Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

Title: Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

Author: Lindy West

Pub Date: May 2016

Honors:  

Rating: ★★★★★

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With inimitable good humor, vulnerability, and boundless charm, Lindy boldly shares how to survive in a world where not all stories are created equal and not all bodies are treated with equal respect, and how to weather hatred, loneliness, harassment, and loss, and walk away laughing. Shrill provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.

I am sad to say that I didn’t know about Lindy West before I read this book. I purchased this book because I want to buy any new release from feminist books and because I noticed that it gets excellent reviews on Goodreads. So I just ordered it without researching the author. In this case, I am glad that I bought it because it is a book that I will get back to very often, I will pick chapters that suit best my current situation and search for words of wisdom and kindness from Lindy West. It was so easy for me to relate to Lindy, she is fat as I am, and she is a feminist as I am. And we share some insecurities and troubles with being a fat feminist woman and speaking about that. I am not that ‘loud’ as Lindy, I still need to learn a lot to be more confident of my opinions and this book is a perfect source of learning for me.

Nice Girls Endure by Chris Struyk-Bonn

Title: Nice Girls Endure

Author: Chris Struyk-Bonn

Pub Date: August 1, 2016

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

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“My parents tell me all the time that I should enjoy my teenage years, that these should be the happiest, most carefree days of my life, that this is the time for me to become independent and figure out who I truly am. You know what I have to say to that? What a bunch of crap.”

Easy to say that to your teenage daughter. But what it this girl is overweight? What is she has to struggle with being and overweight girl in our society every day? What if she has to listen to kids at school calling her fat and bullying her, what if she has to listen to some perfect looking girls chanting songs that undermine her. What if her mother only sees the fat on her and wants her thinner no matter what? How that supposed to be the happiest, joyous and carefree time of her life?

Chelsea is a teenage girl who loves to sing, musicals and is a tiny bit obsessed with her feet and shoes. She is also overweight which is the only thing people see about her and the only thing they base their full judgment of her. She is trying to work in this world the best she can, she is trying to make her invisible, she is not making friends, she is not raising her hand in classes, and she spends her times with her father watching musicals and singing. Special school project about filming your autobiography is a pivotal point of her teenage life. She makes a friend, a friend that sees her, not her weight.

The Girls by Emma Cline

Title: The Girls

Author: Emma Cline

Pub Date: June 14th, 2016

Honors:  

Rating: ★★★★★

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“That was part of being a girl–you were resigned to whatever feedback you’d get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn’t react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they’d backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.”

I rarely read book blurbs; I choose my reads mostly on intuition and cover (don’t judge a book by its cover? Please, my judging rarely disappointing me. And I think that if the cover is appealing to me, then it means that I’m the target audience for that book). So I had no idea what to expect when I started the book. I highly recommend reading books like this, when you find such an amazing book like this, not knowing anything about it is just the best! You can experience the book without any expectations, just knowing that you like the cover.