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A review by and_abigail
Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit
5.0
I loved this book. So so much. I can't believe I've never come across Ms. Solnit before! I loved every single word, every single chapter, and I felt so liberated and understood by many of them.
some favorite quotes:
"The struggle to find a poetry I which your survival rather than your defeat is celebrated, perhaps to find your own voice to insist upon that, or to at least find na way to survive amidst an ethos that relishes your erasures and failures is work that many and perhaps most young women have to do. In those early years, I did not do it particularly well or clearly, but I did it ferociously." (p. 4)
"And so there I was where so many young women were, trying to locate ourselves somewhere between being disdained our shut out for being unattractive and being menaced or resented for being attractive, to hover between two zones of punishment inn space that was itself so thin that perhaps it never existed" (p. ?)
"It's a book that seemed to assume that the poet's orientation is that of a straight man to a female goddess; it might have encouraged some young women not smile ... and levy tribute, but I wanted to be a writer, not a muse."
"I don't desire a paradise that demands nothing of us, and I see paradise as not a destination not arrive in, but a pole star by which to navigate."
some favorite quotes:
"The struggle to find a poetry I which your survival rather than your defeat is celebrated, perhaps to find your own voice to insist upon that, or to at least find na way to survive amidst an ethos that relishes your erasures and failures is work that many and perhaps most young women have to do. In those early years, I did not do it particularly well or clearly, but I did it ferociously." (p. 4)
"And so there I was where so many young women were, trying to locate ourselves somewhere between being disdained our shut out for being unattractive and being menaced or resented for being attractive, to hover between two zones of punishment inn space that was itself so thin that perhaps it never existed" (p. ?)
"It's a book that seemed to assume that the poet's orientation is that of a straight man to a female goddess; it might have encouraged some young women not smile ... and levy tribute, but I wanted to be a writer, not a muse."
"I don't desire a paradise that demands nothing of us, and I see paradise as not a destination not arrive in, but a pole star by which to navigate."