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A review by gbatts
The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing by Hannah Dawson
3.0
Collating seven centuries of feminist texts into a single, portable edition is a mammoth, maybe impossible, task. I was left disappointed by this attempt.
The version of feminism presented in this tone was narrow in scope largely staying in the intellectual realm and not touching on the practicalities of living in this world as a female. There was much on identity and what it means to be female but not much on how females live. Curiously, topics not touched upon include: suffrage, prohibition, fashion, financial independence, child custody, contraception, abortion, domestic abuse, right-to-work, pay equality and #metoo.
The texts were overwhelmingly anglophonic and majority US-based. There were no overly disabled voices. Where politics were overtly mentioned, they were mostly aligned to socialist/Marxism. There was never a version of feminism presented that would be uncomfortable to a modern progressive reader, which made me wonder how much Dr Hannah Dawson challenged herself when compiling this volume.
The tone was persistently angry which made the reading experience rather flat and the reader didn’t get a sense of feminism ever actually achieving anything. It’s good to point out problems (raise awareness) but discussions on how to solve problems could have given this reading experience more depth. In this way Feminism, Interrupted was a high to go out on and I would have like to see more writing like that throughout the book.
Overall, there were a lot of insightful texts and powerful voices included in this volume. I can’t wait to part 2 ;)
The version of feminism presented in this tone was narrow in scope largely staying in the intellectual realm and not touching on the practicalities of living in this world as a female. There was much on identity and what it means to be female but not much on how females live. Curiously, topics not touched upon include: suffrage, prohibition, fashion, financial independence, child custody, contraception, abortion, domestic abuse, right-to-work, pay equality and #metoo.
The texts were overwhelmingly anglophonic and majority US-based. There were no overly disabled voices. Where politics were overtly mentioned, they were mostly aligned to socialist/Marxism. There was never a version of feminism presented that would be uncomfortable to a modern progressive reader, which made me wonder how much Dr Hannah Dawson challenged herself when compiling this volume.
The tone was persistently angry which made the reading experience rather flat and the reader didn’t get a sense of feminism ever actually achieving anything. It’s good to point out problems (raise awareness) but discussions on how to solve problems could have given this reading experience more depth. In this way Feminism, Interrupted was a high to go out on and I would have like to see more writing like that throughout the book.
Overall, there were a lot of insightful texts and powerful voices included in this volume. I can’t wait to part 2 ;)