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sarakomo 's review for:
Recollections of My Nonexistence
by Rebecca Solnit
2021: a beautiful series of essays from a feminist whose views I overall agree with, but are perhaps slightly more outdated that I expected going in.
Let me explain: Solnit lives just over the line of distrusting men from where I am. I have had many formative and loving relationships with the men in my life, and I have been fortunate enough to not have experienced physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. Do I think that abuse and misogyny doesn't exist in our society today? Absolutely not. But do I immediately think that all men are evil? Also no.
Everything Solnit says is completely warranted though, don't get me wrong. Plus, I don't have any woman in my life who was stabbed 15 times because she tried to leave her ex-boyfriend. If I did, I would probably trust men a little less too. One of the most poignant takeaways is Solnit's discussion of the transition from the disparagement of women and misogyny in general from isolated incidents into an epidemic, recognized in public conversation as such.
Overall, I took this book as a reminder not to forget that things (as recent as 30 years ago) were not always as I have experienced them. Hell, not even five years ago, we lived in a pre-#MeToo era. "For what seemed to me the first time, these stories were presented as emblematic of an epidemic rather than, as such crimes almost always had been before, as isolated anomalous incidents that didn't raise questions about how common such violence is and how it affects women in general."
This was a lovely time to read this book - I'm newly arrived to California (somewhat close to the Bay Area) and this is such a love letter to San Francisco that I want to move there tomorrow. I did think that this would be much more of a memoir than it is - I would consider it (again) a series of essays published by Solnit and less a start-to-finish journey of her life. However, I did completely relate to the student mentioned in the quote below, way more than to Solnit: "Many years later a student who'd just moved to the Bay Area from New York relayed her distress to me at no longer being in the center of things, with the implication that centers are what matters. I went home and thought about the value of margins." I miss being in EST!
I did discover one of my new favorite quotes in this book: "You furnish your mind with readings in somewhat the way you furnish a house with books, or rather the physical books enter your memory and become part of the equipment of your imagination." and an Honorable Mention for: "I wanted to live by books and in books and for books."
An early line of Solnit's says, "But I can wish that the young women who come after me might skip some of the old obstacles" and I can say, born 30 years after Solnit, that I have.
Let me explain: Solnit lives just over the line of distrusting men from where I am. I have had many formative and loving relationships with the men in my life, and I have been fortunate enough to not have experienced physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. Do I think that abuse and misogyny doesn't exist in our society today? Absolutely not. But do I immediately think that all men are evil? Also no.
Everything Solnit says is completely warranted though, don't get me wrong. Plus, I don't have any woman in my life who was stabbed 15 times because she tried to leave her ex-boyfriend. If I did, I would probably trust men a little less too. One of the most poignant takeaways is Solnit's discussion of the transition from the disparagement of women and misogyny in general from isolated incidents into an epidemic, recognized in public conversation as such.
Overall, I took this book as a reminder not to forget that things (as recent as 30 years ago) were not always as I have experienced them. Hell, not even five years ago, we lived in a pre-#MeToo era. "For what seemed to me the first time, these stories were presented as emblematic of an epidemic rather than, as such crimes almost always had been before, as isolated anomalous incidents that didn't raise questions about how common such violence is and how it affects women in general."
This was a lovely time to read this book - I'm newly arrived to California (somewhat close to the Bay Area) and this is such a love letter to San Francisco that I want to move there tomorrow. I did think that this would be much more of a memoir than it is - I would consider it (again) a series of essays published by Solnit and less a start-to-finish journey of her life. However, I did completely relate to the student mentioned in the quote below, way more than to Solnit: "Many years later a student who'd just moved to the Bay Area from New York relayed her distress to me at no longer being in the center of things, with the implication that centers are what matters. I went home and thought about the value of margins." I miss being in EST!
I did discover one of my new favorite quotes in this book: "You furnish your mind with readings in somewhat the way you furnish a house with books, or rather the physical books enter your memory and become part of the equipment of your imagination." and an Honorable Mention for: "I wanted to live by books and in books and for books."
An early line of Solnit's says, "But I can wish that the young women who come after me might skip some of the old obstacles" and I can say, born 30 years after Solnit, that I have.