A fresh perspective on continued challenges to women’s lives.
A recent history of the women’s rights movements that have proliferated worldwide.
Vogelstein, a women’s rights lawyer and director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, and her colleague Stone, a senior fellow at the CFR, offer an inspiring overview of burgeoning women’s movements in Brazil, China, Egypt, Tunisia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Sweden. Social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter have proved indispensable to this powerful wave of activism, allowing women to share their experiences, support one another, and organize to address their concerns. Although sometimes inciting severe backlash for participants, the movements, the authors show, have generated positive results: More women have been elected to government, beneficial laws have been enacted and enforced, and policies have been reformed. For each country represented, the authors create vivid profiles of activists who have spoken out against cultural norms that discriminate against women and that condone abuse. In Latin America, for example, harassment and violence “are endemic to machismo culture, and Brazilian women are particularly at risk,” facing the highest incidence of femicide in the region. In China, although the constitution recognizes equal rights for women, with no specific legal prohibitions against sexual harassment and gender discrimination, women can face personal and professional retribution by protesting. In Egypt, feminist activism is suppressed by an authoritarian government, causing women to risk constant surveillance, house arrest, exile, or imprisonment if they dare to organize and speak out. In contrast, in nearby Tunisia, the nation’s constitution, ratified in 2014, contains provisions for guaranteeing women’s safety and equality. Even in a country as socially progressive as Sweden, “staggering numbers of women” have testified to sexual harassment and discrimination. The authors suggest an agenda for change that includes meaningful redress, legal reform, women’s equal representation in all areas, fair allocation of resources, and recalibration of the social norms that allowed abuse. #MeToo founder Tarana Burke provides the foreword.
A fresh perspective on continued challenges to women’s lives.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5417-5862-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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