A good reminder that the work of activists is often challenging yet important.
A guide to being an uncompromising feminist in today’s world.
In her latest work, British Australian writer and scholar Ahmed, author of Living a Feminist Life, offers a guide to thriving as a feminist. A feminist killjoy, also known as a “buzzkill, miserabilist, party pooper, wet blanket, dampener, and spoilsport,” is someone who speaks out and calls for change in response to sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or racist comments. “My aim,” she writes, “is not to rescue us from the feminist killjoy but to give her a voice,” and she hopes to help those “fighting against inequalities and injustices of many kinds.” Throughout, Ahmed shares her experiences as a queer female feminist of color as well as stories that others have shared with her, with a particular focus on the responses and types of push back commonly encountered. As the author points out, as feminist killjoys, “we learn about the world from what comes back at us because of what we say or do.” Ahmed also references and analyzes literature and films that have inspired her and help illustrate her points. Among the survival tips she shares with fellow feminist killjoys are surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals, knowing that you are not always responsible for how you are received, and remembering that there is only so much you can do. As a supplement, Ahmed also includes her collection of killjoy maxims, recommended further reading, and reading group discussion questions for the book. The author notes that she was strongly influenced by Black writer and feminist Audre Lorde and references her works extensively throughout the guide. Although Ahmed makes strong and relatable points, her writing is wordy and repetitive at times. Regardless, feminist and social activists are certain to find the book encouraging.
A good reminder that the work of activists is often challenging yet important.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781541603752
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK REVIEW
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