Souped-up Garden: 2020-11-22

Thursday, 26 November 2020

Book Review / Good And Mad: The Revolutionary Power Of Women's Anger by Rebecca Traister

Ms Traister wrote Good and Mad in just four months because she wanted to keep the intense intellection and emotionality flowing from a series of connected events happening in the United States as fresh as possible such as Donald Trump winning the 2016 presidential election, International Women Marches, #MeToo/#TimesUp, and record numbers of women running and winning political office in 2018. With each paragraph, she succeeds in sustaining her passion. My finishing the last page was like letting out a sigh of satisfaction, wonderment, and joy, as if her book was a long love letter, but focusing not on all the emotions connecting two people, but instead on the many intriquing facets of anger as they relate in the struggle for gender equality throughout its long, honourable history, describing in an intimate tone⁠—at times, soothing, at other times, invigourating⁠—various guideposts that has led the way and will continue to do so. She writes:

In the popular imagination, feminism has since its inception been on the verge of collapse, thanks to the intensity of its very real internal conflicts: divisions over race, class, sexuality, and generational difference, not to mention the flare-ups of personal jealousies and combative power plays. These rifts have often been serious and damaging. But they have not set the women's movement apart from any other social justice movement, from the civil rights or Black Power or immigration or gay rights or the New Left or socialist movements, all of which at times been riven by generational, racial, gendered, and class divides, by homophobia, strategic differences, and personal feuds, To some degree, this is the nature of mass activism.

The nature of mass activism is what it is because what it is fighting is what it is. Entrenched power for a few is only able to hold onto to its privileged position by encouraging and cementing through mass media, education, and policing a climate of division and distrust. To break away from the 'normal' interface to wage protest against 'normality' is a supreme challenge. Taking two steps forward, one step backward is to be expected.

The author participating at a Bay Area Book Festival

Grounding women's anger by showing how it has repeadedly got the job done despite being perceived through the distorted lens of the powerful white male minority as crazy or in less dismissive terms as ineffective is essential. In many instances, women expressing anger was the exact trigger making significant advancement towards social justice possible. Mrs. Till directed an incandescent fury after her murdered, teenaged son Emmett was beaten beyond recognition by white supremacist terrorists on August 28, 1955 by demanding that not only would his hastily buried body be returned to her, but his wake would be conducted via an open coffin so the horror of what was done be seen.

Ms Traister guesting on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

The expertly cut gem of insectionality shines throughout her writing, reflecting light and emitting a rainbow of colours, sending enlightening beams right through the fog of structural, systemic racism and sexism. She quotes Brittney Cooper:

White women and black men both want what white men have--white women want to have corporate power and black men want to be patriarchs. Black women a) know we're never going to get that and b) don't want that. We don't want to wield corporate power and we don't want to oppress people. That's why I look to black women as the political future.

Ms Traister admits though expressing anger and channeling it into action is effective and emboldening, it is also demanding on relationships and families which was born out during the second feminism wave in the 1960s of which I can personally confirm because that's when I was a young woman. Additionally, if being angry will cost you your livilihood among other supports, this approach doesn't align with everybody who is focused on the arc of progressive change. Regardless, Good and Mad inspires, upskills, and empowers.