October 17, 2016

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

May, 2016: 5 print in system (Overdrive has ebook & audiobook)

Shrill is an uproarious memoir, a feminist rallying cry in a world that thinks gender politics are tedious & that women, especially feminists, can’t be funny.

Coming of age in a culture that demands women be as small, quiet, & compliant as possible–like a porcelain dove that will also have sex with you–writer & humorist Lindy West quickly discovered that she was anything but. 

From a painfully shy childhood in which she tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her big body & even bigger opinions; to her public war with stand-up comedians over rape jokes; to her struggle to convince herself, & then the world, that fat people have value; to her accidental activism & never-ending battle royale with Internet trolls, Lindy narrates her life with a blend of humor & pathos that manages to make a trip to the abortion clinic funny & wring tears out of a story about diarrhea.

With inimitable good humor, vulnerability, & boundless charm, Lindy boldly shares how to survive in a world where not all stories are created equal & not all bodies are treated with equal respect, & how to weather hatred, loneliness, harassment, & loss, & walk away laughing. Shrill provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent & invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.