This is a wonderful introduction to Flora Tristan’s life and work, with English translations of selections of her major works.
A thoughtful quote from George Packer's acceptance speech
The full speech can be read here: The Enemies of Writing: A writer who’s afraid to tell people what they don’t want to hear has chosen the wrong trade.
“[I]f writers are afraid of the sound of their own voice, then honest, clear, original work is not going to flourish, and without it, the politicians and tech moguls and TV demagogues have less to worry about. It doesn’t matter if you hold impeccable views, or which side of the political divide you’re on: Fear breeds self-censorship, and self-censorship is more insidious than the state-imposed kind, because it’s a surer way of killing the impulse to think, which requires an unfettered mind. A writer can still write while hiding from the thought police. But a writer who carries the thought police around in his head, who always feels compelled to ask: Can I say this? Do I have a right? Is my terminology correct? Will my allies get angry? Will it help my enemies? Could it get me ratioed on Twitter?—that writer’s words will soon become lifeless. A writer who’s afraid to tell people what they don’t want to hear has chosen the wrong trade.”
New interview in French for Belgium's Solidaire.org →
This makes me so happy.
Yes, I know I am a big dork, but I can’t help it. I have been so looking forward to this, and even got myself a Chateau Picard T-Shirt from the official fan shop to wear while watching the first episode.
A new review in El Nacional (Cat) by Marta Roqueta →
“Sexe a la URSS” Marta Roqueta, Barcelona. Dimecres, 22 de gener de 2020 (Catalan)
Winter Reading: Momo by Michael Ende
The men in grey are stealing time… A beautiful critique of modernity by the German author of The Never Ending Story.
New review in the January 2020 issue of Kultur Austausch →
“With this book Ghodsee contributes a slice of women’s history on the era before the fall of the Berlin wall. She includes pictures of women on the world stage who are mostly unknown, because the East’s success stories remained untold for too long (to avoid any signs of leniency towards the long-gone unjust regimes). She tells how the Cold War arms race permeated all areas of society, how in 1961 John F. Kennedy laid the legal foundations for the “First Commission on the Status of Women”, which later helped spark the U.S. women’s movement with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. Part of the reason the USA bid farewell to the ideal of the woman at the stove as the “American Way of Life” was the Russian woman Valentina Tereshkova, who was the first woman in space to orbit the earth 48 times. According to the book, it was feared that socialist states had an advantage in the development of new technologies because they had twice as many bright minds - in Russia women were better educated and the brightest were recruited to work in science.”
Also available in German
Review of Second World, Second Sex →
“[W]e ought to acknowledge the contradictions and complexities of the formerly socialist world, rather than shallowly disregarding it as a monolith of un-freedom. Second World, Second Sex challenges the conventional wisdom of three-wave feminist history by documenting the critical interventions made by these [socialist] women in service of a vision of women’s equality that was always already intersectional, and that refused to separate women’s issues from questions of neo-colonialism, racism, and economic re-distribution. Ghodsee’s book offers a helpful and instructive reminder of socialist feminism’s rich and global history of organization and action, a history that was created and fought for in large part by alliances of women from non-aligned and socialist countries during the Cold War, and whose memory is all too often erased from Western histories of the women’s movement during the “American century.””
По-добър ли е бил сексът при социализма? →
Дали при социализма жените са имали по-добър секс? Да, убедена е американската етнографка Кристен Годсий. В своята книга, излязла през 2019 в Германия, тя обяснява защо. Годсий задава и други въпроси.
A gorgeous little review in Spain's La Marea (en Español) →
¿Por qué las mujeres follan mejor en el socialismo?
Winter Reading - The Way to Paradise
This is basically a fictionalized double biography of the Utopian Socialist, Flora Tristan, and her grandson, the painter Paul Gaugin by Llosa. I read mostly for the background on Tristan, which he lifted directly from her own diaries and writings.
Reading Bogdanov's Red Star
The grades are all in and the reviews done, so I finally have a little time for reading. I finished this amazing book last night. So prescient!
Some nice acknowledgments in Spain and Belgium
Unless you have friends abroad, it is always hard to know exactly how one’s work is being received when it is translated into another language. My German friends and colleagues have kept me apprised of the reception in Germany, but I was really shocked to learn that that one Belgian website (focus.knack.be) chose the Dutch translation as one of their best books of 2019. And in Spain, the national newspaper El Diario chose my book as one of five “cultural milestones” of 2019.
Junge Welt's Best of 2019 →
I know I am not as radical as they would prefer, but I am deeply grateful to Germany’s junge Welt for including my book on their best of 2019 Non-fiction book list.
Sachbuch-Bestenliste für Januar 2020 →
I am very grateful to the 30 jury members of Die Zeit, ZDF, Deutschlandfunk, and others for choosing the German version of my book for their January non-fiction top ten. I am also so thrilled to be be in the company of Naomi Klein as one of the two women authors included on the list.
Die Jury der Sachbuch-Bestenliste
René Aguigah (Deutschlandfunk Kultur), Peter Arens (ZDF), Susanne Billig (Deutschlandfunk Kultur), Ralph Bollmann (F.A.S.), Stefan Brauburger (ZDF), Alexander Cammann (DIE ZEIT), Gregor Dotzauer (Der Tagesspiegel), Heike Faller (DIE ZEIT), Daniel Fiedler (ZDF), Jenny Friedrich-Freksa (Kulturaustausch), Manuel J. Hartung (DIE ZEIT), Thorsten Jantschek (Deutschlandfunk Kultur), Kim Kindermann (Deutschlandfunk Kultur), Inge Kutter (DIE ZEIT), Hannah Lühmann (DIE WELT), Ijoma Mangold (DIE ZEIT), Tania Martini (taz), Susanne Mayer (DIE ZEIT), Christoph Möllers (HU Berlin), Jutta Person (freie Literaturkritikerin), Bettina von Pfeil (ZDF), Jens-Christian Rabe (Süddeutsche Zeitung), Christian Rabhansl (Deutschlandfunk Kultur), Anne Reidt (ZDF), Anna Riek (ZDF), Stephan Schlak (Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte), Hilal Sezgin (freie Autorin), Catrin Stövesand (Deutschlandfunk), Elisabeth von Thadden (DIE ZEIT), Julia Voss (Leuphana-Uni Lüneburg).
Happy Yuletide!
SO thrilled to be seeing the first showing of The Rise of Skywalker in my neighborhood
Sofia in a can...
I love these little pony cans of Sofia sparkling rosé. What a perfect invention for the holidays. Yum. And they are named after my favorite city in the Balkans.
Quote from the book Love, Marriage and Friendship in the Soviet Union (1984)
“One of the major factors that has contributed to the sexualization of the Soviet mentality today, according to Igor Kon, is ‘the drastic increase in female sexual activity.’ Kon derogates Victorian morality and medical theories that contend that ‘a decent woman in general does not enjoy sex.’ He asserts, referring for lack of Soviet data to Czechoslovakian sources, that the proportion of women from the younger generation who experience orgasm reached 79 percent, against 31 percent among women of the older generation. He further suggests that this sexual awakening of women is a source of conflict between men and women, presumably because now men cannot satisfy the increasing sexual appetites of Soviet women (Kon 1982, p. 118).” Page 55-56
Family Policies in the GDR
A great summary table in Josie McClellan’s book, Love in the Times of Communism.
