A thoughtfully disturbing, sharp sociological study.
A professor of English and creative writing reflects on sexual assault and female embodiment.
Situated at the intersection of prose and poetry, Hume’s essay collection explores patriarchy’s ongoing war against girls and women. The author divides the book into two sections, the first of which deals with female physical and sexual vulnerability. In the opening essay, Hume muses on what it has meant to live in the city of, Ypsilanti, Michigan, where the weekend she moved in, “a stranger raped our neighbor in her home” and where “one in twenty-six men…are registered sex offenders.” Within a mile radius of her house, she notes, there are nearly 100 offenders. Her “horror” stems not just from the relative normalization of sexual violence, but also the way race perverts the situation even more, transforming her Whiteness into what she knows will “save” her in ways unavailable to women of color. At the same time, Hume also understands the predicament of registered sex offenders who, “treated as enemies rather than criminals,” lose the possibility of ever finding a way to be treated like community members. In the second section, the author meditates on how the male gaze has reduced the female body to a fetishized—and ultimately disposable—spectacle of body parts. Living under patriarchy transforms women into dolls like the Frozen Charlotte figurines she discusses in “Icy Girls, Frigid Bitches, Frozen Dolls.” Hemmed in by social expectations, they instead find themselves “perfected” in the many “deaths”—for example, of subjectivity, self-confidence, and self-worth—they are forced to endure from girlhood on. Provocative and intelligent, this book, which concludes with impressionistic, mordantly ironic prose-poems that capture the experiences of individual women who have lived through abortion and sexual assault, gives voice to the many ways females (and other marginalized people) are stripped of their power by (White) male misogyny.
A thoughtfully disturbing, sharp sociological study.Pub Date: March 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780814258620
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Mad Creek/Ohio State Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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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