Scan barcode
A review by marathonreader
Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004-2021 by Margaret Atwood
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Get ready for a compendium of essays on science and climate change, on politics, on literature, on writing, on friendship and growing up in Canada and everything under the sun. I was at first surprised to see the science-related topics, but then this makes sense, given how Atwood based her Maddaddam series and others on existing research: she clipped out articles and, later, would research online: she said that she didn't make up anything in Handmaid's Tale (p. 252).
"Stories were potent things... One theory is that the earliest form of story is tehstory of a journey between this reality... and other realm, which might be the past or the world of the ancestors or the world of the dead... Such journeys were typically undertaken at times of need, we're told... That is one function of stories: to tell us about our choices, and about the actions we take" ("Literature and the ENvrionemnt," 2010, 143)
"All such monsters, being man-made, are entirely metaphorical" ("The Futures Market" 2013, p. 177)
"So yes, we can change the world. We have already changed it, we are continuing to change it, and unless we can now change some of it back, we are facing challenges unprecedented since we first began to record our history" ("How to change the world," 2013, p. 207)
"Women who cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have babies are snlaved because the state claims ownership of their bodies and the right to dictate the use to which their bodies must be put. The only similar circumstance for men is conscription into an army. In both cases there is risk to the individual's life, but an army conscript is at least provided with food, clothing,a nd lodging. Even criminals in prisons have a right to those things... And if the state is very fond of babies, why not honour the women who have the most babies by respecting them and lifting them out of poverty?" (A slave state, 2018, p.361)
- to Argentina
"'I no longer know their names,' he told a friend of ours. 'But then, they don't know my name either' (the bedside of birds, 2020, p. 426)
"Stories were potent things... One theory is that the earliest form of story is tehstory of a journey between this reality... and other realm, which might be the past or the world of the ancestors or the world of the dead... Such journeys were typically undertaken at times of need, we're told... That is one function of stories: to tell us about our choices, and about the actions we take" ("Literature and the ENvrionemnt," 2010, 143)
"All such monsters, being man-made, are entirely metaphorical" ("The Futures Market" 2013, p. 177)
"So yes, we can change the world. We have already changed it, we are continuing to change it, and unless we can now change some of it back, we are facing challenges unprecedented since we first began to record our history" ("How to change the world," 2013, p. 207)
"Women who cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have babies are snlaved because the state claims ownership of their bodies and the right to dictate the use to which their bodies must be put. The only similar circumstance for men is conscription into an army. In both cases there is risk to the individual's life, but an army conscript is at least provided with food, clothing,a nd lodging. Even criminals in prisons have a right to those things... And if the state is very fond of babies, why not honour the women who have the most babies by respecting them and lifting them out of poverty?" (A slave state, 2018, p.361)
- to Argentina
"'I no longer know their names,' he told a friend of ours. 'But then, they don't know my name either' (the bedside of birds, 2020, p. 426)