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willwork4airfare's review against another edition
5.0
I can obviously see how this book might not appeal to some people, but bear in mind that it is a memoir/biography and not an academic discussion. That said, I loved it. I had to remind myself several times that this diary takes place in the 90s in Boston because I felt like it could've been written by myself or someone I knew. Middle school is the weirdest time.
I do wish that there had been more commentary or a more thorough afterword discussing the ramifications or the feminist context for the events of the diaries, but as I said, it's a memoir. The comments were short and mostly contextual, but so many had me laughing out loud, while others had my heart breaking. I relate to so much of what she wrote here and this book prompted so many memories and so much reflection about my own life. I couldn't wait to take out my middle school diaries and see what came up for me.
In these diaries, I saw myself and many of the girls I knew and some I only heard rumors about. I felt ashamed at how the memory of some 12 year old who had "stolen my boyfriend" could still make my stomach twist. I wondered about how many rumors I'd heard about other girls' sluttiness were the result of complete fiction, or nonconsensual acts. It's scary to think of how young we were. That this is how we learned to experiment with flirting and romance and sexuality. I definitely related to the melodrama and the volatility of emotions and of course the bad 11-13 year old poetry. Although she didn't spend much time on it, it made me think of how we as adults and teachers and religious institutions who interact with children every day need to do a better job of teaching them how to navigate relationships and emotional vocabulary. And of course, I love how clear this makes it that even before cellphones and social media, sexual bullying was just as prevalent.
I will definitely be looking into The Unslut Project because this book is pretty amazing. I was lucky enough to stumble upon it in my local library's Women's History Month display.
I do wish that there had been more commentary or a more thorough afterword discussing the ramifications or the feminist context for the events of the diaries, but as I said, it's a memoir. The comments were short and mostly contextual, but so many had me laughing out loud, while others had my heart breaking. I relate to so much of what she wrote here and this book prompted so many memories and so much reflection about my own life. I couldn't wait to take out my middle school diaries and see what came up for me.
In these diaries, I saw myself and many of the girls I knew and some I only heard rumors about. I felt ashamed at how the memory of some 12 year old who had "stolen my boyfriend" could still make my stomach twist. I wondered about how many rumors I'd heard about other girls' sluttiness were the result of complete fiction, or nonconsensual acts. It's scary to think of how young we were. That this is how we learned to experiment with flirting and romance and sexuality. I definitely related to the melodrama and the volatility of emotions and of course the bad 11-13 year old poetry. Although she didn't spend much time on it, it made me think of how we as adults and teachers and religious institutions who interact with children every day need to do a better job of teaching them how to navigate relationships and emotional vocabulary. And of course, I love how clear this makes it that even before cellphones and social media, sexual bullying was just as prevalent.
I will definitely be looking into The Unslut Project because this book is pretty amazing. I was lucky enough to stumble upon it in my local library's Women's History Month display.
rennegade's review against another edition
5.0
4.5 rounded up.
This was a really important read for me. Before I talk too much about the book, I am going to talk a bit about myself. I tried keeping a hand-written diary when I was in middle school, but after it went missing and mysteriously showed up in my parents' closet, I refused to put anything on paper. I turned to the internet - an unknown wilderness to my parents. I felt way more secure putting my deepest, darkest thoughts online, so I signed up for an online journal. (I went through several sites before finally settling on LiveJournal, and I will even admit that I've written in it as recently December of last year.)
UnSlut was very timely for me, as I recently reread my old online journals and cringed at teenage me. Seriously, I was awful. I was embarrassingly guilty of slut-shaming. To be clear, I was not a bully. I did not treat people the way Emily Lindin was treated. I did, however, use my online journal as a place to vent about people, mainly my female friends, by calling them sluts and whores. When I read it now, I get so upset and ashamed. I wanted to delete it (because, amazingly, I still remember the login information for nearly all of my online stuff despite it being there for over 15 years), but I decided instead to change the privacy so only I could see it and use it as an important reminder of how I have grown and developed as a person.
This book struck a chord with me on several levels. Because my middle school journals are still currently fresh in my mind, I saw a lot of myself in her. I thankfully did not experience the sexual bullying that she did, but I still feel as though middle school me could have related to middle school her. Lindin is only a year or so older than I am, so all of the references definitely took me right on back to middle school (though I admit that my musical tastes greatly differed back then). Also, the names she used for her friends (the diary is real, but she explains in the foreword that all names have been changed) were pretty much the names of all of my friends, so it was kind of trippy to read. There were a few lines from her diary moaning about friends that probably exist verbatim in mine.
I appreciate that she put notes along the side of the diary throughout writing as adult Emily reflecting on middle school Emily. When I would get upset about something and almost feel the need to respond to it (for example, ), I would see that Emily added a note in there saying pretty much the very same thing. It is crucial for young people reading this to see that so many things that were said and done were flat out wrong, and I am glad that Emily addresses it. She acknowledged that she said and did some pretty terrible things (such as using 'gay' and 'retarded' as slurs) and explained that she realized later in life how wrong it was to do so. I am almost tempted to edit my online journal entries with the same sort of self-aware notes. I like that, other than changing identifying information of the people in her diary, it was kept intact. I would be SO tempted to edit the crap out of mine if I ever tried to publish it, so it is good that she put it all out there.
This book is not going to be for everyone. It is literally the diary of a middle school girl. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, you may not want to delve into it. I do believe, though, that this book should be on the shelf of every single middle school library in the county. Teachers should assign it as the first book of sixth grade as a sort of cautionary tale. This is a story that needs to be told. People need to stop calling women sluts and shaming them for their sexuality. In order to do that, you really need to nip it in the bud when it starts. Middle school is that critical period of sexual, emotional, and societal development, and it is far too easy for slut-shaming to become an ingrained habit by the age of 11 or 12. Education is key, and I think speaking to preteens in their own language is the way to do it.
After reading this, I realized that I would be interested in reading other memoirs in this style. It almost seems slightly invasive, but since I was the beginning of the online journal generation (which involved allowing my online friends access to my deepest, darkest thoughts), I guess it makes since that I am naturally drawn to it.
Like I said - not for everyone, but it is important and I will be recommending it!
This was a really important read for me. Before I talk too much about the book, I am going to talk a bit about myself. I tried keeping a hand-written diary when I was in middle school, but after it went missing and mysteriously showed up in my parents' closet, I refused to put anything on paper. I turned to the internet - an unknown wilderness to my parents. I felt way more secure putting my deepest, darkest thoughts online, so I signed up for an online journal. (I went through several sites before finally settling on LiveJournal, and I will even admit that I've written in it as recently December of last year.)
UnSlut was very timely for me, as I recently reread my old online journals and cringed at teenage me. Seriously, I was awful. I was embarrassingly guilty of slut-shaming. To be clear, I was not a bully. I did not treat people the way Emily Lindin was treated. I did, however, use my online journal as a place to vent about people, mainly my female friends, by calling them sluts and whores. When I read it now, I get so upset and ashamed. I wanted to delete it (because, amazingly, I still remember the login information for nearly all of my online stuff despite it being there for over 15 years), but I decided instead to change the privacy so only I could see it and use it as an important reminder of how I have grown and developed as a person.
This book struck a chord with me on several levels. Because my middle school journals are still currently fresh in my mind, I saw a lot of myself in her. I thankfully did not experience the sexual bullying that she did, but I still feel as though middle school me could have related to middle school her. Lindin is only a year or so older than I am, so all of the references definitely took me right on back to middle school (though I admit that my musical tastes greatly differed back then). Also, the names she used for her friends (the diary is real, but she explains in the foreword that all names have been changed) were pretty much the names of all of my friends, so it was kind of trippy to read. There were a few lines from her diary moaning about friends that probably exist verbatim in mine.
I appreciate that she put notes along the side of the diary throughout writing as adult Emily reflecting on middle school Emily. When I would get upset about something and almost feel the need to respond to it (for example,
Spoiler
when she was sexually assault by Chris, I wanted to scream, "YOU DIDN'T CHEAT ON YOUR BOYFRIEND! YOU WERE ASSAULTED!"This book is not going to be for everyone. It is literally the diary of a middle school girl. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, you may not want to delve into it. I do believe, though, that this book should be on the shelf of every single middle school library in the county. Teachers should assign it as the first book of sixth grade as a sort of cautionary tale. This is a story that needs to be told. People need to stop calling women sluts and shaming them for their sexuality. In order to do that, you really need to nip it in the bud when it starts. Middle school is that critical period of sexual, emotional, and societal development, and it is far too easy for slut-shaming to become an ingrained habit by the age of 11 or 12. Education is key, and I think speaking to preteens in their own language is the way to do it.
After reading this, I realized that I would be interested in reading other memoirs in this style. It almost seems slightly invasive, but since I was the beginning of the online journal generation (which involved allowing my online friends access to my deepest, darkest thoughts), I guess it makes since that I am naturally drawn to it.
Like I said - not for everyone, but it is important and I will be recommending it!
abbyl0u's review against another edition
2.0
I think this is an important book and a brave concept. I feel the execution, though, is lacking in a way that hampers the effect of the book. The comments often seemed to miss things that were important (I thought) to comment on. Giving a rating is hard for this type of work, but I ultimately went with two stars because UnSlut had huge potential but got in its own way.
kricketa's review against another edition
I'm really interested in the topic of this book, but the format/layout was too much for me. I read the list of characters in the beginning but I couldn't keep any of them straight, and the constant footnotes made everything feel disjointed. Since what Lindin is working with is her diary entries from middle school, it makes sense that she doesn't introduce each character she refers to or give any background information....but it doesn't make it real easy to read either. Anyway, I quit.
thebookishlibrarian's review against another edition
This intense, eye-opening memoir chronicles Emily Lindin’s life as a middle schooler and peer-labeled “slut.” The book is made up of diary entries of Lindin’s middle school years, and footnotes that the adult Emily Lindin has added to examine the craziness of her relationships with her friends, enemies and various crushes and boyfriends. The purpose of the memoir is to shed light on how crazy kids’ lives can be, and what we as adults can do to help them. She includes entries that talk about kids ages eleven to thirteen drinking, engaging in sexual behavior and acting nasty towards each other, like it’s no big deal at all. The Unslut Project began as a blog, but when women started sharing their own stories, and took it a step further, and published the memoir in hopes that it would shed light on the sexual bullying of girls and women.
cate_bird's review against another edition
3.0
The author's analyses as the diary moved along were less thorough than I had hoped for. But her conclusion: that we should forgive ourselves (and others) and recognize that we made decisions based on information we had, and we may regret those decisions based on future information we gain, is kind and valuable, without holding back on the condemnation of many of the actions described in her diary. It's worth reading her conclusion, even if you can't bring yourself to slog through that many pages of middle school drama.
snchard's review against another edition
3.0
Will recommend to any middle schoolers who will listen. Horrifically reminiscent of personal awkward preteen drama. Reads like what it is-- the diary of a 6th-8th grader.
hnagle15's review against another edition
4.0
This was a really interesting project. Lindon's commentary alongside the diary entries are really interesting. I enjoy that she discussed how slut shaming has been around longer than technology, as we often associate the two.
Some of the diary entries made me cringe because I remember being so similar at that awkward middle school age!
Some of the diary entries made me cringe because I remember being so similar at that awkward middle school age!
agw622's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
The story can come across as childish, but the commentary helps with that. I think I'm a bit removed from it given my age, but even still I thought it was nice to see someone else relatable at that age.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Homophobia, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Toxic friendship, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Misogyny, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, and Bullying