“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” – Nina Simone
By Teresa Kenney
TITLE GOOD AND MAD
PUBLISHER SIMON & SCHUSTER
Called “the most brilliant voice on feminism in this country” by writer Anne Lamott, Rebecca Traister is writer-at-large for New York magazine. Her pieces on women navigating the worlds of politics, media and entertainment can be found in publications such as The New Republic, Salon and The New York Times. She’s also the author of All the Single Ladies and Big Girls Don’t Cry. Her latest book, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, traces the history and transformative power of female rage.
In the book, Traister examines how society tries to control women’s anger—how it has been tamped down and quashed—and looks at the standard tropes: hysterical women, PMS-ing bitches, angry black women and man-hating Feminazis. She also reveals how the passion behind those tropes is actually what gets shit done (an outrageous oversimplification, but still). Good and Mad is one book that has stuck with me months after I finished reading it, and I recommend it to anyone who will listen and several who won’t.
In one chapter, Traister recounts how Gloria Steinem told her she was unable to acknowledge her anger in real-time. “Anger is great fuel for political activism; it’s wonderful, and I value it, I treasure it,” says Steinem in the book. Yet, she notes, she still has a problem with expressing her anger as it is happening. Traister then writes the one sentence that reverberates with me:
“If it is so difficult for Gloria Fucking Steinem to confidently let loose with fury, is it any wonder that in many places when I speak to students, young women ask me how they might express their own ire?” We’ve still got a way to go, but we’re getting there. •