Book Reviews

ByAmyO'Brien

Mitchelstown’s Amy O’Brien is a 16 year old self confessed ‘activist and advocate’, passionate about equity and justice, with a love for reading and baking too.

Amy continues with her book review for readers of TheAvondhu. To access these books for free, visit your local library online or in person. This week’s book is:

Feminists don’t wear Pink (and other

lies) - curated by Scarlett Curtis

This book is for long time feminists, people who don’t think feminism is necessary anymore and people who don’t think they can be feminists!

Scarlett Curtis is a journalist and activist.

She has been a part of changing 2 laws to date, a bill to help end period poverty and a bill to get

FGM in to the Children’s Act. On top of that, she’s a lover of the colour pink and has curated this book, ‘Feminists don’t Wear Pink (and other lies)’ with essays and poetry from brilliant women on what feminism means to them.

Sometimes, the ‘f-word’ (I mean feminism) can get a bad rap of belonging in an age of bra-burning and suffrgettes, that it’s all about not wearing makeup or shaving our legs and even, man-hating. But feminism by definition, is the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. Nonetheless, what that means can be different for every feminist!

If we look to the past and in some groups of so called ‘feminists’ now, it hasn’t always been an inclusive movement. Thanks to the Suffragettes, in 1918, women in Ireland along with the rest of the UK won the right to vote; known as suffrage. But not all women, you had to be 30 with property qualifications or in university constituencies. These restrictions on women’s franchise did not apply to men and it meant that only older, already wealthy, mainly white

women could vote!

So when I use the term, feminism… I am talking about intersectional feminism or very simply, feminism that includes everyone no matter their identity. Whether you are non-binary, trans, lesbian, bisexual, man, women, a black, indigenous, person of colour, in a larger body, a person with a disability and on and on, you can (and should) be a feminist and as feminists, we respect your identity and include you!

That’s what this book is all about, telling the stories of lots of different feminists and how they found it relates to feminism and more. Some names you might recognise, such as Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson and Keira Knightley, but the other voices in here are also incredible including Emily Odesser, Amika George and Amy Trigg. Scarlett makes it perfectly clear, you don’t have to call yourself a feminist to read this book, you don’t even have to know what it is, you might be feeling rage, sadness or hope, but you can read this and make sense of what you’re feeling.

This book, full of fierce roars, shows that you are not alone, this is a movement and there are a million ways to join.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the book, ‘The goal of the feminist movement… aims to give each person the freedom to live their life the way they want to live it, unhindered by sexism or oppression or aggression.’