The Change: the must read debut feminist fiction novel and crime thriller of 2022!

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I now have intense grief that this book wasn't given to me when I was younger, that its lessons are not taught in schools, that copies are not given to boys and teenagers. It has shown me new insight that more parts of my personality are not innate but are a result of our culture, generating some serious existential wondering. A brilliant, unputdownable 5-star stunner that will have you cheering one minute, and then reeling over the atrocities of the world the next! hooks mahnt, dass der Charakter Harry Potter ein schlechtes Vorbild für Jungen sei, da Harry ein "Mini-Patriarch" und "weißes Genie" sei, "das über die ebenso schlauen Kinder herrscht". Zudem "verherrlichen die Bücher den Krieg, der als Töten im Namen des 'Guten'" dargestellt würde. Ehhh? Bestie babes, da bin ich raus. Es gibt vieles, was man an den Harry Potter-Büchern kritisieren kann. Sie sind an vielen Stellen aus der Zeit gefallen und verstärken teilweise gefährliche Stereotype und Narrative ... aber dass die Bücher kriegsverherrlichend seien, kann ich absolut nicht nachvollziehen?? Harry als "Mini-Patriarchen", der über die anderen Kinder "herrscht", sehe ich auch überhaupt nicht. Ich habe das Gefühl, dass hooks die Bücher nicht mal gelesen hat. After Nessa James’s husband dies and her twin daughters leave for college, she’s left all alone in a trim white house not far from the ocean. In the quiet of her late forties, the former nurse begins to hear voices. It doesn’t take long for Nessa to realize that the voices calling out to her belong to the dead—a gift she’s inherited from her grandmother, which comes with special responsibilities.

This is part fantasy, part mystery, part social commentary. But it is also fun, emotional, and heartwarming. Again and again children hear the message from mass media that when it comes to sex, ‘he’s gotta have it.’ Adults may know better, from their own experience, but children become true believers. They think that men will go mad if they cannot act sexually. This is the logic that produces what feminist thinkers call ‘a rape culture.’” (p. 78) Often she makes blanket statements about men as a whole that seem to be heavily informed by her personal experiences with men. Additionally, her attempts to link her arguments to pop culture and media are clumsy and overwrought.I have profound respect for bell hooks. She is and will probably always be one of the most clear minded and insightful feminist theorists for years to come. Her works and lectures can be both mind blowing and humbling. But even aside from all that evidence, you can look at those facts without saying that girls' gender socialization is more damaging than boys. You can just talk about how bad it is and not assume that girls' shitty lives means all boys are doing great, which is a claim I have never heard a feminist make, so I don't know why hooks needs to make the inverse claim for boys' greater harm. But mostly I was bugged at the frequency with which hooks makes grandiose, superlative statements that have no real support and don't actually withstand scrutiny. For instance, she writes, “Whether watching daytime soap operas, a porn channel, or X-rated movies, children in our nation are more aware of the body and of sexuality than ever before” (77).

Zudem fand ich hooks' These zu Frauen, die arbeiten, sehr treffend: "Die meisten Frauen arbeiten, weil sie das Haus verlassen wollen und weil ihre Familien das Einkommen zum Überleben brauchen, nicht weil sie Feministinnen sind, die glauben, dass Arbeit ein Zeichen der Befreiung ist." Es ist einfach interessant, wie sich manche Diskurse verschieben. Es ist total wichtig, dass Frauen auf die Straße gegangen sind und sich für ihr Recht auf Arbeit und Lohn eingesetzt haben, trotzdem ist die Ausgangslage heute insofern eine andere, dass die kapitalistischen Strukturen in denen wir leben, uns diese Freiheit genommen haben. Wir müssen arbeiten, wenn wir leben wollen. Es gibt keine Wahl mehr (zumindest für den Großteil der Frauen auf dieser Welt). On the cusp of 50, suave advertising director Harriett Osborne has just witnessed the implosion of her lucrative career and her marriage. She hasn’t left her house in months, and from the outside, it appears as if she and her garden have both gone to seed. But Harriett’s life is far from over—in fact, she’s undergone a stunning and very welcome metamorphosis. bell hooks ist eine bekannte afro-amerikanische Feministin und Theoretikerin. Ihre Werke werden vielfach rezipiert und empfohlen. Nachdem mich vor einiger Zeit bereits ihr Einstiegswerk Feminismus für alle enttäuschte, hatte ich eigentlich nicht vor, zu einem weiteren Buch von ihr zu greifen. Da Männer, Männlichkeit und Liebe dann aber für kurze Zeit umsonst über die LfPB zu bekommen war, entschied ich mich dafür, hooks noch eine Chance zu geben. Harriett’s smile spread across her face, revealing a rather large gap between her two front teeth. “Perhaps,” she said.

Wow, the amount of times I started, stopped and restarted this book I didn’t think I’d ever finish it. Then come on through. Just step over the brambles. I know they look bloodthirsty, but I swear they won’t bite.” Late in the book, she claims, “anyone who has a false self must be dishonest. People who learn to lie to themselves and others cannot love because they are crippled in their capacity to tell the truth and therefore unable to trust.” (p. 154) This completely ignores closeted trans and queer people who may not be able to be fully honest and transparent with people out of concern for their own safety, as well as people who have not reached a point where they feel comfortable coming out to themselves.

Auch ich fand einige Punkte spannend. Die Stellen, an denen hooks über ihr Aufwachsen und ihre Familie schreibt, waren für mich die stärksten: "In unserer Familie war Papa nicht ständig wütend, aber die intensiven emotionalen und körperlichen Misshandlungen, die er bei den seltenen Gelegenheiten, in denen er gewalttätig wurde, ausübte, hielten alle in Schach, wir lebten am Rande des Abgrunds un in Angst." Viele Menschen kennen diese Dynamik zwischen Vater (meistens ruhig, aber trotzdem die Respektsperson) und Mutter (regt sich ständig auf, Kinder tanzen ihr auf der Nase herum). For all Thunberg’s brilliance and bravery, ignoring these possibilities feel timorous and blinkered. This book is superb at explaining the urgency and importance of preventing climate change, but despite its heft it stops too soon. There is little pragmatism over what to do about now-certain changes, which means it feels like a book whose time was 10 years ago. But perhaps it has taken this decade for an audience that’s receptive to its message to develop. History will show. Die fehlenden Quellen und Falschaussagen sind wohl das, was mich am meisten an diesem Buch gestört hat. Oft hat man das Gefühl, dass hooks einfach irgendwas raushaut, was ihr gerade gut in den Kram passt und ihr Narrativ fördert. Damit macht sie sich natürlich auch für Kritiker*innen angreifbar, die ihr genau dies vorwerfen können. Really? Seriously? What basis is there for making this claim? Plenty of children in the past grew up on farms and knew quite a bit about the sexual habits of a range of animals. Plenty of children grew up in one-room cabins or tenements; if anyone in the household had sex, everyone would have been in the room for it. People were born, got ill, convalesced, died, and were prepared for burial AT HOME, and kids would have seen bodies in such states. The Change is like a guttural rage scream (and somehow a soft, tearful hug) of a book, and I couldn't have loved it any more." --Emily HenryThe catch is that when men have been educated about alternate ways of being, "Most men chose not to change” (127). hooks doesn't adequately deal with this fact; instead, she lists more ways that women don't fix men. For one thing, not enough feminists write feminist novels--because there's such a huge market for them? It soon becomes clear that there is a serial killer among their community when Nessa hears the voice of a teenage girl leading her to the beach. The police refuse to look too deep into it, shrugging the victim off as a drugged up prostitute. Walter John Williams‘ “The Venetian Dialectic”: A Venetian admiral works to protect Rhodes from an invasion from Cyprus. This was a curious story and I especially liked how Venice is once again a major power in the Mediterranean and Communist. Funny how flexible some ideologies can be in the face of the supernatural. hooks' Definition eines Mannes, die sie in diesem Buch angibt, ist zudem transfeindlich: "Wir müssen Männlichkeit als eine Zustand des Seins und nicht als Leistung definieren. Männliches Sein, Männlichkeit, Maskulinität müssen für die essentielle Grundgüte des Selbst stehen, für den männlichen Körper, der einen Penis hat."

Jody Lynn Nye's " The New Normal" takes place in the New Forest in Hampshire in Britain of a witch and her coven who find shelter with a forest ranger. It's a short, sweet story of how Dr. Saltford comes to recognize "The New Normal" with a batch of grain alcohol. Since the night she and her grandmother had found the dead woman, Nessa had always felt the cool calm of the graveyard. When she’d encountered Jo, she had been drawn to her warmth. Together, they balanced each other out. This woman was different—far more powerful and less controlled. She pulled Nessa toward her, and though Nessa was neither scared nor reluctant, she also knew there was no point in resisting. Some forces in life are so strong that the only thing you can do is submit. Nessa looked around. There had to be thousands of different species planted in Harriett’s garden. “What do you plan to do with all of this?” she asked. Men might be harmed by patriarchy in that they lose their potential for self-actualization, mind and soul. It is indisputably a lower quality of life. What? What evidence does she have for this claim? And is it even a competition? Do we need to label "the process" as "far more damaging" for boys than for girls?I will say, I appreciate her taking the time to point out ways men are hurt by patriarchal structures, as well as noting that the more militant arenas of feminism do not make space for men to share pain and grow. However, even this latter subject is treated with a slight air of condescension, sort of a "I'm-not-like-other-feminists" attitude. hooks also blames women more than men for the perpetuation of patriarchy for a variety of reasons: she asserts that "most of us learned patriarchal attitudes in our family of origin, and they were usually taught to us by our mothers" (23). So women have to be the ones to teach kids something else. These new adventures revisit beloved people and places from Stirling’s fantastic universe, introduce us to new ones, and deliver endlessly fascinating challenges to conquer.