by Louise Gouëffic ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2010
A passionate, logically jagged, linguistic-based argument of man’s subdual and suppression of women.
There is a lie being told, passed around not merely from person to person, but from generation to generation, and its destructive powers are great. Such is the force with which Gouëffic attacks symbol-makers and users, with scarcely anyone safe from her criticisms. Starting with Manu in 2400 B.C., the author weaves her polemic against man’s creation of words aimed at separating off, rising above and distinguishing themselves as the idealized part of our species. It’s not merely the use of the term “man” to refer to our species as a whole that distorts the truth. The other half—the feme—is subjugated by man to a mere add-on, to wo-man. Words such as “human,” “mankind” and “woman” built from “man,” or having “ver” (man), “wor” (man), “fir” (tree/phallic) or “sem” (semen) in “universe,” “world,” “firmament” or “seminal” respectively, has man placing himself over and above all, projecting himself outward, making himself the alpha male, the godhead. But, according to Gouëffic, there is a solution—the Rofemtic movement, “the movement to reestablish true-to-reality symbols and truths”; its heart is the idea that we establish man not as man, but as male, and fem as fem. Gouëffic’s writing has passion and fire to it, but it might take too much effort for the reader to attempt the task of absorbing the information. With an incessant use of slashed words (H/he, F/father, etc.), long Hegelian-type prose, overly repetitive arguments and loose informal reasoning, the book reads more like propaganda in search of a philosophical soapbox. An essay that was pushed beyond its means; what could have been an engaging look at historical and social etymology is rendered difficult and distant.
Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0969027720
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Sapien
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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