"If you’re an intellectually honest American, at some point you have to find a way to live with the knowledge that this country was founded on genocide, slavery, and misogyny. Every majestic national park was stolen from a murdered and exiled people. Some of our most beautiful historic buildings were constructed by the hands of human beings brought here in bondage. Nearly every “Great Man” we celebrate was raised by a woman working for free, then married to another woman who kept his house and raised his kids for free. This is the America we all know."
I wanted to love this book so hard! Nasty Women, edited by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding, brings together some of the best contemporary feminist thinking in the wake of Trump's election, from a wide variety of viewpoints and perspectives. Together, they paint a worrisome picture about the erosion of rights and rise in safety concerns for those negatively impacted by the president's policies and platforms, which is.... pretty much anyone not wealthy, white, or male. Many of the narratives are deeply personal - in fact, it's these chapters that pack the most punch. My favorites included "As Long As It's Healthy" by Sarah Michael Hollenbeck, which discusses fertility and living with disabilities, Sarah Hepola's "Refusing to Numb the Pain," about managing anxiety (or not) with alcohol, and Sady Doyle's "The Pathology of Donald Trump," which takes to task our labeling of Trump as mentally ill as a way of discrediting him. I also loved "All American" by Nicole Chung, and "X Cuntry" by Randa Jarrar.
Overall, there is so much to love about this anthology. Maybe because I spend so much time reading feminist cultural and political critique already, there was also a lot in here that wasn't "new" to me, or didn't challenge my position or concerns about our current president, and I found myself skimming through quite a few chapters in order to get to the next one.
3/5 stars.
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