Reviews

Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation by Sophie Lewis

noonan's review

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4.75

Amazing - definitely a manifesto in style so doesn’t always go in as much depth as I would like - excited to read more about family abolition

pondezra123's review

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

laurynkelly's review

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challenging informative medium-paced

3.0

mark_kivimaki's review

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adventurous informative reflective fast-paced

3.25

this book is full of a bunch of interesting ideas but not enough synthesis in my opinion. especially the part of the book that goes through histories of family abolition -- what would it look like to unite these struggles? i'm not sure, and the last chapter doesn't give me a ton of answers. additionally, ending the book on a very defensive note about how family abolition doesn't entail supporting family separation felt a bit dissonant and out of nowhere, contrary to what this book professes to be about -- articulating a new vision for a world beyond family. we're hearing what abolition is not -- i want to hear more about what it is.

thednfdarling's review

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hopeful informative medium-paced

5.0

jhatrick's review

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adventurous challenging inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

jxhibit's review

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

3.75

jananih's review

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adventurous challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

froggin_around_'s review

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3.0

As a family abolitionist myself, this book offered me lots of references of authors that I might want to read in order to see what the academic views are on this topic, since my abolitionism came intuitively to me more than anything else. However, what this book really lacks is an actual argument for family abolition. It does mention reasons at times, but the book should have been primarily about this. Maybe there are other texts about this, maybe even written by the same author, but at least an overview should have been offered. As it is, this books mostly reads as a history of the concept of family abolition in literature (and at times even feels like the author tries to justify her point of view by saying "look, Marx thought the same" and there are way better ways to support it) + some shorter chapters that are not very well structured and gave me the impression of tweet threads, because it felt like the author was rushing through ideas without showing any depth to any of them. These latter sections did indeed echo my own thoughts quite often, but I don't think this would apply to someone who's just being introduced to the concept.

What I got from this book is another list of books to read tho so I'm happy :)

andreagioseffi's review

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informative reflective medium-paced

3.25