Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
As I thought after listening to [b:Men Explain Things to Me|18528190|Men Explain Things to Me|Rebecca Solnit|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1393447237l/18528190._SX50_.jpg|26233826], Solnit's essays are much better for eyes-reading. I felt more immersed in her writing and her language and I could stop and go back very easily when a sentence got weird.
The essays in this book are mostly short and sweet and about feminism and what tools the Majority (the patriarchy, white people, people who don't want to listen to the plight of others) use to silence others. There is one big slog of an essay about silencing that begins this collection and it was tough going, but once I got through it the rest of the essays were a welcome relief. Some of them feel just a touch dated as this was published after #yesallwomen but just before #metoo and it feels like the essays are missing that extra touch of context, which of course they couldn't have had.
I'm definitely interested enough after reading this to check out the book that comes between Men Explain Things to Me and this one, and also some of the books Solnit wrote that she mentions in the various essays. Good self-promotion!
The essays in this book are mostly short and sweet and about feminism and what tools the Majority (the patriarchy, white people, people who don't want to listen to the plight of others) use to silence others. There is one big slog of an essay about silencing that begins this collection and it was tough going, but once I got through it the rest of the essays were a welcome relief. Some of them feel just a touch dated as this was published after #yesallwomen but just before #metoo and it feels like the essays are missing that extra touch of context, which of course they couldn't have had.
I'm definitely interested enough after reading this to check out the book that comes between Men Explain Things to Me and this one, and also some of the books Solnit wrote that she mentions in the various essays. Good self-promotion!
Solid collection of essays, particularly useful for thinking about language and power.
A hard book to read in the current climate, but devastating in its clarity. The summation of all the ways women are silenced and also silence themselves is the truest thing I've read this year. Recommended!
ebook ARC from Edelweiss - expected publication date March 2017.
Currently reading, researching and so on about gender stereotypes for my thesis. I sort of wanted a break from reading all that and "accidentally" picked The Mother of All Questions. Which is definitely not a mistake and was a delightful and yet heartbreaking read. It makes me wonder all the time why people don't see it and such. Funny how she simply wrote that if you did not understand this to be a problem, you are stupid. Plain, blunt, direct, necessary.
It was a great read, I learned a bit more here and there as well as, acknowledged some more things. I think every country is different but there are definitely the same situations and thus things I could understand and yet things I could now learn from another perspective.
I picked up The Mother of All Questions because I really enjoyed Solnit's more well-known collection, Men Explain Things To Me. This collection is a solid sequel, although I have the same minor complaints that I did with the first book: some of the essays are stronger than others, and Solnit tends to re-use the same statistics and anecdotes. The latter point is fine when the essays are read separately, but begins to feel repetitive if you read the book all at once, as I did.
My favorite essays were in the latter half of the book, where Solnit moves more into commentary on specific literary texts. Her ideas are incisive, thoughtful, and original. I particularly enjoyed "80 Books No Woman Should Read," her sharp response to "The 60 Best Books Every Man Should Read" published in Esquire, and her subsequent reflection on the enormous Internet response and backlash titled "Men Explain Lolita to Me." Her final essay in the book, titled "Giantess," was my favorite -- it is her love letter to the 1956 George Stevens film Giant. Her passion and relationship with the film (and other texts) was fascinating and well-articulated.
I thought the weakest essay was "A Short History of Silence." The essay is over fifty pages and divided into four parts with poetic names, i.e. "I. The Ocean around the Archipelago", and summarizes the history of silencing in relation with women and violence in our culture. The divisions between parts felt arbitrary to me and the pay-off for the length was simply not there.
Much of Solnit's writing synthesizes what I find are fairly mainstream liberal and feminist ideas about policy and culture. While I can appreciate essays in this category as well-constructed, I generally don't learn anything new from them. But when Solnit writes about specific media (as in "Giantess"), the essays are much more original -- these were the essays I enjoyed more. That said, I think the collection is worth reading as a whole and your specific familiarity/relationship with feminist praxis will influence which essays are the most powerful and informative.
My favorite essays were in the latter half of the book, where Solnit moves more into commentary on specific literary texts. Her ideas are incisive, thoughtful, and original. I particularly enjoyed "80 Books No Woman Should Read," her sharp response to "The 60 Best Books Every Man Should Read" published in Esquire, and her subsequent reflection on the enormous Internet response and backlash titled "Men Explain Lolita to Me." Her final essay in the book, titled "Giantess," was my favorite -- it is her love letter to the 1956 George Stevens film Giant. Her passion and relationship with the film (and other texts) was fascinating and well-articulated.
I thought the weakest essay was "A Short History of Silence." The essay is over fifty pages and divided into four parts with poetic names, i.e. "I. The Ocean around the Archipelago", and summarizes the history of silencing in relation with women and violence in our culture. The divisions between parts felt arbitrary to me and the pay-off for the length was simply not there.
Much of Solnit's writing synthesizes what I find are fairly mainstream liberal and feminist ideas about policy and culture. While I can appreciate essays in this category as well-constructed, I generally don't learn anything new from them. But when Solnit writes about specific media (as in "Giantess"), the essays are much more original -- these were the essays I enjoyed more. That said, I think the collection is worth reading as a whole and your specific familiarity/relationship with feminist praxis will influence which essays are the most powerful and informative.
Rebecca Solnit is a lovely author, with many of her books being an enjoyable read for me. From my own experience, this book feels a bit naive, and now a bit dated. The way she approaches history at times gives off the feeling that she is not a historian- which she is not. This sentiment is strongly felt in her essay "Man the Hunter", which interestingly brings up Sahlins 1972 book "Stone Age Economics", but misses out on a wide amount of feminist and gender literature coming from the archaeological and anthropological fields from the 1980s onwards. I think it is a lack of knowledge due to her background which could make some of these historical aspects of her feminist writing seem less researched. Otherwise an interesting read!
Brief, but with plenty of depth. Come for Solnit's thoughtful critiques of modes of literary and embodied silencing -- stay for her sharp asides on how Jonathan Franzen is trash. Sadly, chapter on the great male allies of standup has not aged well (C.K. and Aziz top the list).