Talking About a Revolution

by Yassmin Abdel-Magied (Author, Narrator)

With her trademark optimism, sass, boldness and search for answers, across a collection of new and revisited essays, Yassmin Abdel-Magied explores resistance, transformation, and revolution.


This audiobook includes an exclusive conversation between Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Randa Abdel-Fattah.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied started out a dynamic, optimistic, naïve, youthful grass-roots organiser and oil rig worker before she found herself taking on the heft of the Australian political and media establishment, unintentionally.

From her new home in Europe she brings her characteristic warmth, clarity and inquisitive nature to the concepts of 'the private and public self' and 'systems and society' that structure this collection.

In 'The Private and Public Self’, Yassmin shares her passions for cars and cryptocurrency as well as the personal challenges around her activism and leaving Australia. She provides a hearty defence of hobbies and expands on the value and process of carving out a private life and self in an incredibly public-facing world. The concept of identity when one is a 'forever migrant' - by ancestry, and by choice - is interrogated, as is what it means to organise for social justice when you arent sure where you belong.

In 'Systems and Society’, through essays on cultural appropriation, the meaning of citizenship, and inconscious bias, Yassmin charts how her thinking on activism, transformative change and justice has evolved. She brings an abolitionist lens to social justice work and, recalling her days as a young revolutionary, encourages younger generations of activists to decide if it is empowerment they are working towards, or power.

In all these essays, written with the passion, lived-experience and intelligence of someone who wants to improve our world, the concept of revolution, however big or small, is ever-present.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Politics, Audiobook, Feminism, Religion, Society

9 pages, Audiobook

First published May 13, 2022

Reviews

[Yassmin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am biased, of course… ;)

[Salma El-Wardany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ate this up in one sitting. It was a truly brilliant walk-through of our times, the systems we live in and everything we're trying to process.

Yassmin's whip-smart observations and searingly intelligent narrative was so beautifully and simply communicated that I found it incredibly helpful as I try to understand what's going on around me. Of course, Yassmin's classic humour was on every page and it was a great relief to read something that is so complex but so simply done. It takes a huge amount of skill to be able to do that and Yassmin has that in spades.

A must read. A beautiful book.

[Zoë · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook, narrated by the author! Her life story is so interesting! Loved her essays on rejecting the monetization of hobbies as side hustles, the variance of language and identity across times and spaces, and the significance of borders and our complicated relationship with citizenship.

[sim · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Talking About a Revolution by Yassmin Abdel-Magied is unfortunately a disappointing book. I've read the reviews on Goodreads, which are all (the written ones anyway) 5 stars so I understand this is an unpopular opinion. I'd also like to clarify that I don't hold anything against Abdel-Magied. I didn't disagree with her infamous Facebook post, and I don't hold it against her that she left Australia. It's difficult to review such a personal book and separate the author and the work, but I'm going to attempt that.

Firstly, on a technical note, Talking About a Revolution was extremely repetitive. I get it, Abdel-Magied worked on an oil rig, and yes, I know, she left Australia. I swear, this was mentioned every second essay and it got old and tired quite quickly. The book was also divided into two parts, ‘The Private and Public Self’ and 'Systems and Society’ yet the second section felt like more of the same, with 'Systems and Society’ still focusing a lot on Abdel-Magied's private and public self. This double-up also contributed to the repetition.

Personally, I also didn't feel as if this book actually lived up to its name. How is supporting cryptocurrency, which has been dubbed the "currency of the far-right" and terrible for the environment due to the huge amounts of electricity it uses, revolutionary? Strangely enough, Abdel-Magied mentions that it uses a lot of power, yet somehow implies that this is a good thing. It's bizarre. Her numerous essays about being the only woman on an oil rig are also quite tone-deaf. Not once is climate change mentioned in these particular essays, and when she does mention climate change (quite briefly, might I add), she never once connects the dots between her involvement with oil rigs to the devastating impact they have on the environment. The "feminist" themes in these oil rig essays all felt a bit superficial to me. Sure, this one particular woman is "smashing gender roles" in the workplace, but does that really matter when millions of women (and men) in the developing world are suffering from the impacts of climate change? See Pakistan's floods, for instance.

On a lighter note, there were some elements of the book I did like, such as Abdel-Magied's discussion on abolition, which I didn't know much about. I just wish there was more of this rather than the nearly constant talk of oil rigs and Abdel-Magied's personal essays. I would have preferred more talk about theory, which I presumed would be in the 'Systems and Society' section.

Would I recommend this book? Probably not. The mediocre writing and the lack of actual discussion about revolution renders this book redundant. Instead, read books like Climate Change Is Racist: Race, Privilege and the Struggle for Climate Justice, Girl, Woman, Other or Guardians of the Trees: A Journey of Hope Through Healing the Planet: A Memoir. Those are just some that I've read this year, but there are many, many more amazing books that actually talk about revolution.

*Here's two articles about why the cryptocurrency is so terrible. I implore you to not listen to Abdel-Magied in this particular instance. Don't use cryptocurrency.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yassss !!! Preach it yassmin! Loved this!

[Gülsüm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved every bit of it! Yassmin writes so powerfully. As a reader, I felt I was inside her brain, exploring how she thinks and how she looks at things. I practically inhaled the book over a few days. Also, I genuinely don’t get how she masterfully simplifies the most complex topics into the most easy-to-read bundles of words (and doing it so effortlessly).

[Njwayz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purchased this book after seeing Yassmin interviewed at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. The interview was powerful and thought-provoking and funny, and this collection of essays left me feeling the same sense of gratitude for Yassmin’s words, curiosity and intellect. Buy yourself a copy!

[Libby Caldwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yassmin’s thoughts and theories are very readable and easy to follow. I liked the links to her personal life which is missing in a lot of books like this.

I have to say, some of the subjects I found repetitive but there was some really good stuff towards the end.

The only other thing I’d say is it’s pretty frustrating reading about all these issues and then the author never suggesting changes or solutions, especially as she was complaining that lots of people don’t like solving the issues.

Despite that, I still found so much value in these pages. Lots of poignant moments that really made me stop and think as well as references to further reading I’ll be doing.

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

A series of thoughtful and well constructed essays, Yassmin’s collection is insightful, thought-provoking and oh so refreshing. She has a unique voice to offer, and has so carefully considered her opinions on a variety of topics. I listened to this as an audiobook, which was a gift to hear it in Yassmin’s voice. However, I’m considering also buying a hard copy of it to not only provide some revenue for her, but also so I can return to the essays time and time again.

[Jessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. A collection of YAM’s essays from the past decade on topics as diverse as hobbies, feminism, Islam, nascar rallies, career death, life on oil rigs, and a lot more. I listened to it as an audiobook and hearing it in Yassmin’s own voice added a special element. Highly recommended 🙂

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful and charming reflection on what it's like navigating and coming up against the brunt of powerful institutions when you dare step outside their box of acceptability. Tough topics delivered with Yassmin's standard wit and grace.

[T’Layne Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful, thoughtful book. It’s a really interesting collection of essays to inspire, inform, and challenge each of us. Yassmin writes with so much warmth and humour, I recommend this to everyone.

[Elias Jahshan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading ‘Talking About A Revolution’ had all the feels that come with catching up with an old friend. It was lovely to reacquaint myself with some of Yassmin’s previously-published work in this format, and they all spoke so well her newer, equally powerful essays. Her chapter on that strange sense of yearning mixed with loneliness (solastalgia) during the pandemic left me an emotional wreck as it was all too relatable - and was also an epiphany of sorts, as I finally found something that described exactly what I was feeling. This book as a whole proves that Yassmin is one of the brightest, most eloquent writers of our generation.

[Declan Fry]

In 1968, a debate between two of America’s leading intellectuals, Gore Vidal – liberal, wryly patrician – and conservative polemicist William F. Buckley jnr, was broadcast on live television. Presented to coincide with that year’s presidential nominating conventions, each was chosen not merely on the basis of their eloquence, public gravitas, intellect or political persuasion, but in service of a new paradigm: the reactionary versus the enfant terrible, concerned citizen toe-to-toe with intellectual hauteur; the “I’m just thinking out loud here” patsy, and their interlocutor, chosen precisely for lacking in this tendency.

A formula whose genesis each man helped expedite is, by now, dispiritingly familiar – a point and counterpoint of preordained clash replicated across the length and breadth of TV programming, publications and social media eager to tilt continually at windmills.

In the Vidal-Buckley debate’s climax, blows were exchanged – figurative, of course, but not without the threat of their literalisation. Moderator Howard K. Smith concluded the episode generated more “heat than light”. Still, it was a heat whose strength both men, until the day they died, would not fail to feel.

Vidal dubbed Buckley a “crypto-Nazi”; Buckley, reeling, labelled Vidal a “queer”. Buckley reprised the incident by devoting hundreds of words to it in Esquire the following year. He could not help pondering the Talking Heads’ existential conundrum: Well, how did I get here?

Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s reckoning was never as ignominious as all this, although her pain at the Australian media trial by fire is clear, ongoing and not wholly incomparable. The psychic wound stems not from any one event or conservative pundit, but a gradual accumulation of them: first, the global spectacle of walking out on Lionel Shriver during Shriver’s 2016 Brisbane Writers Festival keynote speech; five months later, a stand-off with Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie on Q&A; finally, the tweet – whose contents Abdel-Magied never repeats between these covers – encouraging her Twitter followers, on Anzac Day, to remember Syria, Palestine and the asylum seekers languishing on Manus Island and Nauru.

In the instance of the Lambie incident, much of the consternation was based upon misunderstanding, or the refusal to countenance, Abdel-Magied’s attempt to separate liberationist theologies of Islam from the state-mandated regimes that today predominate – and all in the space, admittedly, of a soundbite. Abdel-Magied is interested in the possibility, or concept, of a progressive Islamic theology, while her critics are focused only on the question of dictator-states instrumentalising religion for craven, selective ends.

Of the 23 essays published here, about four are contemporaneous with L’affaire Yassmin. They are occasionally interrupted by occasional pieces: two on oil rigs (no place for women, apparently, but Abdel-Magied is nothing if not drawn to a challenge), cars (see challenge, above; cf also global warming, Catch that Kid and Paul Walker), hobbies (knitting, cryptocurrency; the latter is called, half-ironically, wholly unconvincingly, revolutionary), and her reactions to the Boris Johnson cabinet, freedom of speech, Black Lives Matter, abolition and the 2019 Sudanese uprising (roughly one piece each).

Much of the writing replicates the rhythm of her viral 2014 TED talk What Does My Headscarf Mean to You? Virality is a metric of success with which Abdel-Magied has formed a weary, if otherwise fairly genial, relationship. At two different points in the collection we are reminded that her TED talk has more than 2.5 million views, a quantifiable measurement, even as its longer-term impact remains trickier to evaluate.

Notwithstanding the impediment, Talking About A Revolution makes an attempt, attributing to it a role in ushering “the idea of ‘unconscious bias’ into mainstream conversations around the globe”. Considering the concept of unconscious bias has been in fairly wide circulation since the advent of the century, this is impressive.

The difference between talking about a revolution and talking about refashioning your CV and HR culture on the TED talk circuit lies somewhere at the head, if not the heart, of this book. If a person accumulates 12 years of board and council experience by the time they are 26 but later comes to decide the concept of corporate liberalism and “empowerment” might neglect to engage with questions of structural inequity and corruption, what should they tell their younger self?

Is “the ridiculously detrimental lack of diversity in our workforce, particularly in areas of influence”, truly “the product of something called unconscious bias”? (If so, colonialism and capital would like to have a word.) If your parents escape mortal danger for dissenting from their government, is it necessarily germane to compare those travails – among whose dangers lay state retribution – to online harassment? Both can endanger life, yes; but equating the two feels disingenuous.

Notwithstanding this, there is a through line between her parents’ activism, their subsequent migration and Abdel-Magied’s exile. Both acts stemmed largely from the question of what institutions owe to those who otherwise help to support them, how far the bonds of loyalty and protection between state and citizen can reach. As Abdel-Magied has learnt – in the case of the ABC, DFAT, and the Australian government – the answer is: not very far.

Abdel-Magied is many things: metisse in France, black in London, brown in Australia. So it is odd to see her devote so much of Talking About A Revolution to the least interesting thing about her, or what she might wish to say – namely, what others wish to say about her.

Read on:
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/...

[Stella ☆Paper Wings☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Yassmin Abdel-Magied's substack, and I've really appreciated her work educating people on Sudan recently, so I decided it was time I read one of her books! This is truly the collection of her thoughts, from more personal memoir-style essays to pretty clever pop culture political theory.

I've been reading a lot of dense theory books lately, partly driven by my desire to expand my knowledge to more and more radical and nuanced perspectives. But that does mean that a lot of the stuff I'm reading takes time to get through and process, and that when I review it, I might not necessarily recommend it to the average reader.

This book is honestly a fantastic entry point to talking about intersectional feminism, Islam, and abolitionism through the lens of one person's experience. By no means should you read this book and then stop, but it's one of the few nonfiction books I've read recently that I actually got through with relative ease and I can comfortably recommend to just about anybody, especially people interested in expanding their feminism.

(For this audience I'd also highly recommend Hood Feminism and Ain't I a Woman and then maybe Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement to take you to the next level.) There's also a lot of moments where she touches on abolitionism, though you definitely could go further on it. (For next steps here I'd recommend The New Jim Crow and Are Prisons Obsolete?)

I'm currently in the middle of Joy James' In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities which is a fantastic book that's consistently blowing my mind. But this book was a fantastic break from that, bringing me back to the basics and reminding me of my radical roots, which are the same as Yassmin's in a lot of ways.

I do wish these essays were a bit more cohesive, and some of them were too focused on engineering-related topics for me (which is Yassmin's academic background), but if you're somebody who just likes reading books of essays, she has a great voice and is very engaging.

[David Lenton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was first introduced to the work of Sudanese-Australian Yassmin Abdel-Magied when she was living and working as a political/cultural commentator (amongst other things) in Australia. I read her work online; read her autobiography, 'Yassmin's Story: Who Do You Think I Am?', and also followed her on social media before and after the (completely wild and unnecessary) media uproar that ultimately led to her deciding to leave Australia for the UK. I mention this not to brag (lol), but because it provides some important context for this review.

'Talking about a Revolution' engages with the idea that the personal is political, combining stories from Yassmin's own life as a young Muslim girl and woman who just so happened to challenge a lot of notions about what it means to be someone with those identifiers with discussions of political organising, the role of social media in providing (and destroying) opportunities for communication, what life is like after being 'cancelled' by the most vocal parts of a country, and a range of other topics relevant topics.

If you're new to Abdel-Magied, or at least don't know much about her history, then this is going to be a much fresher read (or listen, in my case) for you than it was for me. Already having some background knowledge as I did, a lot of the first half of this book was touching on themes that had already been explored in her autobiography. Despite enjoying her narration of the audiobook, I did find myself fading in and out at times, as things I already knew about were being rehashed in varying degrees of detail. This became less of an issue for me post-move to the UK, though.

I do think there's more done to highlight issues that exist rather than necessarily proposing ways to address/fix those issues, so I'd recommend this as an entry-point into broader discussions of political activism rather than an end-point. The blend of the personal and political makes for an engaging read, which also helps in introducing some more political and cultural topics that could be picked up and further expanded upon in some more dense follow-up reading.

[Giulia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely do you pick up a book and come away with such a wealth of new ideas spanning interesting and diverse topics, paired with fresh insights into subjects already familiar. I wasn't sure what to expect from reading a collection of essays but being a long term fan of Yassmin Abdel-Magied, I knew I was not going to be disappointed. I thoroughly enjoyed each and overy chapter and know I will revisit them time and again. Her ideas are well considered and her writing honest and engaging. Not only did I learn more about citizenship, crypotcurrency, working on an oil rig, fast cars, Islam, racism, bias and abolition (and so, so much more), I also felt I learned so much about Yassmin: not only about her life and career, but her hopes, dreams, humour, and obsessions. Her personality jumps off the page and is wondrously intelligent, humourous, optimistic and resilient. I will happily throw this book into the arms of anyone who walks in my vicinity. An excellent read.

[Natasha (jouljet) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of essays from Sudanese-Australian exile, living in Paris and London, after a seven word social media post had her run out of the country by the vicious and right winged mainstream media, threatened by the truth, and the gumption of a brown hijab-wearing, Muslim woman.

Discussion ranging from #BlackLivesMatter movements, abolition, and racially biased COVID-19 lockdowns. To being a female engineer on a male-dominated oil rig, to being a petrol-head yearning to work in the Formula 1 space. Analysing Australian and UK political landscapes, to sharing her horror at the uprising in Sudan.

A frank and honest collection, as only Yassmin can be, she's funny and self-deprecating. She delves into racial, gendered inequality, and the significant events and discourse of the past decade.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. The writing was beautiful at times and it was clearly very well researched and intentional but it was a bit tiring at times and certain elements were a bit repetitive. Overall, I did enjoy the section on free speech the most. It really was thought provoking and I recall just sitting on it for a while

[Katherine Fraser · Rating 4 out of 5]

such a good collection of writing, taught me a lot about things i hadnt really looked into or thought about too much. abdel-magied's insight comes through strong. i also love writing that relates the personal and the systemic, always more potent

[Elle · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of essays. Yassmin is an interesting public figure that has survived the Australian media and populace, unsurprising that she has left our shores to find peace. I enjoyed reading her Brisbane stories.

[Mrjules · Rating 4 out of 5]

I especially enjoyed part 2 of this book. Yassmin writes with passion and empathy about important topics that I personally, and other young people would be grappling with. It's also a plus that I now actually understand what cryprocurrency is. 4.5.

[Maia Cavendish · Rating 5 out of 5]

can’t recommend this enough!

[Alli_aye · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exceptional author, a good collection.
Having read her autobiography and listened to her speak, I was aware of some of the stories and the audio read by author was really well done

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Articulate.
Sharp.
Observant
Insightful
.......collection of essays.{title borrowed from a Tracey chapman song}

[Steven Kolber · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting compilation of essays, the quality and writing improves across the papers.

[Melissa Stebbins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated Yassmin's perspective on life as a migrant and Muslim in Australian society and also her reflections on her experiences working in male-dominated settings.

[Beth Reeve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really important book that discusses resistance in all its forms - from knitting to abolishing prisons.

[Bec · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I fell into the pattern of so many female engineers before me, I did what I could survive"

[Reem Salman]

I'm mindblown...