Recollections of my nonexistence / Rebecca Solnit.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780593083338
- ISBN: 0593083334
- Physical Description: 244 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
- Publisher: [New York, New York] : Viking, [2020]
Content descriptions
Formatted Contents Note: | Looking glass house -- Foghorn and gospel -- Life during wartime -- Disappearing acts -- Freely at night -- Some uses of edges -- Diving into the wreck -- Audibility, credibility, consequence -- Afterword: Lifelines. |
Summary, etc.: | "In this memoir, celebrated author, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit relates how she found her voice as a writer and as a feminist during the 1980s in San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. Then in her early twenties, Solnit tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city, which became her great teacher; of the small apartment she found, which became a home in which to metamorphosize; of how punk rock gave form and voice to her own fury and explosive energy. Solnit explores the way some men attempted to erase her, to shut her up, keep her out and challenge her credibility, as well as contemplating other kinds of nonexistence of groups for gender, ethnicity, and orientation. Her book ends with what liberated her as a person and as a writer--books themselves, the gay men and community who presented a new model of what else gender, family, and celebration could be, and her awakening to the spacious landscapes of the American west, which taught her how to write in the way she has ever since. Recollections of My Nonexistence connects Solnit's hugely popular polemical feminist writings of the last decade with the more lyrical, personal writing of her beloved earlier books A Field Guide to Getting Lost and The Faraway Nearby. This book is for everyone who has endured erasure and dismissal while coming of age in male-dominated spaces"-- Provided by publisher. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Solnit, Rebecca. Women authors, American > 20th century > Biography. Women > United States > Social conditions > 20th century. |
Genre: | Autobiographies. |
Available copies
- 10 of 10 copies available at Bibliomation. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Gunn Memorial Library - Washington.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 10 total copies.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gunn Memorial Library - Washington | BIO SOL (Text) | 34055145671925 | Adult Biography | Available | - |
Publishers Weekly Review
Recollections of My Nonexistence : A Memoir
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Author and activist Solnit (Whose Story Is This?) writes in this enlightening, nonlinear memoir of her life as a poor young woman in 1980s San Francisco and her development as a writer and feminist thinker. As a teen, Solnit fled a volatile home life to forge her path. She rented an apartment in a black neighborhood ("I was the first white person to live in the building in seventeen years") and acquired a writing desk from a friend who was nearly murdered by an ex ("Someone tried to silence her. Then she gave me a platform for my voice"). While in graduate school, she worked at a museum--which informed the writing of her first book, Secret Exhibition--and struggled to be heard in a world that favored male writers. In fluid, vivid prose, she recalls the terror she experienced while walking the streets alone, not knowing if she'd be attacked or raped, and considers how negative representations of women in art affect creative output ("How do you make art when the art that's all around you keeps telling you to shut up and wash the dishes?"). Along the way, she highlights her publishing achievements, including the viral essay "Men Explain Things to Me," which inspired the term mansplaining. This is a thinking person's book about writing, female identity, and freedom by a powerful and motivating voice for change. (Mar.)
Library Journal Review
Recollections of My Nonexistence : A Memoir
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Solnit (Men Explain Things to Me) reflects on her life using a feminist perspective so that her experiences navigating a patriarchal society might be instructive to younger women. Through these essays, Solnit shows her progression from a young, unsure woman to confident, experienced writer. Along the way, she muses on issues such as gentrification, gender violence, bodily integrity, poverty, and the nature of change. Her recollection of her feelings regarding violence and being silenced are particularly resonant. The city of San Francisco is a key character in her life story, as its neighborhoods and residents evolve along with her. Despite such heavy subject matter, Solnit's passion for reading and writing shines through. Her tone is authoritative, but reassuring. She knows who she is and which forces have shaped her. Additionally, Solnit realizes the power of naming inequity, violence, and oppression against women, though she is coming from a privileged perspective. VERDICT An engaging look at Solnit's life, which succeeds in giving voice to inequity caused by patriarchy. Recommended for memoir aficionados, especially feminist audiences.--Rebekah Kati, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
BookList Review
Recollections of My Nonexistence : A Memoir
Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
An inquisitive, perceptive, and original thinker and enthralling writer with more than 20 salient books to her name, Solnit has created an unconventional and galvanizing memoir-in-essays that shares key, often terrifying, formative moments in her valiant writing life. Already living on her own at 19, Solnit moved into a light-filled apartment in San Francisco in the early 1980s and lived and wrote there for a quarter of a century, learning invaluable lessons in self and community from her African American and gay neighbors and watching the city change. Solnit muses on her love of reading and wandering and recounts how she found her way to writing nonfiction that evokes life both factual and felt. She also illuminates with piercing lyricism the body-and-soul dangers women face in our complexly, violently misogynist world. Her own encounters with sexual aggression taught her the art of nonexistence, since existence was so perilous, yet Solnit has sent herself on intrepid journeys in pursuit of understanding the contradictions of existence. An activist as well as a writer steeped in history, landscapes, and art, Solnit has become a feminist hero for her critiques of sexist acts great and small, while remaining dedicated to change and hope. This is an incandescent addition to the literature of dissent and creativity.--Donna Seaman Copyright 2020 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Recollections of My Nonexistence : A Memoir
Kirkus Reviews
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
A feminist, activist, and prolific writer recounts her emergence from solitude and vulnerability."To have a voice," writes Solnit (Whose Story Is This?: Old Conflicts, New Chapters, 2019, etc.) in her absorbing new memoir, "means not just the animal capacity to utter sounds but the ability to participate fully in the conversations that shape your society, your relations to others, and your own life." As a young woman in San Francisco in the 1980s, Solnit lacked the "three key things that matter in having a voice: audibility, credibility, and consequence." Instead, she felt silenced by a society that effaced women, circumscribed their freedom through harassment and violence, and insisted that they learn "deferential limits." So she became expert "at the art of nonexistence, since existence was so perilous." At 19, "young, ignorant, poor, and almost friendless," Solnit was finishing her last semester at San Francisco State University, living in a dingy residential hotel, when she found an affordable, light-filled studio apartment. Furnished with pieces she found on the street or in thrift stores, the tiny apartment, where she lived for the next 25 years, became a refuge from a pervasive threat of violence. A joyous walker, she was often "followed and yelled at and mugged and grabbed." In the news, movies, and TV, women were beaten, raped, and murdered by boyfriends, husbands, or serial killers: "Even if none of these terrible things happen to you," writes the author, "the possibility they might and the constant reminders have an impact." Books offered another kind of refuge where "I ceased to be myself, and this nonexistence I pursued and devoured like a drug." Solnit traces her discovery of communitiesartists, punk musicians, gay men and womenthat sustained her and the people and places that inspired many of her books. Writing offered her a way of participating in the world, probing "what's hidden beneath the assumptions or conventions," illuminating forgotten people and places, and showing "how invisibility permits atrocity."A perceptive, radiant portrait of a writer of indelible consequence. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.