A review by kitmacneil
Ariel: The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath

2.0

There is so much to say about this book. There were a number of delightfully jarring passages and it possesses a biting starkness that I admire, yet sadly the positives of this collection were outweighed by her racist imagery. The persistent use of the words Africa, black, negro, the “n-word,” Jew, Indian, and many others as a means of connecting the feminine experience to othering reveals more about Plath’s own racist underpinnings than the sexism she is trying to write about.

It was very disappointing, as I don’t remember coming across these comparisons in her other works (Bell Jar, Colossus and other poems), but I suppose I’ll have to scrutinize those a bit more closely.