A timely, compelling dissection of feminism's reliance on consumerism and useful suggestions for paths forward.
A clear analysis of the commodification of feminism from protest to brand.
As the former editor-in-chief of Jezebel and executive editor of Vogue, Beck is no stranger to the White feminism that permeates the modern cultural landscape. As influencers blithely attach Audre Lorde quotes to Instagram ads and White women are once again donning literal and metaphorical pink hats in “protest,” the author deftly retraces how we ended up here and highlights the many women this brand of feminism elides or ostracizes. Beck offers a lively history of the suffragettes and their ideological descendants, including the #GirlBoss and #MeToo movements. The author effectively brings out of the background many of the Black working women who enabled the success of the predominantly White and upper-class women at the center of these stories. “Instead of a protest vehicle,” she writes, “feminism became a brand….To ‘revolutionize’ your life through business once again merges the radicalism of feminism with the corporate, women-oppressing language of capitalism. If you threw a millennial-pink lens over this saying, you could put it on Pinterest.” Beck posits that the stark inequalities of so-called “women’s empowerment” are exacerbated even more unevenly in the Covid-19 era. The pandemic has engendered further demarcations along class and racial lines, between protected forms of labor and the economically vulnerable—e.g., nannies, housekeepers, and other caretakers. The author situates herself as a woman with considerable influence who chooses to amplify underappreciated workers in concrete ways rather than resting on the laurels of corporate “diversity.” With both vigor and rigor, Beck outlines a variety of fundamental problems with contemporary liberal feminism, which relies too much on brand endorsements and shallow empowerment. As she writes, “we can avoid becoming the next generation of white feminism by incorporating the points of view that this ideology does not account for.”
A timely, compelling dissection of feminism's reliance on consumerism and useful suggestions for paths forward.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982134-41-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
