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gina_gina's review against another edition
2.0
The first two chapters (Men Explain Things to Me and The Longest War) were amazing and angering.
In chapters 3 and 4, (World's Collide in a Luxury Suite: Some Thoughts on the IMF, Global Injustice, and a Stranger on a Train and In Praise of Threat: What Marriage Equality Really Means), things start to slip a bit for me.
By chapter 5 (Grandmother Spider -- descriptions of the Ana Teresa Fernandez art within the book), I tipped into restlessness.
Chapter 6 (Woolf's Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable) pushed me into the pool of boredom, and it took me weeks to read this 20-page essay.
Chapter 7 (Cassandra Among the Creeps) highlights how women's accusations of sexual harassment, abuse, etc. are typically dismissed and/or turned around. Solnit references Anita Hill and Dylan Farrow in this essay, and I have to quibble with her. It wasn't just men who sought to condemn and silence Hill; African-American women denounced Hill for failing to support and raise up a black man. There is misogyny amongst the females.
Chapters 8 and 9 (#YesAllWonen and Pandora's Box and the Volunteer Police Force) bring up the issues of mass violence against women and the policing of women in an effort to stuff them back into the box of traditional and stereotypical roles. These chapters read like a duplicates of each other -- and other essays within the collection.
In chapters 3 and 4, (World's Collide in a Luxury Suite: Some Thoughts on the IMF, Global Injustice, and a Stranger on a Train and In Praise of Threat: What Marriage Equality Really Means), things start to slip a bit for me.
By chapter 5 (Grandmother Spider -- descriptions of the Ana Teresa Fernandez art within the book), I tipped into restlessness.
Chapter 6 (Woolf's Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable) pushed me into the pool of boredom, and it took me weeks to read this 20-page essay.
Chapter 7 (Cassandra Among the Creeps) highlights how women's accusations of sexual harassment, abuse, etc. are typically dismissed and/or turned around. Solnit references Anita Hill and Dylan Farrow in this essay, and I have to quibble with her. It wasn't just men who sought to condemn and silence Hill; African-American women denounced Hill for failing to support and raise up a black man. There is misogyny amongst the females.
Chapters 8 and 9 (#YesAllWonen and Pandora's Box and the Volunteer Police Force) bring up the issues of mass violence against women and the policing of women in an effort to stuff them back into the box of traditional and stereotypical roles. These chapters read like a duplicates of each other -- and other essays within the collection.
jamiecommander's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
katie_is_dreaming's review against another edition
5.0
I really enjoyed Solnit's collection. She has a very accessible style, and I like the way she brings current events into discussions of wider themes.
She deals with some pretty bleak subjects here: racism and rape and other kinds of violence against women in particular. She draws attention to failings in society by using events such as the scandal surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMF, and the gang rape of a young woman, Jhoti Singh, on a bus in India. Some of her writing is stark in its descriptions, but what she says needs to be said.
While things seem bleak at times, Solnit also writes about potential. She writes about the difference between despair, optimism, and hope. Despair is the belief that things will never change. Optimism is the belief that things will get better. Both beliefs suggest certainty, which can be limiting. Solnit believes that hope can lead to things we never imagined happening: potential, surprise. People and movements based on hope can surprise us and take us to somewhere we never dreamed of.
"Men Explain Things To Me" is probably the most famous essay here. It inspired the term 'mansplaining', though Solnit doesn't use the term herself. I like that essay, but I think some of the others are more profound. I like how she frames the race and gender issues involved in the Strauss-Kahn case as colonial dominance. I also like her discussion of hope in the essay on Virginia Woolf. There's a lot to take from these essays, and they would benefit from another reading.
Her feminism is evident in most of the essays. She talks about equality in terms of marriage, but also in relation to men and women, suggesting, as other feminists do also, that feminism benefits everyone: we are all free or we are all slaves. She praises the 'threat' of equality as something that can create real change in the world.
Definitely a collection I'll read again. I think everyone should read it. Solnit captures the important issues in language that's a lot more straightforward than other things I've read on the same topic.
She deals with some pretty bleak subjects here: racism and rape and other kinds of violence against women in particular. She draws attention to failings in society by using events such as the scandal surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMF, and the gang rape of a young woman, Jhoti Singh, on a bus in India. Some of her writing is stark in its descriptions, but what she says needs to be said.
While things seem bleak at times, Solnit also writes about potential. She writes about the difference between despair, optimism, and hope. Despair is the belief that things will never change. Optimism is the belief that things will get better. Both beliefs suggest certainty, which can be limiting. Solnit believes that hope can lead to things we never imagined happening: potential, surprise. People and movements based on hope can surprise us and take us to somewhere we never dreamed of.
"Men Explain Things To Me" is probably the most famous essay here. It inspired the term 'mansplaining', though Solnit doesn't use the term herself. I like that essay, but I think some of the others are more profound. I like how she frames the race and gender issues involved in the Strauss-Kahn case as colonial dominance. I also like her discussion of hope in the essay on Virginia Woolf. There's a lot to take from these essays, and they would benefit from another reading.
Her feminism is evident in most of the essays. She talks about equality in terms of marriage, but also in relation to men and women, suggesting, as other feminists do also, that feminism benefits everyone: we are all free or we are all slaves. She praises the 'threat' of equality as something that can create real change in the world.
Definitely a collection I'll read again. I think everyone should read it. Solnit captures the important issues in language that's a lot more straightforward than other things I've read on the same topic.
lorabishop's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
ryleighjosephine's review against another edition
3.0
“Liberation is a contagious project, speaking of birds coming home to roost.”
3.25
3.25
joselynmartin's review against another edition
5.0
I didn't know. I just did not know Rebecca Solnit was a thing and now that I know I am obsessed and #blessed because she is here to validate every experience I have ever had as a woman growing up among men. She is not just a historian of misogyny's past, present and future, she is a harbinger of its ultimate demise, of the end times of men explaining things to us, things they know no more about than we do but feel so endowed with implicit knowledge and power that they cannot help but exert this over all women, at will, ad nauseam. What Rebecca Solnit does in this collection of essays is illuminate how this shared experience, which we now can collectively summarize as "mansplaining," is rooted in male privilege and how the maintenance of that privilege is brought about through the exertion of control, power and violence over non-men, especially women. Especially women of color. Especially trans women and most especially trans women of color. (Incidentally, Solnit is often credited with the emergence of the term "mansplaining" because of her essay Men Explain Things to Me, and she expounds on this dubious distinction in the book). Read this book. Then scour the internet for every article, interview and commentary that Rebecca Solnit has ever done and then, if the rage you feel at the sheer weight of our collective existence in a society that continues to endorse an ethos that is damaging and deadly not only to ourselves, but also to the very men who promote it, has not thoroughly blinded you go ahead and take a trip into the basement of comments and reviews on this book and be doubly validated that misogyny, both overt and covert, are alive and well and woven throughout everything we do including leaving Amazon reviews on works of absolute solid gold such as this. A single caveat: don't read this just before trying to go to sleep; devastation is a poor sedative.
alongapath's review against another edition
4.0
I picked up this book because of the viral TikTok video 'Man or Bear' and Laura Killingbeck's brilliant rebuttal article which asks Would you rather be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear? It turns out that Laura's favourite author is Rebecca Solnit and this book is her stand-out.
In this collection of essays, Solnit exposes the truth about women, domestic violence, feminism, patriarchal society, gender roles and rape - lots and lots of rape. She brilliantly defines these terms and offers examples of how they show up in daily life.
Perhaps it is best explained in this quote:
How is it that 50% of the population live with an innate awareness/fear that they could be harmed at any time, for any reason, by the other 50%? And yet men have almost no understanding that this awareness is in the back of women's every action. If you don't believe me, imagine running out into the street without your clothes on because of a house fire. Which fear is stronger - being burned or being seen naked by unknown men - and what that nakedness might spawn?
Society as-a-whole still deludes itself that each occurrence of rape or violence is an isolated incident. It simply isn't the case. Men abusing women is a global problem that isn't yet acknowledged as such.
The blurb for this short book makes it sound like it's going to be funny or comic. But there is no humour in here. It is a devastating read because it is the truth. I downgraded it from 5 stars to 4 mainly because she lost me in a couple of the middle essays - a bit rambling, a bit too in-the-know, and a bit over my head. But it is a striking read and Solnit is brave enough to say it all out loud. Put your big girl panties on and read it, absorb it, and take some sort of action.
In this collection of essays, Solnit exposes the truth about women, domestic violence, feminism, patriarchal society, gender roles and rape - lots and lots of rape. She brilliantly defines these terms and offers examples of how they show up in daily life.
Perhaps it is best explained in this quote:
Rape culture affects every woman. Most women and girls limit their behavior because of the existence of rape. Most women and girls live in fear of rape. Men, in general, do not.
How is it that 50% of the population live with an innate awareness/fear that they could be harmed at any time, for any reason, by the other 50%? And yet men have almost no understanding that this awareness is in the back of women's every action. If you don't believe me, imagine running out into the street without your clothes on because of a house fire. Which fear is stronger - being burned or being seen naked by unknown men - and what that nakedness might spawn?
Society as-a-whole still deludes itself that each occurrence of rape or violence is an isolated incident. It simply isn't the case. Men abusing women is a global problem that isn't yet acknowledged as such.
The blurb for this short book makes it sound like it's going to be funny or comic. But there is no humour in here. It is a devastating read because it is the truth. I downgraded it from 5 stars to 4 mainly because she lost me in a couple of the middle essays - a bit rambling, a bit too in-the-know, and a bit over my head. But it is a striking read and Solnit is brave enough to say it all out loud. Put your big girl panties on and read it, absorb it, and take some sort of action.
reedk2289's review against another edition
2.0
While the subject matter is interesting....this book is not.
mattingtonbear's review against another edition
5.0
a short but potent look at what it means to be a female in our current times. each of these essays are incredible in their own unique ways and I was honestly forced to look at things in different ways. this is the kind of book that if you allow it to will expand your way of thinking. just a perfect lil book filled w/ so many ideas. I plan to share and revisit this book often.