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cassiewbee's review against another edition
DNF’d 50%
Wasn’t bad, just wasn’t for me 🤷♀️
Wasn’t bad, just wasn’t for me 🤷♀️
ummefatema's review against another edition
5.0
"My husband is in the kitchen.
He is channelling his anger, practising his outrage. I am the wooden cutting board banged against the countertop. I am the clattering plates flung into the cupboards. I am the unwashed glass being thrown to the floor. Shatter and shards and diamond sparkle of tiny pieces. My hips and thighs and breasts and buttocks. Irreversible crashing sounds, a fragile sight of brokenness as a petty tyrant indulges in a power-trip. Not for the first time, and not for the last."
I cannot put into words how much I care for this book. It‘s brutal but so important. The author won my heart with her writing. It’s not for the faint of heart but I’d encourage everyone to read this if they can take it.
My copy is full of highlights now because every word the author has written is crucial.
“I am the woman with wings, the woman who can fly and fuck at will. I have smuggled this woman out of the oppressive landscape of small-town India. I need to smuggle her out of her history, out of the do’s and don’ts for good Indian girls.”
He is channelling his anger, practising his outrage. I am the wooden cutting board banged against the countertop. I am the clattering plates flung into the cupboards. I am the unwashed glass being thrown to the floor. Shatter and shards and diamond sparkle of tiny pieces. My hips and thighs and breasts and buttocks. Irreversible crashing sounds, a fragile sight of brokenness as a petty tyrant indulges in a power-trip. Not for the first time, and not for the last."
I cannot put into words how much I care for this book. It‘s brutal but so important. The author won my heart with her writing. It’s not for the faint of heart but I’d encourage everyone to read this if they can take it.
My copy is full of highlights now because every word the author has written is crucial.
“I am the woman with wings, the woman who can fly and fuck at will. I have smuggled this woman out of the oppressive landscape of small-town India. I need to smuggle her out of her history, out of the do’s and don’ts for good Indian girls.”
scarletohhara's review against another edition
4.0
Must read. For everyone.
If you are a woman, read this book and tell yourself how bad some people in this world could be. If you are a man, read it to know the atrocities women have to put up with. If you are a parent, read this to know that you have to support your girl and teach your boy to be a sensitive human being. And if you are a citizen of the world, read it to know how harsh the world is and how quick it is to judge, in many cases.
The soft-gore, emotional abuse , physical torture and the story hit a nerve with me because it could have happened to any of us. And as 90s Indian women, brought up to be modern by our parents, educated, after having been told that the sky is really the limit for us, most of us have known deep in our hearts that a horror like this could still happen to us. We count ourselves lucky when we lead normal lives, as sad and ironic as that sounds.
Reading this book also brought the lives of so many friends whom I've known to have gone through torture like this. And I wept a little for them all, again.
If you are a woman, read this book and tell yourself how bad some people in this world could be. If you are a man, read it to know the atrocities women have to put up with. If you are a parent, read this to know that you have to support your girl and teach your boy to be a sensitive human being. And if you are a citizen of the world, read it to know how harsh the world is and how quick it is to judge, in many cases.
The soft-gore, emotional abuse , physical torture and the story hit a nerve with me because it could have happened to any of us. And as 90s Indian women, brought up to be modern by our parents, educated, after having been told that the sky is really the limit for us, most of us have known deep in our hearts that a horror like this could still happen to us. We count ourselves lucky when we lead normal lives, as sad and ironic as that sounds.
Reading this book also brought the lives of so many friends whom I've known to have gone through torture like this. And I wept a little for them all, again.
hetauuu's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars
Meena Kandasamy takes on a highly disturbing and disturbingly real topic: domestic violence, both physical and mental. From the very first pages of When I Hit You it becomes apparent that the things done to our unnamed narrator have been so brutal that the things you're about to read about will not be for the faint of heart. But closing our eyes to the facts of situations like these, no matter how horrible, serves as nothing but a disservice to those who have to suffer from it.
At first, everything is perfect - our main character falls in love with a man who seems so passionate about equality and justice. He is a communist to the core, a proud supporter of Lenin, Marx and Mao, he believes that the bourgeoisie will one day be dethroned and people will seize the means of production. He speaks with passion and is unshakable in his stances, and our narrator, a woman of the same beliefs, cannot believe her luck. Yet now, as she is writing in hindsight, having already seen this violent marriage to its end, she sees warning signs she didn't see back then, she sees the hypocrisy of a man claiming to be for freedom and justice, yet not even regarding his own wife as human.
The fact that When I Hit You talks about the violence and abuse perpetrated by Leftist men is very important. Often when we talk about sexism and violence against women, we speak of right-wing conservative circles and men, whose traditional viewpoint on gender roles and the places of women and men in society (often dictated by religious views) put women at a disadvantage. Rarely do we mention that the people who claim to embrace the world and claim to seek justice and equality for all often don't extend that promise to women. This side needs to be explored too, it needs to be shown that sexism and misogyny is not only for the right-wing, it's ingrained into the minds of so many leftist people too, it is not a left vs. right question. It's a question of whether or not you see women as people, whether or not you are able to apply your abstract idea of equal treatment to the real life people around you.
Kandasamy's writing is not floral or frilly. It's angry, it's disappointed, it's hurt - yet at the same time, it is full of hope. When the husband tries everything he can to tear our narrator down once and for all, mentally and physically, even threatening with murder, our protagonist is able to pick up the remaining pieces of herself, stick the back together and keep going. The novel is rather fragmentary and does not move on in a strict chronological order. We know the entire time that she is going to eventually get out of the marriage, and the knowledge of that, the relief and sense of safety it brings, is peppered into the novel throughout. Life and freedom will eventually prevail, even when people around her do not believe her and her experiences, at least she is no longer experiencing them.
When I Hit You is a 250-page long gut-punch. I'll be digesting this one for a long time.
one two
tame the shrew
one two
just push through
one two
yes thank you
Meena Kandasamy takes on a highly disturbing and disturbingly real topic: domestic violence, both physical and mental. From the very first pages of When I Hit You it becomes apparent that the things done to our unnamed narrator have been so brutal that the things you're about to read about will not be for the faint of heart. But closing our eyes to the facts of situations like these, no matter how horrible, serves as nothing but a disservice to those who have to suffer from it.
At first, everything is perfect - our main character falls in love with a man who seems so passionate about equality and justice. He is a communist to the core, a proud supporter of Lenin, Marx and Mao, he believes that the bourgeoisie will one day be dethroned and people will seize the means of production. He speaks with passion and is unshakable in his stances, and our narrator, a woman of the same beliefs, cannot believe her luck. Yet now, as she is writing in hindsight, having already seen this violent marriage to its end, she sees warning signs she didn't see back then, she sees the hypocrisy of a man claiming to be for freedom and justice, yet not even regarding his own wife as human.
The fact that When I Hit You talks about the violence and abuse perpetrated by Leftist men is very important. Often when we talk about sexism and violence against women, we speak of right-wing conservative circles and men, whose traditional viewpoint on gender roles and the places of women and men in society (often dictated by religious views) put women at a disadvantage. Rarely do we mention that the people who claim to embrace the world and claim to seek justice and equality for all often don't extend that promise to women. This side needs to be explored too, it needs to be shown that sexism and misogyny is not only for the right-wing, it's ingrained into the minds of so many leftist people too, it is not a left vs. right question. It's a question of whether or not you see women as people, whether or not you are able to apply your abstract idea of equal treatment to the real life people around you.
Kandasamy's writing is not floral or frilly. It's angry, it's disappointed, it's hurt - yet at the same time, it is full of hope. When the husband tries everything he can to tear our narrator down once and for all, mentally and physically, even threatening with murder, our protagonist is able to pick up the remaining pieces of herself, stick the back together and keep going. The novel is rather fragmentary and does not move on in a strict chronological order. We know the entire time that she is going to eventually get out of the marriage, and the knowledge of that, the relief and sense of safety it brings, is peppered into the novel throughout. Life and freedom will eventually prevail, even when people around her do not believe her and her experiences, at least she is no longer experiencing them.
When I Hit You is a 250-page long gut-punch. I'll be digesting this one for a long time.
half_book_and_co's review against another edition
4.0
This novel is narrated by a young Tamil woman, a staunch feminist writer, who marries a Communist lecturer. They move to another town, where he takes up a position, but she cannot speak the language. The husband willfully isolates the wife more and more.
When I Hit You is a candid look at domestic violence and rape in a relationship and the difficulties to escape it (even if you have a theoretical framework for what is happening). Kandasamy portrays the violence of a leftist man, who uses "political" arguments to put his wife down (for example does he complain her feminism is a sign of her (supposedly) bourgeois upbringing). The private is political, and the political private, in this novel - in the rawest sense. The writing - which is full of references to literature - is analytical and poetic at the same time. This book stays with you for a long time.
"And how do you justify that your poems can be written, but that I cannot write poems on my marriage?
Once again, a play of words to justify the duplicity. 'Your poems blame me. My poems blame me. There is a difference between the hatred that fuels your poems, and the self-criticism that forms the backbone of mine. Your poems label me and put me in a box, my poems struggle to move past my weakness.' And that is that. In this marriage in which I'm beaten, he is the poet. And one of his opening lines of verse reads:
When I hit you,
Comrade Lenin weeps.
I cry, he chronicles. The institution of marriage creates its own division of labour."
When I Hit You is a candid look at domestic violence and rape in a relationship and the difficulties to escape it (even if you have a theoretical framework for what is happening). Kandasamy portrays the violence of a leftist man, who uses "political" arguments to put his wife down (for example does he complain her feminism is a sign of her (supposedly) bourgeois upbringing). The private is political, and the political private, in this novel - in the rawest sense. The writing - which is full of references to literature - is analytical and poetic at the same time. This book stays with you for a long time.
"And how do you justify that your poems can be written, but that I cannot write poems on my marriage?
Once again, a play of words to justify the duplicity. 'Your poems blame me. My poems blame me. There is a difference between the hatred that fuels your poems, and the self-criticism that forms the backbone of mine. Your poems label me and put me in a box, my poems struggle to move past my weakness.' And that is that. In this marriage in which I'm beaten, he is the poet. And one of his opening lines of verse reads:
When I hit you,
Comrade Lenin weeps.
I cry, he chronicles. The institution of marriage creates its own division of labour."
zellm's review against another edition
4.0
Well written, heartbreakingly blunt and honest, and poetic in its harshness. This was really really well written, with no embellishment or melodrama. The style was beautiful. I felt like the end was less poignant and riveting than the rest of it - it feels like after the escape the book meanders around the point and loses focus. But it is still honest
anuradha_sethu's review against another edition
4.0
Hard hitting account from an observant perspective... The systematic assumption of control makes you shiver... Just to read it makes your blood boil
awhittz's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
4.0
Absolutely not for the faint hearted but oof what an incredible story of domestic abuse and survival. Wow.