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A review by mpatshi
The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit
I love Rebecca Solnit's thinking and writing.
The clarity in which she formulates her thoughts is a pleasure to read, it opens portals in my brain that maybe were already there, but I hadn't opened that far yet.
I also find her to be very funny.
The mother of all Questions is a book of essays.
I would love to quote the whole book, but I'll keep it at just some parts I particularly loved.
"I have done what I set out to do in life, and what I set out to do was not what my mother or the interviewer presumed. I set out to write books, to be surrounded by generous, brilliant people, and to have great adventures"
It is an answer to the question an interviewer asked.
If her abusive father was the reason she failed to find a life partner.
It is one of those questions of which she states that it is one that
"just because it can be answered doesn't mean that anyone is obliged to answer it, or that it ought to be asked"
The same goes for the forever boring question
"wouldn't a woman be happier with kids?"
"such questions seem to come out of the sense that there are not women, the 51 percent of the human species who are as diverse in their wants and as mysterious in their desires as the other 49 percent, only Woman, who must marry, must bread, must let men in and babies out, like some elevator of the species."
Further in there is an essay about Silence, one that spoke to me a lot.
I too believed that silence is golden, that a quiet person might be a stronger one, the mistake being that there is a difference between quiet and silence.
"Silence is the ocean of the unsaid, the unspeakable, the repressed, the unheard."
"The tranquillity of a quiet place, of quieting once own mind, of a retreat from words and bustle, is acoustically the same as silence, but psychically and politically something entirely different"
Then there is the Essay on Hunter gatherers.
The boring never ending argument used the most in discussions about race or tradition.
"We need to stop telling the story about the woman who stayed home passive and dependent, waiting for her man. She wasn't sitting around waiting. She was busy, she still is"
There are so so many good insights in this book.
So I recommend you read it for yourself, listen and learn, and by all means, form your own opinions.
The clarity in which she formulates her thoughts is a pleasure to read, it opens portals in my brain that maybe were already there, but I hadn't opened that far yet.
I also find her to be very funny.
The mother of all Questions is a book of essays.
I would love to quote the whole book, but I'll keep it at just some parts I particularly loved.
"I have done what I set out to do in life, and what I set out to do was not what my mother or the interviewer presumed. I set out to write books, to be surrounded by generous, brilliant people, and to have great adventures"
It is an answer to the question an interviewer asked.
If her abusive father was the reason she failed to find a life partner.
It is one of those questions of which she states that it is one that
"just because it can be answered doesn't mean that anyone is obliged to answer it, or that it ought to be asked"
The same goes for the forever boring question
"wouldn't a woman be happier with kids?"
"such questions seem to come out of the sense that there are not women, the 51 percent of the human species who are as diverse in their wants and as mysterious in their desires as the other 49 percent, only Woman, who must marry, must bread, must let men in and babies out, like some elevator of the species."
Further in there is an essay about Silence, one that spoke to me a lot.
I too believed that silence is golden, that a quiet person might be a stronger one, the mistake being that there is a difference between quiet and silence.
"Silence is the ocean of the unsaid, the unspeakable, the repressed, the unheard."
"The tranquillity of a quiet place, of quieting once own mind, of a retreat from words and bustle, is acoustically the same as silence, but psychically and politically something entirely different"
Then there is the Essay on Hunter gatherers.
The boring never ending argument used the most in discussions about race or tradition.
"We need to stop telling the story about the woman who stayed home passive and dependent, waiting for her man. She wasn't sitting around waiting. She was busy, she still is"
There are so so many good insights in this book.
So I recommend you read it for yourself, listen and learn, and by all means, form your own opinions.