I had the privilege of meeting Soraya Chemaly last year at the Festival Of Literary Diversity (FOLD) and I loved the idea of rage being a powerful thing and could relate to women not using that power. The topic lead to an important discussion.
Rage Becomes Her is a non-fiction book that delves into this topic and talks about how we raise our children differently. It is ok for boys to show anger as an emotion but girls are often taught that it's not polite or lady like. Chemaly looks at how this plays out in our society.
She tackles issues of how women's bodies are treated and used, trafficking women and girls, and the porn industry. She shares stories of misogyny and clarifies that "sexism is discreet, interpersonal and alters our day. Misogyny however, is systemic, structural and alters life outcomes".
Have you heard of "The Husband Stitch". I had never heard of this and when I read about it, my jaw dropped to the floor.... what???
Chemaly says that anger protects us. We need to know how to understand our feelings and to use them. Anger can be motivating and if used correctly, can transform.
This was a very US-centric book. It would have been nice to hear how this plays out in other cultures, even devoting one chapter to another culture to see how they might do this differently and how we can learn from them would have been interesting.
Chemaly shares her spotify play list of anger songs.... as a music lover, I thought that was very cool.
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