| Title | : | The Mother of All Questions |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1608467406 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781608467402 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 176 |
| Publication | : | First published March 14, 2017 |
| Awards | : | PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay Longlist (2018) |
The Mother of All Questions Reviews
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One of the most intelligent feminist essay collections I have ever read, The Mother of All Questions brought tears to my eyes because of its beautiful language and brilliant ideas. If you want a book to rile up your inner feminist and give you profound insights to smash the patriarchy, look no further. Rebecca Solnit addresses a wide range of important topics with her trademark incisive, fiery prose, including misogynistic violence, how we silence women's pain and men's expression of emotions other than anger, the ways we glorify white men in the literary canon at the expense of underrepresented voices, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. Every single essay felt like a treat, and every paragraph raced forward with trains of thought that propelled the feminist movement onward, as opposed to only articulating what other writers have already said. For example, a longer passage about love and empathy and how masculinity can detract from these qualities and turn into sexual violence:
"Love is a constant negotiation, a constant conversation; to love someone is to lay yourself open to rejection and abandonment; love is something you can earn but not extort. It is an arena in which you are not in control, because someone else also has rights and decisions; it is a collaborative process; making love is at its best a process in which these negotiations become joy and play. So much sexual violence is a refusal of that vulnerability; so many of the instructions about masculinity inculcate a lack of skills and willingness to negotiate in good faith. Inability and entitlement deteriorate into a rage to control, to turn a conversation into a monologue of commands, to turn the collaboration of making love into the imposition of assault and the assertion of control. Rape is hate and fury taking love's place between bodies. It's a vision of the male body as a weapon and the female body (in heterosexual rape) as the enemy. What is it like to weaponize your body?"
I read this book on a flight back from Las Vegas, where America's most recent most lethal mass shooting occurred. My trip had made me feel sad and frustrated for many reasons, including seeing the aftermath of the shooting just a few days after it took place. And yet, The Mother of All Questions filled me with so much hope and determination. Solnit does not sugarcoat any of the issues she discusses. Rather, she delves deep into the historical, interpersonal, and cultural factors that cause so much sexism in contemporary America. She imbues each essay with a journalistic eye for detail and an endless amount of heart. And she elevates her writing by incorporating the horizon - ideas that force us to take our feminism to new heights, to envision a world where men nurture instead of harm and women have freedom from violence, even if that world feels like a fool's fantasy right now. Her prose blew me away with its forwardness, its eloquent twist and turns, and its humor. Another paragraph I loved, about how our culture normalizes movies where men get the majority of screen time:
"But such films are not described as boys' or men's films, but as films for all of us, while films with a similarly unequal amount of time allocated to female characters would inevitably be regarded as girls' or women's films. Men are not expected to engage in the empathic extension of identifying with a different gender, just as white people are not asked, the way people of color are, to identify with other races. Being dominant means seeing yourself and not seeing others; privilege often limits or obstructs imagination."
Overall, a phenomenal essay collection I would recommend to literally everyone. It may feel hard to hope in Trump's America, yet Solnit's masterful essay collection reminds us of why we must continue the feminist fight - we have done so much and we have so much work to do. Again, The Mother of All Questions serves as a genius and compassionate call to action that reminds us of our shared humanity and what we must do to defend it against the forces of sexism, racism, and more. I will end this review with one final quote, about reconceptualizing what it means to love, outside of having kids:
"One of the reasons people lock onto motherhood as a key to feminine identity is the belief that children are the way to fulfill your capacity to love. But there are so many things to love beside one's own offspring, so many things that need love, so much other work love has to do in the world. While many people question the motives of the childless, who are taken to be selfish for refusing the sacrifices that come with parenthood, they often neglect to note that those who love their children intensely may have less love left for the rest of the world." -
I saved finishing this one until January 21, the day of all the women's marches and rallies worldwide. Reading about progress and current status of women's rights is simultaneously terrifying and encouraging.
The book of essays doesn't get five stars from me because there is a fair amount of repetition of ideas between essays. I'm not sure all of them needed to be included because of that, but I definitely think Solnit is an important writer on this subject.
I started marking passages in the introduction, where she talks about interviewers being dismissive, completely in disbelief that she has a fulfilling life without children.
"A Short History of Silence" should be required reading for everyone. It examines the idea of voice, how a voice is silenced, and why it is so important for women to have their own."If our voices are essential aspects of our humanity, to be rendered voiceless is to be dehumanized or excluded from one's humanity."
The idea of who isn't at the table, of whose voice isn't represented, is just as important."If libraries hold all the stories that have been told, there are ghost libraries of all the stories that have not."
And she examines what happens when power consumes others voices, controlling the news, controlling the narrative."It's as though the voices of these prominent public men devoured the voices of others into nothingness, a narrative cannibalism."
And this essay was written before our very young presidency, which has done nothing but sign presidential orders to silence more voices. It cuts deep in these days. Solnit also takes a look at male silence, and the expectation particularly for straight men to stay true to the narrative of power. Then she spins it around and examines how this perpetuates violence against women."Love is a constant negotiation... to love someone is to lay yourself open to rejection and abandonment; love is something you can earn but not extort... so much sexual violence is a refusal of that vulnerability."
"Men Explain Lolita to Me" is a bit of a continuation of the well-known essay, "Men Explain Things to Me," (read online at
LitHub about the white male reaction to her various statements on literature. She wrote a reaction to the GQ Magazine's article called "80 Books All Men Should Read" with, shall we say, a rather different response. The entire essay is worth a read, but a quote near the end stuck with me: "You read enough books in which people like you are disposable, or are dirt, or are silent, absent, or worthless, and it makes an impact on you. Because art makes the world, because it matters, because it makes us. Or breaks us."
Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion. -
This was good—I especially appreciated "Men Explain Lolita to Me" and the essay about the pressures women feel to have children—but it felt like a bit of a retread of Men Explain Things to Me. Haymarket Books has definitely cashed in on collecting well-known authors' sundry essays from around the internet and publishing them in these little books, but this practice means the contents can be rather uneven. I like Rebecca Solnit, but I thought this one was pretty forgettable.
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Well, I liked this better than Men Explain Things to Me, but as you can see, that's not saying much, lol. Both books made me feel like I wasn't really getting anything out of them, and I think that's partly due to the lack of intersectionality. I don't know how committed Solnit is to certain views that are antagonistic toward trans people and sex workers, so I can't say whether she simply hasn't thought about it enough or if she's actively rejecting what people tell her about their lives. Examples: Under the guise of seeking a nuanced view of sex work , she regurgitates the myth that sex workers ("prostitutes") who advocate for their rights are just privileged and in denial about their job's risks. Her point is that "both sides" of the argument are wrong, yet she doesn't take the time to criticize the side that opposes sex work. She likens "rape videos and misogynist porn" to lynching. Tired statements like rape being "a vision of the male body as a weapon" feel like red flags for viewing patriarchy as centered on anatomy (a trans-exclusionary view and one that has never resonated with me anyway).
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This book is part of a trilogy that includes the very powerful book, reviewed by me,
Men Explain Things to Me, although it is a stand alone volume of essays. Solnit continues to eloquently to describe the current status of women today, both celebrating our victories and calling out for further progress.
Solnit details the violence against women that continues to be a major cause of injury and death of women, especially at the hands of their significant others. She shares the quote that "Men are afraid of women laughing at them; women are afraid of men killing them." She argues that the current power structure leaves men stripped of their emotional lives and women left often powerless and voiceless.
The present outpouring of women speaking up about sexual harassment and abuse is the result of years of women (and the men who are our allies) fighting for the voice of women to be heard. 20 years ago, even 10 years ago women were afraid to speak out because they saw those who did, like Anita Hill, disbelieved, mocked and sometimes even imprisoned for doing so. Today, these women are being heard. This may welcome in a time when women have a voice in their lives and in public discourse.
Solnit has a long and moving section about the silence of certain groups, women and other groups--such as people of color and gays. It makes for powerful reading. I think of myself as a feminist but Solnit continually reveals areas of which I am unaware and often limited in my own thinking as well as creating an increased awareness of those issues that I consider myself knowledgeable in. She is an extremely intelligent, awake woman and a powerful writer. Her arguments are well-thought out and strongly presented.
She also discusses marriage equality and how the increasing acceptance of gay marriage also changes our perception of heterosexual relationships and the power balance within those relationships and the entire structure of our society.
Reading Solnit provides strength and information for those who believe in the cause of changing the power structure of today's world and a balance of male/female relationships. And, if people who disagree with her read this, they may find themselves with at least new food for thought. -
4.5*
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Trudnym zadaniem jest ocenienie tej książki, gdyż tematyka przez nią podejmowana jest niezwykle ważna, ale jednak na poziomie stylu mam kilka uwag.
Matka wszystkich pytań to całkiem interesujący zbiór esejów, Solnit raczy nas całkiem trafnymi spostrzeżeniami, celnymi diagnozami, zwraca uwagę na interesujące aspekty milczenia czy procesu uciszania kobiet.
Zupełnie nie trafia do mnie styl, w jakim napisane są eseje – dość chaotyczny, można odnieść wrażenie, że czytamy instagramowe posty.
Instastyl, instant przekaz.
Podchodziłem trzy razy do Matki i mimo wszystko wydaje mi się, że warto poświęcić czas i wypróbować cierpliwość chociażby na Krótką historię milczenia, jednak jest to zadanie dla naprawdę zawziętych czytelników. -
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I had mixed feelings about this author's most famous essay collection,
MEN EXPLAIN THINGS TO ME. I thought the titular essay was quite good but that the overall essay collection felt mixed in theme and tone, and walked away feeling a little befuddled. Not so with THE MOTHER OF ALL QUESTIONS, which is like if Solnit's first book was a Charmander with Confusion who was fed a berry and then evolved into a fire-breathing, socially aware Charizard. It packed a mean punch and was nearly perfect. The emotion and the organization was SO MUCH BETTER.
This is a collection of feminist-themed essays, mostly revolving around the work that still needs to be done. Some of the topics in this book: how a woman's decision to have children is irrelevant to her professional career or the way she defines herself as a woman; the way silence is used and weaponized to preserve the status quo; the way most great and "universal" works of literature tend to be from the white male perspective; the way people miss the point with the book, Lolita; and so much more.
Even though this is a pretty short book, it took me a while to read because 1) the writing is pretty dense at parts and 2) I really wanted to take everything in. I'm honestly so impressed at how Solnit has evolved as a writer. The fire in the writing smoked off the pages. This book reminded me of a much more serious version of Lindy West's
THE WITCHES ARE COMING. It has that same call to action feel, while also being a scathing analysis of pop culture, culture at large, and the work we have left to do. Really, really well done.
4 to 4.5 stars -
Wow. This book was just what I needed at this time in my life. This is my first essay collection by Rebecca Solnit. I own two others but decided I would read this one first after it was very kindly sent to me by the publisher.
This collection starts off with a BANG and ends with a BANG. It is told in two parts, Silence is Broken and Breaking the Story. Solnit's essays are unapologetically themselves and really have that "COME AT ME BRO" vibe radiating off of them. I was nervous at first that I'd be intimidated but her writing style is so immensely easy to get into yet she writes with such power and passion behind what she's stating. She is a woman who knows what she's talking about and I LOVE how at times she comes off a little snarky, just added a bit of sass to such important topics.
There's no way you can read this collection of essays and NOT get fired up or start feeling antsy about how you can speak up and help make change. I seriously want to start gifting this to everyone I know who is about to graduate high school and go out and experience the world on their own for the first time as a forewarning of the fact that there are assholes out there and history has shown that this is how certain situations get/don't get handled so be careful. Be careful! Ha! Solnit mentions in the book how ridiculous that women have to go through their day to day so cautious but yes I want everyone to read this. Everyone should Have to. -
Don't read this book from cover to cover in one sitting.
Do reread essays regularly.
Do buy a copy for a friend.
Do make sure everyone you know reads: "A Short History of Silence" and "Men Explain Lolita To Me"
Do follow Rebecca Solnit on the social medias for some refreshing insight in this clusterfuck of a world. -
What a legend. Favourite essays were "The Mother of All Questions" and "A Short History of Silence". I want to read everything Solnit has ever written but she's too damn prolific.
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This is a very powerful, highly intelligent book that impressed me deeply. Solnit presents a collection of various somewhat recent (2014/2015) essays on feminism, patriarchy and everything that comes with it. It's roughly divided into two parts: The first half deals with deeper, more general, profound problems of society, whereas the second half is more specific towards certain aspects of (recent) (pop) culture.
The book starts with a bang, the first essay - the titular mother of all questions - is quite an eye (or better: brain) opener. It was what made me curious about the book in the first place - and it doesn't disappoint. It's about women and their choices on how to live, with the one big question being the center of the argument: Why don't you have kids? Needless to say, I hate this question and cringe everytime I hear it (I'm talking about more or less random strangers asking such an intimate question). Solnit discusses the question, her answers, (possible) reactions and the reasons why women get asked such a thing at all. Her writing is clear, precise and made me nod all along, for she raises some good and interesting points.
What follows next is a huge essay on silence, which was very cleverly constructed, looking at who is silenced and why (women and men), what kind of silences there are, why some people use silencing others as power tool and what might be the consequences.
The later chapters are somewhat easier to read - mainly because they're shorter and focus on "smaller" issues (not less important ones, but more enclosed). Overall, I find little flaw in this book - here and there, Solnit's language might be conceived as a tad too lecturing, sometimes even bordering condescending - but well, she's on a mission and it's very important, not just to her.
I'll get back to some chapter at a later point (especially The Mother of All Questions, A Short History of Silence and Escape from the Five-Million-Year-Old Suburb). -
Książka ostatecznie rozczarowuje - jest w niej całkiem ciekawy tekst na temat milczenia ("Krótka historia milczenia"), ale poza tym jest to spora porcja patosu, instagramowych bon-motów i ślizgania się po tematach, zamiast dokładniejszej analizy. Szkoda, bo Solnit celnie wyłapuje bolączki patriarchalnego świata i aż się prosi, żeby na podstawie tych obserwacji sformułować jakąś konkretną propozycję odmiany tego stanu rzeczy.
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Bardzo ważny tytuł uświadamiający masę kwestii, na które niekiedy nie zwracamy uwagi bądź staramy się tego nie robić, żeby nie dołować się jeszcze bardziej, bo i tak nie mamy lekko.
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i will now be reading every single one of rebecca solnit's books
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solnit'i seviyorum ve bu kitabı görünce çok heyecanlanmıştım ama açık��ası memnun kalmadım okuduklarımdan. 2015-2016 yıllarında çeşitli yerlerdeki yazıları derlenmiş. öncelikle tüm yazılar inanılmaz grafik, hepsinde tecavüz vakaları, mass shooting'ler, şiddet eylemleri öyle sereserpe yazılı. bir süre sonra rahatsız etmeye başladı beni. diğer bir konu ise bu yazılarda yeni bir argüman sunmaması solnit'in. internet okur yazarlığı olan herhangi birinin de yapabileceği değerlendirmelerden derine inmiyor konuştuğu şeyler. sadece hiçbir kadının okumaması gereken 80 kitap bölümünde çok eğlendim, keşke gerçekten 80 kitap olsaymış.
muhtemelen yayınlandığı gibi çevrilse ve biz de 2022'de değil 2016'da okusak daha anlamlı olurdu ve belki de severdim. 2022 bu yazılar için çok geç artık. -
This was my first experience reading Rebecca Solnit. I was deeply impressed with the lyricism of her writing and the depth of her thinking. The Mother of All Questions is a collection of twelve feminist essays covering topics as diverse as motherhood, anthropology, literature, film, and sexual assault. While there is some overlap between essays, I generally found this collection to be insightful and thought-provoking.
— Kate Scott
from The Best Books We Read In March 2017:
http://bookriot.com/2017/04/04/riot-r... -
Nie umiem jej ocenić. Są tutaj bardzo dobre fragmenty, bo Solnit pisze o rzeczach niezwykle ważnych, ale sposób w jaki to robi (powtarzanie tego samego w każdym tekście, dziwna językowa metaforyka, wtrącenia, które nijak mają się do treści eseju) sprawia, że jest to zbiór tekstów o wszystkim i o niczym. Bardziej spodziewałabym, że przeczytam coś w takiej formie w Wysokich Obcasach, a nie w tym zbiorze esejów. Bardzo się zawiodłam.
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To jest absolutnie czytelniczy must read dla każdego, a dla mnie to moja osobista książka roku. To nie tylko książka dla kobiet i o kobietach, ale też dla każdego, kto choć raz poczuł się nieakceptowany, niezrozumiany, czy po prostu gorszy. Niezależnie od powodu. W tej książce jest jedno bardzo mocne zdanie, wypowiedziane przez jedną z ofiar, które utkwiło mi głęboko w pamięci. Niby zwyczajne, a jednak uderza bardzo mocno. "Tak łatwo poczuć, że się nie nie znaczy". Prawda?
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Intelligent, fierce, witty.
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Let me start this way: The Mother Of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit is a brilliant collection of essays on feminism. I will certainly read everything Solnit has published so far!
These essays explore and develop notions like misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. Solnit also gives answers to some common remarks people make to dismiss feminism.
I found Solnit’s ideas about motherhood really interesting. According to Solnit, there isn’t just one way to be a woman. Womanhood doesn’t necessarily implicate motherhood and it shouldn’t be anyone’s business whether a woman becomes a mother or not. In her words, women and mothers are judged constantly.
Solnit also has an essay that revolves around the idea of happiness. In her opinion, our society is obsessed with the question “how can I be happy?”, but that fixation with happiness is just a way of not asking other important questions.
There’s also a brilliant essay about silence (seriously, it’s one the best essays I’ve ever read in my life). In this essay, Solnit explores violence against women, how toxic masculinity affects sex, relationships and love, and explains why people dismiss women’s reports and stories.
Another great book on feminism! I highly recommend it!
For more reviews, follow me on Instagram: @booksturnyouon -
An exceptional follow up to
Men Explain Things to Me, I have to say this is my favorite of the three books in this series, and I have highlighted multiple lines and passages in this book.
This book is a collection of stand alone essays on feminist topics of a wide range of issues, such as on motherhood (or the choice not to be a mother), on being silenced, on rape jokes, on violence against women, and on books, including a lovely essay called "Men explain
Lolita to me".
Thank you for Rebecca for being the voice of women, all women, across the spectrum. Please never stop speaking out and writing. -
I love Solnit's writing and her insistence on dissecting and inspecting the language we use to re-create masculinity and sexism. These essays are all readable, interesting, and insightful.
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Rebecca Solnit's Mother of All Questions explores a number of issues—should we be trying to live happy lives? how does language shape us? how does art create us?—from a contemporary feminist perspective.
Some of the essays haven't aged well in certain respects, though not in ways that Solnit could necessarily have predicted: here she hails Louis C.K. and Aziz Ansari as feminist men, plus... well I presume you've lived through the last few years, too. Given the backlash against feminism and women and you know... sanity... that's taken place since 2017, I find it real difficult anymore to reach the level of optimism that Solnit expresses at certain points here.
Some of the essays are much stronger than the others, but all are worth reading and Solnit's voice is smart and warm. I especially enjoyed both the opening essay on motherhood, and “80 Books No Woman Should Read" is funny and contains a succinct and beautiful take-down of Hemingway:The gun-penis-death thing is so sad as well as ugly. The terse, repressed prose style is, in his hands, mannered and pretentious and sentimental. Manly sentimental is the worst kind of sentimental, because it’s deluded about itself in a way that, say, honestly emotional Dickens never was.
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A collection of feminist essays by Rebecca Solnit. The standout is “A Short History of Silence”, about the ways in which women have been silenced, particularly to prevent them from speaking out about abuse.
“Being unable to tell your story is a living death and sometimes a literal one. If no one listens when you say your ex-husband is trying to kill you, if no one believes you when you say you are in pain, if no one hears you when when you say 'help', if you don't dare say 'help', if you have been trained not to bother people by saying 'help’.”
Victim-blaming silences women, shame, the socialisation to put others needs before our own, threats of violence and retribution for speaking out.
“Not uncommonly, when a woman says something that impugns a man, particularly one at the heart of the status quo, especially if it has to do with sex, the response will question not just the facts of her assertion but her capacity to speak and her right to do so. Generations of women have been told they are delusional, confused, manipulative, malicious, conspiratorial, congenitally dishonest, often all at once.“
A lot of the essays are on similar topics, so the book can get repetitive if you read it all at once. -
Okay, I figured I should probably add a little more to this review because I couldn't stop thinking about what it was that frustrated me, and I was able to pinpoint it to two things.
It's a smart and reflective collection of essays, but it wouldn't be the first text I'd recommend on feminism. There's a particular neglect to address intersectionality, which is an issue among many cis white women from my experience. You can't possibly talk about silencing women without considering BIWOC, especially Black women. But I was also frustrated with the very binary approach to gender or, rather, Solnit's exclusion of trans women. Bringing BIWOC back into the picture, you can't talk about silencing women without thinking about Black trans women.
Nevertheless, I will say that I still liked the way she framed silence by drawing from various feminist thinkers (though, ironically, bell hooks is one of them). -
Gosto muito da Solnit, é o segundo livro que leio dela e me apetece o modo que usa a linguagem de maneira mordaz para falar de coisas muito sérias.
O primeiro ensaio (e mais longo do livro) é um pequeno tratado sobre o silenciamento feminino dentro da sociedade patriarcal, Solnit destrincha todas as formas de silenciamento, desde o simples interromper frases numa conversa banal até deliberações da ordem da escuta masculina ao não levar em consideração até uma mulher dizendo não durante o estupro.
Os demais ensaios (bem menores) tratam de literatura, cinema, feminicidio, antropologia, entre outras coisas, todos embasados a partir de uma leitura misógina da mulher na sociedade e bem desconstruídos com a verve da Solnit. Livrão. -
"Silence and shame are contagious; so are courage and speech. Even now, when women begin to speak of their experience, others step forward to bolster the earlier speaker and to share their own experience. A brick is knocked loose, another one; a dam breaks, the waters rush forth."
Powerful essay collection by Rebecca Solnit. Felt very in line/on par with her other collection,
Men Explain Things to Me.
I think the key to fully appreciating this kind of book is preparing your expectations. As a cobbled together unit, they can be somewhat repetitive and disjointed.
There are also some real gems, inspired prose, and compelling truths—I remain a big fan of Solnit.
"These books are, if they are instructions at all, instructions in extending our identities out into the world, human and nonhuman, in imagination as a great act of empathy that lifts you out of yourself, not locks you down into your gender."
—
80 Books No Woman Should Read, Rebecca Solnit (One of my favorite essays of the bunch.)
"Works of art that can accompany you through the decades are mirrors in which you can see yourself, wells in which you can keep dipping. They remind you that what you bring to the work of art is as important as what it brings to you. They can become registers of how you’ve changed."
—
Giantess, Rebecca Solnit
For an excellent review on this book with amazing highlights, check out Brain Pickings'
"Rebecca Solnit on Breaking Silence as Our Mightiest Weapon Against Oppression."
Defining silence as “what is imposed” and quietude as “what is sought,” Solnit contrasts the two:Silence is the ocean of the unsaid, the unspeakable, the repressed, the erased, the unheard. It surrounds the scattered islands made up of those allowed to speak and of what can be said and who listens. Silence occurs in many ways for many reasons; each of us has his or her own sea of unspoken words.
[…]
The tranquility of a quiet place, of quieting one’s own mind, of a retreat from words and bustle, is acoustically the same as the silence of intimidation or repression but psychically and politically something entirely different. What is unsaid because serenity and introspection are sought is as different from what is not said because the threats are high or the barriers are great as swimming is from drowning. Quiet is to noise as silence is to communication. The quiet of the listener makes room for the speech of others, like the quiet of the reader taking in words on the page, like the white of the paper taking ink.
[…]
We are our stories, stories that can be both prison and the crowbar to break open the door of that prison; we make stories to save ourselves or to trap ourselves or others, stories that lift us up or smash us against the stone wall of our own limits and fears. Liberation is always in part a storytelling process: breaking stories, breaking silences, making new stories. A free person tells her own story. A valued person lives in a society in which her story has a place.
"Every day each of us invents the world and the self who meets that world, opens up or closes down space for others within that. Silence is forever being broken, and then like waves lapping over the footprints, the sandcastles and washed-up shells and seaweed, silence rises again."
—
Rebecca Solnit on Silence, Pornography, and Feminist Literature -
Tüm Soruların Anası, Rebecca Solnit'in yazılarından oluşan bir derleme. 2016 yılında yayımlanan kitap bir yönüyle Feminizm 101 gibi. Daha önce feminizm ve toplumsal cinsiyete dair okumalar yapan bir okura çok da yeni bir şey söylemiyor esasında. Fakat ne yazık ki kitapta yer alan konulara dair son altı yılda dünya çapında pek de bir ilerleme katedilememiş olması acı gerçek olarak okurun yüzüne vuruyor. İran'da Mahsa Amani'nin başına gelenler, Türkiye'de koruma talep eden kadınların eşleri / partnerleri tarafından öldürülmesi, eve geç dönen her kadının can güvenliğinden endişe etmesi kadınların hâlâ patriyarka ile mücadele ettiğinin kanıtı. Solnit, yakından bildiklerimizi Amerika'daki örneklerle pekiştirmemizi sağlıyor. Yeniden yüzleşmeye hazırım diyen okurlar buyursun.
