Critics' Opinion:
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Published Sep 2018
416 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
A transformative book urging twenty-first century-women to embrace their anger and harness it as a tool for lasting personal and societal change.
Women are angry, and it isn't hard to figure out why.
We are underpaid and overworked. Too sensitive, or not sensitive enough. Too dowdy or too made-up. Too big or too thin. Sluts or prudes. We are harassed, told we are asking for it, and asked if it would kill us to smile. Yes, yes it would.
Contrary to the rhetoric of popular "self-help" and an entire lifetime of being told otherwise, our rage is one of the most important resources we have, our sharpest tool against both personal and political oppression. We've been told for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don't even realize. Yet our anger is a vital instrument, our radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power.
We are so often told to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements in this world would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Rage Becomes Her makes the case that anger is not what gets in our way, it is our way, sparking a new understanding of one of our core emotions that will give women a liberating sense of why their anger matters and connect them to an entire universe of women no longer interested in making nice at all costs.
Following in the footsteps of classic feminist manifestos like The Feminine Mystique and Our Bodies, Ourselves, Rage Becomes Her is an eye-opening book for the twenty-first century woman: an engaging, accessible credo offering us the tools to re-understand our anger and harness its power to create lasting positive change.
"Starred Review. Important, timely, necessary reading." - Kirkus
"Calling for a 'wise anger' that can dismantle pervasive sexism and create a fundamentally democratic society, the book makes a persuasive case that angry women can achieve, not vengeance, but change." - Publishers Weekly
"Rage Becomes Her will be good for women, and for the future of this country. After all, women have a lot to be angry about." - Gloria Steinem
"This explosive, vital and unapologetic book lifts the lid on a hugely important but little-discussed aspect of gender inequality...This book should make you furious. It is a battle cry for women's right to rage: teaching us that we have every right to be angry, and demanding that the world pays attention to that anger." - Laura Bates, author of Girl Up and Everyday Sexism
"Women's anger is the last taboo. In this provocative examination of the forbidden, hidden emotion, Soraya Chemaly asks 'What do we lose, personally and as a society, by not listening to women's anger or respecting it?' Answer: the true voice of half of humanity. If you want to understand why #Metoo has swept the country, you need to read this book." - Katha Pollitt, poet and columnist, author of Learning To Drive
"Soraya Chemaly turns her rigorous compassion, scrupulous fairness, and microscopically sharp clarity of thought on our culture's forced suppression of female anger…Our world will never be the same. And, yes, that's a threat." - Lindy West, New York Times bestselling author of Shrill
"Soraya Chemaly issues a powerful clarion call to women to speak our truth and own our righteous anger during a time when nothing less than our rage will set us free." - Jamia Wilson, Executive Director and Publisher, The Feminist Press
"If you want to understand why #MeToo has swept the country, you need to read this book." - Katha Pollitt, author of Learning to Drive
"With every chapter I felt more power flooding in where fear and shame once were. This is a book that could change your life, and the world." - Jaclyn Friedman, author of Unscrewed
This information about Rage Becomes Her was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Soraya Chemaly is an award-winning writer and activist whose work focuses on the role of gender in culture, politics, religion, and media. She is the Director of the Women's Media Center Speech Project and an advocate for women's freedom of expression and expanded civic and political engagement. A prolific writer and speaker, her articles appear in Time, the Verge, The Guardian, The Nation, HuffPost, and The Atlantic. Follow her on Twitter at @SChemaly and learn more at SorayaChemaly.com.
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