The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one.

In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.

This book is a killer. I read it yesterday and was trying to explain to Carolyn why I liked it so much and I still can't articulate it that well but I think the author has a friendly voice, although a truly angry tone, I agree with everything and it didn't leave me optimistic but it didn't leave me in despair.

Carol asked me if the writer was glass half empty or glass half full and honestly, it doesn't matter because the glasses are all owned by men anyway.

But here's the thing: I was reading the book yesterday and then at dinner my brother started on  a rant about people trying to take away guns and all that nonsense. And usually I get mad and either stay quiet and seethe or argue and seethe. Last night I didn't do either of those things. Instead I responded but simply and with clarity. So he knew which buttons to push and started talking about female politicians who didn't even know about the guns they were talking about and bringing up "ghost guns" and shit that doesn't exist.

I responded that male politicians don't have the faintest clue about women's bodies and reproductive organs but they legislate those all the time. And that kind of ignorance didn't seem to bother him at all. So I can't be bothered to care if a politician believes a gun round has 15 or 15,000 bullets. She knows it kills kids in school. That's what matters.

So then he went into his favorite apples and oranges about how smoking and cars and falling out of trees kills people and I gently explained that it's not the same thing at all and mass falling out of trees isn't killing schoolchildren.

I didn't "win" the argument. But for the first time in a long time I wasn't upset or enraged after a disagreement. I felt stronger. And I felt like there was a little more steel because of this book.

Lindy West is a writer and she's funny and she knows famous people and she's fat and she lives in Seattle and I felt like she was me and is you and is all of us. But I did relate A LOT. And again, I felt that reading her brought something more to my voice.

I'll read the book again because it gave me words. It's there to strengthen our voices. Such a good book.