Just recently Rebecca Solnit gave an interview to the NYT where she stated that “changing the world is more like caregiving than like war”. Here is that video clip. From the intro on YouTube.
“Solnit has written a new book, “The Beginning Comes After the End,” a thematic sequel to her classic “Hope in the Dark.” David Marchese, a host of “The Interview,” says the new book “shines a light on the vibrant world often hidden within our own seemingly gloomier one — a world that has embraced ideas of interconnection, ecological care and political equality.” Solnit and Marchese discuss fighting climate change and much more.” The interview is in two parts where the interviewer comes back specifically to address some climate change questions that he didn’t do justice to the first time.
They do discuss some of her other books too. And remarkably she has a few comments about Prince and the movie Purple Rain. She does talk about the importance of context quite a lot. And that a sense of history is missing.
“Lack of knowledge about the past. Despair and amnesia go hand and hand. And so do hope and memory I think in many cases”.
“And I think there’s a lot of strengths and tendencies, but recognising that the future does not exist really dismantles a lot of defeatism, despair, doomerism, cynicism, which often pretend to know what the future can and can’t be as a way of pretending to a power they don’t really have.”
A few years ago I read one of her books called Men Explain Things to Me from 2014 is a collection of 7 essays. I loved that essay, however some of the others were a bit harder to parse.
The first essay being the most accessible and the most fun. It relates the story of that gives this collection its title and
“I like incidents of that sort, when forces that are so sneaky and hard to point out slither out of the grass and are as obvious as, say an anaconda that’s eaten a cow…”
She claims not to have invented the term mansplaining and is at pains to mention she has been listened to, encouraged and published by men who do not explain things to her but it is still a thing for many women in particular.
In case you don’t get to the collection she was literally at a party where a man explained her own book to her. She had written 7 books by that point.
Essay 2 The Longest War is about the pattern of violence against women. “We have dots so close they are splatters melting in a stain, but hardly anyone connects them or names that stain”. She points out that this violence is everyones problem and its our job to change this. ( Absolutely)
3 Worlds Collide in a Luxury Suite is based on the the Strauss-Kahnn case.
4. What Marriage Equality Really Means and the minefield of gender politics for conservatives. In a nutshell traditional marriage was never equal and so marriage equality is a challenge to that kind of history. She concludes “Marriage equality is a threat : to inequality.”
5. Grandmother Spider – about visibility and seems a bit more abstract that the other essays.
6. Woolfs Darkness is part of a presentation that was given to a Virginia Woolf event. It seems to be a bit opaque to me even after reading it a couple of times. What is very clear is how influential Woolf has been on Solnit’s writing journey and that bears reflection.
The links between Woolf’s writing and Solnit’s work is uncovered at a sort of scaffolding level. It is I believe the key essay in the collection and a pivotal moment. It is about exploring change and hope and the dark and the future all at the same time. It gets a bit existential but in a good way and makes me want to read some Virginian Woolf myself which is a good thing. As she says “A compass by which to get lost.”
7. Pandoras Box and the Volunteer Police force. This one is about the ideas behind feminism and the backlash against it and the continual process in countless ways of moving forward despite the opposition.
Note1: In the latest interview they talk about Roe Vs Wade. And that despite that case being overturned several Catholic countries have passed abortion laws and many of the blue states have changed their laws too. This relates directly to the theme in essay 7 that The long game matters.
Note 2: I borrowed this book from a small country library near Oamaru. I like that the librarian in Oamaru made a note to get the book out and read it herself. Also that the local librarian in Hampden dropped the book off. She was my neighbour and very traditional so I like to think she had a quick read of the book too.
These days Rebecca is still writing “up a storm” in The Guardian and elsewhere. She is on bluesky at @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social and has just started a newsletter called MeditationsInAnEmergency.com.
