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Feminista

3.13 of 5 stars 3.13 · rating details · 159 ratings · 35 reviews

Sydney Zamora is fiercely independent, aggressively opinionated, and utterly self-made. She’s reshaped her body (into the perfect sample-sale outfitted size 6, thank you very much), organized a life for herself as a celebrity journalist at hot magazine Cachet, and strides through the canyons of New York City like she owns them. There’s just one problem: Sydney is so stron

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Hardcover, 384 pages

Published September 1st 2009 by St. Martin's Press (first published August 12th 2009)

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Apr 25, 2010 Carolyn rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel basically follows Sydney Zamora on her quest to find a husband in New York City. That’s it…basically. All right, all right. Sydney represents (arguably) today’s American citizen: her father was an Afro-Cuban lawyer and her mother’s a socialite of Irish descent. She’s a celebrity writer for one of New York’s top women’s magazines and has the wardrobe to rival Carrie Bradshaw’s, although Sydney bought most of hers on sale.

She might very well represent today’s American woman: focused on...more

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Jan 28, 2010 Ciara rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: crummy-chick-lit, read-in-2010

i really didn't get this book (another from the library, thank god, not that i have ever been known to drop money on chick lit). i think it was supposed to kind of be a parody, of both chick lit & chic lit, but it's hard to tell, because it concluded like every other book of the genre. i was drawn in by the fact that "feminist" was in the title, & i was definitely intrigued by the fact that main protagonist, sydney, is a woman of color. there is a real death of women of color protagonist...more i really didn't get this book (another from the library, thank god, not that i have ever been known to drop money on chick lit). i think it was supposed to kind of be a parody, of both chick lit & chic lit, but it's hard to tell, because it concluded like every other book of the genre. i was drawn in by the fact that "feminist" was in the title, & i was definitely intrigued by the fact that main protagonist, sydney, is a woman of color. there is a real death of women of color protagonists in chick lit. i was hoping for something kind of subversive in terms of gender, race, & class, & i think that's what the author was going for, but...it fell flat for me in a pretty big way. i have a conflicted relationship with chick lit to begin with--i think a lot of books are marketed as chick lit because they are by female authors & feature women as main characters, & these women are doing things like dating & trying to balance personal lives & professional lives. remember how curtis sittenfeld's publishers tried to market her as chick lit for a while? yeah. but, i mean...this was really just a romance novel. it was weird.

sydney is a well-paid journalist for the biggest celebrity magazine in new york city, "cachet". she works maybe twenty hours a week because, as it turns out, she was only offered a contract because "cachet" was about to be exposed as having pretty much no women of color writers. sydney can pretty much do anything she wants at work & not worry about losing her job, because she's just a token at the magazine. she is aware of this, & she's taking advantage of it, but sometimes she feels guilty.

she also has a rough time choosing boyfriends. mostly she dates down-market struggling artist types, only for a few weeks or months at a time, & then she gets bored & dumps them. but she's 33 now & she has decided it's time to settle down & find a husband/baby daddy. she asks her sister to introduce her to some eligible bachelors, so her sister hires mitzi berman, professional matchmaker. mitzi specializes in helping high-powered wealthy men find wives. she agrees to set sydney up with some men, but sydney is supposed to follow mitzi's rules, which include things like, don't wear pants on a date, make sure to wear make-up, act interested in what the man has to say, etc. she's kind of like a walking copy of "cosmo" magazine, but i think the author wants us to think that there are hidden nuggets of feminist wisdom buried in what mitzi has to say. mitzi is pretty insightful about pointing out the mistakes sydney makes that scare men away. sydney has a tendency to "emasculate" men because she has such a chip on her shoulder about being a high-powered independent woman. she tells her first date not to objectify her after he says she looks nice. apparently, according to mitzi, this was a HUGE mistake. seemed fair enough to me. i probably would have said the same thing, & yet, i have an awesome boyfriend who doesn't seem to feel emasculated--probably because he hasn't tied his entire self-worth up in the concept of being "a Man".

there was pretty much no narrative tension in this book at all, because right after we are introduced to sydney, we are introduced to max, the son of harvey cooper, who owns one of the biggest, poshest luxury department stores in new york. max is a classic rich kid--prep school, blowing his first trust fund check on a bentley, loafing off & traveling around the world & having sex with models to whom he gives luxury handbags. he's back in new york taking care of business at the store while his more capable & business-minded sister is out on maternity leave. the reader knows, as soon as max is introduced, that he & sydney are going to end up together. the 350 pages in between are just filler, throwing sitcom-esque barriers up between them.

when sydney & max first meet, sydney mistakenly assumes that max is the store's doorman-in-training. you'd think she'd catch on after he manages to secure her a 70% discount on anything she wants in the store, but...whatever. she is attracted to him, but she's trying to be serious about her love life & won't let herself settle for a mere doorman. but at the same time, she rails against rich people like lulu merriwether, an ex-girlfriend of max's (sydney doesn't know that), socialite/author of a series of chic lit roman a clefs ghostwritten by max's assistant. sydney actually hates lulu because lulu got sydney fired from a job waitressing at an upscale restaurant, but sydney won't admit that. sydney is a real piece of work--it seems like she thinks that everything good that happens in her life is due to her own tenacity & feminist-lite perseverence (ie, "anything a man can do, i can do too!"), & anything bad that happens is someone else's fault. it gets really old, really fast.

max is attracted to sydney too (why?), & lets her believe he is a doorman. he is worried that if he admits that he's a spoiled rich boy, she'll hate him. he becomes secret friends with sydney's parody of a gay confidante, jeffrey, & jeffrey encourages max to continue to the charade, get sydney to fall for him, & then break the truth to her. all seems to be going well & the two finally sleep together, & the next day, sydney calls max in a rage because she thinks he gave her herpes.

this is the point where the book lost me. first of all, you don't kiss an asymptomatic herpes carrier & sprout a cold sore six hours later. so sydney is a dumbass for that. second of all, she calls max & pretty much just screams at him, calling him names, & telling him he's a liar when he tries to tell her that he doesn't have herpes. she goes so far as to call him a "faggot". my mental record player scratched the record at that point. sydney supposedly has a whole bevy of gay male friends she turns to when her female friends run off to get married & have babies (at which point, sydney cuts them out of her life--is this girl a treasure or what?). but when she's pissed at a dude, she calls him a faggot? & that's supposed to be in any way acceptable, amusing, or cute? is the reader SUPPOSED to hate sydney & hope she gets set on fire? if i was max, i would have ditched her then & there, but he sticks with it & tries to win her back. does. not. compute.

some more ridiculous shit happens, including sydney getting fired & joining a commune (huh?), sydney getting set up on a date with max's father & giving him some tips on re-designing the store (at which point, i knew she was going to end up working for the store in some capacity), sydney thinking she's in love with a professional football player because he dwarfs her physically & makes her feel "girlish" (puke), etc, but of course, sydney & max end up together. sydney becomes the creative director the department store, mitzi the matchmaker marries max's father, sydney & max decide to put off having kids for a bit, & everyone lives happily ever after.

what the fuck? rebecca walker gave this book a glowing review. i don't understand. supposedly sydney is a "feminist," but i think they must mean it in only the most selfish, shallow, individualistic possible way. max's infatuation with sydney reminded me a lot of edward's obsession with bella in the "twilight" books--even though bella is wrong for him in pretty much every way (he wants to eat her, for crying out loud), he seems something in her that makes him betray all his instincts & continue to love her. it's the oldest story in the book, & the most trite. i'd like to see a story where a woman is strong & independent, feels an attraction toward a man, doesn't give an eff what he does or doesn't do for work, he is attracted to her & admires her independence, he is not hung up on his masculinity, & they have a healthy relationship where no one throws around anti-gay slurs when they think they have contracted herpes.

& don't even get me started on the way sydney's stripper neighbor is portrayed. the woman makes enough money to live next door to someone making $100,000 in magazine publishing, but she's a stripped, so she's obviously trash, right? & don't even get me started on the big reveal when sydney freaks out & says a rich kid like max killed her father. a 33-year-old woman still working out her daddy issues? what an awesome character. except for not.(less)

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Mar 20, 2013 Katie Jensen rated it 1 of 5 stars

When I picked up this book at the library, I was drawn to the title. Feminist? Check. Fashion? I dabble sometimes. This book let me down, hard. First of all, I was pleasantly surprised to note that Sydney, the protagonist, is a woman of colour with Afro-Cuban, Irish, and French blended heritage.

Thanks to a decision made by the publishers, we are treated with a bleached white cartoon woman on the cover for whatever reason. If you're going to write a chick lit with a unique protagonist, shouldn't...more When I picked up this book at the library, I was drawn to the title. Feminist? Check. Fashion? I dabble sometimes. This book let me down, hard. First of all, I was pleasantly surprised to note that Sydney, the protagonist, is a woman of colour with Afro-Cuban, Irish, and French blended heritage.

Thanks to a decision made by the publishers, we are treated with a bleached white cartoon woman on the cover for whatever reason. If you're going to write a chick lit with a unique protagonist, shouldn't you advertise that? (In a good way!)

Sydney and her gang of "gays," rich men, friends she has ruthlessly cut off once they get married, and random pretty-boy sex vessels are all as flimsy and two-dimensional as the glossy pages she writes on for her job as a celebrity gossip columnist. She suffers from a bad case of the Mary-Sues, and Kennedy constantly tries to remind us of all her amazing qualities (feisty, size 6, gorgeous, bland designer wardrobe, 100k paycheque) without giving any real personality traits to her. We're lead to believe that Sydney is a feminist because she has several shirts that say "Betch" and "Beyotch." Yet Sydney shows no real capacity for intellectual discourse. Name dropping Balenciaga and Lanvin doesn't make her a fashionista, particularly since she seems to only shop at one department store. The male love interest is similarly sketched - nobody "gets him" because he's the poor rich heir of said department store. He only felt happy back at Oxford (wah wah) because nobody knew who he was. Despite attaining a masters in philosophy, he only thinks about reserving (stealing) designer bags from his family business in exchange for blowjobs from a ditzy Slavic model he "discovered."

My biggest beef with this "novel" is not that I wasted three days of commuting time reading this Cosmo excerpt. It's that I was tricked into believing somehow Sydney wouldn't be conned into equating marriage with personal and emotional fulfillment. Her job apparently sucks, even though she is a writer in NY on contract with benefits, and she manages to screw it up in an unsatisfying way (by insulting a transgendered pop star living in a commune?? ). If I were her, I would go back and finish my undergraduate - apparently she dropped out after freshman year, and it feels like she stunted herself back then too.

Don't read this book if you value any of the following:
- deep, meaningful conversations between characters
- people who are passionate about life and their careers
- women's studies
- healthy lifestyles
- positive examples
- New York City

All of the women in this book are tropes - the tragically depressed stay at home mom, the insufferable career bitch who had sacrifice her youth and beauty and ends up alone, the fag hag, the vain and idiotic socialite, the ugly and pitiable assistant.

I feel like this book wasn't written by a woman, but a man who hates women. Feminist my balls.
(less)

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Nov 12, 2009 Bg rated it 3 of 5 stars

Though I don't normally pick up these types of books where the characters are making more money then I am and complaining about how their living when their buying Marc Jacobs and Vesache, I can honestly say this was an okay book.
Sydney Zamora, was sharped tongued, afro-cuban new yorker, has been having problems when it comes to her love life. So after realizing that she's sick of dating guys who don't plan the resturant bills and only give her 'somewhat' satifsying sex, she asked her younger sis...more

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Mar 01, 2010 Nakia White rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: booktini

This book had its ups...and many, many downs. It's much longer than it should be and I have to be honest and say that had it not been for the book being a bookclub pick, I would not have finished it. I actually ended up being the only one in the entire club that was able to finish. lol I must admit though, had my bookclub associates read a little bit longer, they would have enjoyed it enough to push through. The first and 2nd parts included too much detail and not enough action (Sydney's best fr...more

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Oct 08, 2009 Alice rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: library, 2009, feminist, literary, humor, romance

Don't be scared by "Feminist" in the title!

I found this an incredibly fun read. The protagonist shares a lot of my cynical views about "chic lit," which made her easy to relate to despite her convenient views on feminism and sometimes spoiled-brat attitude.

Sydney Zamora is a well-rounded, fun character. She isn't easy to like, but it's easy to see why Max does. He's not perfect, either, but their imperfections line up just the way they should in these types of books. The ending seemed a little t...more

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Aug 30, 2010 Lisa rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 04, 2010 Kristin rated it 1 of 5 stars

Admittedly, I couldn't finish this book. I got halfway through and was completely turned off by the characters. Feminista was perhaps intended to be a critique of "chick lit", but it practices the genre while looking down its nose at it. A self-proclaimed feminist protagonist, Sydney, objectifies and scathingly insults other female characters based on their appearance, social status, and the men with whom they associate. And while claiming to deplore high society women, Sydney moves among them i...more

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Sep 29, 2009 Marquetta (LoveToReadForFun) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sydney Zamora is an independent, no nonsense type of woman. She sees committment and marriage as traps that women fall into. There's no way that a woman can have it all - career and marriage. Something has to give. She believes that once you're married, you lose your identity as a woman. She goes through life trying to avoid this trap by dating highly inappropriate men. Like every heroine, she eventually meets her match in Max who shows her that you can have possibly have it all.

I absolutely LO...more

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Dec 24, 2009 K.L. Brady rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: african-american-fiction

Syndney Zamora is one helluva woman—hell being the operative word. She’s a sharp-tongued, take no prisoners, self-made single woman in the city with a Helen Reddy perception of the world--I am woman, hear me roar! And honey, boy can Sydney roar! Unfortunately, her roars usually scare off most men—and some women—who deign to attempt to penetrate her tough exterior.

After breaking up with her most recent loser and exasperated with the whole dating scene, she decides ask her sister for assistance i...more

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May 08, 2011 Candace Cottrell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Sydney is an multi-culti celebrity journalist who decides that her biological clock is ticking and she needs to do something about it. With the help of a matchmaker to the rich and bourgeois, Sydney embarks on a journey to find Mr. Right. Sydney finds out, however, that not only is she a tough match, but her preconceived notions and biases are about to be challenged.

Feminista is a witty, dramatic account of a single gal in the city on the hunt for success, love, and the perfect Marc Jacobs bag....more

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Dec 29, 2011 Nisha rated it 2 of 5 stars

Can I just say that I thought Sydney was absolutely hilarious? She was so crazy. I loved her, because she was so self-involved that she didn't realize all of the things wrong with her (and there were plenty). I love these type of flawed protagonists. Sydney really isn't someone you would pick out as a good person per say, but she doesn't realize because she's keeping it real.

It's the story itself that makes this a two star review. It goes on too long, there's too much going on, and towards the...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Michael Rene'e rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I howled while reading this book. I had seen it before, but wasn't compelled to read until learning of the death of the author. I saw a lot of myself in the title character, while at the same time remembering why my women friends can make me feel so exhausted. A must read. Get it!

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Apr 13, 2013 Jacq Francois rated it 2 of 5 stars

Man, oh man...Erica Kennedy is someone I adore, but when I tell you this book was a damn challenge. It was filled with hilarious characters, but the over-detailing of minor things, and the slow development of the plot just made things even more difficult. Luckily, I still have 'Bling' as one of my favorite works before Erica Kennedy passed away, as this book just didn't cut it.

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Sep 20, 2012 Mel rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like Erica Kennedy. I loved Bling. I am saddened that we won't get be graced with anymore of her writing. With her passing earlier this year the literary world lost a talent. I liked this novel a lot. Liked the cultural references (pop and otherwise)and the fact that it was based in NY. It was funny, and I could truly relate to some parts. But, I am wondering how I liked it so much when I couldn't stand one of the main characters. Sydney was annoying, aggressive, and abrasive. How can you symp...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Martine added it

VEry funny book. I had a good time reading about Sidney and her crazy attitude. I really felt bad for her with the Jerome situatiuon- and the end product with Candi!!! Oh and the interview with teh Raven was heart breaking, lol!! A ver fun read.

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Nov 10, 2009 Lilli rated it 2 of 5 stars

Reading this book was exhausting. I needed more dialogue and less of the petty details. I understand that this is "chic lit", but really there were passages where I thought "just get to the point already." This is the second chick lit book I've read in the past 6 months where I hated the main character. Sydney had a Mt. Everest-sized chip on her shoulder and it never went away. Honestly, Max was too good for her.

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Oct 22, 2009 Sarah rated it 2 of 5 stars

It's not you, it's me.

This book has a strong female character, a predictable ending but a not-so-predictable in between, and I still went 'meh.'

I think you might be the last chick lit book I read...for awhile.

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Apr 07, 2010 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

This could be really good. The author has created a believable character that captures a personality seen often in life but rarely in books. However, her transformation was messy and unbelievable.

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Jun 01, 2011 shana rated it 2 of 5 stars

this book dragged on painfully. it took forever for main characters to cross paths with so many close calls. it was a tease. just wordy and not really saying anything.

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Apr 28, 2011 Nolareader rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book. i agree with some of the commentors that it was a little long but many parts were laugh out loud funny. It screams movie adaptation.

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Nov 27, 2009 Allison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Light, entertaining book about a "feminist" who decides she wants to settle down and get married.

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Jan 22, 2012 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book took way, way too long to get to the plot so I quit about 1/2 way through.

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May 07, 2013 Paola rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is great book! Fast paced, easy read! It's a light hearted, fun book!

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Jan 13, 2011 Jamesia marked it as to-read

I read the Nookbook sample and I will definitely be reading this one!

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Nov 30, 2010 Angela rated it 2 of 5 stars

I couldnt make it past the first 100 pages......no substance at all

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Mar 10, 2010 Sharonbrown rated it 1 of 5 stars

Confusing and uneven -- could not relate nor get into the characters and/or plot. Did not even finish it... was plain bored.

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Aug 18, 2012 Bethy rated it 3 of 5 stars

The main character, I could really relate to.

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Mar 25, 2010 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars

Surprisingly fun, smart and edgy chick lit.

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Mar 09, 2010 Jen Koontz rated it 3 of 5 stars

Probably the closest I'll ever get to chick lit. Not bad, at least it appealed to my feminist side and did seem to be in tune with women my age. But still chick lit when it comes down to it.

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