Rachel Reads & Reviews

Ah yes, the iconic Tedtalk that made waves everywhere when Aidichi talked about the dangers of a single story and why feminism isn’t a scary word that others make it out to be. In honor of women’s history month this had to be the first thing I read. I also read her A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Both books clock under 60 pages but deliver heartfelt thought.

Aidichi writes as if she’s talking to a friend, making these complex words with loads of positive and negative connotations into easy steps that don’t make you a man-hater or doom your marriage, it simple encourages you to be yourself whoever that may be.

I’m not going to talk much about the books’ content itself because seriously you can read both in an hour, go get it yourself but to sum up words of advice for men and women.

Hold your opinions and be firm in them. Gender should not limit your voice or be a reason not be listen to, it’s your knowledge base that matters.

Marriage is a wonderful thing, it’s a union between two people who love and respect each other. So why should women be the only one to aspire to it. Men should want it too and maybe if we encouraged men to aspire for a partner, they wouldn’t act like they’re still single when their married and women wouldn’t feel the need to compromise so much because marriage is the ultimate female goal.

Be open-minded. That doesn’t mean be so non-judgemental that you don’t say what you think as to ‘not offend’ but be aware everyone has their own path, their own views of normalcy and make their own choices.

Being feminist isn’t about being a man, be as girly as you like because differences should be celebrated as much as the common bond we share.

Women are always looked at as vain for caring about their appearences. Men are vain too, their vanity just stems from having cars, money and all those entails. Men feel pressured to be the providers and to be a man, we shouldn’t force the men to shoulder all these burdens. Be a breadwinner too.

That’s only a few bits of her advice but it makes you think. The whole marriage and vanity thing was a total change in perspective for me.

I also read Isabel Allende’s The Soul of a Women. Her latest memoir which she did three years ago in the pandemic, reflecting on her generation being a transitional phase in feminism between her mother’s and her own daughter’s. Allende was full of fire for equal rights to the point of being radical to her more traditional mother and abuelos. After all, women’s rights didn’t affect them.

There’s a lot going on here as Allende reflects on the turmultuous politics of Chile leading to her exile, her marriages and her current lover at the ripe age of 80 as well as reflections on her relationship with her mother and understanding her mother’s point of view as a single mother and the limits of her position in society.

This also leads a lot of “promotion” for her foundation. I put that in quotes because it does tie into Allende’s story as she touches on racism, gentile mutilation, abortion, sexism, domestic violence, rape as a weapon of war, all the women’s issues that are supposedly not our issue and totally resolved. So her foundation gets mentioned a lot as she laments how it feels like there is so much to deal with and so little of an impact in the long-run but it does matter. Every choice, every action matters.

Plus she ties into women’s history as well by mentioning prominant and not-so prominant women who have inspired including her friend, Olga who helps sex-trafficking victims in Serbia, the first female Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, her mother. Always remember the mothers.

Her work is just as thoughtful and descriptive as her fiction and with light humor too as she jokes she shouldn’t be wriing a memoir but a novel like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Love in the Time of a Pandemic.

The ending was a bit bittersweet I must admit as she ends in a hopeful note that the end of the pandemic might lead to a softer, more loving society after being isolated from other human beings. It was at first but now it’s less so. Bittersweet but her words are a soothing balm that you can escape into.