A review by kait_sixcrowsbooks
Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power, and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All by Jaclyn Friedman

hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

3.5

So here’s the thing: I originally read this book back in undergrad for a class called Reading and Resisting Sexual Violence. It was a fascinating class, and I learned a lot, both from my two instructors and my peers. I genuinely enjoyed it. I read most of the chapters of Unscrewed for the class so a good majority of the book was something that I already read. However, it was really interesting to read back through my annotations from five years ago, some quips that I don’t really understand the context anymore. But I also truly enjoyed the chapters that I read for the first time. It was all super informative, and it made me feel like I was back in my GWS program again, of which I felt a bit nostalgic about.

However, do I think Friedman set out for what the blurb/summary described on the inside flap? I’m not sure. There was a lot of talk about fauxpowerment as a concept on the flap, but I think only one or two chapters dedicated themselves to it. There were quite a few organizations and women forefronting those organizations that were described, which I thought were really cool. But there only seemed to be a few pages dedicated to what “regular” people can do when they can’t shift their lives towards one of full-time activism. Overall, while it was still an interesting book and I enjoyed myself walking through memory lane, I thought Unscrewed’s argument was simply okay — not too bad, but certainly not the best.