Tag: Feminism

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The Gilded Ones, Namina Forna

“No matter my origins, there is worth in what I am.”

Namina Forna, The Gilded Ones

Okay. First of all, can we just admire the cover of this book? I don’t really talk about the impact of a beautiful cover, but honestly I pick up a lot of books because of the cover. That was pretty much the case here. I also read the blurb and it looked interesting, but the cover was the first thing that drew me in.

The plot here is really interesting. It’s not anything super new or innovative, but it’s different enough to still feel fresh. In the land of Otera, girls are ritually cut at the age of 15 to determine the color of their blood. If their blood runs red, they are considered “pure” and are able to go on with their lives. If their blood runs gold, they’re considered to be the descendants of demons and are therefore “unclean.” There’s a nationwide death order for all “unclean” girls.

On top of all of this, monsters called deathshrieks stalk the land and kill tons of people. The emperor wants to eliminate the deathshrieks, so he allows the “unclean” girls to live so they can come and fight in his army. As the progeny of demons, the girls have some pretty intense magical skills. They’re faster and stronger than other people, and they’re almost immortal. Some good people to have on your team when you’re fighting monsters.

The protagonist, Deka, is a girl who is a bit of an outcast in her hometown, but who wants desperately to belong. As you can probably predict, her blood runs gold, and she’s given the option to fight for the emperor or die. But even as she avoids the death mandate, she faces the hate of her countrymen, who still consider her to be unnatural. Demonic. Evil. And for a long while, Deka believes it, too.

What I love about this book is the depiction of female friendship and loyalty. When Deka goes to train for combat, she’s put in a training camp with a bunch of other girls. I expected there to be a few who would be her friends and at least one who would be her rival. That’s sort of how things usually go in Young Adult fiction, isn’t it? Whenever you have a group of girls together, there’s got to be at least one who is nasty and competes with the protagonist. And to be honest, I’m sick of it. I was thrilled to discover that that’s not the case in The Gilded Ones. Namina Forna does an amazing job of creating this supportive group dynamic. The girls all watch each other’s backs. They take care of one another. There’s never any question of their loyalty to one another. When I see things like that in literature, I want to sing. Yes! This is how the majority of my female friendships have been, and I love seeing it reflected in fiction.

There’s also a love interest who brings zero drama. None. There’s none of that obnoxious “does he like me or doesn’t he?” that is usually present in YA. Keita is earnest, kind, and competent. I’m totally here for it. Love doesn’t have to be dramatic, and if it is it’s probably not going to last very long. Real love is stable, and I’m so happy that the author chose to portray it that way.

This book does have a few flaws. I felt that there was a lot character-wise that could have been explored, but wasn’t. Maybe Forna is going to get more into that in the next book in the series? I hope so. Otherwise it seems like a wasted opportunity to really get into the meat of these characters.

Also—fair warning—there’s a lot of violence in this book. There’s also discussion of sexual abuse and child abuse, though none of it happens “on screen.” If any of those things are triggering for you, I’d suggest skipping this one.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this debut novel. I’m definitely going to pick up the next one in the series. It’s called The Merciless Ones and it’s supposed to come out later this year.

Happy reading!

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Circe, Madeline Miller

“So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.

“You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure to not dishonor me.”

“I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”

Madeline Miller, Circe

My love affair with Greek mythology started in elementary school. My dad used to watch the TV series “Hercules.” You know, the one with Kevin Sorbo in it? No? Was it just my dad that watched it? Anyway, I was intrigued by the stories of the gods, goddesses, and heroes. I checked out this giant book of Greek myths from my school library.

I think I had this book on constant checkout for months. I read it over and over again and tried to explain to all of my classmates why the books they were reading were inferior to D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. And then when Disney released the movie Hercules, I spent all of my time enumerating the things Disney had changed from the original myth. Yeah, I didn’t have a ton of friends in elementary school.

The point is, I was hooked. I eventually allowed myself to return the book and move on to other things, but Greek myths have always held a place in my heart.

Which is why it’s weird that it’s taken me this long to read Circe by Madeline Miller. It’s been on my radar for a long while. It won a Goodreads award in 2018, so I’m late to the game. But I’m glad I finally got around to reading Circe, because it was exactly the kind of book I needed to read right now.

If you read any of The Odyssey in high school, you may remember that Circe is a witch Odysseus meets on his journey home from Troy. She turns his crew to pigs. That’s pretty much all I remembered about her until I read this book. In Circe, Madeline Miller expands on the lore around the infamous witch to give us a deeply intimate portrait of rejection, loneliness, and self-acceptance. Circe is, at its heart, a book about self-love.

Circe is the daughter of Helios—the sun—and a water nymph. The other gods consider her to be ugly and untalented. They hate the sound of her voice, which they describe as thin. So Circe grows up as an object of scorn. She tries to make herself agreeable to her parents and her siblings, but she’s rebuffed time and again. Eventually—and if you read the book you’ll get all of the juicy details—Circe is banished to an island to live out the rest of her life in solitude.

But her ouster from the halls of the gods doesn’t end up being the punishment her father thinks it is. Alone and away from the malicious gaze of her family, she’s able to develop her talents and find that she’s not the untalented, worthless waste of divinity that her family has always allowed her to believe. Then, as she begins to interact with visitors to her island, she learns the joys of companionship for the first time.

What I loved about Circe is that Madeline Miller gives us the coming-of-age story of a goddess. We watch as Circe grapples with the nature of love and loss. She learns the value of vulnerability. She is stretched almost to the breaking point, and in her extremity she learns to stand up for herself against those to whom she always kowtowed. I think one of the most beautiful parts of the book is where she’s able to look at the ugliness within herself, try to make amends for the wrong she’s done, and allow herself to move forward.

If you’re up for a book that’ll suck you in and make you think, this is it.

Happy Reading!

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Know My Name, Chanel Miller

“The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential.”

Chanel Miller, Know My Name

Let me tell you a story before I get into this review, and please be aware that this may be triggering if you’ve been the victim of a sexual assault. Honestly, this whole review may be triggering, so it may be better to skip this one if that’s something you’re sensitive about.

I had been married for a year, maybe two, when the women at my university started to be terrorized by a man we all called “The Groper.” It was a male student who would walk by, seemingly innocently, but then grab the body of a nearby woman, then take off running. We went to a pretty “safe” university, but there was a hill on the south of campus we all called “rape hill” because there had been a few assaults at night, and students were cautioned to avoid the area if they were walking alone. There were little signs and emergency telephones and everything. Even so, we felt pretty safe there. I’d never heard of anyone actually getting attacked until “The Groper” came on the scene. His assaults got bolder until he finally broke into some girls’ apartment. As far as I know, he didn’t harm them physically, but he robbed them of their feeling of safety.

At this time, my husband and I lived in a crappy little apartment near campus with a creepy parking garage, terrible lighting, and a few seedy neighbors. I was getting ready for work one morning and I asked my husband if he would walk me to my car since I was nervous about the parking garage with “The Groper” on the loose. He assured me that I’d be fine. He wasn’t dressed yet, it would be inconvenient, and there was really nothing to worry about after all. Now I don’t want you to hate on my husband, because he’s truly a caring and thoughtful partner, but in this situation he just didn’t understand how scary the situation was for me. I went to my car by myself clutching my keys between my fingers. I was fine. Nothing happened.

But that was the day that I realized just how different my experience of the world was from my husband’s. I lived in a world in which women carry pepper spray and hold their keys between their fingers like Wolverine. We avoid certain areas, especially at night, and try to never walk alone if we can avoid it. Meanwhile, my husband lived in a world in which he could pretty much go where he wanted without ever thinking about it. He’d never bought pepper spray. He’d never checked the backseat of his car for lurking danger. He could walk through a creepy parking garage and not give it a second thought. Since then, he’s learned about the sort of vigilance expected of women and why I act the way I do sometimes.

This sort of blindness is endemic to men in our society, I think. They tend not to see the ways in which women mold their lives around the possibility of sexual assault, and when they do see our precautions they mock us as being paranoid. That is, until a woman is assaulted, and then she was stupid for [fill in the blank.] She should have known better than to get drunk. She should have dressed more modestly. What was she doing walking alone at night? Why was she in such a rough part of town? What did she think was going to happen?

Chanel Miller’s incredible memoir, Know My Name, shines a glaring light on this type of attitude and shows us just how damaging it can be. For many years, I didn’t know Chanel’s name. I knew her as Emily Doe, Brock Turner’s victim. In this book, she courageously steps out, tells her story, and challenges the world to be better.

I can’t tell you how much I loved and hated this book. I hated the things that happened to her. I hated having to read about her assault and how the court system continually revictimized her over the course of years while Brock Turner fought his felony charges. I hated Chanel’s sleepless nights, her isolation, her pain. How her very hometown had been poisoned for her by Turner’s actions. I hated that the trial kept getting postponed, causing Chanel and her family to have to rearrange their schedules time and again to accommodate other people. I hated Stanford’s patronization of her, their too-late attempts to help her.

But I loved Chanel’s fighting spirit, how she was drowning but kept swimming toward the surface anyway. I loved her refusal to be silenced. How, when Stanford insisted she put a “hopeful, affirming” quote on the plaque in the memorial garden, she told them to just forget it. She’d rather say nothing at all than empty platitudes. I loved reading about the love of her family, the support of her friends, the steadiness of her boyfriend. There was beauty in the ugliness, and we’re privileged that she let us see it.

Chanel Miller is a talented writer. Period. She’s not a talented writer “for a rape victim,” or a talented writer “for someone so young.” She’s just good. Her voice is fresh and powerful, her words impactful. I listened to this on audiobook (which she narrated herself! Seriously, I don’t know how she got through it.) and I found myself whispering her words to myself to try to remember them.

Can I share some of my favorite quotes with you? I know I’m gushing, but I just want everyone to read at least some of her words.

“When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?”

“I did not come into existence when he harmed me. She found her voice! I had a voice, he stripped it, left me groping around blind for a bit, but I always had it. I just used it like I never had to use it before. I do not owe him my success, becoming, he did not create me. The only credit Brock can take is for assaulting me, and he could never even admit to that.”

“What we needed to raise in others was this instinct. The ability to recognize, in an instant, right from wrong. The clarity of mind to face it rather than ignore it. I learned that before they had chased Brock, they had checked on me. Masculinity is often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying.”

This book isn’t an easy read. If you don’t have the mental or emotional space to read it right now, that’s okay. But someday, if you’re feeling up to it, I really want you to pick this one up. Especially if you’re a man. Not so you can feel guilty, but so you can understand. So you can see the importance of being one of the Swedish bicyclists who saved Chanel, not the gross Freshman taking advantage of her behind a dumpster. So you can be the elderly man manning the booth to get signatures for the judge’s recall, not the judge who gave a young man six months (actually three, because of good behavior) for sexually assaulting a woman because he was more worried about the cost of accountability for the rapist than about the damage to the victim.

Be better.