Interview with Victoria Smith, author of Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women
Victoria Smith, author of Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women recommends a superb selection of books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Victoria's book:
Description from Bookshop.org:
What is about women in their forties and beyond that seems to enrage - almost everyone?
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women
In the last few years, as identity politics have taken hold, middle-aged women have found themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings: the face of bigotry, entitlement and selfishness, to be ignored, pitied or abused.
In Hags, Victoria Smith asks why these women are treated with such active disdain. Each chapter takes a different theme - care work, beauty, violence, political organization, sex - and explores it in relation to middle-aged women's beliefs, bodies, histories and choices. Smith traces the attitudes she describes through history, and explores the very specific reasons why this type of misogyny is so very now. The result is a book that is absorbing, insightful, witty and bang on time.
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK £19.00
Bookshop.org US $26.96
Waterstones £17.99
Wordery $19.00
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
Katrine Marçal’s Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? really changed my perspective on how we undervalue the type of care work that is mostly done by women. Once you start to see the way in which our anxieties over acknowledging dependency colour how we decide what does and doesn’t have economic value, you really can’t unsee it. This dependency denialism feeds into so many political decisions that harm not just the most vulnerable but ultimately everyone. It’s also an incredibly accessible, witty read.
Description from Bookshop.org:
Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, believed that our actions stem from self-interest and the world turns because of financial gain. But every night Adam Smith's mother served him his dinner, not out of self-interest but out of love.Today, economics focuses on self-interest and excludes our other motivations. It disregards the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning and cooking and its influence has spread from the market to how we shop, think and date.
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner? A Story About Women and Economics
In this engaging takedown of the economics that has failed us, Katrine Marçal journeys from Adam Smith's dinner table to the recent financial crisis and shows us how different, how much better, things could be.
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK £8.54
Waterstones £8.99
Wordery $9.99
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
Cancelled, by Umut Özkirimli, which explores the politics of outrage and intolerance on the left. It’s written from a left-wing perspective, applying an intersectional feminist analysis in places and drawing comparisons with right-wing authoritarianism. I’ve felt for some time that “cancel culture” – or whatever one wants to call it – is real and disturbing, but this book made me question my own complicity in it. I think a lot of us have a tendency, if we’ve not openly embraced some form of radicalism, to regard ourselves as a nuanced golden mean as far as our own politics are concerned. This book shook me out of my own complacency (a little!) in relation to those I’ve often viewed as “the baddies”.
Description from Waterstones:
Right now, someone, somewhere is being cancelled. Off-the-cuff tweets or "harmless" office banter have the potential to wreck lives. The Left condemns the Right and the bigotry of the old elites. The Right complains about brain-dead political correctness. In reality, both sides are colluding in a reactionary politics that is as self-defeating as it is divisive. Can the Left escape this extremism and stay true to the progressive ideals it once professed?
(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Cancelled: The Left Way Back from Woke
In this provocative book, Umut OEzkirimli reveals how the Left has been sucked into a spiral of toxic hatred and outrage-mongering, retreating from the democratic ideals of freedom and pluralism that it purports to represent. Exploring the similarities between right-wing populism and radical identity politics, he sets out an alternative vision. It is only by focusing on our common humanity and working across differences that the Left will find a constructive and consensual way back from "woke."
Buy On:
Bookshop.org US $18.55
Waterstones £18.55
Wordery $16.49
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
I loved Beverly Cleary’s Ramona series. Cleary had such great insight into that mixture of humiliation and resentment that comes with being a child, constantly undermined by adults who – quite unfairly! – only know more than you because they’re older. All the minor dramas of Ramona’s life are portrayed with such empathy and humour, because small things just aren’t all that small when you’re young.
Description from Bookshop.org:
Whether a long-time fan of Beverly Cleary or a newcomer to her award-winning books for children, this eight-book box set of the complete Ramona Quimby series will be a perfect addition to any bookshelf.
(All links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Complete 8-Book Ramona Collection
Kids everywhere feel connected to Ramona's unique way of looking at the world as she tries to adjust to new teachers, encounters bullies at school, and puts up with her bossy older sister.
The scrapes she gets herself into--like wearing pajamas to school or accidentally making egg yolk shampoo--are funny and heartwarming, and sometimes embarrassing. No matter what, Ramona's lively, curious spirit shines through.
Titles included in set: Beezus and Ramona; Ramona the Pest; Ramona the Brave; Ramona and Her Father; Ramona and Her Mother; Ramona Quimby, Age 8; Ramona Forever; Ramona's World
Buy On:
Easons €30.80
Bookshop.org UK £42.75
Bookshop.org US $59.45
Waterstones £45.00
Wordery $50.63
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
Kindle, because I am always highlighting and making notes, and if I have print I end up scribbling all over it. I do listen to a lot of audiobooks when I’m commuting but these tend to be fiction (otherwise I’d be distracted from driving by wanting to note-take).
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
Blackwells in Oxford – I grew up in a relatively small town, then went to university in Oxford, so Blackwells was the first really large bookshop I could go in whenever I wanted. My mum (a school librarian) and I used to always spend hours there whenever she’d visit. I recently signed some copies of my own book there and thought how much she would have loved it.
Many thanks to Victoria for recommending a superb selection of books! Please don't forget to check out Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Little, Brown Book Group (Hags), Granta Books (Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?), John Wiley and Sons Ltd (Cancelled), HarperCollins Publishers Inc (Ramona Collection).
< Home
