published by random house (2019)
"in the end, the safest conclusions may not actually be conclusions. we are asked to understand our lives under such impossibly convoluted conditions. i have always accommodated everything i wish i were opposed to. here, as in so many other things, the ‘thee’ that i dread may have been the ‘I’ all along.”
I had to truly force myself to finish this book as the chapters dragged on, but GOD am I glad I did because that very last paragraph truly sums up the book in its entirety. I resent this book so incredibly because of the layers of self-delusion that exist within it; the author Jia Tolentino writes on topics that she seems uniquely UNqualified to speak on, and in doing so writes essays so uncertain and elementary that it makes the reader wonder what the point of the writing is in the first place. It is incredibly difficult to read and trust a writer who is an ex-cheerleader, popular girl, yoga and pure barre enjoyer, generically beautiful, and in a functional and well-adjusted heterosexual relationship. The topics she brings up are heavy with trauma and hardship about the female experience from a hard feminist standpoint, but her points either come from elementary definitions of standpoints that are important, but fairly obvious. OR they come from a personal anecdote that only marginally helps support her point. It is hard to feel trust when her evidence for the effect of the sexual assault-infested underbelly of her alma mater is simply that she went there.
I want to preface before saying this that my perspective comes from a trans-masc queer person of POC experience having lived as a girl/woman for 22 years, but I felt that this woman mansplained feminism to me. I do not know WHO this book is for, because if the intention is to inform an audience who may not have known the content beforehand, it definitely wasn’t delivered in a way that that audience would find interesting, engaging or informative. It assumes a reader understands certain terms and references while spending a page-worth explaining fairly basic ones. I truly believe this book could’ve been HALF THE LENGTH if she had simply removed the over-explaining of general concepts and the millions of examples reiterating the same point over and over (the chapter Pure Heroines was especially painful for me).
Lastly, I will say that the only chapter I was truly engaged with was her essay on drug use titled Ecstasy. I can definitively say that this was the only topic she used her personal experiences and anecdotes to support her point, one that was not generic or over-explained. To compare drug-use to a connection to God backed by her religious upbringing and her subsequent trips was EXACTLY the kind of writing I wish the rest of the book had. For this chapter alone I award this book 2 stars.
