WOMEN TALK MONEY

A collection of essays exploring women’s relationships with money.

In her latest book, prominent third-wave feminist Walker brings together a wide variety of contributors—both women and gender-nonconforming writers—to address the subject. “We had thought that telling the truth about money might divide us by revealing how different we were; we had not considered that the same honesty might unite us against whatever forces still kept us apart,” she writes. Throughout, the contributors show how money is inextricably intertwined with race, gender, body image, well-being, and more. From children of immigrants who witness their parents calculating how best to ensure their children’s (and thereby their own) futures to sex work, unpaid caregiving, and widowhood, the presence or absence of money is an invisible hand driving the fates of each essayist. Heart-wrenching pieces about the cost of addiction and the price of success for Black women coexist with fascinating, if less sympathetic, reflections on rejecting family wealth and the less-photogenic aspects of being an Instagram influencer. The collection contains universal truths as well as uniquely American ones, such as the contentious notion of having to pay for health care and the bureaucracy of college financial aid. While some pieces feel repurposed, with the topic at hand shoehorned in as an afterthought, for the most part, the essays are thoughtful and expansive, giving readers a glimpse of how people from across the socio-economic spectrum have had to define—and oftentimes reinvent—themselves through the prism of money. “I take as a given that we exist in a context of white supremacist settler colonialism and voracious capitalism,” writes poet and translator Jen Hofer. In this collection, talking about money becomes a revolutionary act against these systems. Other contributors include Daisy Hernandez, Porochista Khakpour, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Jamie Wong; Alice Walker provides the foreword.

A worthy read, but its true worth will be reflected in the conversations it will start.