A writer in the trenches convincingly asserts how violence against women diminishes all of us equally.
The enormous toll of violence against women and how it affects everyone.
Despite the success of the #MeToo movement and the exposure of long-standing, high-profile abusers like Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, and R. Kelly, among many others, violence against women is still a significant problem across the globe. DePrince, a psychology professor and recognized authority on the subject, looks at some of the important successes during recent decades—e.g., Take Back the Night movement marches, the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, and a deeper understanding of the complexities of PTSD—while also revealing the interconnected systemic problems that continue to perpetuate violence. The author stresses the need for an inherently different, community-based approach to the problem. “Violence against women ripples out to affect each of us,” she writes, “regardless of our own genders or life histories.” After a brief history of the deeply flawed treatment of “hysteria” in women at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris in the 1860s, DePrince shows how women have always been stigmatized as deficient simply because they are women. During that time—and for decades after—doctors “did not connect lifelong intimate violence and trauma to women’s hysterical symptoms.” The author clearly demonstrates how intimate violence activates a chain of chronic health problems often ignored by health officials. In a rigorous yet occasionally disorganized text, DePrince looks at violence involving guns, school campuses, immigrants, and the pandemic, emphasizing the importance of prevention among youth especially. She delineates how cycles of violence perpetuate poverty, child abuse, and other social ills, including blunted education, lack of job advancement, and unwieldy health care costs. The bottom line, she argues, is that addressing the issue collectively should be a priority for everyone, and she offers a detailed, scholarly framework for change at the end.
A writer in the trenches convincingly asserts how violence against women diminishes all of us equally.Pub Date: May 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-19-754574-4
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.
Gornick’s (The Odd Woman and the City, 2016) ferocious but principled intelligence emanates from each of the essays in this distinctive collection.
Rereading texts, and comparing her most recent perceptions against those of the past, is the linchpin of the book, with the author revisiting such celebrated novels as D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Colette's The Vagabond, Marguerite Duras' The Lover, and Elizabeth Bowen's The House in Paris. Gornick also explores the history and changing face of Jewish American fiction as expressions of "the other." The author reads more deeply and keenly than most, with perceptions amplified by the perspective of her 84 years. Though she was an avatar of "personal journalism" and a former staff writer for the Village Voice—a publication that “had a muckraking bent which made its writers…sound as if they were routinely holding a gun to society’s head”—here, Gornick mostly subordinates her politics to the power of literature, to the books that have always been her intimates, old friends to whom she could turn time and again. "I read ever and only to feel the power of Life with a capital L," she writes; it shows. The author believes that for those willing to relinquish treasured but outmoded interpretations, rereading over a span of decades can be a journey, sometimes unsettling, toward richer meanings of books that are touchstones of one's life. As always, Gornick reveals as much about herself as about the writers whose works she explores; particularly arresting are her essays on Lawrence and on Natalia Ginzburg. Some may feel she has a tendency to overdramatize, but none will question her intellectual honesty. It is reflected throughout, perhaps nowhere so vividly as in a vignette involving a stay in Israel, where, try as she might, Gornick could not get past the "appalling tribalism of the culture.”
Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-28215-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.
Two bestselling authors engage in an enlightening back-and-forth about Jewishness and antisemitism.
Acho, author of Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, and Tishby, author of Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, discuss many of the searing issues for Jews today, delving into whether Jewishness is a religion, culture, ethnicity, or community—or all of the above. As Tishby points out, unlike in Christianity, one can be comfortably atheist and still be considered a Jew. She defines Judaism as a “big tent” religion with four main elements: religion, peoplehood, nationhood, and the idea of tikkun olam (“repairing the world through our actions”). She addresses candidly the hurtful stereotypes about Jews (that they are rich and powerful) that Acho grew up with in Dallas and how Jews internalize these antisemitic judgments. Moreover, Tishby notes, “it is literally impossible to be Jewish and not have any connection with Israel, and I’m not talking about borders or a dot on the map. Judaism…is an indigenous religion.” Acho wonders if one can legitimately criticize “Jewish people and their ideologies” without being antisemitic, and Tishby offers ways to check whether one’s criticism of Jews or Zionism is antisemitic or factually straightforward. The authors also touch on the deteriorating relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, despite their historically close alliance during the civil rights era. “As long as Jewish people get to benefit from appearing white while Black people have to suffer for being Black, there will always be resentment,” notes Acho. “Because the same thing that grants you all access—your skin color—is what grants us pain and punishment in perpetuity.” Finally, the authors underscore the importance of being mutual allies, and they conclude with helpful indexes on vernacular terms and customs.
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668057858
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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