Kathy’s Reviews > This Has Always Been a War > Status Update

“I was so lucky, through all this, to have been blessed with so many good friends who loved me and stood with me through so much, even when I did not deserve it. I was not a good friend at that time, selfish and needy. … I would like to write that it was this great love that saved me, but that’s not true. In the hour you are most alone, all the love in the world is not enough.”

“Where are we in your dystopia?” is OBNOXIOUS. The author just isn’t well read enough and treats it as if the authors she wants to read don’t exist. THEY DO. “Margaret Atwood is the mother of feminist dystopia spec fic and the genre isn’t brown enough” HELLO HAVE YOU HEARD OF OCTAVIA BUTLER?

The first four chapters of this were absolute bangers. Chapter five trails off a bit, which is why I stalled out for a while. Anyway: “Every little act of cruelty, whether intentional or not, makes us a little less than we were, than we would have been. It takes something from us.”

“There is nothing more pleasing to me, more vindicating, more enrapturing, more sublime, than a woman who is absolutely fucking *furious.* […] All our lives, we […] are discouraged from anger. Women are supposed to be ‘nurturers’ and ‘caregivers,’ which is man-speak for ‘physically and emotionally available doormat who never says no and always puts other people first, men especially.’”🔥💕💯

“attention, I quickly learned, was an unforgivable rudeness to refuse. It is as if little girls are somehow the common property of everyone but themselves.”

Incisive. Makes me feel less alone/not insane in my perceptions of misogyny.