Feminist is a dirty word but it doesn’t have to be. We Should All be Feminists should be required reading for middle school, the book is so short no one has a good reason not to read it. Seriously, it didn’t even take half my lunch break to read so I went through it twice. “Some people ask: “Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, […]
Americanah
I wasn’t sure what to expect from “Americanah.” I’ve heard many good things about Ms. Adichie’s work, but with the book being almost 600 pages I was afraid of committing to it. Am I glad I did. From the opening pages I was hooked into the characters and the plot. This book didn’t feel like I was reading it but rather that I was experiencing it. We begin with present Ifemelu as she prepares to return to Nigeria, her country of origin. She’s spent her […]
I am a man. I am uncomfortable. I now know why, and embarrassed it’s taken this long.
I’ve probably qualified enough of my reviews with this statement, at this point, to make my continued use of it superfluous, but old habits die hard: I am a white male. And though I think of myself as fairly progressive, I find myself disagreeing with liberals almost as much as I do conservatives. So, for whatever that’s worth, this is where I’m coming from. I’ve always had an uneasy association with feminism. The immediate consequence of this tends to fall somewhere in the vicinity of […]
An Update to “We Should all be Feminists”
This letter to a friend acts as an update to “We Should All Be Feminists.” In some ways, it covers a lot of the same examples, ideas, and subjects, but it also adds in some oblique references to the 2016 presidential election in the US and also provides some various kinds of intersectionality (specifically toward race and class). One of the things that I think this tract does really well is heavily emphasize the process aspect of Feminism. For a lot popular discussions of Feminism, […]