Uplifting reading for anyone, regardless of gender identity.
Accounts of women young and old who have taken stands against gender injustice.
Witnessing Christine Blasey Ford’s 2018 testimony about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's sexual misconduct permanently changed and inspired this cohort of co-editors. Seeking solace in “sisterhood,” they sought firsthand accounts, and “stories began to bubble up, from inappropriate encounters and incidents normalized as a sign of the times to stories of workplace injustices, schoolyard bullying, physical and sexual abuse.” The narrative consistently reveals how disrespect for women cuts across class, color, race, and even time. Some contributors—e.g., Gloria Steinem, Cyndi Lauper, and Marlo Thomas—are celebrities whose efforts at finding success in a patriarchal society predated and/or coincided with the rise of the 1960s feminist movement. Steinem credits the cheek bite she gave a man who forced a kiss on her to “catlike [survival] instincts,” while Thomas recollects spurning her well-meaning father’s advice to give up acting after facing industry executives who told her to “marry your boyfriend and give your father some grandkids.” Many of the other contributors are ordinary young to middle-aged women. Janelle Murren, a Trinidad-born career nanny, tells a story of fully understanding male misogyny—and racism—the day a male employer complained about having to “f**ing pay her and feed her too.” Teenage athlete Miya Lao offers wisdom gained from being bullied for her small size, and transgender activist and actor Shakina Nayfack speaks proudly of “my people” and of having made a place for herself despite constantly facing misunderstanding and hate. The diversity of voices is the greatest strength of this profoundly personal book, which also contains images of each contributor shot with cameras the editors gave them. The message of hope and courage they offer to all women is a powerful tonic to contemporary anti-feminism. Other well-known contributors include Chelsea Handler, Reba McEntire, Carol Burnett, and Billie Jean King.
Uplifting reading for anyone, regardless of gender identity.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982160-92-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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