A liberating and transformative book by award winning writer and activist Soraya Chemaly.
This book is an antidote to being raised to fear, hide and suppress your anger in the name of being a nice girl. Being told by the self-help movement of the harm and negative effects of being angry.
Despite what we have been taught this book presents that anger is our hope and our compassion!
This book inspires you and sets up a compelling case for accepting, understanding and utilizing the anger women rightfully feel in the world today. Instead of feeling ashamed of it, using it as the force for change that it is and our internal radar for injustice. It also discusses the physical harm that is caused to women and the illnesses they face due to chronically suppressed anger as they bottle it up over years of oppression.
It starts from the early experiences girls have on a playground, that I have watched my own daughter experience, with parents of boys saying ‘He can’t help it’, ‘he is being such a boy’ therefore raising this internal anger and feeling of injustice and the same time suppressing it back down by justifying it with that’s what boys do. Not to mention the message that is given to the boys who hear this about themselves and their gender. The book then takes us through statistics, and events throughout women’s lives which come together to reinforce both the anger and the suppression of it.
After reading this book I will never think of rape in the same way because as she explains men think of rape as an event. However, rape in the mind and lives of women is not only a moment and is not just an event, it is a permanent part of their life, enveloped in every decision of where and when to walk and each uncomfortable encounter. Underlying all of this are the confusing foundations of society saying ‘oh, the boy stole a kiss’ as if it is an endearing act of love.
This book is a call to women, whose anger in society is usually met with infantilization, belittlement and being labelled as hysterical. It is a call to unapologetically embrace their anger, using ‘wise anger’ in a world that is telling girls they are being too loud or too quiet, to smile more so they look beautiful, to people please incessantly, be polite and well mannered, that they are too sensitive or not sensitive enough and to be quiet while they stay overworked and underpaid.
An explosive book that every woman should read for her own sake as well as her daughter’s!
