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library_brandy's review against another edition
4.0
A lot of this is fascinating--investigative journalism from the late nineteen century! But the title story killed my momentum. Nellie's journey around the world is complicated--I hesitate to call her racist, because she is a product of her time, but that time was pretty racist, so there we go. The only culture she didn't speak disparagingly of was the Japanese, and even while she enjoyed her time there she's viewing the people as zoo exhibits rather than actual people with lives and customs. She overlooks her enormous privilege and exhibits a lot of self-serving bias--the good things are due to her hard work and determination; bad things are due to weather and other circumstances.
This collection is edited from full pieces and it's possible I'm missing some context, but there are always problematic time that come up when you read things that happened in less enlightened times. I'm sure someone may read this a century-plus from now and wonder just what i was thinking.
This collection is edited from full pieces and it's possible I'm missing some context, but there are always problematic time that come up when you read things that happened in less enlightened times. I'm sure someone may read this a century-plus from now and wonder just what i was thinking.
keruin's review
I loved reading about Nellie Bly in her own words! What a window into the time she was writing. I adored her no-nonsense attitude about it all, in the midst of a world that seriously did not take her seriously at first.
marknemeth's review
3.0
The greatest value of this is in being able to read about how Americans in the late 19th century thought about technology, other cultures, and feminism. It was interesting to see what has changed and what remains similar.
ehmannky's review
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
3.0
Nellie Bly was certainly a charming and entertaining writer, I'll give her that. However, major mark downs for Bly's spectacular racism she exhibited on her trip around the world, specifically her Sinophobia I honestly felt it was so paradoxical that she was so bigoted towards so many people in China (and Asia more generally, but it most clearly comes out in the parts where she travels to China and Hong Kong) when she generally held relatively progressive views towards other ethnic and racial minorities she encountered. Most of her attitudes towards the mentally ill, women, the working class, etc. were so progressive that it was so jarring to hear her parrot attitudes so strongly echoed by conservatives. The only reason I wouldn't rate this lower is because this edition specifically has editor's notes that highlights her racist behavior, and the endnotes take care to point out where she was wrong or just flat out lied for a more exciting story.
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