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A Sentimental Education
How do you tell the story of a feminist education, when the work of feminism can never be perfected or completed? In A Sentimental Education, Hannah McGregor, the podcaster behind Witch, Please and Secret Feminist Agenda, explores what podcasting has taught her about doing feminist scholarship not as a methodology but as a way of life.
Moving between memoir and theory, these essays consider the collective practices of feminist meaning-making in activities as varied as reading, critique, podcasting, and even mourning. In part this book is a memoir of one person’s education as a reader and a thinker, and in part it is an analysis of some of the genres and aesthetic modes that have been sites of feminist meaning-making: the sentimental, the personal, the banal, and the relatable. Above all, it is a meditation on what it means to care deeply and to know that caring is both necessary and utterly insufficient.
In the tradition of feminist autotheory, this collection works outward from the specificity of McGregor’s embodied experience – as a white settler, a fat femme, and a motherless daughter. In so doing, it invites readers to reconsider the culture, media, political structures, and lived experiences that inform how we move through the world separately and together.
Moving between memoir and theory, these essays consider the collective practices of feminist meaning-making in activities as varied as reading, critique, podcasting, and even mourning. In part this book is a memoir of one person’s education as a reader and a thinker, and in part it is an analysis of some of the genres and aesthetic modes that have been sites of feminist meaning-making: the sentimental, the personal, the banal, and the relatable. Above all, it is a meditation on what it means to care deeply and to know that caring is both necessary and utterly insufficient.
In the tradition of feminist autotheory, this collection works outward from the specificity of McGregor’s embodied experience – as a white settler, a fat femme, and a motherless daughter. In so doing, it invites readers to reconsider the culture, media, political structures, and lived experiences that inform how we move through the world separately and together.
142 pages, Paperback
First published May 17, 2022
27 people are currently reading
2791 people want to read
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September 21, 2022
I loved this book souch I wrote a whole damn review on my blog: https://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wo...
Here's a bit of my lengthy review:
This book ... may have gotten me excited about academic writing for the first time in what feels like a millennium, more accurately about two decades. As McGregor writes, A Sentimental Education is her trying out a new type of academic writing that is more in line with her podcasting voice...
Like with any ideas-focused writing, I know it's a hit with me when it gets my brain buzzing and has me itching to record my thoughts and responses. Also, though, this book made me cry and have, well, feelings. I laughed out loud multiple times! The illusion that these two responses -- intellectual vs emotional -- are contradictory or ill-paired is explored in the book at length...
A Sentimental Education is a collection of essays that run the gamut from analyzing the politics of whiteness in many beloved classics for (white) girls such as Anne of Green Gables and Little Women to discussing the mechanics of the podcasting form and how it engenders intimacy, authenticity, and familiarity. The book is a master class in the seamless integration of diverse tones, going from formal citations of Sara Ahmed to sentences like "Frankly, podcasting made me into a real hard-line bitch about open access" as if these different kinds of sentences were meant to coexist in the same essay...
McGregor's careful attention to affect when discussing literature, her moving inclusions of details from her personal life – especially about her mother's death – and more are so refreshing. They're not an addition to the intellectualism of the book; it's an incorporation and a whole way of approaching the intellectual. I love it. It's why the book spoke so deeply to me.
Here's a bit of my lengthy review:
This book ... may have gotten me excited about academic writing for the first time in what feels like a millennium, more accurately about two decades. As McGregor writes, A Sentimental Education is her trying out a new type of academic writing that is more in line with her podcasting voice...
Like with any ideas-focused writing, I know it's a hit with me when it gets my brain buzzing and has me itching to record my thoughts and responses. Also, though, this book made me cry and have, well, feelings. I laughed out loud multiple times! The illusion that these two responses -- intellectual vs emotional -- are contradictory or ill-paired is explored in the book at length...
A Sentimental Education is a collection of essays that run the gamut from analyzing the politics of whiteness in many beloved classics for (white) girls such as Anne of Green Gables and Little Women to discussing the mechanics of the podcasting form and how it engenders intimacy, authenticity, and familiarity. The book is a master class in the seamless integration of diverse tones, going from formal citations of Sara Ahmed to sentences like "Frankly, podcasting made me into a real hard-line bitch about open access" as if these different kinds of sentences were meant to coexist in the same essay...
McGregor's careful attention to affect when discussing literature, her moving inclusions of details from her personal life – especially about her mother's death – and more are so refreshing. They're not an addition to the intellectualism of the book; it's an incorporation and a whole way of approaching the intellectual. I love it. It's why the book spoke so deeply to me.
June 26, 2022
It is a brave academic who can abandon the prestige associated with being regarded an objective theorist, and represent her emotional involvement in a text, all the while analysing it deeply. This book of essays is a loving interrogation, with recurring themes such as feminism, white supremacy, queerness, fatness and sentimentality woven throughout. It stands on its own as an academic text but it’s obvious that the non-academic reader is welcomed.
Hannah McGregor begins by acknowledging the Indigenous people of Vancouver, and exploring what it means to have a history of cross- (and inter-) continental migration. What does it mean to be a white settler who is informed by Indigenous multi-generational claims to land? Does being rootless contribute to white people’s invasiveness to the Indigenous? “I read once that settlers fetishize* relocation as an ideal because so many of us have lost the connection to our home places. It’s a pathology to disdain staying put, a pathology of whiteness.”
Another remarkable insight into the affect associated with white privilege comes in a later essay, where she writes of 'my own limitations as a white woman, grappling with the recognition that, even in my most intimate relationships, I cannot assume that I understand the experiences of my friends who are Black, Indigenous, or people of colour—indeed, that my desire to hold everything, to empathize with every experience, is an extension of the logic of whiteness and its desire for universality.’ As a white woman with anti-racist intentions, this made me think about letting go of my need to make all the cultural practices of people of colour legible to me, and prioritise a culture of respect – for myself, and for others – first.
Hannah traces her interest in elevating the rights of marginalised groups of people back to her feminist mother, who also modelled many admirable qualities, including abrasiveness. This stood out to me because if we are to do away with tone policing, being an abrasive feminist subverts expectations of people-pleasing and respectability politics, and becomes a subversive strategy of empowerment. More people should read their mothers as texts, embracing the specifics of their upbringing and thus problematising 'the view from nowhere'.
In an academic world where podcasts are still regularly seen as 'low culture', it's refreshing to find that 'A Sentimental Education' positions them as instrumental to self-discovery. I have never listened to the popular ‘This American Life’ one, but the essay ‘Getting to know you’ made me curious about the episode ‘Tell Me I’m Fat’. According to Hannah, the spoken narratives of Roxane Gay, Lindy West and Elna Baker here are only offered as valuable to a certain extent – the host positions them as worthy of empathy, but an empathy which has its limits, and some subtle fat-shaming undermines it. Furthermore, the podcast is more geared towards providing the listener with infotainment, than it is to calling people to political action. Through engaging with ‘Tell Me I’m Fat’ at different times in her life, Hannah goes from feeling seen to being disappointed, but is able to recontextualise her initial enthusiasm for it as an important step towards activism.
Fans of the author's own podcasts, ‘Witch, Please’ (which is both a fan’s and a critical scholar’s engagement with Harry Potter) and ‘Secret Feminist Agenda’ (in which she explores the meeting point between theory and practice, otherwise known as praxis), will find insights into the processes behind them. Podcasting is represented as a gateway to different affective worlds and collaborative relationships, a welcome departure from the limitations of academia, while also reinvigorating the academic practice. One of the concepts associated with podcasts is that of relatability - something which we encounter every day in our consumption of popular culture, but rarely look at self-consciously.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of the essay on #Relatability was the description of the knowing subversion of it in Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir ‘In the Dream House’. In a heteronormative world where there is little space held for healing from abusive queer relationships, ‘In the Dream House’ is preoccupied with reliving a traumatic event while being only able to show fragments of it at any given point. To draw Machado’s text out from this complex essay which moves seamlessly between many texts and a myriad of attendant themes is perhaps to do it a disservice, but I must start somewhere.
And I must end somewhere: I recommend ‘A Sentimental Education’ for its fascinating treatment of subjects close to the author’s heart. It’s not just the #Relatability essay that is rich, complex and expertly woven: the same can be said for all of them. If something I’ve written about here captured your attention, you will find much more like it within this fabulous and thought-provoking book.
*The negative view of fetishisation could unfortunately be seen as kink-shaming.
Hannah McGregor begins by acknowledging the Indigenous people of Vancouver, and exploring what it means to have a history of cross- (and inter-) continental migration. What does it mean to be a white settler who is informed by Indigenous multi-generational claims to land? Does being rootless contribute to white people’s invasiveness to the Indigenous? “I read once that settlers fetishize* relocation as an ideal because so many of us have lost the connection to our home places. It’s a pathology to disdain staying put, a pathology of whiteness.”
Another remarkable insight into the affect associated with white privilege comes in a later essay, where she writes of 'my own limitations as a white woman, grappling with the recognition that, even in my most intimate relationships, I cannot assume that I understand the experiences of my friends who are Black, Indigenous, or people of colour—indeed, that my desire to hold everything, to empathize with every experience, is an extension of the logic of whiteness and its desire for universality.’ As a white woman with anti-racist intentions, this made me think about letting go of my need to make all the cultural practices of people of colour legible to me, and prioritise a culture of respect – for myself, and for others – first.
Hannah traces her interest in elevating the rights of marginalised groups of people back to her feminist mother, who also modelled many admirable qualities, including abrasiveness. This stood out to me because if we are to do away with tone policing, being an abrasive feminist subverts expectations of people-pleasing and respectability politics, and becomes a subversive strategy of empowerment. More people should read their mothers as texts, embracing the specifics of their upbringing and thus problematising 'the view from nowhere'.
In an academic world where podcasts are still regularly seen as 'low culture', it's refreshing to find that 'A Sentimental Education' positions them as instrumental to self-discovery. I have never listened to the popular ‘This American Life’ one, but the essay ‘Getting to know you’ made me curious about the episode ‘Tell Me I’m Fat’. According to Hannah, the spoken narratives of Roxane Gay, Lindy West and Elna Baker here are only offered as valuable to a certain extent – the host positions them as worthy of empathy, but an empathy which has its limits, and some subtle fat-shaming undermines it. Furthermore, the podcast is more geared towards providing the listener with infotainment, than it is to calling people to political action. Through engaging with ‘Tell Me I’m Fat’ at different times in her life, Hannah goes from feeling seen to being disappointed, but is able to recontextualise her initial enthusiasm for it as an important step towards activism.
Fans of the author's own podcasts, ‘Witch, Please’ (which is both a fan’s and a critical scholar’s engagement with Harry Potter) and ‘Secret Feminist Agenda’ (in which she explores the meeting point between theory and practice, otherwise known as praxis), will find insights into the processes behind them. Podcasting is represented as a gateway to different affective worlds and collaborative relationships, a welcome departure from the limitations of academia, while also reinvigorating the academic practice. One of the concepts associated with podcasts is that of relatability - something which we encounter every day in our consumption of popular culture, but rarely look at self-consciously.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of the essay on #Relatability was the description of the knowing subversion of it in Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir ‘In the Dream House’. In a heteronormative world where there is little space held for healing from abusive queer relationships, ‘In the Dream House’ is preoccupied with reliving a traumatic event while being only able to show fragments of it at any given point. To draw Machado’s text out from this complex essay which moves seamlessly between many texts and a myriad of attendant themes is perhaps to do it a disservice, but I must start somewhere.
And I must end somewhere: I recommend ‘A Sentimental Education’ for its fascinating treatment of subjects close to the author’s heart. It’s not just the #Relatability essay that is rich, complex and expertly woven: the same can be said for all of them. If something I’ve written about here captured your attention, you will find much more like it within this fabulous and thought-provoking book.
*The negative view of fetishisation could unfortunately be seen as kink-shaming.
November 29, 2022
This is an essay collection I know I will return to again and again. Hannah McGregor, host of two of my favorite podcasts, Witch Please and Secret Feminist Agenda, tells the story of her own feminist education through six essays written in the first person, a deliberate act to carry over the voice she developed in podcasts into her writing. The first essay introduces a theme that recurs throughout of the uses and agendas of sentimental literature, especially books about white women caring deeply about things, in a way that can spark equal emotion in the reader, which has the potential to either, or both, stir political action or else prop up white supremacy. One of the major questions of the text is whether reading certain kinds of books, or reading in certain kinds of ways, can make the reader a better person- more empathetic, more motivated to strive for justice and equality. Caring about others is a feminist project, and McGregor questions where this care falls inside institutions like the university, who is able to ask for and receive care, who is able to give it or refuse giving it. McGregor asks these questions as a queer, fat, asexual, white university professor with a tenured position and constantly acknowledges her own position and also where her knowledge comes from. One of my favorite pieces is the many quotes woven through the text, as well as references to longer conversations I experienced in podcast form. I am so grateful for this book, and excited to annotate it on my second pass!
August 14, 2022
Thank you to Wilfrid Laurier University Press for sending me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
A Sentimental Education is a book about "creating a feminist ethics of care," and sets about the task with exceptional deftness and nuance. McGregor writes with both earnestness and well-sourced academic ease, marrying her internal and external worlds to craft a story (and she insists that story is crafted, always, with intention and bias) of hope, criticism, and widening worldviews beyond the violent narrowness of white supremacy.
I was recommended to request an ARC of this book by a friend. I did not know anything really about McGregor before reading it, and I've never listened to either podcast she mentions in the book. I was blown away! The writing hits hard when it needs to—I have an obscene number of quotes listed—but pushes and presses at the reader to engage and act. I have both a new reading list from this book, and renewed vigor in the value of action over performing the "correct" politicized forms of entertainment. This book wants me to read differently, more actively and more determinedly, and it wants me to learn and then do something.
It is difficult to express the impact this had on me without devolving into universalist cliches. I am glad that I read it. I will be recommending it a lot. I look forward to continuing to find the ways, as the text reads toward the end, to embed care in my mundane everydays, and to always be interrogating my own definitions of sentimentality, of everyday, and above all of how we care for each other, and what that means.
A Sentimental Education is a book about "creating a feminist ethics of care," and sets about the task with exceptional deftness and nuance. McGregor writes with both earnestness and well-sourced academic ease, marrying her internal and external worlds to craft a story (and she insists that story is crafted, always, with intention and bias) of hope, criticism, and widening worldviews beyond the violent narrowness of white supremacy.
I was recommended to request an ARC of this book by a friend. I did not know anything really about McGregor before reading it, and I've never listened to either podcast she mentions in the book. I was blown away! The writing hits hard when it needs to—I have an obscene number of quotes listed—but pushes and presses at the reader to engage and act. I have both a new reading list from this book, and renewed vigor in the value of action over performing the "correct" politicized forms of entertainment. This book wants me to read differently, more actively and more determinedly, and it wants me to learn and then do something.
It is difficult to express the impact this had on me without devolving into universalist cliches. I am glad that I read it. I will be recommending it a lot. I look forward to continuing to find the ways, as the text reads toward the end, to embed care in my mundane everydays, and to always be interrogating my own definitions of sentimentality, of everyday, and above all of how we care for each other, and what that means.
August 4, 2022
I’m a fan of McGregor’s podcasts both Witch, Please and Secret Feminist Agenda so I was very excited to read an ARC of this book through NetGalley. I expected to enjoy the book but what I didn’t expect was for the ways this book would touch me so deeply and make my heart swell with tenderness and love.
This book approaches a variety of topics through memoir, personal anecdote, and through theory. The topics covered are wide ranging but touch on a ton of media I care about - Harry Potter, This American Life, etc. the ability to reflect and acknowledge how they shape different points in your life while not shying away from looking back at them and critiquing them earnestly is such a healing and profound read in the context of the book.
I found myself thinking more critically and more lovingly. I love how tangled these fragments, ideas, and perspectives get in each essay. There’s not one clear easy answer but you’re guided through the tangle to deeper perspectives and closer nuance.
The essays really got me to reflect on my own life, perspectives, and experiences but also gave me many moments of reflection that were challenging. I’m already sensing that I’m going to aggressively recommend this to every person I know because I truly think there’s something sentimental that everyone will find to connect to and something that will challenge each reader in a good way.
Read through Netgalley and Wilfrid Laurier University Press. I’m grateful for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. I’ve already preordered a physical copy as well so that I can highlight, annotate, and scribble to my heart’s content.
This book approaches a variety of topics through memoir, personal anecdote, and through theory. The topics covered are wide ranging but touch on a ton of media I care about - Harry Potter, This American Life, etc. the ability to reflect and acknowledge how they shape different points in your life while not shying away from looking back at them and critiquing them earnestly is such a healing and profound read in the context of the book.
I found myself thinking more critically and more lovingly. I love how tangled these fragments, ideas, and perspectives get in each essay. There’s not one clear easy answer but you’re guided through the tangle to deeper perspectives and closer nuance.
The essays really got me to reflect on my own life, perspectives, and experiences but also gave me many moments of reflection that were challenging. I’m already sensing that I’m going to aggressively recommend this to every person I know because I truly think there’s something sentimental that everyone will find to connect to and something that will challenge each reader in a good way.
Read through Netgalley and Wilfrid Laurier University Press. I’m grateful for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. I’ve already preordered a physical copy as well so that I can highlight, annotate, and scribble to my heart’s content.
August 6, 2025
How do we care ferociously for one another without demanding that we become collectively legible to one another?
This is a very interesting essay collection because it truly acts as an ongoing dialogue. None of its points are absolute—each chapter acts more as a raised question.
While the collection is rooted in ideas of feminism, its more specific subjects are quandaries I hadn't considered before. For instance, the titular essay, "A Sentimental Education," ponders the value of sentimentality, the concept of the anecdote, and later furthers these points in the essay "#Relatable." I've always been someone who values anecdotal evidence in understanding societal issues, but this piece effectively discusses why that and sympathy itself are inherently drenched in white femininity. Cited in the text, Kyla Schuller calls the perception of excess sympathy a "technology of whiteness" that allowed white people to be perceived as the "sole representatives of civilization." Because so often in history, Hannah McGregor concludes, "the world [only] changes when white women feel sad about it."
While for many this may be uncomfortable to read or sound a little too absolute, McGregor makes sure to explore arguments for and against each of her theses. It is true that we must recognize the systemic privilege that allows sentimental narratives to function within society the way they do, but we also cannot deny the value of stories as a whole. (Though the concept of "story" has been warped by the media landscape into something that can also be harmful.) And we must also consider the impact of how these narratives function within a capitalist system���which voices ever even get the chance to be heard. The more I write here, the more McGregor's arguments splinter out, and that's what I wish to applaud this collection for doing: Not trying to decide if sentimental stories are good or bad... [Dwelling], instead, in the gloriously messy process of collective meaning-making.
I must admit that what initially drew me to this collection was an excerpt I saw covering Jo March in Greta Gerwig's 2019 adaptation of Little Women. I am happy to report that section did not disappoint.
The final topics of this book stray a bit from the beginning, but are equally interesting. Similarly to another book I'm currently reading (The Other Significant Others), the later essays delve into the frustrations and challenges of marriage being the only form of care recognized by the state and how that makes maintaining other types of support systems much more difficult. Always gonna love an essay on that, so no complaints.
Overall, a collection that truly allows its readers to think. The issue of sentimentality is uncomfortable at times, but that's why it's important to discuss. And its extension into the issue of "relatability" is a concept I think many older generations struggle to understand right now. People shouldn't have to explain themselves to you in a way you understand, because that implies that your version of understanding is superior. Same goes for grammar, ways of speaking, etc. The linguistic aspect is not something discussed by McGregor, but something I think relates based on what I've studied in the past. There should be no "prescriptively correct" form of speaking. If a form of grammar functions, it is correct. Just because it's not the one you use, doesn't make it wrong. If you think that it does, you have some reflecting to do. And not everything has to be comfortable or have an answer. Not every discussion is an argument. Okay sorry I'm getting a bit off topic, but I've found this to be such a problem when talking to older people about big concepts! Our generation (at least within my university and social circles) enjoys pondering, or has been taught how to have a debate without it getting instantly defensive and unproductive. Haven't found it to be the same when talking to people who have been out of the classroom for a while.
Maybe reading this book and sitting with it instead of yelling at it could foster some progress.
This is a very interesting essay collection because it truly acts as an ongoing dialogue. None of its points are absolute—each chapter acts more as a raised question.
While the collection is rooted in ideas of feminism, its more specific subjects are quandaries I hadn't considered before. For instance, the titular essay, "A Sentimental Education," ponders the value of sentimentality, the concept of the anecdote, and later furthers these points in the essay "#Relatable." I've always been someone who values anecdotal evidence in understanding societal issues, but this piece effectively discusses why that and sympathy itself are inherently drenched in white femininity. Cited in the text, Kyla Schuller calls the perception of excess sympathy a "technology of whiteness" that allowed white people to be perceived as the "sole representatives of civilization." Because so often in history, Hannah McGregor concludes, "the world [only] changes when white women feel sad about it."
While for many this may be uncomfortable to read or sound a little too absolute, McGregor makes sure to explore arguments for and against each of her theses. It is true that we must recognize the systemic privilege that allows sentimental narratives to function within society the way they do, but we also cannot deny the value of stories as a whole. (Though the concept of "story" has been warped by the media landscape into something that can also be harmful.) And we must also consider the impact of how these narratives function within a capitalist system���which voices ever even get the chance to be heard. The more I write here, the more McGregor's arguments splinter out, and that's what I wish to applaud this collection for doing: Not trying to decide if sentimental stories are good or bad... [Dwelling], instead, in the gloriously messy process of collective meaning-making.
I must admit that what initially drew me to this collection was an excerpt I saw covering Jo March in Greta Gerwig's 2019 adaptation of Little Women. I am happy to report that section did not disappoint.
The final topics of this book stray a bit from the beginning, but are equally interesting. Similarly to another book I'm currently reading (The Other Significant Others), the later essays delve into the frustrations and challenges of marriage being the only form of care recognized by the state and how that makes maintaining other types of support systems much more difficult. Always gonna love an essay on that, so no complaints.
Overall, a collection that truly allows its readers to think. The issue of sentimentality is uncomfortable at times, but that's why it's important to discuss. And its extension into the issue of "relatability" is a concept I think many older generations struggle to understand right now. People shouldn't have to explain themselves to you in a way you understand, because that implies that your version of understanding is superior. Same goes for grammar, ways of speaking, etc. The linguistic aspect is not something discussed by McGregor, but something I think relates based on what I've studied in the past. There should be no "prescriptively correct" form of speaking. If a form of grammar functions, it is correct. Just because it's not the one you use, doesn't make it wrong. If you think that it does, you have some reflecting to do. And not everything has to be comfortable or have an answer. Not every discussion is an argument. Okay sorry I'm getting a bit off topic, but I've found this to be such a problem when talking to older people about big concepts! Our generation (at least within my university and social circles) enjoys pondering, or has been taught how to have a debate without it getting instantly defensive and unproductive. Haven't found it to be the same when talking to people who have been out of the classroom for a while.
Maybe reading this book and sitting with it instead of yelling at it could foster some progress.
September 13, 2025
"And here, the parting words of Secret Feminist Agenda, the only words on this list - scrawled across an envelope, surrounded by flowers - is a directive to myself and my beloveds, a reminder of the most practical thing we can do with our knowledge and our passions and our hard-gained insights no matter how small: Pass it on."
This book really challenged me (in a good way). I think (and care) a lot about how literature can be used to open folks up to new perspectives and consider new ways of being, and this book (and memoir) challenged me to also consider the limits of that and the potential pitfalls of it.
McGregor is really smart, and her insights on academia - and stark analysis of her relation to it - were something that really resonated with me. I could both see some of my own experience and had to think beyond it.
The initial on ramp to her theory was pretty steep, and I did feel that in how she engaged with it throughout.
All in all, a book I think I'll continue to come back to.
4.5
This book really challenged me (in a good way). I think (and care) a lot about how literature can be used to open folks up to new perspectives and consider new ways of being, and this book (and memoir) challenged me to also consider the limits of that and the potential pitfalls of it.
McGregor is really smart, and her insights on academia - and stark analysis of her relation to it - were something that really resonated with me. I could both see some of my own experience and had to think beyond it.
The initial on ramp to her theory was pretty steep, and I did feel that in how she engaged with it throughout.
All in all, a book I think I'll continue to come back to.
4.5
April 18, 2023
Hannah<3 I fucking love you. This book is a masterpiece, I feel so incredibly lucky to be here to read and experience it. The questions, the buildup, the duality, the resolution, the conversation and debate: it’s all SO good. I’m blown away with the constant attention to perspective and moving it to include so many lost parts of sentimentality, literacy and reality. It’s a stunning book discussing all the uncomfortable but really important conversations.
Having read this as a soon to be teaching-student I’m beyond excited to incorporate this in my teaching, even for younger children (on a more comprehensible level) as it is critical in our time and age to learn and understand. It’s time for some change and this is where it starts.
Incredible book.
Having read this as a soon to be teaching-student I’m beyond excited to incorporate this in my teaching, even for younger children (on a more comprehensible level) as it is critical in our time and age to learn and understand. It’s time for some change and this is where it starts.
Incredible book.
June 16, 2023
I absolutely love love LOVE how Hannah McGregor is able to combine easily digestible prose with incredibly rich theory. I’ve loved their work since discovering Witch, Please in 2017 and this was a delightful read. My only minor point of criticism is that the ending seemed to come out of nowhere. I would have loved a clear conclusion, but even so this was brilliant.
August 19, 2025
It is a podcast made into book. It’s very hard to listen to, because it is all over the place. Hannah McGregor wants to talk about gender and racial cliches and how they are all created by white men for their convenience.
This is a very big subject, and it is not possible to address stealing lands from indigenous people, Black Lives Matter, body shaming women, homophobia, and every problem cic gender white men created in a small book. That’s why this book fails.
This is a very big subject, and it is not possible to address stealing lands from indigenous people, Black Lives Matter, body shaming women, homophobia, and every problem cic gender white men created in a small book. That’s why this book fails.
March 5, 2023
Mostly giving this a 3 because it wasn't quite right for me, not because it wasn't good. This is an academic field very much different from my own and not one that I participated in much during my time in higher education, which made it harder for me to understand her jargon and analysis. Despite this, McGregor presented a lot of interesting ideas and I was always engaged by her essays. Although McGregor is an excellent audiobook narrator (probably thanks to her experience in podcasting), there are several reasons why this may be a better text read: the footnotes were read in succession at the end of the book, and it was challenging or impossible to remember what they referred to in the main text; McGregor's necessary inclusion of verbal "quote... end quote" additions was a little annoying; and there were multiple passages that I wanted to examine more closely through re-reading.
September 15, 2025
A brilliant work of accessible, public feminist theory. McGregor blends literary and cultural critique with larger lessons of praxis and feminist thought.
It's elegantly written, perspective-changing, radical, and important. The writing style lends itself well to the intimate publics, ethics of care, and sentimentality that McGregor develops.
This will become a staple on my feminist bookshelf! The questions this book raises are crucial in a digital age where sentimentality can neutralize the urgency of action.
tasting notes: insightful, feminist, sharp, witty, methodological, necessary
5 stars
It's elegantly written, perspective-changing, radical, and important. The writing style lends itself well to the intimate publics, ethics of care, and sentimentality that McGregor develops.
This will become a staple on my feminist bookshelf! The questions this book raises are crucial in a digital age where sentimentality can neutralize the urgency of action.
tasting notes: insightful, feminist, sharp, witty, methodological, necessary
5 stars
September 28, 2025
my brain feels so stimulated..... it just, it just really makes you reconsider all that you thought about gender, queerness, social class, identity, etc, but also asserts what you already believed in? this was really hecking good i can't describe it... just read it!!!! i think my fav chapter were the white feminist childhood heroines, it really smacked me in the face. this was a great starting point on my non-fiction kick :)))
January 31, 2026
2.5/5
sometimes it was profound, sometimes it was not. At many moments it felt too preachy, and I don't think it managed to convey the thought/emotion it wanted to convey.
sometimes it was profound, sometimes it was not. At many moments it felt too preachy, and I don't think it managed to convey the thought/emotion it wanted to convey.
December 7, 2022
I've been listening to Hannah McGregor's various podcasts for years now so when this book came out I purchased both a print edition and the audiobook because I wanted my first "read" to be a listen and I wanted to print book to read a second time and annotate.
I can't say for sure how this book will hit for anyone not familiar with Hannah's other work, but I believe that whether you're a long time listener or coming to her for the first time there is a lot of value to be gained in this work.
One of the things I admire in Hannah's previous work and in this book is the way that she grapples with academia, a world that she is very much a part of, but which she also works hard to push to grow/evolve/and generally do better.
I can't say for sure how this book will hit for anyone not familiar with Hannah's other work, but I believe that whether you're a long time listener or coming to her for the first time there is a lot of value to be gained in this work.
One of the things I admire in Hannah's previous work and in this book is the way that she grapples with academia, a world that she is very much a part of, but which she also works hard to push to grow/evolve/and generally do better.
September 12, 2022
This was my first exposure to Hannah McGregor’s work, and after reading it, it will not be my last. This book is both academic and personal, and McGregor deftly weaves memoir, criticism, and feminist theory to reflect on pop culture and her own life and work. The closest analogue to it I can think of is Elissa Washuta’s White Magic, another book I couldn’t stop thinking about once I finished it. It also feels very teachable, and I will be recommending it to my students.
If you like essays, criticism, or thinking deeply about feminism (especially ethics of care), this one is for you.
Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an early copy of this book.
If you like essays, criticism, or thinking deeply about feminism (especially ethics of care), this one is for you.
Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an early copy of this book.
December 22, 2022
I’ve been looking forward to reading Hannah McGregor’s A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION for months, and when I finally got my hands on it I think I read it much too quickly, gulping it as though someone was going to take it away from me, furtive, starving for its nourishment and wisdom. This book feels brilliant in an expansive way, a warning that is also an invitation to dismantle the danger it writes about. McGregor considers place, space, and who is given power under systems that underwrite much of our lives no matter who we are, where we are, and whether we choose to see or look for frameworks of power — which are also always frameworks of disenfranchisement. These chapters swing beautiful from the personal to the universal, wrapped in a network of care that both uses and rejects sentimentality. On one hand I know this book speaks to me precisely because of the mechanism of sentimentality that McGregor studies here, both lovingly and critically: I see myself reflected in her thoughts as a scholar, as a child-free and queer woman, as someone who struggles with grief and with societal expectations of beauty, labour, and authority. I felt held by these empathies, and I felt called out, too, by the reminder in these pages that reading alone is not enough. Reading is a tool for empathy, for shared sentiment, but it is not action in and of itself. We learn from books, sure, but surely that’s… not enough? I have a feeling I’ll read this book again, and soon, and with a highlighter in my fist. I have a feeling I’ll read it over and over. But I also have a feeling I’ll carry it forward, I hope, in action as well as thought.
April 3, 2023
I’m biased because Hannah is a colleague and a friend, but holy fuck she’s smart.
December 5, 2023
Affecting, intelligent, and reflective, Hannah McGregor's A Sentimental Education explores the production of knowledge and the narratives we construct about knowledge acquisition. A Sentimental Education is neither an endorsement nor a refutation of sentimental aesthetics. Instead, McGregor deploys a dialectical approach in an attempt to understand the multi-faceted and conflicting contours of sentimentality. For example, early in the book, she writes, "Sentimentality is an appealing way of approaching texts and our relationship to them, as it does, an understanding that is rooted in feeling and care, rather than in patriarchal ideals like rationality and realism. It is also an overdetermined way of relating to the world, mediating identity and experience to give them pleasing shapes and, more significantly, serving a politics invested in smoothing over difference via feeling" (7). As McGregor suggests, sentimentality offers an approach that antagonizes patriarchal and, by extension, historically preferred and prioritized knowledge acquisition modalities for unruly feminist modalities. But by offering a "heightened attention to feeling," sentimentality verges on "mawkishness or self-indulgence" (7). This implies that sentimentality, as Walt Whitman suggests about most things, contains multitudes.
McGregor also explores and complicates claims about reading itself. McGregor describes a popular heuristic about reading: it makes people better, more sensitive, and more attentive. Sure, but as McGregor claims, "any generalized belief that reading makes people better, or less racist, or more compassionate, falls apart as soon as we look at the political actions of highly literate cultures" (16). Here, McGregor argues that reader responses fail to articulate the potential benefits of a text, but they also fail to account for political, cultural, and historical realities. Do we think, for example, that racists, even in the 21st century, are illiterate? Perhaps one might argue they read the wrong materials, but that line of argumentation obfuscates the larger point about reading as an activity. How many of us have heard or read the following: "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free" or "If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads." These claims are text-neutral. That is to say, they fail to discriminate on the grounds of content. Therefore, these passages make a formal claim about the value of reading.
But as McGregor suggests, feelings are impossible to separate from the act of knowledge production, and any attempt to suggest, either descriptively or prescriptively, that feelings and knowledge operate independently of one another should be received with skepticism. McGregor writes, "Taking sentimental texts seriously becomes an entry point for putting ourselves and our feelings back into our criticism, not dividing them off, but seeing that what moves us is what we should be paying attention to" (27). Notice the emphasis on words like "ourselves," "our," and "us." So many humanities scholars work to remove themselves from their work, but McGregor argues otherwise. We should embrace our place in the scholarship we produce. Otherwise, who cares? Knowledge, scholarship, and criticism are human productions. They are about people, by people, and for people. While complicated, sentimentality reminds "us" of this.
McGregor closes by returning to the question of care, specifically sentimental care. Care is complicated, like so many thoughts, feelings, and activities in a deeply capitalist system. McGregor acknowledges this by writing, "I want to imagine care as tending and as attending to. I want to imagine care as boundaried but limitless, beyond the scarcity logics of capitalism that tell us there isn't enough for everyone, that care for me must come at the cost of care for you. Sometimes care is enacted through refusal...Other times it takes the form of collective action...As I recognize the limitations of the sentimental model of care, with its fantasies of a universal human experience, I can instead see how care is embedded in attention to the granular differences of people's everydays" (119-120). Like sentimentality itself, care is contradictory and dialectical. Care attends to itself as it, at times, attends to others. By eschewing a one-dimensional understanding of care, McGregor recognizes how care, like sentimentality, contains multitudes.
McGregor also explores and complicates claims about reading itself. McGregor describes a popular heuristic about reading: it makes people better, more sensitive, and more attentive. Sure, but as McGregor claims, "any generalized belief that reading makes people better, or less racist, or more compassionate, falls apart as soon as we look at the political actions of highly literate cultures" (16). Here, McGregor argues that reader responses fail to articulate the potential benefits of a text, but they also fail to account for political, cultural, and historical realities. Do we think, for example, that racists, even in the 21st century, are illiterate? Perhaps one might argue they read the wrong materials, but that line of argumentation obfuscates the larger point about reading as an activity. How many of us have heard or read the following: "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free" or "If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads." These claims are text-neutral. That is to say, they fail to discriminate on the grounds of content. Therefore, these passages make a formal claim about the value of reading.
But as McGregor suggests, feelings are impossible to separate from the act of knowledge production, and any attempt to suggest, either descriptively or prescriptively, that feelings and knowledge operate independently of one another should be received with skepticism. McGregor writes, "Taking sentimental texts seriously becomes an entry point for putting ourselves and our feelings back into our criticism, not dividing them off, but seeing that what moves us is what we should be paying attention to" (27). Notice the emphasis on words like "ourselves," "our," and "us." So many humanities scholars work to remove themselves from their work, but McGregor argues otherwise. We should embrace our place in the scholarship we produce. Otherwise, who cares? Knowledge, scholarship, and criticism are human productions. They are about people, by people, and for people. While complicated, sentimentality reminds "us" of this.
McGregor closes by returning to the question of care, specifically sentimental care. Care is complicated, like so many thoughts, feelings, and activities in a deeply capitalist system. McGregor acknowledges this by writing, "I want to imagine care as tending and as attending to. I want to imagine care as boundaried but limitless, beyond the scarcity logics of capitalism that tell us there isn't enough for everyone, that care for me must come at the cost of care for you. Sometimes care is enacted through refusal...Other times it takes the form of collective action...As I recognize the limitations of the sentimental model of care, with its fantasies of a universal human experience, I can instead see how care is embedded in attention to the granular differences of people's everydays" (119-120). Like sentimentality itself, care is contradictory and dialectical. Care attends to itself as it, at times, attends to others. By eschewing a one-dimensional understanding of care, McGregor recognizes how care, like sentimentality, contains multitudes.
February 28, 2023
This book is a combination of theory and personal reflection, very similar to the writings I did for my Master’s in Gender and Social Justice. So then as you may guess, this audiobook is fairly academic in style and structure, which doesn’t necessarily make for the most accessible reading experience.
That being said, I enjoyed this one! Having been a listener of the author’s podcast Witch, Please, plus, her use of academic lingo in this book that throws me back to my university glory days probably made this book more of a sentimental read for me than it should’ve been. But that’s maybe not such a bad thing, as illustrated by Hannah McGregor’s quote:
“What moves us is what we should be paying attention to. Sentimental stories gave me a theoretical framework for understanding my own life.”
Overall, I appreciated the academic lens on sentimentality and how this has shaped Hannah McGregor’s life, theorizing, and action. I especially enjoyed the last third of the book which focused on McGregor’s podcasting.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is:
- in academics
- a feminist reader
- interested in investigating their own sentimental attachments
A note on the audio: this is narrated by Hannah McGregor herself, which is excellent since she is also a podcaster so has experience with recorded audio. That being said, it did lose a bit of its whimsy and hilarity that I loved from her podcast dialogue. And with so much theory heavy text and references, there were so many pages where I’d prefer to have had a physical copy so I could go back and re-read a bit easier.
Thank you Wilfrid Laurier Press for this giveaway win of this audiobook through Audiobooks.com.
That being said, I enjoyed this one! Having been a listener of the author’s podcast Witch, Please, plus, her use of academic lingo in this book that throws me back to my university glory days probably made this book more of a sentimental read for me than it should’ve been. But that’s maybe not such a bad thing, as illustrated by Hannah McGregor’s quote:
“What moves us is what we should be paying attention to. Sentimental stories gave me a theoretical framework for understanding my own life.”
Overall, I appreciated the academic lens on sentimentality and how this has shaped Hannah McGregor’s life, theorizing, and action. I especially enjoyed the last third of the book which focused on McGregor’s podcasting.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is:
- in academics
- a feminist reader
- interested in investigating their own sentimental attachments
A note on the audio: this is narrated by Hannah McGregor herself, which is excellent since she is also a podcaster so has experience with recorded audio. That being said, it did lose a bit of its whimsy and hilarity that I loved from her podcast dialogue. And with so much theory heavy text and references, there were so many pages where I’d prefer to have had a physical copy so I could go back and re-read a bit easier.
Thank you Wilfrid Laurier Press for this giveaway win of this audiobook through Audiobooks.com.
November 30, 2024
Perplexed. A bit of a delayed review so more the feelings I'm left with than the details. True I've been sleep deprived and that's coloring lots of things but I was just left confused by the book. I appreciate the authors work as a podcaster and wanted to read more. The text is weighed down by what I can only describe as the burden of woke-ism. A 40 minute land acknowledgment, citations and footnotes out my hoo ha, and all of this limiting structure by someone who supposedly left academia to be free of it? At the most basic level I was left wondering what the major point of large sections were. Sentimentality is talked about but never described. Instead we get phrases like "sentimentality is a technology of whiteness" for example. I do hate to be so negative but I think I just have big emotions in response to people making massive overarching claims about an entire ethnicity in any context. As someone with no formal education in "feminism" it certainly got me wondering what actually is feminism. Overall felt like this incredibly intelligent and well-meaning woman has been so incredibly silod into this niche of fringe left wokist beliefs, and has catered her writing so much to not offending that the ideas she is trying to explore are completely suffocated by the language and context. As someone who would love feminist ideas to be more wide read and easily understood it just makes me sad that what I thought would be a down to earth relatable text ended up being so dense and inaccessible even as I felt I was approaching it with such an open mind.
March 7, 2024
Part memoir, part academic theory, this is the story of coming through academia to also become a podcaster, and about podcasts as a tool for feminist scholarship as praxis. Ish. The fluid, shifting nature of these essays means it's a little of all of the above, none in exhaustive detail, but still building engaging arguments about both the limitations and strengths of podcasts and other forms of media that hinge on storymaking and sentimentality. The decision to put footnotes at the end of the text in an audiobook was a poor one, but McGregor's reading is otherwise, unsurprisingly, fantastic. I wish this were ... more; I have an impulse to call it slight, which isn't quite right; more like: there's a lot of threads at play here, but the focus on memoir makes for limited "solutions" (if that's the goal) to the issues it raises, a light touch that leaves many of its subjects in airy limbo and returns the focus back to McGregor's own attempts at radial self-care and feminist work, which makes the ending sudden and a little, well, sentimental, and perforce unsatisfying.
But the actual reading experience is thoughtful, intentional, stimulating, and (although I've only listened to Witch, Please) I would be hard-pressed to not enjoy McGregor having thoughts about the world and her place in it.
But the actual reading experience is thoughtful, intentional, stimulating, and (although I've only listened to Witch, Please) I would be hard-pressed to not enjoy McGregor having thoughts about the world and her place in it.
September 19, 2022
Thanks to NetGalley and Wilfred Laurier University Press for the advanced reader copy.
This week’s headline? Can books change the world?
Why this book? Time for another non-fiction
Which book format? ARC
Primary reading environment? Couch during lunch break
Any preconceived notions? I expect this to be informative
Identify most with? n/a
Three little words? “pluck and imagination”
Goes well with? Mother/daughter relationships
Recommend this to? People with a moral compass
Other cultural accompaniments: https://secretfeministagenda.com/auth...
Grade: 4/5
I leave you with this: “I didn’t know the history of this place, I only knew the stories that had been told to erase that history.”
“But theories are damn seductive, and they can make the raw stuff of experience hurt a whole lot less.”
📚📚📚
Written by a podcaster who wanted to experiment with her writing style by adding her podcaster voice in order to “further push [her] own understanding of what forms scholarly knowledge may take,” and McGregor has certainly done just that. With a blend of ideas, methods, but mostly feelings, McGregor takes us through the personal and the academic (I don’t want to say political, but this book does touch on that in a thought-provoking way in terms of performative feminism versus actually taking action). What I liked about this was how it treated podcasting as a valid form of not just self-expression and entertainment, but being informative about important topics while discovering oneself along the way.
A Sentimental Education is available now.
tw: mentions of death, eating disorders, sexual violence, slight kink shaming
This week’s headline? Can books change the world?
Why this book? Time for another non-fiction
Which book format? ARC
Primary reading environment? Couch during lunch break
Any preconceived notions? I expect this to be informative
Identify most with? n/a
Three little words? “pluck and imagination”
Goes well with? Mother/daughter relationships
Recommend this to? People with a moral compass
Other cultural accompaniments: https://secretfeministagenda.com/auth...
Grade: 4/5
I leave you with this: “I didn’t know the history of this place, I only knew the stories that had been told to erase that history.”
“But theories are damn seductive, and they can make the raw stuff of experience hurt a whole lot less.”
📚📚📚
Written by a podcaster who wanted to experiment with her writing style by adding her podcaster voice in order to “further push [her] own understanding of what forms scholarly knowledge may take,” and McGregor has certainly done just that. With a blend of ideas, methods, but mostly feelings, McGregor takes us through the personal and the academic (I don’t want to say political, but this book does touch on that in a thought-provoking way in terms of performative feminism versus actually taking action). What I liked about this was how it treated podcasting as a valid form of not just self-expression and entertainment, but being informative about important topics while discovering oneself along the way.
A Sentimental Education is available now.
tw: mentions of death, eating disorders, sexual violence, slight kink shaming
August 23, 2025
CWs from author's note: white supremacy, settler colonialism, death of mother, disordered eating, sexual violence.
CW: racism, genocide, fatphobia, cancer, suicide, homophobia, Harry Potter books, JKR, transphobia, ableism, cis-hetero-normativity
I'll admit, I picked this up from the library (virtually as an ebook) primarily to fulfill one of the goodreads summer bookmark challenges, but was excited to find (what I thought was going to be) a short, feminist memoir on the list. Ultimately, I was disappointed because it's much more about the author's podcasts, which I have never listened to. I avoid podcasts as a person with audio processing problems stemming from ADHD. I misinterpreted her "Witch, please" podcast, hoping it was about witchcraft (which I practice), but was disappointed to discover was about the Harry Potter books, of which I am no longer a fan. Also, I found that a lot of the feminist discussion was going over my head, possibly as I am many years out of academic practice. This book was just not for me, unfortunately.
CW: racism, genocide, fatphobia, cancer, suicide, homophobia, Harry Potter books, JKR, transphobia, ableism, cis-hetero-normativity
I'll admit, I picked this up from the library (virtually as an ebook) primarily to fulfill one of the goodreads summer bookmark challenges, but was excited to find (what I thought was going to be) a short, feminist memoir on the list. Ultimately, I was disappointed because it's much more about the author's podcasts, which I have never listened to. I avoid podcasts as a person with audio processing problems stemming from ADHD. I misinterpreted her "Witch, please" podcast, hoping it was about witchcraft (which I practice), but was disappointed to discover was about the Harry Potter books, of which I am no longer a fan. Also, I found that a lot of the feminist discussion was going over my head, possibly as I am many years out of academic practice. This book was just not for me, unfortunately.
September 7, 2025
A Sentimental Education is one of those rare books that feels both above my head and deeply transformative. At times I was frustrated—especially with the heavy literary name-dropping—but more often I was provoked to think in new ways. I loved the balance in her discussion of land acknowledgments, holding both their absurdity and importance, and her reframing of sentimentality as something that can either obscure systemic injustice or propel us toward change. Her insights into girlhood in literature, especially the idea of Anne of Green Gables stretching adolescence before the “sentimental death” of marriage, were striking. Even when I didn’t fully grasp concepts like “intimate publics,” I found myself grateful for the challenge. This is a book that made me ask better questions—about reading, empathy, and care—and left me wanting to audit her classes just to keep learning.
September 26, 2022
This is a must-read for anybody who reads, researches, or teaches. I am a big fan of Hannah McGregor from listening to Witch Please, and I underlined so many of her thoughts as articulations of things that have gotten under my skin lately as I start applying to my first academic jobs and work on my dissertation topic proposal. I was particularly enthralled by her writing on relatability, and the differences between academic writing and podcasting—I have recently been discouraged from including my personal feelings in my academic articles and dissertation, but the truth is, I have bothered to research things this deeply because I love them on a sentimental level or because I care strongly about them, even if they are not my experience. Highly recommend.
August 27, 2025
I want to start off by saying that I really liked what this book has to say. McGregor made me think about a lot of opinions and experiences I have in a different light. I definitely want to dip my toes into more explicitly feminist nonfiction.
However, I just couldn’t connect with the writing style at all, which led to the actual experience of reading this to be downright grueling at times. I recognize that McGregor is an academic first, which is where her writing style was solidified (as she mentions and admits), but I just couldn’t help but feel like I was reading a doctoral thesis. It was just too pedantic for me to be able to enjoy fully.
Great message though. Women in academia should def read
However, I just couldn’t connect with the writing style at all, which led to the actual experience of reading this to be downright grueling at times. I recognize that McGregor is an academic first, which is where her writing style was solidified (as she mentions and admits), but I just couldn’t help but feel like I was reading a doctoral thesis. It was just too pedantic for me to be able to enjoy fully.
Great message though. Women in academia should def read
September 24, 2025
选编还是很聪明的，如果把后三篇放在开始我估计不会看完这本书。后三篇让作者在开始为自己构建起的开放包容非二元的姿态显得像个笑话，一边驳斥白人中心主义一边又非常惊讶于居然那么多人无法进入大学教育系统。虽然能理解用“我原本不关心某事 → 后来某个契机让我意识到它的重要性”这种叙事方式，但哪怕最后引入了黑人女性主义或基层运动的谱系，都不是直接从那些边缘群体的经验出发，而是把它们作为补充或“证据”，来印证自己的“顿悟”…作者声称自己是女权主义无性恋，在最后一篇看到她用spinster这个词自称我觉得很惊讶，如果真的是摆脱了强制异性恋以及非二元的性别认知，为什么会用这么一个以已婚作为常规形态而未婚就专门创造的词汇？前面写的很多其实都蛮拓宽边界而且有新意的，虽然引用了不少trick mirror的内容，但是更打破常规，特别是对于社交媒体的认识和大家在这个时代暴露出的自我，作者的一些讨论都很有趣。以及作者提到千禧一代作者们在写memoir的时候，通过掩盖来创造“透明”的错觉。回过头来看，这本书又何尝不是，通过大量的议题讨论，作者呈现给我们的是折射的自我，像透过一面棱镜。提到的创作的relatable，让我审视了自己这些年改变的阅读习惯，也让我找到了自己在看到很多评论的时候觉得太过扁平的原因。一味从自身出发要求艺术创作和自己产生联系，会让太多创作失掉更多讨论的可能性。这几年我也试着不在作品里寻找共情，而是寻找不同的叙事，已有故事的重述也好，完全实验性的书写也好，都是非常有趣的。其中提到intimate public也是我退了很多群的原因，虽然激活了共享的感情和经验词汇，但也是某种平凡的重复流通，一种虚假的舒适与安全。但这些正向的感受，在看到后三篇的时候让我陷入了怀疑，只能说非常可惜……
September 27, 2025
a thoughtful mix of memoir and feminist theory. While not every essay fully landed for me, I really appreciated the way McGregor shows feminism as something lived—in reading, podcasting, critique, and even in grief. She frames this as “feminist meaning-making,” which is really about how we interpret and create meaning through a feminist lens: asking whose voices are centered, how power shapes experiences, and how care and community can guide the way we understand the world. One key learning that stuck with me is her idea that caring is both necessary and never quite enough, which felt like such an honest and important reflection. Overall, it gave me new ways of thinking about feminism in everyday life, and I’m curious now to check out her podcast
September 1, 2025
2.5 stars
This reads very much as a podcast made into a book. It didn't meet what I was expecting in several ways, mainly the sweeping claims backed by little substance. The most aggressive offense was the notion of being able to like something and still critique it--with using HP as the example. The only critique mentioned was that the author is a transphobe; with an articulation that the text is redeemable for it's "empathy". WTF? The author's racism, fatphobia, and homophobia are all over the text.
I also need to state with my full chest a "friend" that suggests you should be gay because of what you look like [in a fat body in this case]-- IS NOT YOUR FRIEND.
This reads very much as a podcast made into a book. It didn't meet what I was expecting in several ways, mainly the sweeping claims backed by little substance. The most aggressive offense was the notion of being able to like something and still critique it--with using HP as the example. The only critique mentioned was that the author is a transphobe; with an articulation that the text is redeemable for it's "empathy". WTF? The author's racism, fatphobia, and homophobia are all over the text.
I also need to state with my full chest a "friend" that suggests you should be gay because of what you look like [in a fat body in this case]-- IS NOT YOUR FRIEND.
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