente and the people of Mattapoisett as family, I really can’t say that I felt much of an emotional connection between any of them at all. Most of their conversations consist of Socratic-style info-dumps. I’m not necessarily saying that I could come up with a better way of conveying a vast amount of information about society-building over the course of a 400 page novel, but I AM saying that the impact of Piercy’s ideas is hobbled by the means of their conveyance.
I have a few other quibbles with the time travel aspect of the story. It seems bizarre to me that Luciente and per people had so entirely little knowledge about Connie’s world and how it functioned. Was there some kind of event that caused a loss of information about the world before it was restructured? If I traveled 200 years into the past I think I would have a much better understanding of how it functioned than Luciente did of Connie’s world. I was also frustrated by how bizarrely dismissive Luciente was of Connie’s experiences in the institution. On some occasions it felt like person more or less entirely ignored the horrific things that were happening in Connie’s life to jump right back into lecturing about per society. I additionally would have appreciated it if Connie had been a little bit more inquisitive about the future people’s vocabulary, because I struggled with some of their slang and vocabulary and having a few more explanations about that would have helped a great deal.
If I had more time I would dive down into how Piercy’s version of a gender neutral world contrasts with Le Guin’s take in The Left Hand of Darkness. I fear I’m already straining at the limits of my hypothetical reader’s patience, however, so I think I’ll leave well enough alone for now.
this was another random library selection. One of those books that I thought I should’ve read a long time ago. It’s hard to give only three stars to a book that has reportedly had such an impact. But I felt like it needed a huge amount of editing and did not get it. The end was very confusing and her descriptions of the future utopia often very didactic. at times it no longer felt like a novel and more like a speculative treatise. Oh well.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A utopia in the tradition of William Morris' News from Nowhere, but incorporating a stronger criticism of the present as well as a less doe-eyed view of the utopian future. Piercy's characters are fully drawn and exist beyond their functions in pitching a possible future, which in turn makes the possibility of that future feel more real, as it is a world that actual people live in and not just a fantasy that requires flat souled inhabitants to work. Similarly the future language is crafted just right to feel strange but not fake.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Forced institutionalization, Medical trauma
Moderate: Addiction, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Abortion
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Finally got around to finishing this. Having only read her poetry, I am in awe of Piercy's novelistic prowess. Much of her prose is beautifully poetic. I felt slightly disappointed by the ending, but I think that is how the reader is supposed to feel. There are no true happy endings, just small victories that do not benefit everyone, sometimes not even the protagonist.
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes