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auntiedd's review
5.0
“compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence,” while important to take with a grain of salt because it has problematic moments and is a little TERFy, really really helped me realize that i am a lesbian and uncracked everything i previously thought about my sexual orientation. shoutout to adrienne rich… mommy? sorry
baund_'s review against another edition
Read certain sections that I was interested and didn't find the energy for the rest
Would pick back up
Would pick back up
paracosm's review
3.0
Mixed bag between some truly fantastic essays and others that I couldn't wait to finish.
harleymartin111's review against another edition
2.25
smart but boring. skimmed the last 100 pages or so.
anthroxagorus's review
5.0
So, in my mission to read more works by women, I was beyond excited to start Adrienne Rich (especially because of Alison Bechdel's nod of approval for her - I am shameless). Maybe it was mistake to not have started with "Of Woman Born" or "Lies, Secrets and Silence" Imagine my disappointment to see the angry, irrational feminist trope come to life.
Intially I skipped "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" for being way too aggressive. (I also skipped the works that were specific critiques, as I didn't know the original content.) Maybe rightly so, but I later found it is more or less a major work of hers. Oops. Glad to find that the final work in this collection ("Notes toward a Politics of Location") admits it was too narrow-minded. That is the Adrienne Rich I like, the one who is questioning and unsure, but articulates exactly what we are trying to work out. In that way, her work feels ahead of her time and certainly improves over the years.
The essays I most enjoyed were the ones working through her Jewish identity (plus what it means to a WOMAN and FEMINIST and JEWISH and LESBIAN), particularly "Split At the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity." Her insights were fresh to me - how does a Jewish person operate in the world where one not only faces stupid jokes, or must face the reality of the Holocaust, but has to construct an identity from this isolated information (especially with parents that would rather avoid it!) One could pile this information, plus knowing she was married with children, and this understandably puts her in a strange insider/outsider position with all the benefits of living both lives - one of being "white," one of Jewish; one of heterosexual, one of homosexual; one of passive, the other radical feminism. Her meditations on identity as both important and restricting are my favorite part above all.
Above all, Adrienne Rich has a way with words that I thoroughly enjoy. I found myself copying whole sections onto paper. For example:
While some of her insights may now feel ingrained into feminism, I think there is definitely a place for Adrienne Rich's work now.
Intially I skipped "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" for being way too aggressive. (I also skipped the works that were specific critiques, as I didn't know the original content.) Maybe rightly so, but I later found it is more or less a major work of hers. Oops. Glad to find that the final work in this collection ("Notes toward a Politics of Location") admits it was too narrow-minded. That is the Adrienne Rich I like, the one who is questioning and unsure, but articulates exactly what we are trying to work out. In that way, her work feels ahead of her time and certainly improves over the years.
The essays I most enjoyed were the ones working through her Jewish identity (plus what it means to a WOMAN and FEMINIST and JEWISH and LESBIAN), particularly "Split At the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity." Her insights were fresh to me - how does a Jewish person operate in the world where one not only faces stupid jokes, or must face the reality of the Holocaust, but has to construct an identity from this isolated information (especially with parents that would rather avoid it!) One could pile this information, plus knowing she was married with children, and this understandably puts her in a strange insider/outsider position with all the benefits of living both lives - one of being "white," one of Jewish; one of heterosexual, one of homosexual; one of passive, the other radical feminism. Her meditations on identity as both important and restricting are my favorite part above all.
Above all, Adrienne Rich has a way with words that I thoroughly enjoy. I found myself copying whole sections onto paper. For example:
“As we all do when young and searching for what we can't name yet, I took what I could use where I could find it. When the ideas or forms we need are banished, we seek their residues wherever we can trace them. But there was a major problem with this. I had been born a woman, and I was trying to think and act as if poetry – and the possibility of making poems – were a universal – a gender-neutral – realm.” (175)
While some of her insights may now feel ingrained into feminism, I think there is definitely a place for Adrienne Rich's work now.
agnesforell's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
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