You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.22 AVERAGE
4.22 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
"To have a voice means not just the animal capacity to utter sounds but the ability to participate fully in the conversations that shape your society, your relations to others, and your own life."
The first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page, the first chapter. Each one made me stop in my tracks, to reread, highlight and just appreciate each piece. I was already a fan of hers so I really enjoyed reading the story of her development & discovery as an artist, an author and a feminist. And if you haven't picked up anything else of hers, this is also a great introduction to her writing.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism
Moderate: Rape, Violence
reflective
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This book kicked my butt. In a good way.
Thoughts, in pieces:
Learning that she, early on in her life, studied collage artists, I now see her books as collages. Quotes, ideas, experiences, observations, stitched together to make something new, and even more beautiful.
"We die all the time to avoid being killed." -- I'm feeling this very strongly right now, as I try to open back up after 2 1/2 years of being mostly COVID-isolated.
The whole passage "When I read, I ceased to be myself..." That, too, I'm feeling now, as I've found all the books I'm reading now to be a door to elsewhere since here is so compressed and unpalatable.
The pages about margins, where creativity sparks, and centers do not. When I came to Austin in 1980, her descriptions of San Francisco at the same time resonated and made me think that the environment, the milieu, the zeitgeist, was maybe more widespread (and maybe that's why Indigo Girls, B-52s, X, so many other bands, popped up everywhere in the US). I don't know where that is now, but Austin now feels like a center, no longer a margin, and so devoid of creativity. But maybe it's just that I'm older, have reached that stability that I wanted, and am no longer on or around the margins.
"You can't at least declare failure immediately, because consequences are not always direct, or immediate, or obvious, and indirect consequences matter." I loved the whole section that followed. We have occasionally had moments like this, where we discover someone that we had an impact on that were in the audience, so we didn't know them at the time. So we remind ourselves of this all the time. As hard as it is to carry on sometimes, we just never know what will come of what we do. So we keep doing our small contributions. I really, really appreciated this section.
And, while there was a gap in between, this actually would have been a nice segue into the idea that revolutionary works of art don't really look revolutionary anymore, because they changed the world, and that revolution has now been incorporated into culture and become commonplace. And then she went into some deep musings about permanence, impermanence, and religion.
The section about how 'mansplaining' came to be, and how men tend to run over women in conversations, in, well, just everywhere. Ouch. So, as a result, I went to a small party this evening, and made sure to listen, and wait speakers out, especially the women. And I'm trying to be more conscious of it at work.
I'm sure this all makes almost no sense, but the book really did work for me, so much so that I can't wait to read more of hers.
Thoughts, in pieces:
Learning that she, early on in her life, studied collage artists, I now see her books as collages. Quotes, ideas, experiences, observations, stitched together to make something new, and even more beautiful.
"We die all the time to avoid being killed." -- I'm feeling this very strongly right now, as I try to open back up after 2 1/2 years of being mostly COVID-isolated.
The whole passage "When I read, I ceased to be myself..." That, too, I'm feeling now, as I've found all the books I'm reading now to be a door to elsewhere since here is so compressed and unpalatable.
The pages about margins, where creativity sparks, and centers do not. When I came to Austin in 1980, her descriptions of San Francisco at the same time resonated and made me think that the environment, the milieu, the zeitgeist, was maybe more widespread (and maybe that's why Indigo Girls, B-52s, X, so many other bands, popped up everywhere in the US). I don't know where that is now, but Austin now feels like a center, no longer a margin, and so devoid of creativity. But maybe it's just that I'm older, have reached that stability that I wanted, and am no longer on or around the margins.
"You can't at least declare failure immediately, because consequences are not always direct, or immediate, or obvious, and indirect consequences matter." I loved the whole section that followed. We have occasionally had moments like this, where we discover someone that we had an impact on that were in the audience, so we didn't know them at the time. So we remind ourselves of this all the time. As hard as it is to carry on sometimes, we just never know what will come of what we do. So we keep doing our small contributions. I really, really appreciated this section.
And, while there was a gap in between, this actually would have been a nice segue into the idea that revolutionary works of art don't really look revolutionary anymore, because they changed the world, and that revolution has now been incorporated into culture and become commonplace. And then she went into some deep musings about permanence, impermanence, and religion.
The section about how 'mansplaining' came to be, and how men tend to run over women in conversations, in, well, just everywhere. Ouch. So, as a result, I went to a small party this evening, and made sure to listen, and wait speakers out, especially the women. And I'm trying to be more conscious of it at work.
I'm sure this all makes almost no sense, but the book really did work for me, so much so that I can't wait to read more of hers.
Edit - Changed to five stars on Nov 11, 2022
Solnit has her fingers on my pulse.
"There was no adjustment I could make in my psyche or my life that would make this problem acceptable or non-existent, and there was nowhere to go to leave it behind. The problems were embedded in the society and maybe the world in which I found myself."
"I tell all this not because I think my story is exceptional, but because it is ordinary."
"One of the struggles I was engaged in when I was young was about whether the territory of my own body was under my jurisdiction or somebody else's, anybody else's, everybody else's, whether I controlled its border, whether it be subject to hostile invasions, whether I was in charge of myself."
"Men would wander by to tell me what needed fixing...and the ones who spoke were always wrong and never seemed to notice. I already knew what I was doing."
"We were trained to make ourselves desirable in ways that made us reject ourselves and our desires."
Solnit has her fingers on my pulse.
"There was no adjustment I could make in my psyche or my life that would make this problem acceptable or non-existent, and there was nowhere to go to leave it behind. The problems were embedded in the society and maybe the world in which I found myself."
"I tell all this not because I think my story is exceptional, but because it is ordinary."
"One of the struggles I was engaged in when I was young was about whether the territory of my own body was under my jurisdiction or somebody else's, anybody else's, everybody else's, whether I controlled its border, whether it be subject to hostile invasions, whether I was in charge of myself."
"Men would wander by to tell me what needed fixing...and the ones who spoke were always wrong and never seemed to notice. I already knew what I was doing."
"We were trained to make ourselves desirable in ways that made us reject ourselves and our desires."
An excellently unselfish memoir that shows the journey of a woman writing her way into existence. Solnit is an incredible writer. She has the uncanny ability to take the mundane and describe it so intricately it becomes the most important metaphor for the activism that beats through all her stories.
Her simplicity is powerful, and her storytelling is loaded with respect and awareness. Solnit describes living in San Francisco as a vital part of shaping herself. It’s nurturing inclusiveness for the spirit of those who live on the margins.
An empowering book. It is nature, even now, for woman to disregard themselves. Their thoughts and feelings are dismissed by society and so they think their own voice away. Each reflection fights the good fight in showing women their credibility and validates their insecurities around feeling they are not. Because the damage goes that deep, women can be so far away from their voice that they normalise their pain at being unheard.
Solnit is a brave writer with one hell of a voice, and this is the kind of book you can read again and again.
Her simplicity is powerful, and her storytelling is loaded with respect and awareness. Solnit describes living in San Francisco as a vital part of shaping herself. It’s nurturing inclusiveness for the spirit of those who live on the margins.
An empowering book. It is nature, even now, for woman to disregard themselves. Their thoughts and feelings are dismissed by society and so they think their own voice away. Each reflection fights the good fight in showing women their credibility and validates their insecurities around feeling they are not. Because the damage goes that deep, women can be so far away from their voice that they normalise their pain at being unheard.
Solnit is a brave writer with one hell of a voice, and this is the kind of book you can read again and again.