A review by moonyreadsbystarlight
What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron

informative

3.75

Star ratings are hard. This has a lot of neat information, but it's not a book for everyone. And the more I think about it, the more critiques I have tbh.

This history of the gender neutral pronoun was interesting. I did learn a lot - the majority of it focused on the 1800s and early-mid 1900s (though it does touch on times before and after as well). I didn't know that there was so much pronoun discourse in these early days - nor how similarly it was used politically by people (largely white men) to degrade and deflect from more tangible issues*.

This was, however, quite repetative. I didnt mind so much in the beginning because it was a lot that I didnt know, but by the time the last chapters of the book came around, it was a little cumbersome. I think since they included the chronogy chapter, they could have cut or integrated some examples earlier in the book. 

While the discussion about the past was very strong, I don't think the discussion of contemporary neopronoun usage was. That is actually what I came into the book knowing more about, so it was a little dissapointing to see how little it was engaged with when he was making his case for singular they at the very end of the book. I don't even really disagree that "they" makes the most sense as a singular gender neutral term more broadly (considering how the language has evolved organically... though I do take issue with some of his reasoning - but this review is already too long without all of that). But I don't think he engaged with current neopronoun usage enough. I don't expect it to be handled with the same rigor as the rest of the book (because his research is clearly more historical - a current look into it all would be quite different) but I think it could have been improved. 

All that is to say, it has a lot of information. I found it very interesting and would recommend it to people already interested in the topic of historical pronoun usage with the caviat about repetition. However, if you're on the fence about reading a book that's about grammar and grammar seems a bit dry to you, this might not be the best one to start with (intro and first chapter are interesting if you want the main points, but the rest does get a but in the weeds).

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*not that pronouns are unimportant. But when "but the integrity of the English language!" is the focus when women or trans people are facing, like, violence... it's pedantic at best and an accessory to violence at worst. 
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