#FeministOrchestra Book Club Review: I Call Myself a Feminist



This book was the first pick for the Feminist Orchestra BookClub started by Jean on Bookishthoughts on Youtube. It consists of essays from 25 women under 30 on various aspects of feminism. Interspersed are quotes from other people on the subject, so you really get a lot of different viewpoints throughout this book. 

I enjoyed reading this book. The essays are quite short and between essays there are a few short quotes, so you can get through a lot of pages in a short time. I found most of the essays interesting and relevant, but there were definitely some I connected to more than others. As for the quotes, there were a few, where I didn’t really see the connection to feminism, but mostly they were quite poignant. 

The essays tackle a number of different subjects form out-and-out sexism, acid attacks, religion and feminism, rape jokes, why we still need to fight, the underlying sexism in language, how girls are conditioned to care about “beauty” etc. All the essays spring from personal experience of the writer, and this causes some repetitiveness, but not overwhelmingly so. 

I think this book is a good place to start if you are new to feminism. It definitely whetted my appetite for more. That is also the only real problem I had with this book. I wanted more from it. The essays are usually very short, and sometimes they feel a little too short, just scratching the surface of the particular issue. I get that a book like this is supposed to be a short introduction to a variety of subjects under the umbrella of feminism, but sometimes I felt like the subject was only just mentioned briefly and then the essay was over. 

As a woman over the age of 30 I also wonder why the essays were all written by women under 30. Maybe it’s to show that feminism is not a thing of the past, that it doesn’t belong to the bra-burning, hairy-armpitted women of the 1970s, but that it belongs to everyone, no matter how young, but still, I would have liked to see someone older weigh in on the debate. Have we achieved something since those happy, free-boobing days, are they still fighting, how do they feel about their legacy and this new generation of fighters? 

I gave this 4 stars out of 5 on Goodreads and would definitely recommend it as a starting point for anyone looking to learn more, but it is just that; a starting point. After reading this you need to continue reading to really educate yourself on the topic. This is a great introduction to a number of writers and a good jumping-off point for delving deeper into the subject of feminism. And if you feel like reading and learning more about it, why not join the Book Club. Here is a link to the Youtube announcement video, the video of the first few books on the reading list and the Goodreads page. 


BTW: I call myself a feminist!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1000 Places to See Before You Die 20 - Acropolis, Athens, Greece

Image
You cannot go to Athens and not go to the Acropolis. It is a staple on any sightseeing tour and is likely to be crawling with tourists at any given point in time. Still, it is definitely worth it to brave the masses and see the fortified citadel above the city of Athens for yourself.   The word acropolis means the highest point of the city, and there are a number of these acropoleis scattered throughout Greece, but the one in Athens is so well known that it is simply called “The Acropolis”.  There is evidence that the area on the rocky outcropping overlooking the city was inhabited already in the 4th millennium BC, but it was Pericles who started construction on the many famous buildings in the 5th century BC. These famous buildings include the Parthenon, probably the most iconic of the buildings, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike. These buildings were all seriously damaged in 1687 AD when the Venetians had sieged the city and used th
Read more

Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Image
This is the first book in a series, but I have no intention of continuing on with this series. The plot evolves around two young people, Amy and Elder. They live on a spaceship that has left Earth to find a new planet to populate. Amy was part of the cryogeniccaly frozen people on board, meant to be woken up upon arrival and using their skill set to populate the new planet. Elder, meanwhile, is part of the population that has been keeping the ship running whilst it travels towards its destination.  One day Amy is woken up from her frozen sleep and now she must learn to live on this spaceship, without her parents, slowly learning the culture and the secrets of this ship. It turns out there is an abundance of mysteries on board this ship, like who is waking up (and killing) the frozen people, who is the mysterious deceased Elder, what is the current Eldest up to and what’s with the “crazy” people and their medication.  Eventually all these mysteries are solved, but is
Read more

Reading the classics: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The book The book first appeared in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890, and the year after it was released as a book in a revised edition. As I am working on this post, I discover that the book is not necessarily considered a classic….great choice for the kick-off post for the series then! However, in my experience, it does usually appear on “classics” lists, so I am going to count it! At the time of the first publication in 1890 it was considered immoral, by a lot of people, but Wilde took offense to that and defended his story. When it was published in book form though, he had changed some things and added a preface, that stated that books cannot be moral or immoral, only well written or badly written.  The author Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was Wilde’s full name, but he later changed it to Oscar Wilde because, as he said, the name was too long for someone who was going to be famous. He was born on October 16th 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. He went to Trinity Co
Read more