Unearthing Venus: My Search For the Woman Within
Cate Montana, 2013
Watkins
300 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781780285979
Summary
Network TV editor and journalist Cate Montana was raised in a man's world to be “one of the guys." Then, while on a writing assignment, a chance encounter with a shaman set her on the path of understanding the illusive power of the feminine.
In a riveting recapitulation of her life Cate discovers the devastating absence of feminine qualities within herself and the withering personal and global consequences of having only one paradigm available for her to express through: the masculine "P" values of Power, Possessions, Profit, and Progress.
An intelligent, compellingly honest and frequently funny memoir of a modern woman's search for her unrecognized feminine spirit, Unearthing Venus is both a visionary and everywoman story that brilliantly captures what it is to be a woman today and everyday.
Author Bio
• Birth—August 4, 1951
• Where—Middleburg, Virginia, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Virginia; M.A., University of West Georgia
• Currently—lives in Olympia, Washington
Author of Unearthing Venus: My Search for the Woman Within (Watkins) co-author of The Heart of the Matter: Discovering Gifts in Strange Wrapping Paper (Hay House) with Dr. Darren Weissman, and co-author of GhettoPhysics with “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” creator Will Arntz, Cate Montana’s work focuses on self-realization and the resurrection and implementation of feminine life values and sustainable lifestyles.
As one of the West’s emerging spokespersons expanding our understanding of sexuality and the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine forces, Cate’s insights and powerfully engaging talks and guest appearances have hosts of such shows as the Virtual Light Broadcast and Voice America’s “Awakening to Consciousness” rebooking and asking for more. And as a former spokesperson and marketing writer for the film “What the Bleep Do We Know!? and editor of the film’s vastly popular, consciousness-raising newsletter, "The Bleeping Herald," she has an excellent grasp on the physics of consciousness and human potential.
As a journalist, Cate has published hundreds of articles in the mainstream media. Prior to her writing and publishing career she freelanced as a TV editor for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ESPN and the BBC. Currently she is conducting feminine power and gender awareness seminars and writing the second book in the Unearthing series called Beyond Perfection: Healing Religious Trauma Syndrome and the Old Story of Unworthiness. She lives in the Pacific Northwest—for now! (From the author.)
Visit the book website.
Follow Cate on Facebook.
Read Cate on Huffington Post.
Book Reviews
I’m not easily impressed by many books, but I regard this book as possibly delivering the most important message of our time.
Sandie Sedgebeer - Virtual Light Broadcast
A literary masterpiece and a compelling everywoman’s story
Regina Meredith - Gaiam TV co-founder and host of “Open Minds"
The revelations are incredibly impressive and stimulating.
Grady Harp - TOP 50 Amazon reviewer
A compelling view of a woman coming into her power, it’s inspired compassion and given me a clearer view of how easy I’ve had it as a man in a man’s world.
Bruce Smith, ed. - Mountain News
A true tale, Unearthing Venus reads like a gripping novel filled with outlandish characters and circumstances, interesting locales, and astonishing bravery by an everyday heroine. Readers will be captivated by the humor, raw honesty, heartwarming tone, and unexpected insights along this unconventional journey, which eventually yields personal awakenings but also universal lessons about the struggles that women in particular, but humanity in totality endures as a consequence of the feminine values being denied, denigrated and violated.
Julie Clayton - New Consciousness Review
Discussion Questions
1. You say that Western women are not truly liberated. Could you explain this?
2. A newspaper interview with a shaman triggered your exploration of the Feminine and the writing of this book. What was the story and why was it so powerful?
3. You speak about the shame patriarchal religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam have instilled in women. Do you think religion still affects women’s view of themselves and their health and general happiness?
4. Alcoholism and drug use rates have sharply risen amongst women in the last 30 years. In your view what are the main contributing factors to this trend?
5. You’ve been quoted as saying, “The feminine is not a gender. Neither is the masculine. Feminine and masculine are archetypes, patterns and ways of being… specific qualities inherent in man and woman.” Could you please explain this?
6. You talk about the “Penis Values” of Power, Possessions, Profit and Progress and how they mold Western culture. Can you really ascribe these values to men only?
7. What are the “Vagina Values” you speak of?
8. How has Western spirituality been affected by the current masculine social model? How have these masculine values affected modern spiritual movements such as Unity and the New Age/New Thought movements?
9. In your view, women’s liberation has translated into an unnatural over-sexualizing of women, with men as the primary benefactors. Could you please talk about this?
10. How can women and men come into better relationship balance?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
What We See When We Read
Peter Mendelsund, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804171632
Summary
A gorgeously unique, fully illustrated exploration into the phenomenology of reading—how we visualize images from reading works of literature, from one of our very best book jacket designers, himself a passionate reader.
What do we see when we read? Did Tolstoy really describe Anna Karenina? Did Melville ever really tell us what, exactly, Ishmael looked like?
The collection of fragmented images on a page—a graceful ear there, a stray curl, a hat positioned just so—and other clues and signifiers helps us to create an image of a character. But in fact our sense that we know a character intimately has little to do with our ability to concretely picture our beloved—or reviled—literary figures.
In this remarkable work of nonfiction, Knopf's Associate Art Director Peter Mendelsund combines his profession, as an award-winning designer; his first career, as a classically trained pianist; and his first love, literature—he considers himself first and foremost as a reader—into what is sure to be one of the most provocative and unusual investigations into how we understand the act of reading. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1969-70 (?)
• Where—Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
In his words:
The arts always played a large role in my family—my father was an architect-turned-sculptor, and my sister was a painter. I always thought (and still suspect that) I was the one in the family who lacked visual aptitude—We’d go to museums together (incidentally, my mother works at the Metropolitan Museum) and I’d wonder what all the fuss was about.
I think my dad considered me a lost cause in the visual-department as well, because he shackled me to the piano when I was five and I’ve been playing ever since. I went to Columbia U. and was a Philosophy major, though I spent most of my time playing the piano. After College, I got various useless graduate degrees in music from various conservatories, then performed, taught, and wrote classical music for a spell.
The following week, I was working here; first at Vintage, eight months after that, Knopf hardcovers. Improbably, the entire process from music to design took less than a year. I count my lucky stars that John and Carol were up for a gamble. (Excerpted from designrelated.com.)
View Mendelsund's archive at Book Cover.
Book Reviews
[Mendelsund] has a wide range of reference…and he quotes with care…Mr. Mendelsund is an adept memoirist…He can be a canny close reader…The best critics and philosophers slide, necessarily, to and fro on the scale from butterfly to pedant. To his credit, Mr. Mendelsund keeps his tone light while thinking deliberately about fundamental things.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
A playful, illustrated treatise on how words give rise to mental images.... Mendelsund argues that reading is an act of co-creation, and that our impressions of characters and places owe as much to our own memory and experience as to the descriptive powers of authors.... [What We See When We Read] explore[s] the peculiar challenges of transforming words into images, and blend[s] illustrations with philosophy, literary criticism and design theory.
Alexandra Alter - New York Times Book Review
Mendelsund, throughout this thought-provoking book, helps the lay reader contemplate text in ways you hadn’t thought about previously.
Los Angeles Times
A conversation piece, created to entice repeated thumb-throughs.... [The author is] a highly regarded book-jacket designer.... Reading is often considered (especially by those who don’t love to do it) a passive activity. But Cambridge native Mendelsund...makes a nice case that it is, in fact, a kind of active collaboration.... What We See When We Read, itself a work of conceptual design, unfolds the author’s ideas about what makes reading a creative, visual act all its own on pages—some packed with text, others just a line or two—that incorporate sketches, clip art, images of classic book covers and more.
Boston Globe
The liveliest, most entertaining and best illustrated work of phenomenology you'll pick up this year. An acclaimed book-jacket designer and art director, Mendelsund investigates, through words and pictures, what we see when we read text and where those images come from. His breakdown of the reading and visualizing processes yields many insights.... Playfully, he offers us a police composite sketch of Anna, based on the description in Tolstoy's novel.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Mendelsund has creatively combined nuggets of philosophy, the notion of the "reader," and art to expand playful, abstract ideas on what readers process to produce the multitude of feelings and meanings within a reading experience.... This work was written for those who enjoy fully the creative experience of reading, and who read about reading. —Jesse A. Lambertson, Metamedia Management, LLC, Washington, DC
Library Journal
Offhandedly brilliant, witty, and fluent in the works of Tolstoy, Melville, Joyce, and Woolf, Mendelsund guides us through an intricate and enlivening analysis of why literature and reading are essential to our understanding of ourselves, each other, and the spinning world.
Booklist
(Starred review.) In this brilliant amalgam of philosophy, psychology, literary theory and visual art...Mendelsund inquires about the complex process of reading.... In 19 brief, zesty chapters, the author considers such topics as the relationship of reading to time, skill, visual acuity, fantasy, synesthesia and belief.... Mendelsund amply attains his goal to produce a quirky, fresh and altogether delightful meditation on the miraculous act of reading.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Scholar and the Housewife
Susan Whelan, 2013
Createspace Independent Publishing
566 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781482658316
Summary
As The Scholar, Susan Whelan endeavored to further her education and realize her professional potential, working on Wall Street as an attorney.
As The Housewife, she was deeply committed to guiding her children into adulthood with thought and compassion. Now, she gathers her experiences in The Scholar and The Housewife, a letter to her children that explains her struggle to fulfill not only the dreams of her parents and the goals of her youth, but at the same time, to be the mother that her own mother was to her.
Set in the backdrop of Wall Street in the 1980s and 1990s, the author recounts the events and people that informed her choices and strengthened her beliefs. Global economic expansion, technology, and new financial instruments as well as advances in prenatal testing, early childhood development and preschool philosophies are among the topics she considers, all the while questioning goals and values, "walls and moral hazards" and causes and effects.
In an ambitious yet easily digestible work, Whelan brings her experience as a mother, volunteer, lawyer, businesswoman, and United Nations delegate to an honest discussion of the pressures on women, children and families today in America. In doing so, she offers some practical food for thought, particularly in the way of some provocative and compelling economic considerations. (From the author's website.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 18, 1959
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Boston College; J.D., Fordham
University
• Currently—lives in Westchester County, New York, and
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Susan Whelan graduated from Boston College as the Scholar of the College, after which she earned a J.D. at the Fordham University School of Law. She practiced law on Wall Street, advising financial institutions, and currently serves the Holy See as a legal expert and Delegate to the United Nations covering trade law and the law of the sea. She is happily married, is the mother of six children, and lives with her family in Westchester County, New York and Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. (Visit the author's website.)
Book Reviews
This book is a fantastic choice for women who are focused on excelling in their careers while loving and raising a family of their own. Susan Whelan's experiences will spark discussions on a range of topics including - work/life balance, economics, politics, and parenting.
User review - Goodreads.com
I love this book. So true to life and real but in a light hearted, fun way. The short extracts really work and the mix up of the mommy bits with the Wall Street world keep you engaged. Inspiring.
User review - Amazon.com
Discussion Questions
1. On page 13 in “Empty Nest”, Susan tells her children to “Follow your heart.” After reading the book, how do you think that Susan followed that advice on her path from law school graduation through her decision to stay home with her children?
2. Think about Gloria’s experience during her high school reunion in the chapter “Walls” from pp. 17-18, are there other examples in the book where walls are drawn between two people because of success or lack thereof? Do you think those who belittled Gloria’s success have a perspective that can be brought into a more instructive discussion with regard to the role of both Wall Street and education in our society?
3. Susan writes
Where we begin is with the knowledge that I am just one of hundreds of thousands of children who were brought up with the same values and attitudes in the 1960s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s. I was just a normal kid from a big Irish family, with parents who were happily married, a mother who was home taking care of us for the most part and who later returned to work as a teacher, and a father who worked hard balancing corporate work and family responsibilities (49).
How is Susan’s upbringing at once both extremely average and also unique? How does her upbringing translate into how she raises her children?
4. How does Bill’s role play out in Susan’s decisions? How does his unwavering support compare with the lack of support from the federal government discussed in the chapter “Maternity Leave” from pp. 63-65?
5. The chapter “Free Advice” illustrates a problem that is even more exaggerated today. Unsolicited advice is around every corner—on the front of a hundred magazines, discussed on television talk shows, and has hundreds of dedicated websites. While Susan begins the book with advice to her children, she resents the critical advice of a stranger in a store. How does this juxtaposition make sense? Do you think advice is appropriate without personal knowledge of a person’s individual problem? How has advice become such a valuable and sellable commodity when it is so readily given away—by friends, relatives and strangers on the grocery line?
6. Discuss Susan’s response to her interview in the chapter “The Victim.” Do you think her reaction was the best possible course of action?
7. What do you think about the different pre-school philosophies described in the book? While there are certainly merits to each system, is there one system that works best?
8. How does Susan Whelan respond to the arguments made by Anne-Marie Slaughter and Sheryl Sandberg regarding work-life balance?
9. How does the ability to hire home assistance change the Whelan’s family life? How does Susan address the unique circumstances that allow her to hire help? Does she address how other families can handle children while all parents continue to work?
10. What do you think is the most important current issue that Susan raises in the book?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir
Roz Chast, 2014
Bloomsbury
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608198061
Summary
In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast’s memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.
When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the “crazy closet”—with predictable results—the tools that had served Roz well through her parents’ seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed.
While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies—an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades—the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.
An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast’s talent as cartoonist and storyteller. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 26, 1954
• Raised—Brooklyn, New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.F.A., Rhode Island School of Design
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut
Rosalind "Roz" Chast is an American cartoonist and a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker. She grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the only child of an assistant principal and a high school teacher who subscribed to The New Yorker.
Education
She is a graduate of Midwood High School in Brooklyn and first attended Kirkland College (now Hamilton College), and then studied at the Rhode Island School of Design where she received a BFA in painting in 1977.
Career
Her earliest cartoons were published in Christopher Street and The Village Voice. In 1978 The New Yorker accepted one of her cartoons and has since published more than 800. She also publishes cartoons in Scientific American and the Harvard Business Review.
Chast's subjects often deal with domestic and family life. In a 2006 interview with comedian Steve Martin for the New Yorker Festival, Chast revealed that she enjoys drawing interior scenes—often involving lamps and accentuated wall paper—to serve as the backdrop for her comics. Her comics reflect a "conspiracy of inanimate objects," an expression she credits to her mother.
Her first New Yorker cartoon showed a small collection of "Little Things," strangely named, oddly shaped small objects such as "chent," "spak," and "tiv". Chast's drawing style shuns conventional craft in her figure drawing, perspective, shading, etc.; this approach is similar to that of several other female cartoonists, notably Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Lynda Barry. A significant part of the humor in Chast's cartoons appears in the background and the corners of the frames.
Her New Yorker cartoons began as small black-and-white panels, but increasingly she has been using color and her work now often appears over several pages. Her first cover for The New Yorker was on August 4, 1986, showing a lecturer in a white coat pointing to a family tree of ice cream.
Chast's subjects often deal with domestic and family life. In a 2006 interview with comedian Steve Martin for the New Yorker Festival, Chast revealed that she enjoys drawing interior scenes—often involving lamps and accentuated wall paper—to serve as the backdrop for her comics. Her comics reflect a "conspiracy of inanimate objects," an expression she credits to her mother.
She is represented by the Danese/Corey gallery in Chelsea, New York City. She lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut with her husband, humor writer Bill Franzen.
Books
In addition to her 2014 family memoir, Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Chast has written or illustrated more than a dozen books, including Unscientific Americans, Parallel Universes, Mondo Boxo, Proof of Life on Earth, The Four Elements, and The Party After You Left: Collected Cartoons 1995–2003 (Bloomsbury, 2004).
In 2006, Theories of Everything: Selected Collected and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978–2006 was published, collecting most of her cartoons from The New Yorker and other periodicals. One characteristic of her books is that the "author photo" is always a cartoon she draws (presumably) of herself. The title page is also hand-lettered by Chast, even including the Library of Congress cataloging information. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/25/2014.)
Awards/Honors
2013 - Inducted into American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Reuben Award for Best Gag Cartoon
2012 - New York City Literary Award for Humor
2004 - Art Festival Award, Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art
Honorary Doctorates: 2011, Dartmouth College; 2010, Art Institute of Boston; 1998, Pratt Institute. ("Awards/Honors" from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
By turns grim and absurd, deeply poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. Ms. Chast reminds us how deftly the graphic novel can capture ordinary crises in ordinary American lives.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
Very, very, very funny, in a way that a straight-out memoir about the death of one’s elderly parents probably would not be.... Ambitious, raw and personal as anything she has produced.
Alex Witchel - New York Times Book Review
[O]ne of the best memoirs on mortality I’ve ever read, let alone about the difficult specifics of eldercare....an achievement of dark humor that rings utterly true. There is Chast’s gifted ear for the shorthanded, idiosyncratic dialogue that every family develops only over long years.... Mostly, though, this is the humor-leavened portrait of a family saying its long goodbyes, awkwardly and glancingly and painfully, muddling through in the most human of ways.
Washington Post
Better than any book I know, this extraordinarily honest, searing and hilarious graphic memoir captures (and helps relieve) the unbelievable stress that results when the tables turn and grown children are left taking care of their parents.... [A] remarkable, poignant memoir.
San Francisco Chronicle
Devastatingly good.... Anyone who has had Chast’s experience will devour this book and cling to it for truth, humor, understanding, and the futile wish that it could all be different.
St. Louis Post Dispatch
Gut-wrenching and laugh-aloud funny. I want to recommend it to everyone I know who has elderly parents, or might have them someday.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
One of the major books of 2014.... Moving and bracingly candid.... This is, in its original and unexpected way, one of the great autobiographical memoirs of our time.
Buffalo News
A tour de force of dark humor and illuminating pathos about her parents’ final years as only this quirky genius of pen and ink could construe them.
Elle
(Starred review.) [P]oignant and funny.... Despite the subject matter, the book is frequently hilarious...a homage that provides cathartic “you are not alone” support to those caring for aging parents.... [A] cartoon memoir to laugh and cry, and heal, with—Roz Chast’s masterpiece.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Chast's scratchy art turns out perfectly suited to capturing the surreal realities of the death process. In quirky color cartoons, handwritten text, photos, and her mother's poems, she documents the unpleasant yet sometimes hilarious cycle of human doom. the inevitable.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Revelatory.… So many have faced (or will face) the situation that the author details, but no one could render it like she does. A top-notch graphic memoir that adds a whole new dimension to readers’ appreciation of Chast and her work.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Bad Feminist: Essays
Roxane Gay, 2014
HarperCollins
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062282712
Summary
A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay.
“Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.”
In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.
Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1974-75
• Where—Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• Education—M.A., University of Nebraska; Ph.D., Michigan Technological University
• Currently—lives in Layfayette, Indiana, and Los Angeles, California
Roxane Gay is a writer, academician, editor, blogger, and commentator. She is an assistant professor of English at Purdue University, founder of Tiny Hardcore Press, contributing editor for Bluestem Magazine, essays editor for The Rumpus, and co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective.
She is the author of the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), and the essay collection Bad Feminist (2014). She also edited the book Girl Crush: Women's Erotic Fantasies. In addition to her regular contributions to Salon and HTMLGIANT, her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012 and The New York Times Book Review.
Gay was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Haitian parents. She attended Philips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, received her Master's degree from University of Nebraska and her doctorate (in rhetoric and technical communication) from Michigan Technological University. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/20/2014.)
Book Reviews
Blunt and funny.... Gay floats the proposition that “feminism has, historically, been far more invested in improving the lives of heterosexual white women to the detriment of all others.” It might have been interesting to pair further discussion on this theme with Gay’s defense of Sheryl Sandberg and Nell Scovell’s self-help book Lean In, in which [Gay] argues that “Assuming Sandberg’s advice is completely useless for working-class women is just as shortsighted as claiming her advice needs to be completely applicable to all women.” But if I occasionally wish that Gay were a bit more formal in developing her arguments, her writing can also make a virtue of jarring compositions, of ideas that do not quite fit together.
Alyssa Rosenberg - Washington Post
Fascinating.... An important and pioneering contemporary writer.... Readers will immediately understand the appeal of Gay’s intimate and down-to-earth voice.... An important contribution to the complicated terrain of gender politics.
Boston Globe
A prolific and exceptionally insightful writer.... Bad Feminist doesn’t show us how Gay should be, but something much better: how Roxane Gay actually is.... Gay unquestionably succeeds at leading us in her way.
Globe and Mail (Toronto)
A thoughtful and often hilarious new collection of essays.
Chicago Tribune
What makes Bad Feminist such a good read isn’t only Gay’s ability to deftly weave razor-sharp pop cultural analysis and criticism with a voice that is both intimate and relatable. It’s that she’s incapable of blindly accepting any kind of orthodoxy.
San Francisco Chronicle
Roxane Gay is the gift that keeps on giving.... An entertaining and thought-provoking essay collection.
Time
One of our sharpest new culture critics plants her flag in topics ranging from trigger warnings to Orange is the New Black in this timely collection of essays.
Oprah Magazine
An assortment of comical, yet astute essays that touch on Gay’s personal evolution as a woman, popular culture throughout the recent past, and the state of feminism today.
Harper's Bazaar
Bad Feminist collects the very good essays of ‘It girl’ culture critic Roxane Gay.
Vanity Fair
Roxane Gay is the brilliant girl-next-door: your best friend and your sharpest critic.... She is by turns provocative, chilling, hilarious; she is also required reading.
People
Roxane Gay applies her discerning eye to everything from Paula Deen to The Bachelor.
Marie Claire
Roxane Gay delivers sermons that read like easy conversations. Bad Feminist is an important collection of prose—prose that matters to those still trying to find their voice.
Ebony
Toss Roxane Gay’s collection of witty, thoughtful essays, Bad Feminist into your tote bag. With musings on everything from Sweet Valley High to the color pink, Gay explores the idea of being a feminist, even when you’re full of contradictions.
Self
Alternately friendly and provocative, wry and serious, her takes on everything from Girls to Fifty Shades of Grey help to recontextualize what feminism is--and what it can be.
Time Out New York
Arresting and sensitive.... An author who filters every observation through her deep sense of the world as fractured, beautiful, and complex.
Slate
Gay’s essays expertly weld her personal experiences with broader gender trends occurring politically and in popular culture.
Huffington Post
[Gay’s] energetic and thought-provoking first essay collection will become as widely read as other generation-defining works, like Nora Ephron’s Crazy Salad and Joan Morgan’s When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost.
Essence
(Starred review.) This trenchant collection assembles previously published essays and new work by cultural critic and novelist Gay.... Although Gay is aware of her privilege as a middle-class Haitian-American, she doesn’t refrain from advising inner-city students to have higher expectations. Whatever her topic, Gay’s provocative essays stand out for their bravery, wit, and emotional honesty.
Publishers Weekly
Essayist, novelist and pop-culture guru Gay sounds off on the frustrating complexities of gender and race in pop culture and society as a whole. In this diverse collection of short essays, the author launches her critical salvos at seemingly countless waves of pop-cultural cannon fodder.... An occasionally brilliant, hit-or-miss grab bag of pop-culture criticism.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)