Scan barcode
A review by tensy
Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir by Rebecca Solnit
5.0
An exquisitely written memoir of the author as a young woman coming into her own voice as a writer in 1980's San Francisco. The chapter on her love of books, and their influence, was a reflection of my own emotions. Passages about writing could be used as a primer in college writing courses. However, the main theme of this memoir is how the world tends to treat young (and old) women as nonexistent. Her words and experiences are an example of how to find the courage to rely on your own inner voice and to learn use it.
Favorite quotes:
--Being human can mean many things.
--You should be with people who are like you, who are facing what you're facing, who dream your dreams and fight your battles, who recognize you. An then, other times, you should be like people unlike yourself. Because there is a problem as well with those who spend too little time being anyone else; it stunts the imagination in which empathy takes root, that empathy that is a capacity to shape-shift and roam out of your sole self.
--You learn to think of what you are in terms of what they want, and addressing their want becomes so ingrained in you that you lose sight of what you want, and sometimes you vanish to yourself in the art of appearing to and for others.
--I wanted English to be an instrument on which many kinds of music could be played.
--It's not you, it's patriarchy. [I suggest you read her essay "Men Explain Things To Me."]
--to make work that is so deeply absorbed that it ceases to be what people see and becomes how they see.
Favorite quotes:
--Being human can mean many things.
--You should be with people who are like you, who are facing what you're facing, who dream your dreams and fight your battles, who recognize you. An then, other times, you should be like people unlike yourself. Because there is a problem as well with those who spend too little time being anyone else; it stunts the imagination in which empathy takes root, that empathy that is a capacity to shape-shift and roam out of your sole self.
--You learn to think of what you are in terms of what they want, and addressing their want becomes so ingrained in you that you lose sight of what you want, and sometimes you vanish to yourself in the art of appearing to and for others.
--I wanted English to be an instrument on which many kinds of music could be played.
--It's not you, it's patriarchy. [I suggest you read her essay "Men Explain Things To Me."]
--to make work that is so deeply absorbed that it ceases to be what people see and becomes how they see.