guuran62's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Rebecca Solnit är en samhällsengagerad författare och journalist från USA. Jag har läst flera av de böcker som översatts till svenska och givits ut här. I denna bok beskriver hon sina tankar kring feminism och jämställdhet. Som hon skriver ... :
Jag skriver om hur den nyväckta feministrörelsen i Nordamerika och runt om i världen förvandlar samhället i snabb takt, inte bara i form av ändrade lagar. Den förändrar vår syn på samtycke, makt, rättigheter, kön, röst och representation.
Den här rörelsen är en underbar motor för förändring, som framför allt leds av de unga, på universiteten, i sociala medier, på gatorna, och jag känner en enorm beundran för denna nya, orädda generation av feminister och människorättsaktivister som inte ber om ursäkt för sig själva.
Lika stor är min rädsla för det bakslag som rörelsen har mött, ett bakslag som i sig bevisar att feminismen, som ett led i ett bredare frigörelseprojekt, är ett stort hot mot patriarkatet och status quo.
https://daidalos.se/component/virtuemart/alla-fr%C3%A5gors-moder.htm?Itemid=181
Hon utvecklar sina tankar jämfört med hur de formuleras i hennes tidigare bok "Män förklarar saker för mig". En viktig tes i hennes bok handlar om hur strävar efter att tysta ned kvinnor. Men det finns en dimension i det att samtidigt så tystas männen själva ned och tvingas in i fållan.
alittleoverdue's review
4.0
Basically, Solnit is an amazing writer. Among the numerous thought-provoking phrases and essays in the book, Solnit writes what is my favorite quote about books, and puts words to how I feel about reading: "...if there is no one book that saved me, it’s because hundreds or thousands did.” - Rebecca Solnit
jurassicreader's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
pamiverson's review
5.0
Powerful essays on feminism, written over the last 3-4 years. I like her writing -- she always gives me new perspectives to think about.
jiyoung's review
4.0
Another great collection of feminist essays from Rebecca Solnit on a range of topics like sexism in literature, rape culture, and feminine silence. I am a big Solnit fan but this was not her best, though admittedly “not her best” is still great. I recommend her other collections before this one (e.g., Men Explain Things to Me, Hope in the Dark, Call Them By Their True Names). Her other works don’t just have sharp commentary and overviews of politics, gender, and society in the last twenty years, but they also have a unique Rebecca Solnit twist to them. This book was just as intelligently written but it didn’t feel like the insights were particularly fresh.
jmooremyers's review
4.0
The Mother of All Questions:
What I should have said to the crowd was that our interrogation of Woolf's reproductive status was a soporific and pointless detour from the magnificent questions her work poses. (I think at some point I said, 'Fuck this shit,' which carried the same general message, and moved everyone on from the discussion.) ... There is no good answer to how to be a good woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question. (p 3-5)
The problem [re happiness] may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower -- and wither -- all around us. ... There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person: loving and being loved or having satisfaction, honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope. (p 6-7)
Other eras and cultures often asked different questions from the ones we ask now: What is the most meaningful thing you can do with your life? What's your contribution to the world or your community? Do you live according to your principles? What will your legacy be? What does your life mean? Maybe our obsession with happiness is a way not to ask those other question, a way to ignore how spacious our lives can be, how effective our work can be, and how far-reaching our love can be. (p 10)
I turned to the audience and asked, 'Have any of you every been wounded by humanity?' They laughed with me; in that moment, we knew that we were all weird, all in this together, and that addressing our own suffering while learning not to inflict it on others is part of the work we're all here to do. So is love, which comes in so many forms and can be directed at so many things. There are many questions in life worth asking, but perhaps if we're wise we can understand that not every question needs an answer. (p 11)
A Short History of Silence:
Our humanity is made out of stories or, in the absence of words and narratives, out of imagination: that which I did not literally feel, because it happened to you and not to me, I an imagine as though it were me, or care about it though it was not me. Thus we are connected, thus we are not separate. Those stories can be killed into silence, and the voices that might breed empathy silenced, discredited, censored, rendered unspeakable, unhearable. Discrimination is training in not identifying or empathizing with someone because they are different in some way, in believing the differences mean everything and common humanity nothing. (p 36)
Women in politics must not be too feminine, since femininity is not associated with leadership, but they must not be too masculine, since masculinity is not their prerogative; the double bind requires them to occupy a space that does not exist, to be something impossible in order not to be something wrong. Being a woman is a perpetual state of wrongness, as far as I can determine. Or, rather, it is under patriarchy. (p 51)
The task of calling things by their true names, of telling the truth to the best of our abilities, of knowing how we got here, of listening particularly to those who have been silenced in the past, of seeing how the myriad stories fit together and break apart, of using any privilege we may have been handed to undo privilege or expand its scope is each of our tasks. It's how we make the world. (p 66)
The Short Happy Recent History of the Rape Joke:
Of course Margaret Atwood had made the same point as Louis C.K. much earlier and more pithily when she remarked, 'Men are afraid women are going to laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.' (p 107)
The Pigeonholes When the Doves Have Flown:
To use language is to enter into the territory of categories, which are as necessary as they are dangerous. Categories leak. I was going to write that all categories leak, but there are surely things that can be said of prime numbers or stars that are true without exceptions. All muskrats are mammals, and all US presidents to date have been men, but so many other categories are complex, containing truth but also contradictions and exceptions to that truth. (p 123)
Being treated as beyond or outside category may be a kind of privilege, a status as an individual rather than a specimen. It's to be allowed to define yourself and given room to do so. (p 126)
To be free of discrimination is to be allowed to be an individual assessed on the merits. But this becomes a form of freedom that can allow important data to fall through the cracks. For example, the thing that until very recently was almost never said about modern mass shootings is that almost all of them have been by men, and most of the men have been white. ... This lack of a category means the lack of terms to describe a common phenomenon and thus to recognize its parameters and their commonness. (p 126-127)
Really, what I'm arguing for is the possibility of an art of using and not using category, of being dept and supply and imaginative and maybe just fully awake in how we imagine and describe the world and our experiences of it. (p 128-129)
Men Explain Lolita to Me:
Meaning that you don't get to have sex with someone unless they want to have sex with you, which, if we say it without gender pronouns, sounds completely reasonable. You don't get to share someone's sandwich unless they want to share their sandwich with you, and that's not a form of oppression either. You probably learned that in kindergarten. (p 147)
The Case of the Missing Perpetrator:
In the current extremes of antiabortion advocacy and enforcement ... women have no value in relation to the fetuses in their wombs, though about half those fetuses will turn into women who will, in turn, be assessed as having no value in relation to the next potential generation of fetuses. Women my be worthless containers of containers of things of value, namely men. Embryonic men. or perhaps children have value until they turn out to be women. I don't know. It's a mystery to me how these people think. (p 153-154)
In the wildlife sanctuaries of literature, we study the species of speech, the flight patterns of individual words, the herd behavior of words together, and we learn what language does and why it matters. This is excellent training for going out into the world and looking at all the unhallowed speech of political statements and news headlines and CDC instructions and seeing how it makes the world or, in this case, makes a mess of it. (p 158)
Giantess:
Distaff invictus, lady with agency. (p 160)
What I should have said to the crowd was that our interrogation of Woolf's reproductive status was a soporific and pointless detour from the magnificent questions her work poses. (I think at some point I said, 'Fuck this shit,' which carried the same general message, and moved everyone on from the discussion.) ... There is no good answer to how to be a good woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question. (p 3-5)
The problem [re happiness] may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower -- and wither -- all around us. ... There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person: loving and being loved or having satisfaction, honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope. (p 6-7)
Other eras and cultures often asked different questions from the ones we ask now: What is the most meaningful thing you can do with your life? What's your contribution to the world or your community? Do you live according to your principles? What will your legacy be? What does your life mean? Maybe our obsession with happiness is a way not to ask those other question, a way to ignore how spacious our lives can be, how effective our work can be, and how far-reaching our love can be. (p 10)
I turned to the audience and asked, 'Have any of you every been wounded by humanity?' They laughed with me; in that moment, we knew that we were all weird, all in this together, and that addressing our own suffering while learning not to inflict it on others is part of the work we're all here to do. So is love, which comes in so many forms and can be directed at so many things. There are many questions in life worth asking, but perhaps if we're wise we can understand that not every question needs an answer. (p 11)
A Short History of Silence:
Our humanity is made out of stories or, in the absence of words and narratives, out of imagination: that which I did not literally feel, because it happened to you and not to me, I an imagine as though it were me, or care about it though it was not me. Thus we are connected, thus we are not separate. Those stories can be killed into silence, and the voices that might breed empathy silenced, discredited, censored, rendered unspeakable, unhearable. Discrimination is training in not identifying or empathizing with someone because they are different in some way, in believing the differences mean everything and common humanity nothing. (p 36)
Women in politics must not be too feminine, since femininity is not associated with leadership, but they must not be too masculine, since masculinity is not their prerogative; the double bind requires them to occupy a space that does not exist, to be something impossible in order not to be something wrong. Being a woman is a perpetual state of wrongness, as far as I can determine. Or, rather, it is under patriarchy. (p 51)
The task of calling things by their true names, of telling the truth to the best of our abilities, of knowing how we got here, of listening particularly to those who have been silenced in the past, of seeing how the myriad stories fit together and break apart, of using any privilege we may have been handed to undo privilege or expand its scope is each of our tasks. It's how we make the world. (p 66)
The Short Happy Recent History of the Rape Joke:
Of course Margaret Atwood had made the same point as Louis C.K. much earlier and more pithily when she remarked, 'Men are afraid women are going to laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.' (p 107)
The Pigeonholes When the Doves Have Flown:
To use language is to enter into the territory of categories, which are as necessary as they are dangerous. Categories leak. I was going to write that all categories leak, but there are surely things that can be said of prime numbers or stars that are true without exceptions. All muskrats are mammals, and all US presidents to date have been men, but so many other categories are complex, containing truth but also contradictions and exceptions to that truth. (p 123)
Being treated as beyond or outside category may be a kind of privilege, a status as an individual rather than a specimen. It's to be allowed to define yourself and given room to do so. (p 126)
To be free of discrimination is to be allowed to be an individual assessed on the merits. But this becomes a form of freedom that can allow important data to fall through the cracks. For example, the thing that until very recently was almost never said about modern mass shootings is that almost all of them have been by men, and most of the men have been white. ... This lack of a category means the lack of terms to describe a common phenomenon and thus to recognize its parameters and their commonness. (p 126-127)
Really, what I'm arguing for is the possibility of an art of using and not using category, of being dept and supply and imaginative and maybe just fully awake in how we imagine and describe the world and our experiences of it. (p 128-129)
Men Explain Lolita to Me:
Meaning that you don't get to have sex with someone unless they want to have sex with you, which, if we say it without gender pronouns, sounds completely reasonable. You don't get to share someone's sandwich unless they want to share their sandwich with you, and that's not a form of oppression either. You probably learned that in kindergarten. (p 147)
The Case of the Missing Perpetrator:
In the current extremes of antiabortion advocacy and enforcement ... women have no value in relation to the fetuses in their wombs, though about half those fetuses will turn into women who will, in turn, be assessed as having no value in relation to the next potential generation of fetuses. Women my be worthless containers of containers of things of value, namely men. Embryonic men. or perhaps children have value until they turn out to be women. I don't know. It's a mystery to me how these people think. (p 153-154)
In the wildlife sanctuaries of literature, we study the species of speech, the flight patterns of individual words, the herd behavior of words together, and we learn what language does and why it matters. This is excellent training for going out into the world and looking at all the unhallowed speech of political statements and news headlines and CDC instructions and seeing how it makes the world or, in this case, makes a mess of it. (p 158)
Giantess:
Distaff invictus, lady with agency. (p 160)
gsrichlin's review
challenging
informative
medium-paced
2.5
This book has not aged very well. Solnit seems so concerned with those who say she’s going too far in her critiques to let/make herself go far enough. There are glimmers of this in the text - caveats acknowledging the cis, white, middle classed privilege of her takes - but she plows right past these asides to luxuriate in exactly those takes.
Some of the poor aging of the book is no fault of her own - she has a cautious optimism for the future that is unfortunately depressing looking back over the last several years.
But other parts - like the men she chooses to trust (Louis CK & F Scott Fitzgerald both get warm shoutouts!!) are just plain under researched and require a benefit of the doubt and incredibly low bar for a certain type of white man and undermine her authority in a big way.
Some of the poor aging of the book is no fault of her own - she has a cautious optimism for the future that is unfortunately depressing looking back over the last several years.
But other parts - like the men she chooses to trust (Louis CK & F Scott Fitzgerald both get warm shoutouts!!) are just plain under researched and require a benefit of the doubt and incredibly low bar for a certain type of white man and undermine her authority in a big way.