

I came across this book when I overheard a coworker talking about it. “It took me too long to realize that the people most inclined to say “You sound angry” are the same people who uniformly don’t care to ask “Why?” They’re interested in silence, not dialogue.” In this book, Chemaly examines anger in women, the forces that drive it and ways of dealing with and utilizing anger in our everyday lives. If you don’t agree and don’t want to follow me on Goodreads anymore because of that, I understand.

So, if you know me in real life you know I am a feminist and I am very liberal. “We are so busy teaching girls to be likeable that we often forget to teach them, as we do boys, that they should be respected.” We are so often told to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements in this world would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Rage Becomes Her makes the case that anger is not what gets in our way, it is our way, sparking a new understanding of one of our core emotions that will give women a liberating sense of why their anger matters and connect them to an entire universe of women no longer interested in making nice at all costs.įollowing in the footsteps of classic feminist manifestos like The Feminine Mystique and Our Bodies, Ourselves, Rage Becomes Her is an eye-opening book for the twenty-first century woman: an engaging, accessible credo offering us the tools to re-understand our anger and harness its power to create lasting positive change.

On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power. Yet our anger is a vital instrument, our radar for injustice and a catalyst for change.

We’ve been told for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yes, yes it would.Ĭontrary to the rhetoric of popular “self-help” and an entire lifetime of being told otherwise, our rage is one of the most important resources we have, our sharpest tool against both personal and political oppression. We are harassed, told we are asking for it, and asked if it would kill us to smile. Women are angry, and it isn’t hard to figure out why. A transformative book urging twenty-first century-women to embrace their anger and harness it as a tool for lasting personal and societal change.
