Thank you to Netgalley, for an advanced copy for review!
This was an easily-readable piece of nonfiction, in terms of prose at least, no small feat Thank you to Netgalley, for an advanced copy for review!
This was an easily-readable piece of nonfiction, in terms of prose at least, no small feat when you think of the heavy material some of these books cover. It also wasn’t too long, always a relief in this hectic age. However, there were serious formatting issues with the Kindle edition I read, and that contributed to confusion and pages that cut off, as if they were a side bar or something in a printed book, and never seemed to resume. The title, overlaid on every left(? or right) page I think, would cut into the main text. I found the labor required to figure out how a page read slowed down my reading immensely. This is my main gripe with the book and why I lowered my rating – I hope the final Kindle version has been tweaked because it’s otherwise a fantastic book.
It’s funny because in school, we only ever learned about suffrage as a generic movement, and never in detail. The truth was it was much more a layered issue, state by state and region by region rather than one nationwide issue. This book details specifically the western territories/eventual states’ struggles towards votes for women, and it was anything but a simple fight. Whenever I heard about suffrage, it was mainly the big fights in D.C. and New York, and it was so nice to hear about a different region with different issues.
My eyes were completely opened to the intersectional obstacles to getting the vote for women across the west; I feel thoroughly educated after reading this book. In general, there were fears that those promoting suffrage were also promoting temperance and prohibition; that votes for women would be granting freedom to pursue prohibition as well. There was also a racial intersection. Some of the most well-known suffragists unfortunately sought the right only for those who looked like them, and it was saddening to read even in retrospect. In Utah, Mormonism and polygamy practices were seen as jeopardized by the suffrage movement; in Wyoming, there was conversely an impetus to encourage new settlers, and suffrage could lure them. It was fascinating to read how a local issue provided broader arguments for or against the vote.
Overall, a great foray into some specific fights for suffrage. I learned about many more woman than the Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and it was great to read about Washington, where I live, and get that specific local insight into the fight. Keeping to a length that felt just long enough, while still doing a deep-dive into every aspect of the movement, and keeping the prose light all combined for a very satisfying read. ...more
Okay, I tried plodding through, and I see what she's done, taken a historical gender population imbalance and turned it on its head in regards to aOkay, I tried plodding through, and I see what she's done, taken a historical gender population imbalance and turned it on its head in regards to a patriarchal system too, but I can't stand the way its done. I'd appreciate a matriarchal society so much, and gender parity certainly, but this sends societal power careening the other way and still leaving someone powerless. That lack of free will bothers me immensely. The way the shortage of males results in like a gross inverse-harem feeling has me squicked out. One dude for all these sisters? I can't. DNFing at 121 pgs....more
This is brilliant. Everything I've read of Traister's makes me just want to make a powerpoint and gesture furiously at it.*wiping away inspired tears*
This is brilliant. Everything I've read of Traister's makes me just want to make a powerpoint and gesture furiously at it.
As someone interested in public sphere work and public speaking, I appreciated how the double standards women face, particularly politicans and other public-facing roles or positions of power, are laid out here. Be angry, emotional and relatable - but sacrifice poll points as you are seen as unfeminine, unlikeable. Be calm, rational - but unconvincing and robotic. The eternal dichotomy of a woman's speech is that it is seen as portraying her as either too-quiet, inept and therefore unqualified; or as loud, crass, off-putting and not credible. We cannot be loud, angry and correct at the same time. Traister captured this amazingly.
I like that she addressed privilege as a platform, intersectional feminism and activism, and the fact that white women mad after November 2016 were not the first to join this fight and movement.
And several good lines:
"women are asked to foot the bill for men's bad acts"
"In the United States, we have never been taught how noncompliant, insistent, furious women have shaped our history and our present, our activism and our art. We should be."
"What becomes clear, when we look to the past with an eye to the future, is that the discouragement of women’s anger—via silencing, erasure, and repression—stems from the correct understanding of those in power that in the fury of women lies the power to change the world."
"Anyone who wants power within a white male power structure has been asked to quell anything that sounds like wrath, to reassure that they come in cooperative peace and are not looking to mete out repercussion against those who have oppressed or subjugated them."
This whole book is so quotable. And I remain good and mad....more
Thank you, Netgalley, for an advanced copy for review!
I have been reading a ton of feminist literature recently and they were starting to blend Thank you, Netgalley, for an advanced copy for review!
I have been reading a ton of feminist literature recently and they were starting to blend together, so I took this nice and slow.
This book was fantastic, taking a place for me among the recent feminist literary giants like Feminasty or Good and Mad of the past year or so. Surprisingly, I hadn’t heard of Lindy or her social media storm and other happenings of the past few years, so I went in unbiased, and I was glad for it.
Firstly, this book is quotable as heck. For the sake of this being an advanced copy I read, I think I’m not allowed to quote anything, but consider it sufficient to say I want to just print this book on a scroll, walk to public areas, unravel it across the pavement and get up on a soapbox to read it aloud. It’s great. Any chapter would make an excellent oration – in fact, the audiobook version, if being made, will probably be fantastic, just like Feminasty was; some stuff needs snarky enunciation and so forth. The book was written in a great tone for those formats of delivery – alternating internet slang with millennial street lingo with scholarly rhetoric that I want to engrave on something. That exact tone, casual with strong tones of exasperation, made it extremely readable and relatable reading.
Lindy covers a lot in this book, a lot that rational women today should be mad about, concerned with, or fighting for actively. Her frank explication of #MeToo, abortions and how they really aren’t the big deal everyone thinks they are, Adam Sandler’s comedy, heck, even GOOP by Gwyneth Paltrow. Lindy’s there with an unvarnished take on most things that have come up in at least my own personal life. Trump is more than hateful rhetoric, she impresses, he is the embodiment and symptom of hate and gross behavior that has grown like a tumor beneath America’s skin for years and years. And climate change. She doesn’t hold back, and she is a native of Seattle, close to where I live, so her no-holds-barred take on how this crisis will affect it specifically hit home for me.
As I finished reading, I felt both hopeful and choked-up with frustration, just as Lindy is throughout these pages. We can do something to mitigate climate change, we can choose not to watch South Park or Adam Sandler movies, we can vote Donald Trump out (or impeach him, at this point).
I like that Lindy didn’t present a rose-colored glasses vision of anything; her blunt honesty is everything we need, and probably exactly why she was hounded on social media so viciously. Most can’t handle frank truth from feminists, and that’s a fact. But Lindy is hilarious, she makes sense, she is convincing. The witches are coming, and we can join and help them....more
For shame, I know. But this started promising and got wacky in a bad way for how my brain processes, maybe? Maybe I should've tried to read itFor shame, I know. But this started promising and got wacky in a bad way for how my brain processes, maybe? Maybe I should've tried to read it younger. But that's something else off my mental catchup list! On to the next....more
A really quirky but enjoyable & quick listen/read, Convenience Store Woman is like the Japanese Amélie you didn't know you needed. Keiko is...A really quirky but enjoyable & quick listen/read, Convenience Store Woman is like the Japanese Amélie you didn't know you needed. Keiko is... well, basically a sociopath. She doesn't understand emotion and the human connection well, and balks at societal norms - but at this last part, I thought, hard SAME, girl.
She's undeterred by those who judge her for working in the same convenience store for 18 years, not marrying, not dating, not moving up the career ladder. But Keiko feels absolute fulfillment working at the store, knowing restocking needs, placing orders, feeling at peace in the predictable environment. So who can blame her? The whole of Japanese society and her family, apparently, but certainly not me. As an asexual, this book resonated deeply with the part of me that cringes away from societal expectations of home life and I appreciated its message greatly, that it's okay to do you.
When Keiko decides that not having children is in her best interest: "I would carry my genes carefully to my grave, being sure not to rashly leave any behind, and I would dispose of them properly when I died." This is real as heck and totally how I feel. Love it.
So this was just a really different slice-of-life piece that spoke to many parts of me. A solid 4 stars....more
This was great, another relatable read just as good as Feminasty from earlier this year. This book was written a couple years ago, but its openingThis was great, another relatable read just as good as Feminasty from earlier this year. This book was written a couple years ago, but its opening anecdotes rang so true for me, the writer’s crestfallen feeling when the heroines in her favorite books and movies got married. The changes in the narrative those life changes for the heroine enact - the disappointment at the story switching from a heroine running around the woods to cooking for a man or nursing a baby is something I constantly, constantly feel. I go out of my way to avoid domesticity in my books and shows, so I was delighted the book opened with this relatability.
Now, this book isn’t hating on marriage, firing shots at heteronormative behavior or engaging in man-hating dialogue – or if there are moments of this, they aren’t the point. The main focus of the book is the way society, human behavior and expectations, and in particular ways of life in the U.S. can target single women, single mothers, and she-identifying people in general with disadvantageous policy and beliefs. At the same time, it shows how these women and people can rise above and fight against such systemic discrimination.
Traister isn’t focusing just on unmarried feminists – she herself got married a few years before the book was published, in fact – she mentions suffragettes, female domestic staff of the 1800s, abolitionists, and of course spinsters of all eras, ages and classes. I liked how she mentioned the burgeoning power of single women as starting with the physical unburdening of flappers, who literally shed about thirty pounds of outfits when they opted for shorter-sleeved and -hemmed dresses. So interesting. She also brought up the Miss America pageant, and how harmful it is to pit women against each other, and not only that but on the dumbest level, comparing mostly physical and shallow attributes.
Another aspect of life Traister mentioned that resonated with me was the idea of non-blood “found family”. That there are other ways to pass on lineage or feel connections besides heteronormative marriage and having children. I loved that. She has a line about how self-constructed families are no less important than ‘mainstream’ ones, that “voluntary kin” can be equally or more meaningful. As a single woman whose family is not close, that spoke to me and my circle of friends I consider family.
Honestly, I could have quoted the entire book. I bookmarked like 88 places and nodded along to the whole thing. Excellent piece of work.
I'm always wary of starting books with such heavy topics as"You is kind. You is smart. You is important."
Cue me sobbing on the ground. What a BOOK.
I'm always wary of starting books with such heavy topics as this, being a strong empath and hypersensitive person. It just hurts a lot to read injustice. But it's also important to do so, and especially in the case of this book. Intersectional feminism was a hallmark of my degree in women's studies, and I was pleased to see it utilized in a plausible setting here. I wasn't sure if this was based on a true story, or modified, or whatever, but it absolutely could've happened and probably did, many of the aspects of the story.
I like that it covered everything. Racial prejudice and violence, demeaning treatment of domestic workers, miscarriage and infertility, domestic violence, gender politics, the sadly combative, competitive tendency between higher-society women to tear each other down, and women's education, finding a career and one's place in the world. It was all here, and in the end, it was women helping other women in all these situations. The best outcome.
I loved every character's POV. And I found real grim truth in Minnie's character; a woman who can be so strong and sassy in the domain of her kitchen and household work, but can be shrunk to a quiet weakling asking "Why?" as her husband beats her. It's a testament to her that her husband says he does so because of what she could be, otherwise. And doesn't that make ya think? Without millennia of oppression, what all of us could have been.
Oh, and the spectre of the Shit Pie was hilarious....more
This was amazing. Memoirs are a strange sort of book for me, in that there isn’t action, per se, in them, and yet they hold so much to keep you[image]
This was amazing. Memoirs are a strange sort of book for me, in that there isn’t action, per se, in them, and yet they hold so much to keep you reading – if it’s the right one. Michelle Obama’s memoirs were the right fit for me.
“Since stepping reluctantly into public life, I’ve been held up as the most powerful black woman in the world and taken down as an “angry black woman.” I’ve wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most – is it “angry” or “black” or “woman”?”
Michelle’s story of a young girl growing up in a lower-class lower-income family, and her academic drive and self-motivation to ‘check off boxes’ in life, work towards something, all spoke to me strongly. I always saw her as a classy woman, but now she is more relatable, modest, and approachable than ever. Also, a great female role model.
“I tried not to feel intimidated when classroom conversation was dominated by male students, which it often was. Hearing them, I realized that they weren’t at all smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different.”
She also portrays Barack as even better than we saw him as, as president – and that was something. It really saddens me as I compare with the government we are currently enduring. Michelle’s reluctance to appear “bougie”, determination to inconvenience the public as little as possible when serving as First Lady, and general ‘grounded’ air was so refreshing - and encouraging. You really feel anyone could be president or first lady, that the person in the white house could be just like you, wearing a gap t-shirt, for example, as she mentions at one point. She’s also a great feminist, from her female staff, to her programs for girls, to her anecdote of standing in a room with the Queen and comparing the pain from their shoes – the Queen’s just another lady in many cases.
On her public image campaigning: “The easiest way to disregard a woman’s voice is to package her as a scold. No one seemed to criticize Barack for appearing too serious or not smiling enough. I was a wife and not a candidate, obviously, so perhaps the expectation was for me to provide more lightness, more fluff. And yet, if there was any question about how women in general fared on Planet Politics, one needed only to look at how Nancy Pelosi, the smart and hard-driving Speaker of the House of Representatives, was often depicted as a shrew or what Hillary Clinton was enduring as cable pundits and opinion writers hashed ad rehashed each development in the campaign.”
I’ll let Michelle tell her own story, but I’m just … impressed, in a word. You never know how much of this sort of book is the individual’s own words and what is ghost writer production, but her story is her own – and whoever wrote some of these lines, they’re amazing. See my tabbed physical copy for reference, lol. On a final note, Michelle made me feel better about having endured this Trump presidency – she too lies awake at night some days angry and frustrated, but knows this too shall pass. One last piece of wisdom:
“What I won’t allow myself to do, though, is to become cynical. In my most worried moments, I take a breath and remind myself of the dignity and decency I’ve seen in people throughout my life, the many obstacles that have already been overcome. I hope others will do the same. We all play a role in this democracy. We need to remember the power of every vote. I continue, too, to keep myself connected to a force that’s larger and more potent than any one election, or leader, or news story – and that’s optimism.” ...more
I was sitting here deciding which brilliant quotes to point out when I realized: I want to quote the whole book. Verbally, eagerly, at EVERYONE II was sitting here deciding which brilliant quotes to point out when I realized: I want to quote the whole book. Verbally, eagerly, at EVERYONE I MEET. This book was perfection, a quick read or listen, as in my case. And I cannot recommend the audiobook highly enough; Gibson herself narrates, basically yelling the whole book at you like it's a crazy story from her trip to the grocery store and I adore it. Also, Mike Pence's words are read in a pirate accent, and Gibson uses an accent eerily reminiscent of Sarah Palin to voice his wife, Betsy Devos, and other garbage conservative figureheads and I enjoyed it sooo much. It helps I agree with, well, everything herein. She covers everything from periods, to gynos and STDs, to sexism and male profiteering in the makeup industry, to abortion law fine print. Perfect for every Nasty Woman out there today. Also, this isn't simply some raging feminist soapbox for Gibson - her research is apparent, and not to mention respectable; can't say I'd be able to delve into lines of pro-life law and stay calm....more
I have to say, I didn't think this would be so dry and heavy. Then again, being written so long ago... it isn't often I delve into the 1700s so theI have to say, I didn't think this would be so dry and heavy. Then again, being written so long ago... it isn't often I delve into the 1700s so the language was the major roadblock.
A lot of Wollstonecraft's ideas (those I could comprehend, the prose was dense and seemed awful rambling for most of the book, I ended up skimming sooo much) unfortunately have to work within the confines of acceptable social ways of the time - highly religious, heterosexual, domestic arrangements of what seemed like upper class women particularly. My modern, heathen feminist self cringed back from the often-mentioned biblical establishments of gender roles. That said, she did find sneaky ways to work inside that box - how can a widow be expected to raise proper, god-fearing but successful citizens if she herself is not educated? How can women survive the travails of daily life if not bodily strengthened as men are by exercise?
She had a few generally good ideas:
- Rousseau's ideas SUCKED. - Inherited wealth and title breeds slothful, lazy individuals - women being even further harmed by the fact that upper class women are just closeted inside to primp all the time. - with preconceived ideas of women as domesticated, blindly-obedient animals who exist just to look pretty, men make those "artificial duties" clash with "natural" duties of motherhood and a domestic role model for children. - how can a woman serve as a proper wife and intellectual companion - at least nod and smile at the right parts of a husband's rant - if not educated? - re: women, "denying her genius and judgment, it is scarcely possible to divine what remains to characterize intellect."
All of this considered, she mentions flirtatious, shallow women who don't do much work, which worried me that she was focusing on upper-class women. The lower classes have to learn to manage their own finances, keep a family going, get creative with resources, often are physically strengthened by long, hard days of labor...soooo I took a lot with a grain of salt.
Sad I didn't enjoy this more, but I'm going to try her travel writings too. ...more
wow. just wow. simultaneously relatable but a nightmare version of where you could see yourself. relevant in any era, not just the stifling housewifewow. just wow. simultaneously relatable but a nightmare version of where you could see yourself. relevant in any era, not just the stifling housewife era of rhe 50s . . ....more
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