In the right hands, this book is reassuring, enlightening, and inspiring; in others, it’s OK to skim.
The "Woman Woman" turns her attention to the problems of men, particularly in their youth.
Moran is known for her nonfiction books about womanhood and feminism, including How To Be a Woman. Her latest is inspired by the notion, expressed by her teenage daughters' male friends, among other sources, that these days, it's easier to be a woman than a man. "If boys, and men, really feel this—if they observe that there is more discussion, support, cheerleading and belief in girls, and women—then I believe them. You have to believe people when they keep saying the same thing, over and over, more despairingly each time." In chapters with such titles as "The Conversations of Men," "The Cocks and Balls of Men," "The Friendships of Men," "The Oldness of Men," this very funny writer addresses the dearth of discussion and support for men's problems, applying a sympathetic eye, research techniques of the ask-around and Google varieties, and a conventional but still widely applicable model of gender. For example, men are apparently afraid to talk in detail about their penises, which is why "only 25 percent of men with erectile dysfunction seek medical treatment. Four in ten cases of prostate cancer are only detected when they reach stage three or four. Thirty percent of men are unhappy about the size of their penises." Maybe this wouldn't happen if they had learned to actually converse instead of banter and boast. Moran wants to put an end to the silence that surrounds boys' often traumatizing experiences with pornography, and she has sharp words for Neil Strauss, Jordan B. Peterson, and Andrew Tate. If you don't know who those people are, you are not the author’s target reader. In fact, it's not completely clear who that might be—boys? girls? parents? men?—and this is reflected in some fluctuations of tone, focus, and interestingness.
In the right hands, this book is reassuring, enlightening, and inspiring; in others, it’s OK to skim.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780062893741
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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