A sturdy argument that small choices can lay a foundation for larger collective shifts.
A professor of professional practice champions social and political change that will reshape our economies into a circular model that protects the planet—and us.
This is a carefully researched and closely reasoned critique of consumerism, resource depletion, cheap labor, waste, and the ruinous belief in unbridled growth. In 2013, Goldmark employed her skills as a theatrical set and costume designer to open a series of short-term pop-up repair shops in New York City, discovering more sustainable ways of utilizing the “stuff” we too often discard. The author clearly educated herself on the many complex threads of local, national, and global issues involved in the promotion of rampant consumerism. She demonstrates how our linear manufacturing model inevitably creates monumental waste, not just planned obsolescence, and how durability and ease of repair seldom enter the equation. The real environmental tab is the energy we waste and the human costs of cheap labor. Goldmark places responsibility not just with corporations, but also with the consumer. Paraphrasing Michael Pollan’s guidelines on eating, she advocates buying well-made, durable products, not too many, mostly reclaimed, caring for them and, when possible, passing them on. Beyond individual behavior, some of the author’s proposed systemic solutions are sound. However, she sometimes clouds her arguments with sermons on the myth of the American West and religion, sounding like a left-leaning urban ideologue who brooks no argument with her interpretation of the facts. Some matters are more complicated than she would have it. Insofar as the big picture is concerned—countering excessive consumerism, transforming capitalism’s eternal growth ethic into something more reasonable—one fears that the author is up against a tide that will refuse to wane until it’s too late. Nonetheless, at least she’s trying, as are others, to educate and inspire change. Many of Goldmark’s narrative threads are ripe for further study.
A sturdy argument that small choices can lay a foundation for larger collective shifts.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64283-045-3
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Island Press
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
An intellectually probing analysis.
A wide-ranging investigation of gender, power, and abuse.
British literary scholar and cultural critic Rose examines the impetus for and experience of violence, especially against women. Casting a wide net, she considers sexual predation and harassment; violence against transgender women, including by feminists who engage in “the coercive violence of gendering”; violence depicted in literary fiction; South Africa, where a woman is murdered every three hours and Cape Town is known as the rape capital of the world; and violence against migrant women and children. Although Rose focuses mainly on male violence, she argues that violence is not inherent in masculinity, and she takes issue with feminists who see women “solely or predominantly as the victims of their histories.” Nevertheless, she calls sexual harassment “the great male performative, the act through which a man aims to convince his target not only that he is the one with the power, which is true, but also that his power and his sexuality are one and the same thing.” Though she does not believe “that all women are at risk from all men,” she concedes “that a woman does not say she is scared of a man without cause and that when she does so, we must listen.” Drawing on Freudian psychoanalytic theory, Rose sees violence as “part of the psyche,” characterizing violent behavior as “a crime of the deepest thoughtlessness. It is a sign that the mind has brutally blocked itself.” Feminists, she asserts, must reckon with “the extraordinary, often painful and mostly overlooked range of what the human mind is capable of.” Like Hannah Arendt, Rose sees violence as “a form of entitlement” inflamed by “illegitimate and/or waning power.” The abuse of refugees and asylum seekers, for example, reflects “the violence of colonial expansion” as well as a “fight to preserve the privilege of the few against the many.”
An intellectually probing analysis.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-28421-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A timely, spirited collection.
A compendium of feminist perspectives.
Essayist, memoirist, and fiction writer Gay represents the history, scope, and challenges of feminism in a judicious selection of 65 pieces, some written by iconic feminist writers (bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Susan B. Anthony), others by collectives, and still others by lesser-known voices. Citing “dynamism” as her guiding principle, Gay has chosen works that are articulate, diverse, and hard-hitting. “I believe there is a feminist canon,” Gay writes, “one that is subjective and always evolving, but also representative of a long, rich tradition of feminist scholarship.” The pieces are grouped into eight thematic sections. Foundational texts include a statement of guiding principles for the 2017 Women’s March; early feminist texts begin with 16th-century scholar Henricus Cornelius Agrippa’s defense of women’s superiority and includes Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Anthony’s argument for women’s right to vote. Other well-known pieces include Judy Brady’s wry “I Want a Wife,” a 1970 essay reprinted in the first issue of Ms. magazine; Rebecca Solnit’s “Men Explain Things to Me”; and Gloria Steinem’s “If Men Could Menstruate.” There are also fresh surprises: “The Woman-Identified Woman,” a manifesto written by six women calling themselves Radicalesbians, argues that lesbianism is central to feminist politics “as an identity of political, cultural, and erotic resistance to patriarchy.” In “Girl,” novelist Alexander Chee reflects on gender fluidity, remembering being mistaken for a girl when he was growing up and revealing the beauty he finds when he puts on drag. With its capacious perspective, the collection speaks to a range of feminist concerns, past, present, and future. As Gay notes, “women’s bodies, movements, and choices are contingent on the whims of men in power. We have made progress but we are not yet free.”
A timely, spirited collection.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780143110392
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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