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Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir
An electric portrait of the artist as a young woman that asks how a writer finds her voice in a society that prefers women to be silent
In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher; of the small apartment that, when she was nineteen, became the home in which she transformed herself; of how punk rock gave form and voice to her own fury and explosive energy.
Solnit recounts how she came to recognize the epidemic of violence against women around her, the street harassment that unsettled her, the trauma that changed her, and the authority figures who routinely disdained and disbelieved girls and women, including her. Looking back, she sees all these as consequences of the voicelessness that was and still is the ordinary condition of women, and how she contended with that while becoming a writer and a public voice for women’s rights.
She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer—books themselves, the gay men around her who offered other visions of what gender, family, and joy could be, and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West. These influences taught her how to write in the way she has ever since, and gave her a voice that has resonated with and empowered many others.
In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher; of the small apartment that, when she was nineteen, became the home in which she transformed herself; of how punk rock gave form and voice to her own fury and explosive energy.
Solnit recounts how she came to recognize the epidemic of violence against women around her, the street harassment that unsettled her, the trauma that changed her, and the authority figures who routinely disdained and disbelieved girls and women, including her. Looking back, she sees all these as consequences of the voicelessness that was and still is the ordinary condition of women, and how she contended with that while becoming a writer and a public voice for women’s rights.
She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer—books themselves, the gay men around her who offered other visions of what gender, family, and joy could be, and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West. These influences taught her how to write in the way she has ever since, and gave her a voice that has resonated with and empowered many others.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published March 10, 2020
1011 people are currently reading
26247 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Solnit
110 books7,846 followersWriter, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including Call Them By Their True Names (Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction), Cinderella Liberator, Men Explain Things to Me, The Mother of All Questions, and Hope in the Dark, and co-creator of the City of Women map, all published by Haymarket Books; a trilogy of atlases of American cities, The Faraway Nearby, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). Her forthcoming memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence, is scheduled to release in March, 2020. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at the Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub.
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February 12, 2023
MEMORIA DI RAGAZZA
Memoria di ragazza, e di giovane donna. Memoria di un essere umano che si va formando, e di come cambia il mondo insieme e intorno a lei.
Gran bel viaggio, gran bella scoperta, gran bel primo incontro.
Il cambiamento è l’unità di misura del tempo, e io ho capito che per accorgersi del cambiamento bisogna andare a un ritmo più lento di lui; vivendo un quarto di secolo nello stesso posto ci sono riuscita.
Rebecca Solnit racconta la sua vita, il suo percorso esistenziale, la sua crescita. Un po’ come si trattasse di una pianta, un albero che s’innalza ed estende tutt’intorno sempre più.
Racconta dettagli più che fatti, episodi più che storie.
Per farlo, insieme, racconta il cambiamento del luogo in cui ha vissuto.
E siccome quel luogo è la città che più amo al mondo insieme a quella dove abito, e siccome il periodo che racconta sono gli anni in cui anch’io abitavo in quella città, in un altro quartiere, ma non poi così lontano – e poi in fondo la mia prima casa era vicino alla zona dove abitava lei, era una così:
Le splendide case di legno erano state costruite a fine Ottocento e inizio Novecento senza lesinare tutto l’armamentario ornamentale dell’epoca: bovindi, colonne, ringhiere tornite, modanature, spesso a motivi vegetali, coppi a scaglia di pesce, portici sorretti da arcate, torrette, persino cupole a bulbo.
Ecco, per questi motivi leggere i Ricordi della mia inesistenza è stato un lento intenso piacere che vorrei non mi lasciasse più.
Man mano il racconto sembra abbandonare la trasformazione urbanistica per orientarsi più sull’aspetto sociale, e poi via via sempre più su quello biografico.
Con lo scorrere delle pagine il racconto di Rebecca Solnit diventa sempre più personale. Ma siccome la sua vita è parte di un tutto, e di quel tutto, o meglio, a determinati aspetti di quel tutto lei si è sempre più dedicata, si segue anche il cambiamento del paese e del paesaggio americano: ambientalismo, proteste antinucleare, movimenti pacifisti. E prima e dopo e intorno a tutto, l’essere donna: cosa significa, cosa determina, cosa implica. Femminismo, sì, certo:
La condizione delle donne e l’atto dello scrivere sono i temi centrali di questo reportage di un’iniziazione all’esistenza nella quale il declinarsi al femminile non equivale mai al cancellarsi o al subire.
Il suo percorso di scrittrice. Scrittrice di giornalismo, di ricerca, di storia, di reportage, di saggistica, di analisi, di commento e critica. Partendo da quel suo primo minuscolo appartamento vissuto come “una stanza tutta per sé" – il riferimento a Virginia Woolf è tutto meno che casuale.
Reagan aveva appena preso il posto di Carter, e molte cose stavano per cambiare, nella direzione di un inasprimento della cultura misogina e sessista. Se non fosse che intorno altro era e stava ancora di più per cambiare: il movimento e le istanze femministe, appunto. Ma anche quelle gay, e nere, e ambientaliste, e… in una direzione che dovrebbe sempre più spezzare quel dogma racchiuso nel titolo del suo libro più famoso, Gli uomini mi spiegano le cose.
Privato e pubblico procedono meravigliosamente a braccetto nella vita di questa scrittrice, di questa donna da non dimenticare.
Su e giù per le strade di San Francisco, e per quelle della California, dell’Ovest americano, a piedi (Storia del camminare è un altro dei suoi libri più celebri) e in macchina, attraverso deserti e aree impiegate per esperimenti atomici, attraverso la devastazione dell’AIDS, via dalla famiglia d’origine dominata da un padre repressivo e forse anche violento, collezionando violenze e molestie, quelle che si fanno alle donne, i primi esseri umani che si vogliono mettere a tacere (da qui l’uso del termine “inesistenza”), così come le cosiddette “minoranze”, che sono tali solo finché le si reprime e punisce e calpesta.
Ciò che volevo sopra ogni cosa era la trasformazione, non della mia indole ma della mia condizione.
Muovendosi e procedendo con e dentro la Storia.
Un magnifico, pregnante, emozionante memoir.
Ci sono stati cambiamenti epocali che hanno reso i tempi della mia giovinezza una terra straniera in cui non vivo più, che i giovani non visiteranno mai e di cui non sapranno mai quanto fosse diversa e perché le cose siano cambiate e chi ringraziare per questo. Anche la mia si trasformò grazie a passaggi che avrei riconosciuto solo rivolgendo lo sguardo all’indietro.
Memoria di ragazza, e di giovane donna. Memoria di un essere umano che si va formando, e di come cambia il mondo insieme e intorno a lei.
Gran bel viaggio, gran bella scoperta, gran bel primo incontro.
Il cambiamento è l’unità di misura del tempo, e io ho capito che per accorgersi del cambiamento bisogna andare a un ritmo più lento di lui; vivendo un quarto di secolo nello stesso posto ci sono riuscita.
Rebecca Solnit racconta la sua vita, il suo percorso esistenziale, la sua crescita. Un po’ come si trattasse di una pianta, un albero che s’innalza ed estende tutt’intorno sempre più.
Racconta dettagli più che fatti, episodi più che storie.
Per farlo, insieme, racconta il cambiamento del luogo in cui ha vissuto.
E siccome quel luogo è la città che più amo al mondo insieme a quella dove abito, e siccome il periodo che racconta sono gli anni in cui anch’io abitavo in quella città, in un altro quartiere, ma non poi così lontano – e poi in fondo la mia prima casa era vicino alla zona dove abitava lei, era una così:
Le splendide case di legno erano state costruite a fine Ottocento e inizio Novecento senza lesinare tutto l’armamentario ornamentale dell’epoca: bovindi, colonne, ringhiere tornite, modanature, spesso a motivi vegetali, coppi a scaglia di pesce, portici sorretti da arcate, torrette, persino cupole a bulbo.
Ecco, per questi motivi leggere i Ricordi della mia inesistenza è stato un lento intenso piacere che vorrei non mi lasciasse più.
Man mano il racconto sembra abbandonare la trasformazione urbanistica per orientarsi più sull’aspetto sociale, e poi via via sempre più su quello biografico.
Con lo scorrere delle pagine il racconto di Rebecca Solnit diventa sempre più personale. Ma siccome la sua vita è parte di un tutto, e di quel tutto, o meglio, a determinati aspetti di quel tutto lei si è sempre più dedicata, si segue anche il cambiamento del paese e del paesaggio americano: ambientalismo, proteste antinucleare, movimenti pacifisti. E prima e dopo e intorno a tutto, l’essere donna: cosa significa, cosa determina, cosa implica. Femminismo, sì, certo:
La condizione delle donne e l’atto dello scrivere sono i temi centrali di questo reportage di un’iniziazione all’esistenza nella quale il declinarsi al femminile non equivale mai al cancellarsi o al subire.
Il suo percorso di scrittrice. Scrittrice di giornalismo, di ricerca, di storia, di reportage, di saggistica, di analisi, di commento e critica. Partendo da quel suo primo minuscolo appartamento vissuto come “una stanza tutta per sé" – il riferimento a Virginia Woolf è tutto meno che casuale.
Reagan aveva appena preso il posto di Carter, e molte cose stavano per cambiare, nella direzione di un inasprimento della cultura misogina e sessista. Se non fosse che intorno altro era e stava ancora di più per cambiare: il movimento e le istanze femministe, appunto. Ma anche quelle gay, e nere, e ambientaliste, e… in una direzione che dovrebbe sempre più spezzare quel dogma racchiuso nel titolo del suo libro più famoso, Gli uomini mi spiegano le cose.
Privato e pubblico procedono meravigliosamente a braccetto nella vita di questa scrittrice, di questa donna da non dimenticare.
Su e giù per le strade di San Francisco, e per quelle della California, dell’Ovest americano, a piedi (Storia del camminare è un altro dei suoi libri più celebri) e in macchina, attraverso deserti e aree impiegate per esperimenti atomici, attraverso la devastazione dell’AIDS, via dalla famiglia d’origine dominata da un padre repressivo e forse anche violento, collezionando violenze e molestie, quelle che si fanno alle donne, i primi esseri umani che si vogliono mettere a tacere (da qui l’uso del termine “inesistenza”), così come le cosiddette “minoranze”, che sono tali solo finché le si reprime e punisce e calpesta.
Ciò che volevo sopra ogni cosa era la trasformazione, non della mia indole ma della mia condizione.
Muovendosi e procedendo con e dentro la Storia.
Un magnifico, pregnante, emozionante memoir.
Ci sono stati cambiamenti epocali che hanno reso i tempi della mia giovinezza una terra straniera in cui non vivo più, che i giovani non visiteranno mai e di cui non sapranno mai quanto fosse diversa e perché le cose siano cambiate e chi ringraziare per questo. Anche la mia si trasformò grazie a passaggi che avrei riconosciuto solo rivolgendo lo sguardo all’indietro.
February 28, 2020
Solnit is an author I have meant to read for quite a while. I have another book of hers somewhere around here, that I received in one of my book boxes. I, now regret waited so long as she is a fabulous writer, essayist.
She writes about the apartment in San Fransisco that she lived in for a decade. A beautiful apartment in San Francisco in an all black neighborhood, a neighborhood that was full of life. As in all the essays in this book, she than turns way from herself and talks about all the people, cultures that have been misplaced. Either for money, or ventures that will make money or just because someone else wanted what someone else already had. Again, the haves and have nots.
She talks about violence against women, men who think they have the right to a women's body. Expectations on how bodies should look to appeal to men, of to feel good about oneself. Socities expectations. Her own brushes with violence and again she turns away from her own story to tell of violence against other women. As well as historical bias against women victims of crime.
Books and what they mean to her. Her writing life and so much more. Elegantly and gracefully written. Her words just flowed. Yes, I was impressed and once I can put my hands on that book that is somewhere on some pile, I fully intend to dive in.
ARc from Edelweiss.
She writes about the apartment in San Fransisco that she lived in for a decade. A beautiful apartment in San Francisco in an all black neighborhood, a neighborhood that was full of life. As in all the essays in this book, she than turns way from herself and talks about all the people, cultures that have been misplaced. Either for money, or ventures that will make money or just because someone else wanted what someone else already had. Again, the haves and have nots.
She talks about violence against women, men who think they have the right to a women's body. Expectations on how bodies should look to appeal to men, of to feel good about oneself. Socities expectations. Her own brushes with violence and again she turns away from her own story to tell of violence against other women. As well as historical bias against women victims of crime.
Books and what they mean to her. Her writing life and so much more. Elegantly and gracefully written. Her words just flowed. Yes, I was impressed and once I can put my hands on that book that is somewhere on some pile, I fully intend to dive in.
ARc from Edelweiss.
February 6, 2020
One of the iconic stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses is the terrible tale of Philomela, raped by her brother-in-law and then silenced by him hacking out her tongue so that she can't accuse him or speak out about her ordeal. It's this classic intertwining of violence against women and the muting of female voices which drives Solnit's memoir.
Don't come to this expecting anything like a conventional autobiography: Solnit retains a sense of privacy with regard to her personal life. Instead this is a kind of biography of her voice, how she moves from a young woman harassed on the streets of 1980s San Francisco and aware of violence against women all around her to the advocate, essayist and outspoken feminist writer she is today.
Solnit may not be a supreme stylist but she is intelligent, honest, compassionate and empathetic: she has that ability to reach out via her words, to move from the individual to a voice for other women, but without appropriating others' experiences as her own. She can be funny, too, not least when recounting how she came to write her classic essay 'Men Explain Things To Me'.
Sharp but accessible, thoughtful, committed - a must-read for Solnit groupies and those new to her writing.
Many thanks to Granta for an ARC via NetGalley.
Don't come to this expecting anything like a conventional autobiography: Solnit retains a sense of privacy with regard to her personal life. Instead this is a kind of biography of her voice, how she moves from a young woman harassed on the streets of 1980s San Francisco and aware of violence against women all around her to the advocate, essayist and outspoken feminist writer she is today.
Solnit may not be a supreme stylist but she is intelligent, honest, compassionate and empathetic: she has that ability to reach out via her words, to move from the individual to a voice for other women, but without appropriating others' experiences as her own. She can be funny, too, not least when recounting how she came to write her classic essay 'Men Explain Things To Me'.
Sharp but accessible, thoughtful, committed - a must-read for Solnit groupies and those new to her writing.
Many thanks to Granta for an ARC via NetGalley.
July 21, 2022
Chyba moja ulubiona Solnit.
April 19, 2022
Yes, Rebecca Solnit is a radical feminist, this book, 'a memoir', confirms that once again. At first I found it strange that someone of barely 60 years old writes a kind of memoir. Apparently, she felt compelled to outline the background to her controversial essay Men Explain Things to Me, with which she suddenly became known worldwide in 2013, and which would help lay the foundation of the #MeToo-movement.
Solnit describes in detail how, from her adolescence, she became sensitive to the harassment of women by men when she came to live in the metropolitan city of San Francisco. She speaks of a kind of permanent war, and that is hard to swallow as a male reader. But when you read her overview of the way in which (some) women are treated by (some) men, and the psychological (if not fysical) harm does to the victims, it actually seems justified. And because this pattern already exists for decades, centuries, millennia..., women have come to see the world through this predicament: “you depend on men, and what they think of you, learn to constantly check yourself in a mirror to see how you look to men, you perform for them, and this theatrical anxiety forms or deforms or stops altogether what you do and say and sometimes think. You learn to think of what you are in terms of what they want, and addressing their want becomes so ingrained in you that you lose sight of what you want, and sometimes you vanish to yourself in the art of appearing to and for others.”
Beautiful is the way in which Solnit indicates how, like so many other women, she quickly learned to 'become invisible', hence the reference in the title to her non-existence. “I became expert at fading and slipping and sneaking away, backing off, squirming out of tight situations, dodging unwanted hugs and kisses and hands, at taking up less and less space on the bus as yet another man spread into my seat, at gradually disengaging, or suddenly absenting myself. At the art of nonexistence, since existence was so perilous.”
Because that is the mechanism she puts her finger on: how men time and again succeed in not taking women seriously, and thus, for example, engage in condescending 'mansplaining'. According to Solnit, we should not minimize that: it belongs to a spectrum where at the extreme end also murder must be situated. Again I had to swallow when I read this, but she is right, putting things as sharp as that is necessary, as is – unfortunately – daily proven.
Before you get the impression that Solnit is a one-trick pony: this book also contains many more considerations than just about the female condition. I already knew her from her Wanderlust: A History of Walking and A Field Guide to Getting Lost in which she offers (literally) alternative paths to approach reality, alternative with regard to western modernity. Solnit also briefly discusses this in these memoires. For instance, she links the feminist struggle with that of the Native Americans, and also draws hope from it: “I argued that we had a lot of power, a history of forgotten and undervalued victories, that while somethings were getting worse, the long view – especially if you were nonmale, or nonstraight, or nonwhite – showed some remarkable improvement in our rights and roles, and that the consequences of our acts were not knowable in advance.”
Not everything in this book is gold. In addition to the perhaps a little too one-sided focus on feminism, these memories also contain reckonings and self-justifications, as with any memoir. But fortunately, there's Solnit's unsurpassed style, which when you get used to it, is truly mesmerizing and captivates. For this she has developed a galvanizing writing process that can be called unique, in which she starts from a general statement, and then explores other views via side roads and thus arrives at a deeper experience of reality: “I believe in the irreducible and in invocation and evocation, and I am fond of sentences less like superhighways than winding paths, with the occasional scenic detour or pause to take in the view, since a footpath can traverse steep and twisting terrain that a paved road cannot. I know that sometimes what gets called digression is pulling in a passenger who fell off the boat.”
In addition, what she writes about reading and writing, and about the special form of empathy that reading entails, goes right to my heart! Absolutely recommended
Solnit describes in detail how, from her adolescence, she became sensitive to the harassment of women by men when she came to live in the metropolitan city of San Francisco. She speaks of a kind of permanent war, and that is hard to swallow as a male reader. But when you read her overview of the way in which (some) women are treated by (some) men, and the psychological (if not fysical) harm does to the victims, it actually seems justified. And because this pattern already exists for decades, centuries, millennia..., women have come to see the world through this predicament: “you depend on men, and what they think of you, learn to constantly check yourself in a mirror to see how you look to men, you perform for them, and this theatrical anxiety forms or deforms or stops altogether what you do and say and sometimes think. You learn to think of what you are in terms of what they want, and addressing their want becomes so ingrained in you that you lose sight of what you want, and sometimes you vanish to yourself in the art of appearing to and for others.”
Beautiful is the way in which Solnit indicates how, like so many other women, she quickly learned to 'become invisible', hence the reference in the title to her non-existence. “I became expert at fading and slipping and sneaking away, backing off, squirming out of tight situations, dodging unwanted hugs and kisses and hands, at taking up less and less space on the bus as yet another man spread into my seat, at gradually disengaging, or suddenly absenting myself. At the art of nonexistence, since existence was so perilous.”
Because that is the mechanism she puts her finger on: how men time and again succeed in not taking women seriously, and thus, for example, engage in condescending 'mansplaining'. According to Solnit, we should not minimize that: it belongs to a spectrum where at the extreme end also murder must be situated. Again I had to swallow when I read this, but she is right, putting things as sharp as that is necessary, as is – unfortunately – daily proven.
Before you get the impression that Solnit is a one-trick pony: this book also contains many more considerations than just about the female condition. I already knew her from her Wanderlust: A History of Walking and A Field Guide to Getting Lost in which she offers (literally) alternative paths to approach reality, alternative with regard to western modernity. Solnit also briefly discusses this in these memoires. For instance, she links the feminist struggle with that of the Native Americans, and also draws hope from it: “I argued that we had a lot of power, a history of forgotten and undervalued victories, that while somethings were getting worse, the long view – especially if you were nonmale, or nonstraight, or nonwhite – showed some remarkable improvement in our rights and roles, and that the consequences of our acts were not knowable in advance.”
Not everything in this book is gold. In addition to the perhaps a little too one-sided focus on feminism, these memories also contain reckonings and self-justifications, as with any memoir. But fortunately, there's Solnit's unsurpassed style, which when you get used to it, is truly mesmerizing and captivates. For this she has developed a galvanizing writing process that can be called unique, in which she starts from a general statement, and then explores other views via side roads and thus arrives at a deeper experience of reality: “I believe in the irreducible and in invocation and evocation, and I am fond of sentences less like superhighways than winding paths, with the occasional scenic detour or pause to take in the view, since a footpath can traverse steep and twisting terrain that a paved road cannot. I know that sometimes what gets called digression is pulling in a passenger who fell off the boat.”
In addition, what she writes about reading and writing, and about the special form of empathy that reading entails, goes right to my heart! Absolutely recommended
March 17, 2020
One does not review Solnit, one imbibes her wisdom and words and feels grateful.
September 13, 2019
Readers like me who, over Rebecca Solnit’s thirty years of writing, have fallen in love with her seismic, world-shifting essays will not be disappointed in this memoir, her first longform writing in seven years. True to her form, this is a memoir not necessarily of the events of Solnit’s coming of age, but rather the greater influences in her development as a feminist, an activist, and a writer in 1980s San Francisco. In these pages, Solnit describes the formation of her own powerful voice while interrogating the culture that routinely silences women through violence and disregard. By sharing these formative years, Solnit is sure to inspire and vindicate generations of women and offer much-needed encouragement to people of all genders to invest in voices long suppressed.
December 24, 2019
This book was...fine. I enjoy reading Solnit's essays, so I was looking forward to reading her memoir, thinking that I would actually learn a bit more about her. This was very much focused on Solnit finding her voice and learning how to use it through her writing. The problem is that she neglects to tell the reader anything personal about herself. I felt so disconnected from the author. She almost completely skips over her childhood and starts the memoir with her as a young adult living on her own. She skims over relationships, friendships, or anything that would showcase emotion. Solnit spends a large chunk of the book going over events of the 1970s and 1980s, dropping names of artists and writers and movements that I've never heard of, and only spending 20 pages or so on her career from the 2000s onward, which is the point at which she became well-known as an author. I think it was a mistake on the part of the publisher to market this as a memoir, since it really is a series of recollections on a writer finding her voice, with very little biographical information at all.
February 3, 2020
4.5 rounded down
When I heard Rebecca Solnit was publishing a memoir this year it quickly became one of my most anticipated releases of 2020 - having enjoyed a number of her previous collections (including Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Faraway Nearby and Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises to name but a few) Solnit is one of my favourite living essayists.
And this is a very "Solnit" memoir. Rather than being a straight retelling of the formative events of her life thus far the reader learns about the author and how she has become the writer she is today through snippets of her past which are seamlessly weaved into writing in a style typical of her essays. A key theme is (duh) her identity, and how gender is inextricably linked to that - and how her experience of gender through her life as a white American woman in the 20th and 21st centuries has contributed to the writer she has become today. I found myself relating closely to a lot of what she said and ended up highlighting long sections of writing. There've been times in the past where I've felt that even though the topics she has chosen to write about are quite zeitgeist-y and the essays are published still in that moment that they already feel a bit passé, but I have to say I never felt that here.
Highly recommended to everyone, but I think those who are already fans of Solnit will enjoy this even more.
Thank you Netgalley and Granta Publications for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
When I heard Rebecca Solnit was publishing a memoir this year it quickly became one of my most anticipated releases of 2020 - having enjoyed a number of her previous collections (including Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Faraway Nearby and Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises to name but a few) Solnit is one of my favourite living essayists.
And this is a very "Solnit" memoir. Rather than being a straight retelling of the formative events of her life thus far the reader learns about the author and how she has become the writer she is today through snippets of her past which are seamlessly weaved into writing in a style typical of her essays. A key theme is (duh) her identity, and how gender is inextricably linked to that - and how her experience of gender through her life as a white American woman in the 20th and 21st centuries has contributed to the writer she has become today. I found myself relating closely to a lot of what she said and ended up highlighting long sections of writing. There've been times in the past where I've felt that even though the topics she has chosen to write about are quite zeitgeist-y and the essays are published still in that moment that they already feel a bit passé, but I have to say I never felt that here.
Highly recommended to everyone, but I think those who are already fans of Solnit will enjoy this even more.
Thank you Netgalley and Granta Publications for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
April 2, 2020
My, my, my .... that was an exquisite, though-provoking, sublime, powerful book.
Sure, it's a memoir, but it's much more. Solnit recollects a writer's life, and the history, the journey, the articulation of the craft, the circuitous route to productivity and readership, was as inspirational as it was engaging, interesting, and inspiring.
But, ultimately, Solnit's voice is a woman's voice, and not merely a powerful voice, but a clear and compelling and lyrical voice ... speaking about the evolution of her voice. And that's a remarkable story well told.
I'm not sure what it says that, until recently, I was (almost entirely) unfamiliar with Solnit and that, left to my own devices, I never would have found her or this book. My sense is that Traister's GOOD AND MAD (which I read at just the right moment and found compelling and now frequently recommend) prodded me in this direction, and for that I'm grateful.
Caveat/disclaimer: Based on its size and length, what looks and feels like a slender volume, I'd generally describe a book of this size as a little book, but it's anything but. It a big book ... in terms of content, ideas, gratifying riffs, etc. ... even if it's been marketed in a less-than-massive package. Nor is it necessarily a quick read. I found the short chapters perfect for savoring the book, digesting a little each day, often sitting and enjoying and ruminating on each (again, brief) chapter. ... And, throughout, I found myself re-reading passages - phrases, sentences, and paragraphs - that were elegantly crafted and demanding of additional attention and consideration.
Reader's delight: I read the hardback version (not long after it was published), and I admit that I was intrigued ... not only as a reader, but as a photographer ... by the cover photo. Without offering any spoilers, I'll merely concede that I was immensely gratified, almost giddy, with the passage in the book that placed the photograph in context (which could not have been further from than what I expected). Nicely played, Rebecca Solnit.
Now that she's on my radar screen (and reading list), I'm guessing I'll turn to Wanderlust next. But for now, I ecstatic that I found and read this book.
Sure, it's a memoir, but it's much more. Solnit recollects a writer's life, and the history, the journey, the articulation of the craft, the circuitous route to productivity and readership, was as inspirational as it was engaging, interesting, and inspiring.
But, ultimately, Solnit's voice is a woman's voice, and not merely a powerful voice, but a clear and compelling and lyrical voice ... speaking about the evolution of her voice. And that's a remarkable story well told.
I'm not sure what it says that, until recently, I was (almost entirely) unfamiliar with Solnit and that, left to my own devices, I never would have found her or this book. My sense is that Traister's GOOD AND MAD (which I read at just the right moment and found compelling and now frequently recommend) prodded me in this direction, and for that I'm grateful.
Caveat/disclaimer: Based on its size and length, what looks and feels like a slender volume, I'd generally describe a book of this size as a little book, but it's anything but. It a big book ... in terms of content, ideas, gratifying riffs, etc. ... even if it's been marketed in a less-than-massive package. Nor is it necessarily a quick read. I found the short chapters perfect for savoring the book, digesting a little each day, often sitting and enjoying and ruminating on each (again, brief) chapter. ... And, throughout, I found myself re-reading passages - phrases, sentences, and paragraphs - that were elegantly crafted and demanding of additional attention and consideration.
Reader's delight: I read the hardback version (not long after it was published), and I admit that I was intrigued ... not only as a reader, but as a photographer ... by the cover photo. Without offering any spoilers, I'll merely concede that I was immensely gratified, almost giddy, with the passage in the book that placed the photograph in context (which could not have been further from than what I expected). Nicely played, Rebecca Solnit.
Now that she's on my radar screen (and reading list), I'm guessing I'll turn to Wanderlust next. But for now, I ecstatic that I found and read this book.
August 24, 2021
Absolutely gorgeous, love Solnit! Will definitely revisit this one again.
🖤
“It was a lovely fortune to be handed by a stranger, and I took it, and with it the sense that who I was meant to be was a breaker of some stories and a maker of others, a tracer of the cracks and sometimes a repair-woman, and sometimes a porter or even a vessel for the most precious cargo you can carry, the stories waiting to be told, and the stories that set us free.”
“What is armor after all but a cage that moves with you?”
“Nonfiction is at its best an act of putting the world back together—or tearing some piece of it apart to find what's hidden beneath the assumptions or conventions—and in this sense creation and destruction can be akin. The process can be incandescent with excitement, whether from finding some unexpected scrap of information or from recognizing the patterns that begin to arise as the fragments begin to assemble. Something you didn't know well comes into focus, and the world makes sense in a new way, or an old assumption is gutted, and then you try to write it down.”
"When I read, I ceased to be myself, and this nonexistence I pursued and devoured like a drug. I faded into an absent witness, someone who was in that world but not anyone in it, or who was every word and road and house and ill omen and forlorn hope. I was anyone and no one and nothing and everywhere in those hours and years lost in books. I was a fog, a miasma, a mist, someone who dissolved into the story, got lost in it, learned to lose myself this way as a reprieve from the task of being a child and then a woman and the particular child and woman I was. I hovered about in many times and places, worlds and cosmologies, dispersing and gathering and drifting."
🖤
“It was a lovely fortune to be handed by a stranger, and I took it, and with it the sense that who I was meant to be was a breaker of some stories and a maker of others, a tracer of the cracks and sometimes a repair-woman, and sometimes a porter or even a vessel for the most precious cargo you can carry, the stories waiting to be told, and the stories that set us free.”
“What is armor after all but a cage that moves with you?”
“Nonfiction is at its best an act of putting the world back together—or tearing some piece of it apart to find what's hidden beneath the assumptions or conventions—and in this sense creation and destruction can be akin. The process can be incandescent with excitement, whether from finding some unexpected scrap of information or from recognizing the patterns that begin to arise as the fragments begin to assemble. Something you didn't know well comes into focus, and the world makes sense in a new way, or an old assumption is gutted, and then you try to write it down.”
"When I read, I ceased to be myself, and this nonexistence I pursued and devoured like a drug. I faded into an absent witness, someone who was in that world but not anyone in it, or who was every word and road and house and ill omen and forlorn hope. I was anyone and no one and nothing and everywhere in those hours and years lost in books. I was a fog, a miasma, a mist, someone who dissolved into the story, got lost in it, learned to lose myself this way as a reprieve from the task of being a child and then a woman and the particular child and woman I was. I hovered about in many times and places, worlds and cosmologies, dispersing and gathering and drifting."
June 17, 2021
This was similar to the other Rebecca Solnit books I've read: Mostly her musings around issues of social injustice (primarily sexism), with some personal aspects used to illustrate some of her points. That's fine, but since this one was specifically billed as a memoir, I was expecting a lot more of the personal. She did paint a good picture of the Bay Area in the 1980s and the personal aspects I did get were very interesting, but overall I was a wee bit disappointed. 3.5, rounded up because I still liked it better than The Faraway Nearby.
April 27, 2022
Niesamowicie napisana! Wyrażająca tak wiele, zmuszająca do refleksji.
February 19, 2022
As I was reading this book, there was a heated debate on social media in India on the PIL challenging the existing law on marital rape in the Indian Penal Code.
I saw men coming out claiming their rights, while speaking against the suggested amendment because as of now our system doesn't hold marital rape under the purview of punishable crime except if the girl is a minor.
Wow, I thought. Do these men have any idea what it is like to live as a woman in a male centric world where all we do all the day is be on our guards?
It doesn't matter whether we are outside in the world, studying or working, or within the relative safety of walls of our homes, we are always on the look out for a possible threat. And it isn't just about danger to our bodies but also about the burden of values and expectations imposed upon us by the patriarchal norms which tells us either directly or indirectly that our lives are not as important.
I mean do they have the lens to see the world as we see it. Sometimes like an ever present threat to existence where our minds are constantly busy deciding which turn to take on a road, how to avoid unwarranted gaze or touch, just how to be invisible - to remain non existent. Do they know how much stress it is to be constantly on the watch.
In a world where crime against women is an everyday reality, where women are killed everyday for just being women, how difficult is it to understand the ordeal which most women, especially those from unprivileged backgrounds, have to go through in their lives.
Rebecca Solnit writes about her own experiences in this memoir. At the age of nineteen, in the early 1980s, she came out into the world to find herself. Although she doesn't write much about the violence she was exposed to in her family, it is evident how it did impact her. She writes about being a woman in a world, in times when women were being raped and killed everyday. She writes about much more though. This book makes you feel seen.
Reading her, one realise the times haven't changed much. Only that now atleast we can voice our concerns, talk and fight for our rights and our voices are heard.
It still is a long battle to go.
PS: This is not a review but a rant. Please bear with it.
I saw men coming out claiming their rights, while speaking against the suggested amendment because as of now our system doesn't hold marital rape under the purview of punishable crime except if the girl is a minor.
Wow, I thought. Do these men have any idea what it is like to live as a woman in a male centric world where all we do all the day is be on our guards?
It doesn't matter whether we are outside in the world, studying or working, or within the relative safety of walls of our homes, we are always on the look out for a possible threat. And it isn't just about danger to our bodies but also about the burden of values and expectations imposed upon us by the patriarchal norms which tells us either directly or indirectly that our lives are not as important.
I mean do they have the lens to see the world as we see it. Sometimes like an ever present threat to existence where our minds are constantly busy deciding which turn to take on a road, how to avoid unwarranted gaze or touch, just how to be invisible - to remain non existent. Do they know how much stress it is to be constantly on the watch.
In a world where crime against women is an everyday reality, where women are killed everyday for just being women, how difficult is it to understand the ordeal which most women, especially those from unprivileged backgrounds, have to go through in their lives.
Rebecca Solnit writes about her own experiences in this memoir. At the age of nineteen, in the early 1980s, she came out into the world to find herself. Although she doesn't write much about the violence she was exposed to in her family, it is evident how it did impact her. She writes about being a woman in a world, in times when women were being raped and killed everyday. She writes about much more though. This book makes you feel seen.
Reading her, one realise the times haven't changed much. Only that now atleast we can voice our concerns, talk and fight for our rights and our voices are heard.
It still is a long battle to go.
PS: This is not a review but a rant. Please bear with it.
May 7, 2020
In a series of beautifully written essays, Rebecca Solnit shares her life and what inspired her in her quest for individuality and respect as a person who writes and thinks, to not be fetishized. She presents a well rounded description of what it has meant living in San Francisco, a city that itself has been fetishized and has changed before her eyes, neighborhoods transforming from zones of danger to whitewashed havens of coffee shops but where it is less perilous for women in particular to walk at night. Full disclosure, I lived around the corner from her for a number of years and watched that same neighborhood in transition.
September 18, 2024
„w tym systemie zawsze spotka cię kara, chyba ze sama wymierzysz sobie karę w postaci nieistnienia” ☠️
February 17, 2022
This memoir was my first foray into Solnit's long-form writing after having become a fan of her feminist essays, through which she gained popularity. If you liked those, this more personal piece will likely resonate with you too—her essays have a very distinct voice that blends the political and the anecdotal (the political is personal, after all) while remaining inclusive, and this memoir is written in the same vein. I love the title, and it's really the aptest one she could've gone with, since the thread running throughout each chapter is how she found her voice in a society that would've preferred to rob women of one.
Keeping her background as a writer on art, culture, places, and political and environmental issues in mind, it might not come as a surprise that this is not your standard biography. You won't learn much about Solnit as a person as far as hard facts go, and more often than not, it was not so much about her, but rather about what was happening around her, and how that influenced her life's trajectory. It's more of a series of snapshots of a different time and place, a portrait of the artist as a young woman, recounting the watershed moments in her formative years (and beyond) that led to her becoming the writer and activist that she is, while fighting against a culture that wanted to silence and erase her, make her disappear.
In more ways than one, it reminded me of Patti Smith's airy, bohemian memoirs, but less dreamy, more tangible and coherent (and Solnit criticizes many of the artists Smith reveres). The language is lyrical, the feelings very relatable, and much like Just Kids was a love-letter to New York City in the late 60's and early 70's, Recollections Of My Nonexistence is an ode to 1980s San Francisco, with its vibrant queer culture, before the gentrification (which she contributed to), despite the pervasive atmosphere of gender violence, and also to the vast expanse of the American West, in which she found direction and clarity by solitarily drifting and wandering, as Smith did in Year of the Monkey . She made me nostalgic for a time I haven't lived through, in a city I've only ever visited once, and deserts I've only driven through on dusty roads.
The evocativeness of her writing is probably a big part of how she always manages to leave me feeling hopeful, despite the horrid things it often dwells upon. Many feminist works gets me angry and riles me up, which is good and necessary—nasty women get shit done—but too much of it, and, in the long run, you'll just wear out and despair. Solnit walks that fine line of educating and empowering, while also encouraging to believe in the potential for change. She's lived through many seismic shifts in society herself, which has given her her own hope, and she passes it along to the reader, as a little light to keep you safe and hopeful in the dark.
In digital books, I often highlight quotes that make an impression on me; either because of the beauty of the writing itself, the pictures they evoke, the relatable feelings they describe, or sometimes even just because I think that they'd fit into a later review nicely, but I'm finding that I did a poor job here, or rather, Solnit did hers exceptionally well: I didn't highlight sentences, passages, or even paragraphs, but entire pages of text because they resonated with me so strongly, so I'm leaving much out. Instead, I'll wrap up with this beautiful thought; a different kind of nonexistence, and one I cherish more than almost anything.
—————
Note: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
"I became silently furious, back in the day when I had no clear feminist ideas, just swirling inchoate feelings of indignation and insubordination. A great urge to disrupt the event [reviewer's note: the opening for an exhibition of Allen Ginsberg photographs, with two sad, mentally ill women as the only female subjects in the entire show] overtook me; I wanted to shout and to shout that I was not disrupting it because a woman is no one, and to shout that since I did not exist my shouting did not exist either and could not be objectionable. I was, in that room, that time, clear and angry about my nonexistence that was otherwise mostly just brooding anxiety somewhere below the surface."
Keeping her background as a writer on art, culture, places, and political and environmental issues in mind, it might not come as a surprise that this is not your standard biography. You won't learn much about Solnit as a person as far as hard facts go, and more often than not, it was not so much about her, but rather about what was happening around her, and how that influenced her life's trajectory. It's more of a series of snapshots of a different time and place, a portrait of the artist as a young woman, recounting the watershed moments in her formative years (and beyond) that led to her becoming the writer and activist that she is, while fighting against a culture that wanted to silence and erase her, make her disappear.
In more ways than one, it reminded me of Patti Smith's airy, bohemian memoirs, but less dreamy, more tangible and coherent (and Solnit criticizes many of the artists Smith reveres). The language is lyrical, the feelings very relatable, and much like Just Kids was a love-letter to New York City in the late 60's and early 70's, Recollections Of My Nonexistence is an ode to 1980s San Francisco, with its vibrant queer culture, before the gentrification (which she contributed to), despite the pervasive atmosphere of gender violence, and also to the vast expanse of the American West, in which she found direction and clarity by solitarily drifting and wandering, as Smith did in Year of the Monkey . She made me nostalgic for a time I haven't lived through, in a city I've only ever visited once, and deserts I've only driven through on dusty roads.
"Out on your own, you're a new immigrant to the nation of adults, and the customs are strange; you're learning to hold together all the pieces of a life, figure out what that life is going to be and who is going to be part of it, and what you will do with your self-determination. You are in your youth walking down a long road that will branch and branch again, and your life is full of choices with huge and unpredictable consequences, and you rarely get to come back and choose the other route. You are making something, a life, a self, and it is an intensely creative task as well as one at which it is more than possible to fail, a little, a lot, miserably, fatally."
"I have no regrets about the roads I took, but a little nostalgia for that period when most of the route is ahead, for that stage in which you might become many things that is so much the promise of youth, now that I have chosen and chosen again and again and am far down one road and far past many others. Possibility means that you might be many things that you are not yet, and it is intoxicating when it's not terrifying."
The evocativeness of her writing is probably a big part of how she always manages to leave me feeling hopeful, despite the horrid things it often dwells upon. Many feminist works gets me angry and riles me up, which is good and necessary—nasty women get shit done—but too much of it, and, in the long run, you'll just wear out and despair. Solnit walks that fine line of educating and empowering, while also encouraging to believe in the potential for change. She's lived through many seismic shifts in society herself, which has given her her own hope, and she passes it along to the reader, as a little light to keep you safe and hopeful in the dark.
In digital books, I often highlight quotes that make an impression on me; either because of the beauty of the writing itself, the pictures they evoke, the relatable feelings they describe, or sometimes even just because I think that they'd fit into a later review nicely, but I'm finding that I did a poor job here, or rather, Solnit did hers exceptionally well: I didn't highlight sentences, passages, or even paragraphs, but entire pages of text because they resonated with me so strongly, so I'm leaving much out. Instead, I'll wrap up with this beautiful thought; a different kind of nonexistence, and one I cherish more than almost anything.
"When I read, I ceased to be myself, and this nonexistence I pursued and devoured like a drug. I faded into an absent witness, someone who was in that world but not anyone in it, or who was every word and road and house and ill omen and forlorn hope. I was anyone and no one and nothing and everywhere in those hours and years lost in books. I was a fog, a miasma, a mist, someone who dissolved into the story, got lost in it, learned to lose myself this way as a reprieve from the task of being a child and then a woman and the particular child and woman I was. I hovered about in many times and places, worlds and cosmologies, dispersing and gathering and drifting."
—————
Note: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
April 21, 2021
«Divenni esperta a sparire e sgattaiolare via, a indietreggiare, a divincolarmi dalle situazioni in cui potevo finire alle strette, a scansare abbracci e baci e mani moleste, a stringermi in spazi sempre più esigui sull’autobus mentre un uomo si allargava verso il mio sedile, a sganciarmi gradualmente o a sparire all’improvviso. Esperta nell’arte di non esistere visto che esistere era tanto pericoloso.
[…] Per non essere uccise passiamo il tempo morendo».
Questo libro è molto bello, così come il suo titolo. C’è un capitolo (“Liberamente di notte”) in cui Rebecca Solnit si sofferma a parlare del suo amore per la lettura; be’ sono pagine meravigliose. Ricorda più volte del mito di Filomela, dalle Metamorfosi di Ovidio, Filomela violentata da suo cognato viene amputata della lingua affinché non rivelasse dello stupro. Filomela tesse la sua storia su un arazzo che farà avere, avvalendosi dei gesti, a sua sorella (ossia la moglie del suo stupratore). Rebecca Solnit scrive: «Quando la verità è indicibile la si dice in modo indiretto. Quando ti privano della parola a parlare sono altre cose. A volte è il corpo - le eruzioni cutanee, i tic, gli intorpidimenti, le paralisi - che racconta cosa è accaduto in modo cifrato».
Non impressionatevi dalle righe dolenti, questo è un memoir vario, speranzoso, coraggioso.
C’è un’altra pagina notevole in cui Rebecca Solnit descrive di una sera in cui tornando verso casa, intorno alla mezzanotte, si vide affiancata da un individuo alto, barba incolta e capelli lunghi; accelerò il passo, lui le restò vicino - a distanza fissa di sessanta centimetri, scrive - per un lungo tratto di strada, le sussurrava che non voleva farle del male, che non era una persona pericolosa, che era un suo amico, più lo dichiarava e più l’atmosfera si faceva inquietante, fino a quando un’auto accostò al marciapiede, una portiera si aprì e lei vi si tuffò dentro. L’uomo alla guida dell’auto, avrebbe potuto essere altrettanto pericoloso, ma non lo fu, le disse che l’aveva notata in pericolo, quasi dentro un film di Hitchcock e aveva voluto aiutarla.
«Sono grata che un uomo mi abbia salvata da un altro uomo. Avrei preferito non trovarmi dentro un film di Hitchcock in cui avevo bisogno di essere salvata».
[…] Per non essere uccise passiamo il tempo morendo».
Questo libro è molto bello, così come il suo titolo. C’è un capitolo (“Liberamente di notte”) in cui Rebecca Solnit si sofferma a parlare del suo amore per la lettura; be’ sono pagine meravigliose. Ricorda più volte del mito di Filomela, dalle Metamorfosi di Ovidio, Filomela violentata da suo cognato viene amputata della lingua affinché non rivelasse dello stupro. Filomela tesse la sua storia su un arazzo che farà avere, avvalendosi dei gesti, a sua sorella (ossia la moglie del suo stupratore). Rebecca Solnit scrive: «Quando la verità è indicibile la si dice in modo indiretto. Quando ti privano della parola a parlare sono altre cose. A volte è il corpo - le eruzioni cutanee, i tic, gli intorpidimenti, le paralisi - che racconta cosa è accaduto in modo cifrato».
Non impressionatevi dalle righe dolenti, questo è un memoir vario, speranzoso, coraggioso.
C’è un’altra pagina notevole in cui Rebecca Solnit descrive di una sera in cui tornando verso casa, intorno alla mezzanotte, si vide affiancata da un individuo alto, barba incolta e capelli lunghi; accelerò il passo, lui le restò vicino - a distanza fissa di sessanta centimetri, scrive - per un lungo tratto di strada, le sussurrava che non voleva farle del male, che non era una persona pericolosa, che era un suo amico, più lo dichiarava e più l’atmosfera si faceva inquietante, fino a quando un’auto accostò al marciapiede, una portiera si aprì e lei vi si tuffò dentro. L’uomo alla guida dell’auto, avrebbe potuto essere altrettanto pericoloso, ma non lo fu, le disse che l’aveva notata in pericolo, quasi dentro un film di Hitchcock e aveva voluto aiutarla.
«Sono grata che un uomo mi abbia salvata da un altro uomo. Avrei preferito non trovarmi dentro un film di Hitchcock in cui avevo bisogno di essere salvata».
May 27, 2020
Holy shit. Rebecca Solnit’s writing is absolutely gorgeous. Her memoir focuses on feminism, how her identity as a woman has impacted her life as a writer, and larger movements outside of her own experience. She writes about street harassment, violence against women, and how keeping women silent and discrediting their voices leads to real harm.
I can’t adequately express how amazing this book was. So many passages and lines gave me chills. Especially during the sections focused on violence against women.
This is the first book I’ve read from Rebecca Solnit but now I’m definitely going to seek out more of her writing.
I can’t adequately express how amazing this book was. So many passages and lines gave me chills. Especially during the sections focused on violence against women.
This is the first book I’ve read from Rebecca Solnit but now I’m definitely going to seek out more of her writing.
July 9, 2022
Yes, that is Rebecca Solnit on the cover, trying to both reveal herself and merge into the wall. She is very young in the photo, still a teenager and she will travel a long way to get to where she is today.
Solnit's memoir begins with the black manager of a building in San Francisco helping her rent her first apartment at seventeen, how she came to know members of the local community, where she walked and why. She lived there for twenty-five years and watched the neighborhood change, watched AIDS come to the Castro, watched her own life happen. She found courage and friends, and she is a person I would enjoy sitting with for a few hours talking about . . . everything.
This is likely the best book I will read this year. I connected to Solnit's observations and concerns, despite being nine years older, short and plump instead of tall and scary-thin, raised north of Seattle instead of San Francisco, and gifted with a kindly father instead of a brutal one. I know the times she describes and the concerns she wrestled.
The way the evening sky in the west somehow manages to shift from amber-orange to aqua without passing green; the way I have found the term "girl" to be demeaning, trivializing when applied to women; the way, like most women I know, I have lived my life in recognition of the threat too often posed to me because I am female. Along the way, Solnit meets artists who challenge her views of the world, participates in movements to save landscape and peoples and principles, and finds new questions and reasons for hope. (I too have been attacked for having hope—how strange is that?) She describes how she pursued writing as a profession and how she became a writer of books and how men insisted on explaining her own areas of expertise, about which they sometimes knew less than nothing.
There is some overlap with her collections of essays, but I did not mind that at all. She excludes details about her childhood that I am less interested in than in her overcoming it. Some people enjoy reading about the fall; I have always valued the process by which people regain their feet. Rather than a record of repression and cruelty, this is a memoir of rising despite it all.
Solnit's memoir begins with the black manager of a building in San Francisco helping her rent her first apartment at seventeen, how she came to know members of the local community, where she walked and why. She lived there for twenty-five years and watched the neighborhood change, watched AIDS come to the Castro, watched her own life happen. She found courage and friends, and she is a person I would enjoy sitting with for a few hours talking about . . . everything.
This is likely the best book I will read this year. I connected to Solnit's observations and concerns, despite being nine years older, short and plump instead of tall and scary-thin, raised north of Seattle instead of San Francisco, and gifted with a kindly father instead of a brutal one. I know the times she describes and the concerns she wrestled.
“To be a young woman is to face your own annihilation in innumerable ways or to flee it or the knowledge of it, or all these things at once.”
The way the evening sky in the west somehow manages to shift from amber-orange to aqua without passing green; the way I have found the term "girl" to be demeaning, trivializing when applied to women; the way, like most women I know, I have lived my life in recognition of the threat too often posed to me because I am female. Along the way, Solnit meets artists who challenge her views of the world, participates in movements to save landscape and peoples and principles, and finds new questions and reasons for hope. (I too have been attacked for having hope—how strange is that?) She describes how she pursued writing as a profession and how she became a writer of books and how men insisted on explaining her own areas of expertise, about which they sometimes knew less than nothing.
There is some overlap with her collections of essays, but I did not mind that at all. She excludes details about her childhood that I am less interested in than in her overcoming it. Some people enjoy reading about the fall; I have always valued the process by which people regain their feet. Rather than a record of repression and cruelty, this is a memoir of rising despite it all.
May 7, 2020
I was attacked when I was 18 and walking to work by a gang of teenagers I frowned at (they were throwing rocks at parked cars from a bridge). Though I got punched a few times, I was quickly rescued by a couple of passersby who yelled at the kids so that I could slink away, ashamed and terrified. From that moment on, I was frightened--for years--about walking alone. I was so angry at those macho shitheads, and could never tell whether or not the next stranger was a threat.
But I am male, and white, and bulky enough not to look like an easy target. I am privileged in a way that women and African-Americans and many others are not. My temporary fear didn't keep me from going to the movies alone, from biking and hiking alone in deserted areas, from not even thinking about the possibility of disaster while taking a solo driving tour across the West.
All of this is to say that Rebecca Solnit's memoir describes an early life in which the macho shitheads control her behavior, her voice, her sense of self and safety. That isn't to say that kindness is absent; but that, lurking in all of the places she enjoys, there is always the threat of someone who could attack her--verbally or physically. I cannot imagine and would never like to experience that existence; and I know that most women and many individuals face it daily for their whole lives. Her feminist voice is one that she is rightly proud of achieving, and one that calls out for the demolishing of the patriarchal/misogynist attitude so widespread in America.
Easy for me to say, and so hard for her. This book is not as sharp and clear and terse as her essay collections--her "hopscotch" method of approaching stories leaves some details fuzzier than I wish they were. But since that move toward clarity of speech and confidence is what the book is about, I am OK that I still have questions: I know that they will be answered in one of her other books.
And I love her emphases on hope and kindness. I still grieve that I never thanked those two people (man and woman) who chased off the gang of kids attacking me with no thought of their own safety. But I will always treasure their kindness. And I have hope (even in the midst of this lockdown, and with the government we are currently experiencing) that there is a trend toward a better world, as issues that Solnit (and many others) speak of are spoken of by more and more people.
You should read her.
But I am male, and white, and bulky enough not to look like an easy target. I am privileged in a way that women and African-Americans and many others are not. My temporary fear didn't keep me from going to the movies alone, from biking and hiking alone in deserted areas, from not even thinking about the possibility of disaster while taking a solo driving tour across the West.
All of this is to say that Rebecca Solnit's memoir describes an early life in which the macho shitheads control her behavior, her voice, her sense of self and safety. That isn't to say that kindness is absent; but that, lurking in all of the places she enjoys, there is always the threat of someone who could attack her--verbally or physically. I cannot imagine and would never like to experience that existence; and I know that most women and many individuals face it daily for their whole lives. Her feminist voice is one that she is rightly proud of achieving, and one that calls out for the demolishing of the patriarchal/misogynist attitude so widespread in America.
Easy for me to say, and so hard for her. This book is not as sharp and clear and terse as her essay collections--her "hopscotch" method of approaching stories leaves some details fuzzier than I wish they were. But since that move toward clarity of speech and confidence is what the book is about, I am OK that I still have questions: I know that they will be answered in one of her other books.
And I love her emphases on hope and kindness. I still grieve that I never thanked those two people (man and woman) who chased off the gang of kids attacking me with no thought of their own safety. But I will always treasure their kindness. And I have hope (even in the midst of this lockdown, and with the government we are currently experiencing) that there is a trend toward a better world, as issues that Solnit (and many others) speak of are spoken of by more and more people.
You should read her.
March 4, 2021
I've had Solnit's memoir collecting dust on my bookshelf for a couple of months now. We formed a bit of routine you see; I pick it up slant my head contemplate if that particular day will be the chosen day that I decide to finally get to immerse myself in the the life of the essayist and the self proclaimed feminist that is Rebecca Solnit..Then I'm like naah put the book back and go back to watching Good Girls on Netflix.
But finally the day came when I got my head out of my a$% ... (I finished all 3 seasons of Good Girls) and decided why the hell not
I didn't like Men Explain Things To Me ( TBRH only the title was captivating) so time to get intimate with RS again.
Sigh. To my not so shocking revelation I wasn't that captivated with the book. I think we all knew where this would end up. I give up on this woman.
I'm not that motivated to go into details I skimmed through most of it and I was very much tempted to DNF.
Bleugh
But finally the day came when I got my head out of my a$% ... (I finished all 3 seasons of Good Girls) and decided why the hell not
I didn't like Men Explain Things To Me ( TBRH only the title was captivating) so time to get intimate with RS again.
Sigh. To my not so shocking revelation I wasn't that captivated with the book. I think we all knew where this would end up. I give up on this woman.
I'm not that motivated to go into details I skimmed through most of it and I was very much tempted to DNF.
Bleugh
March 14, 2021
I know I should write a detailed review with reasons and everything.
But . . .
Rebecca Solnit gives me hope for humanity.
But . . .
Rebecca Solnit gives me hope for humanity.
July 3, 2020
Having read a few of Rebecca Solnit's collections, I'm used to her meandering mind or circular style of narrative, so while this might have a #memoir tag that indicates a book recounts a slice of the author's life, Solnit's essays are less 'slice of life' and more 'thought bubbles' as she starts out recalling her early adult life, eight years in a neighbourhood of San Franscisco, the people she came into contact with, the situations she avoided as a woman and then pauses now from years afar and wonders about her impact on that neighbourhood, her contribution to its demise, to its gentrification removing its diversity, colour, vibrancy and ultimately affordability.
The title perhaps pays homage to Diana di Prima's Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years, a feminist beatnik poet I first came across earlier in 2020 when I was reading all I could about the year 1968, the year she wrote Revolutionary Letters, a series of poems composed of utopian anarchism and ecological awareness, scribbled from a spiritual, feminist perspective. All touch points within Solnit's reportoire, however she writes in and of a different era, scratching at the surface of our nonexistence, how that is actively contributed to by others and of her/our own hand.
Recalling a sensation of disappearing, as if on the verge of fainting; rather than the world disappearing she senses herself disappear. Thus introduces the metaphor of nonexistence and discovers/exposes the many ways it is enacted.
Because of the meandering style, it's not easy to recall which particular vignette or essay has the most impact, however I note that I've highlighted 107 passages, her words provoke, recollect, igniting the reader's memory and own experience.
She struggles writing poetry as a young woman, not doing it well, but ferociously, unaware of what or why she was resisting, often resulting in a murky, incoherent, erratic defiance, something she observes today, as young women around her fight the same battles.
And though we all know we learn from our own experiences, there is something reassuring in reading or hearing of those who've trod a similar path; she expresses a desire that the young women coming after her might skip some of the old obstacles, that some of her writing exists to that end, at least by naming those obstacles.
Discussing harassment and violence towards women, particularly young women, she ponders how and what she is able to do differently being an older woman, compared to how she reacted and behaved in youth.
Observing how we strengthen our purpose over time, gaining orientation and clarity, she recognises something like ripeness and calm flowing in, as the urgency and naiveté of youth ebb. I think of this her book The Faraway Nearby where she revisits childhood and a difficult mother, unrecognisable in the woman she then tends, neither of them who they once were, there is no need to hang on to the earlier version. Ripeness was a metaphor here too, one she desired to observe mature fully, she left a pile of apricots picked from the trees on the floor of a room, like an art installation, left to mature, rot, transform.
In the collection she looks back at her own evolution as a writer, and recalls for example the conversation that provoked the essay 'Men Explain Things to Me' that went on to become that new word that has now become mainstream 'mansplaining'.
She rereads photocopies of letters in handwriting that is no longer her own and meets a person who was her, but no longer exists, who didn't know how to speak.
Furnishing her mind with readings, they become part of the equipment of imagination, her set of tools for understanding the world, creating patterns, learning enough to "trace paths though the forests of books, learn landmarks and lineages." She celebrates the pleasure of meeting new voices, ideas and possibilities that help make the world more coherent in some way, extending or filling in the map of one's universe, grateful for their ability to bring beauty, find pattern and meaning, creating pure joy.
Discussing patterns of how women were portrayed in novels by men she read in the past, she becomes aware of relating to the part of the male protagonist, where
It was Nella Larsen, author of Quicksand and Passing who said:
and Rebecca Solnit carries that thought further and observes something astonishing about reading:
She finds research exciting and piecing together a nonfiction narrative like craft and medicine combined, a combination of creativity and healing.
Even if some of this is familiar from previous works, it is the reworking of the landscape of her mind, the rearranging of those experiences, interviews, a more mature awareness and wakefulness that makes her work so readable, engaging and accessible and relevant to what is happening in the fast changing world we inhabit.
Highly Recommended.
The title perhaps pays homage to Diana di Prima's Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years, a feminist beatnik poet I first came across earlier in 2020 when I was reading all I could about the year 1968, the year she wrote Revolutionary Letters, a series of poems composed of utopian anarchism and ecological awareness, scribbled from a spiritual, feminist perspective. All touch points within Solnit's reportoire, however she writes in and of a different era, scratching at the surface of our nonexistence, how that is actively contributed to by others and of her/our own hand.
Recalling a sensation of disappearing, as if on the verge of fainting; rather than the world disappearing she senses herself disappear. Thus introduces the metaphor of nonexistence and discovers/exposes the many ways it is enacted.
In those days I was trying to disappear and to appear, trying to be safe and to be someone, and those agendas were often at odds with each other.
Because of the meandering style, it's not easy to recall which particular vignette or essay has the most impact, however I note that I've highlighted 107 passages, her words provoke, recollect, igniting the reader's memory and own experience.
She struggles writing poetry as a young woman, not doing it well, but ferociously, unaware of what or why she was resisting, often resulting in a murky, incoherent, erratic defiance, something she observes today, as young women around her fight the same battles.
The fight wasn't just to survive bodily, though that could be intense enough, but to survive as a person possessed of rights, including the right to participation and dignity and a voice. More than survive, then: to live.
And though we all know we learn from our own experiences, there is something reassuring in reading or hearing of those who've trod a similar path; she expresses a desire that the young women coming after her might skip some of the old obstacles, that some of her writing exists to that end, at least by naming those obstacles.
Discussing harassment and violence towards women, particularly young women, she ponders how and what she is able to do differently being an older woman, compared to how she reacted and behaved in youth.
So much of what makes young women good targets is self-doubt and self-effacement.
Observing how we strengthen our purpose over time, gaining orientation and clarity, she recognises something like ripeness and calm flowing in, as the urgency and naiveté of youth ebb. I think of this her book The Faraway Nearby where she revisits childhood and a difficult mother, unrecognisable in the woman she then tends, neither of them who they once were, there is no need to hang on to the earlier version. Ripeness was a metaphor here too, one she desired to observe mature fully, she left a pile of apricots picked from the trees on the floor of a room, like an art installation, left to mature, rot, transform.
In the collection she looks back at her own evolution as a writer, and recalls for example the conversation that provoked the essay 'Men Explain Things to Me' that went on to become that new word that has now become mainstream 'mansplaining'.
She rereads photocopies of letters in handwriting that is no longer her own and meets a person who was her, but no longer exists, who didn't know how to speak.
The young writer I met there didn't know how to speak from the heart, though I could be affectionate...She was speaking in various voices because she didn't yet know what voice was hers, or rather she had not yet made one.
Furnishing her mind with readings, they become part of the equipment of imagination, her set of tools for understanding the world, creating patterns, learning enough to "trace paths though the forests of books, learn landmarks and lineages." She celebrates the pleasure of meeting new voices, ideas and possibilities that help make the world more coherent in some way, extending or filling in the map of one's universe, grateful for their ability to bring beauty, find pattern and meaning, creating pure joy.
Discussing patterns of how women were portrayed in novels by men she read in the past, she becomes aware of relating to the part of the male protagonist, where
'women devoured to the bone are praised; often those insistent on their own desires needs are reviled or rebuked for taking up space, making noise. You are punished unless you punish yourself into nonexistence.'
It was Nella Larsen, author of Quicksand and Passing who said:
“Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it.”
and Rebecca Solnit carries that thought further and observes something astonishing about reading:
about that suspension of your own time and place to travel into others'. It's a way of disappearing from where you are...a world arises in your head that you have built at the author's behest, and when you're present in that world you're absent from you own...It's the reader who brings the book to life.
She finds research exciting and piecing together a nonfiction narrative like craft and medicine combined, a combination of creativity and healing.
Research is often portrayed as dreary and diligent, but for those with a taste for this detective work there's the thrill of the chase - of hunting data, flushing obscure things out of hiding, of finding fragments that assemble into a picture.
Even if some of this is familiar from previous works, it is the reworking of the landscape of her mind, the rearranging of those experiences, interviews, a more mature awareness and wakefulness that makes her work so readable, engaging and accessible and relevant to what is happening in the fast changing world we inhabit.
Nonfiction is at its best an act of putting the world back together - or tearing some piece of it apart to find what's hidden beneath the assumptions or conventions...recognizing the patterns that begin to arise as the fragments begin to assemble.
Highly Recommended.
February 8, 2025
Thinking of ways I can get my daughter, 17, and my son, 20, to read this book.
May 15, 2020
I am grateful and awed by Solnit's powerful advocacy, by her courage and skill at putting words to experiences many of us have trouble facing and articulating. She also writes joyfully and memorably about people and art and her first home. And she writes her own enchanting account of what makes reading so wondrous even as she is pointing out the limitations of living only in books, "I swam through oceans and rivers of worlds and their incantatory power. In fairy tales naming something gives you power over it; a spell is some words you say that makes things happens. These are just concentrated versions of how words make that words and take us into its heart, how a metaphor opens up a new possibility, a simile builds a bridge" (115). I look forward to re-reading this one.
March 23, 2020
Rebecca Solnit's writing has greatly informed my role in, and identification with, feminism (especially as a cis-gendered, straight, white man) and the stories in this book contain some of the best lessons I've learned from her to-date.
For men who are doing the work of learning from women—working to understand their experience, working to question their own role in the challenges that women face, worldwide—this is a critically important book to read.
For men who are doing the work of learning from women—working to understand their experience, working to question their own role in the challenges that women face, worldwide—this is a critically important book to read.
Read
August 12, 2020I am not sure how to rate a book like this. It is important, it is intense, it is beautifully written. There is a strong focus on the violence that women are forced to endure on a daily basis. The book made me want to squeeze my eyes shut and cry. I had to put it aside.
May 6, 2020
Recollections of My Nonexistence is one of Rebecca Solnit’s more personal books, but that doesn’t mean she has sacrificed one whit of her sharp observation and critical detachment. It opens with her youthful move to a small apartment in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of San Francisco, escaping a childhood home that was dominated by a violent father. Her mother and brothers she largely left behind as well, though her younger brother crops up periodically in the memoir as a loved figure.
In the city she encountered the sort of relentless harassment and physical threat that used to be a constant feature of young women’s lives and still sometimes is; she describes it in clinical detail and speaks eloquently of the lasting psychological harm it causes. These early passages are some of the most lucid analysis I have ever read of the impact on women of male privilege and the way misogyny ultimately cripples everyone in our society; the language fell like stones into my heart, as real and recognizable and inescapably familiar as my own skin.
Proceeding into her early career, Solnit describes some of the ways she was marginalized and silenced and shunted aside in the course of establishing her reputation. While these recollections are embedded in the broader context of our society’s blindness toward and resistance to women’s contributions in the realm of ideas, they occasionally veered perilously close to whining to my ear. But those recollections also contribute to the culminating section of the book, where Solnit clarifies that attempts to silence women and murderous rage are very different things, but they have their origin in common attitudes. As she says, “I’ve sometimes been taken to task by people as though I equate minor indignities with major crimes, people who don’t or prefer not to understand that we talk about a lot of things on a spectrum, and we can distinguish the different points on the spectrum, but the point is that it’s one spectrum. . . . Having your subject of expertise explained to you by a fool who does not know that he does not know what he’s talking about or who he’s talking to is on a spectrum, and . . . the other end of the spectrum is full of violent death.”
In the end she finds strength in her experiences, and progress and reasons for hope. I hope she is right, though the weight of the previously described experiences is so heavy that it’s hard to believe in hope.
Along the way, there are so many of those perfectly illuminating sentences that bring me back over and over to Solnit’s work, passages that make me feel for a moment that I truly understand the world. This book is an important cultural document, clear-eyed and eloquent.
In the city she encountered the sort of relentless harassment and physical threat that used to be a constant feature of young women’s lives and still sometimes is; she describes it in clinical detail and speaks eloquently of the lasting psychological harm it causes. These early passages are some of the most lucid analysis I have ever read of the impact on women of male privilege and the way misogyny ultimately cripples everyone in our society; the language fell like stones into my heart, as real and recognizable and inescapably familiar as my own skin.
Proceeding into her early career, Solnit describes some of the ways she was marginalized and silenced and shunted aside in the course of establishing her reputation. While these recollections are embedded in the broader context of our society’s blindness toward and resistance to women’s contributions in the realm of ideas, they occasionally veered perilously close to whining to my ear. But those recollections also contribute to the culminating section of the book, where Solnit clarifies that attempts to silence women and murderous rage are very different things, but they have their origin in common attitudes. As she says, “I’ve sometimes been taken to task by people as though I equate minor indignities with major crimes, people who don’t or prefer not to understand that we talk about a lot of things on a spectrum, and we can distinguish the different points on the spectrum, but the point is that it’s one spectrum. . . . Having your subject of expertise explained to you by a fool who does not know that he does not know what he’s talking about or who he’s talking to is on a spectrum, and . . . the other end of the spectrum is full of violent death.”
In the end she finds strength in her experiences, and progress and reasons for hope. I hope she is right, though the weight of the previously described experiences is so heavy that it’s hard to believe in hope.
Along the way, there are so many of those perfectly illuminating sentences that bring me back over and over to Solnit’s work, passages that make me feel for a moment that I truly understand the world. This book is an important cultural document, clear-eyed and eloquent.
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