Spanning four decades, ranging from groundbreaking excavations to magisterial syntheses, this stimulating volume reminds us...
Uneven but rewarding collection of essays by poet and pioneering feminist scholar Gilbert (Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve, 2006, etc.).
“To reread is both to read again and to read anew,” writes the author in a preface to a volume that does indeed contain some rethinking, including more nuanced assessments of female writers’ ambivalence toward powerful women than were possible in the giddy early days of the Second Wave. The first section displays both the strengths and weaknesses of academic feminism. The charming “Becoming a Feminist Together—and Apart” chronicles Gilbert’s personal trials as a female graduate student turned down for jobs because she was “just a Berkeley housewife.” Readers will share her exhilaration as she discovers her métier and her convictions, team-teaching with Susan Gubar a course on female-authored texts that became The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), one of the founding works of modern feminism. By contrast, “What Do Feminist Critics Want?, Or a Postcard from the Volcano” is a tedious tract on scholarly politics of little interest to anyone outside the academy. The subsequent two sections, which feature close readings of authors from Emily Dickinson and Charlotte Brontë to Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, are more engaging, though still best appreciated by those with a strong background in English-language literature. “Potent Griselda” reminds us that male writers, especially from the late 19th century on, have often acknowledged and sometimes even admired the power of the ancient Great Mother goddess, while “Mother Rites” is an ambitious attempt to analyze the strategies employed by female artists to tap the matriarch’s mythic powers without having their creativity simplistically tied to motherhood and biology. Gilbert occasionally lapses into academic jargon, but in her best pieces she is forthright without abdicating her mission as a scholar: to read beneath the surface of familiar works and show us what they say about our culture and our attitudes.
Spanning four decades, ranging from groundbreaking excavations to magisterial syntheses, this stimulating volume reminds us how much feminism has changed and grown since the 1970s.Pub Date: May 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-393-06764-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A...
Valediction from the late neurologist and writer Sacks (On the Move: A Life, 2015, etc.).
In this set of four short essays, much-forwarded opinion pieces from the New York Times, the author ponders illness, specifically the metastatic cancer that spread from eye to liver and in doing so foreclosed any possibility of treatment. His brief reflections on that unfortunate development give way to, yes, gratitude as he examines the good things that he has experienced over what, in the end, turned out to be a rather long life after all, lasting 82 years. To be sure, Sacks has regrets about leaving the world, not least of them not being around to see “a thousand…breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences,” as well as the night sky sprinkled with stars and the yellow legal pads on which he worked sprinkled with words. Sacks works a few familiar tropes and elaborates others. Charmingly, he reflects on his habit since childhood of associating each year of his life with the element of corresponding atomic weight on the periodic table; given polonium’s “intense, murderous radioactivity,” then perhaps 84 isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. There are some glaring repetitions here, unfortunate given the intense brevity of this book, such as his twice citing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s call to revel in “intercourse with the world”—no, not that kind. Yet his thoughts overall—while not as soul-stirringly inspirational as the similar reflections of Randy Pausch or as bent on chasing down the story as Christopher Hitchens’ last book—are shaped into an austere beauty, as when Sacks writes of being able in his final moments to “see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A fitting, lovely farewell.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-49293-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
A timely contribution to the discussion of a crucial issue.
A history of the right to vote in America.
Since the nation’s founding, many Americans have been uneasy about democracy. Law and policy expert Waldman (The Second Amendment: A Biography, 2014, etc.), president of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, offers a compelling—and disheartening—history of voting in America, from provisions of the Constitution to current debates about voting rights and campaign financing. In the Colonies, only white male property holders could vote and did so in public, by voice. With bribery and intimidation rampant, few made the effort. After the Revolution, many states eliminated property requirements so that men over 21 who had served in the militia could vote. But leaving voting rules to the states disturbed some lawmakers, inciting a clash between those who wanted to restrict voting and those “who sought greater democracy.” That clash fueled future debates about allowing freed slaves, immigrants, and, eventually, women to vote. In 1878, one leading intellectual railed against universal suffrage, fearing rule by “an ignorant proletariat and a half-taught plutocracy.” Voting corruption persisted in the 19th century, when adoption of the secret ballot “made it easier to stuff the ballot box” by adding “as many new votes as proved necessary.” Southern states enacted disenfranchising measures, undermining the 15th Amendment. Waldman traces the campaign for women’s suffrage; the Supreme Court’s dismal record on voting issues (including Citizens United); and the contentious fight to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which “became a touchstone of consensus between Democrats and Republicans” and was reauthorized four times before the Supreme Court “eviscerated it in 2013.” Despite increased access to voting, over the years, turnout has fallen precipitously, and “entrenched groups, fearing change, have…tried to reduce the opportunity for political participation and power.” Waldman urges citizens to find a way to celebrate democracy and reinvigorate political engagement for all.
A timely contribution to the discussion of a crucial issue.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1648-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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