Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.”

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

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I’ve been wanting to read this for years, and my TBR Jar finally plucked this from the pile. There’s just something about that cheeky title that draws you in, but I never got around to it. Unfortunately, my first impressions of the titular piece were very underwhelming. It’s about seven pages long, plus an updated postscript. I wanted a lot more from the ideas the book was titled after. Luckily I at least knew going in that this was an essay collection that would be […]

Great Title for an Average Feminist Essay Collection

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

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I downloaded this essay collection a year ago when I attended a work training, and felt like I was being over-explained to by the men presenting a class (I asked a few questions, so it might have also simply been that I was one of the only ones that seemed engage enough to pay attention and hence they directed everything directly to me).  I finally ended up reading it in February/March time frame because I was feeling slightly ignored by a different set of men […]

“Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.”

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I was unable to march yesterday because I had to work so I opted to read Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, a collection of feminist essays, instead. This a powerful collection but I think the most powerful punch was just how dated it seemed despite being published only 3 years ago. There is no Trump or Weinstein and while there is a well crafted essay on #yesallwomen it felt lacking in a world where #metoo and the Time’s Up initiative have had such widespread coverage […]

Rebecca Explains it All (In a Good Way!)

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3.5 stars, rounding down because when I think back on it (I finished it a few weeks ago), the things that bugged me stick out more than the things that didn’t. This might’ve been a four star book for me if I’d checked at all on what it actually was. I’d hoped it would be a deeper dive into the title concept, aka “mainsplaining” (although Solnit herself did not coin that term and is not a fan of it). The title essay was fantastic, so […]

“Some women get erased a little at a time, some all at once. Some reappear. Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear.”

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I do not really do New Year’s resolutions, but my informal one this year was to read more about topics I should be more informed about, and specifically more feminist reads. As with most of the good things I read these days, Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit was already on my radar thanks to Cannonballers. I was familiar with the eponymous essay’s conceit: that Solnit was treated to an older gentleman explaining her book to her without realizing that she had written […]



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