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Cargando... The Red Word (edición 2018)por Sarah Henstra (Autor)
Información de la obraThe Red Word por Sarah Henstra
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Sarah Henstra, despite most marketing blurbs I've read, is not merely a fresh young voice graduating from her YA novel Mad Miss Mimic (2015) to her debut adult novel The Red Word; she is a PhD-holding professor and graduate practicum director at Toronto's Ryerson University. Her specialization is 20th-century British literature, upon which she has various scholarly publications. She is a board member of the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP), and she was on the steering committee of the 2016 Canadian Writers’ Summit. Already, she is busy with a new work of fiction entitled Dear Little Jo. Yet for all of her pedigree and hard work, Sarah Henstra has delivered a novel that finds trapeze-artist balance between wide accessibility and complexity. With such a sensitive and contentious subject, she somehow manages to avoid satire and kitsch on the one hand, and sterility on the other. The Red Word is gripping, important, and probably not what you expect. Read full review: http://www.chrisviabookreviews.com/2017/11/15/the-red-word-2018/ What a great read! A difficult one, often, with some flaws, but this book tells a brutally honest story and is well written. Karen is a Canadian attending university in the U.S. She's dating a "frat boy" and living in a house with four lesbians who are committed feminists. We watch Karen as she straddles both worlds and as she tries to determine her own truth, her own version of reality. The plot evolves as the roommates decide to tackle the rape culture rampant in the fraternities -- a culture condoned by the university administration. This places not only Karen, but other women in a dangerous situation. As Karen asks, do the right people suffer the consequences of the roommates' actions? Where is the trade-off between truth and justice? These are the powerful issues that make the book such a compelling read, even though the characters (except Karen) all seem almost two-dimensional in their unwavering way of seeing the world. I am anxious to read more by this author. The Red Word is not an easy book to love, let alone read, but that is, I believe, Sarah Henstra‘s intention. After all, the act of rape is violent and “uncomfortable” for victims; discussing rape culture, especially on university campuses should be equally so for all involved. In that, she succeeds because The Red Word is indeed difficult reading. Some of this deliberate discomfort by Ms. Henstra has to do with the structure of the novel. Set up in the Greek style of storytelling, there are no chapter breaks per se. Rather, she structures each section by its Greek description. For example, one section is “deux ex machina” while an earlier section is “dicaeologia” or defense plea. These section headings, which also extend to the separation of the story into books, have the purpose of hinting to readers at what is to come in the story without giving away details. To have such deliberate directions about one’s reading placed directly into the story is disconcerting if only because it is unfamiliar. It is a bit like a stranger handing you a brand-new phone and walking away. You like the phone but don’t quite know what to do with it or why you were handed one. The characters are equally disrupting. They are unabashedly unashamed of their attitudes, behaviors, and intellect, priding themselves on their support of fellow women and the women’s movement in general. In fact, one might easily say that they prefer to use shock and awe as their primary method of proving any point they want to make, whether that be testing one’s acceptance of gay relationships, casual nudity, use of drugs, or their suspicions regarding the preying on women that may or may not occur during frat parties. With Karen’s entrance into Raghurst’s world, Ms. Henstra also uses class differences to further unease, hinting at the idea that feminism and fighting against a rape culture on campus is something about which only the privileged students with no need to work have time to do. Karen, as the only resident of Raghurst to need a job to help pay for things finds herself caught in the middle of both cultures with no desire to improve the situation and a naivete that is a challenge to accept as natural. All of this combines into characters to whom it is difficult to relate and about whom you don’t care in the slightest. While Ms. Henstra deliberately created characters you won’t like and structured her story in a way that can make for awkward reading, she saves her strongest punch of provocativeness for the language she uses throughout the novel. Throughout the story, Ms. Henstra spares no one with her descriptions or choice of scene. Intellectual conversations between the characters are frank and unapologetic in their academic nature. Sex, consensual and otherwise, plays a large role throughout the story, and she depicts it all without embellishment. These are sex scenes, not love-making or some equally gentle euphemism. These are sex at its most primal and basic – the rutting of young adults on the cusp of adulthood, frantic to extract as much pleasure and experience out of college while they can. Some of these scenes you see as an observer, but others are as a participant, which force you to experience the same fear and disgust as the first-person narrator. If you are squeamish, dislike frank sex scenes, or cannot read about rape or rape scenes, this is not the book for you. The thing is though that no matter how uneasy you are reading The Red Word, the point Ms. Henstra is attempting to make is an important one, especially in this #metoo era. As the women of Raghurst turn to ever more shocking ways to draw attention to their fight, Ms. Henstra all but slaps you in the face with the warning that we are our own worst enemy when it comes to the battle of the sexes. Not only is it too easy to lose focus or go too far in the fight for justice, other women are more likely to derail your efforts than men. Women are quicker to judge other women for what they wear and how they act. Women are quicker to side with men if a situation gets out of hand. Fighting a rape culture of any sort can be successful but only when all women work together to drive the changes. Just one woman who does not agree makes the fight that much more difficult. It is a simple message, but the way in which Ms. Henstra establishes it is powerful and provocative making The Red Word a necessary novel for the times in which we live. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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"A smart, dark, and take-no-prisoners look at rape culture and the extremes to which ideology can go, The Red Word is a campus novel like no other. As her sophomore year begins, Karen enters into the back-to-school revelry -- particularly at a fraternity called GBC. When she wakes up one morning on the lawn of Raghurst, a house of radical feminists, she gets a crash course in the state of feminist activism on campus. GBC is notorious, she learns, nicknamed "Gang Bang Central" and a prominent contributor to a list of date rapists compiled by female students. Despite continuing to party there and dating one of the brothers, Karen is equally seduced by the intellectual stimulation and indomitable spirit of the Raghurst women, who surprise her by wanting her as a housemate and recruiting her into the upper-level class of a charismatic feminist mythology scholar they all adore. As Karen finds herself caught between two increasingly polarized camps, ringleader housemate Dyann believes she has hit on the perfect way to expose and bring down the fraternity as a symbol of rape culture -- but the war between the houses will exact a terrible price. The Red Word captures beautifully the feverish binarism of campus politics and the headlong rush of youth toward new friends, lovers, and life-altering ideas. With strains of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot, Alison Lurie''s Truth and Consequences, and Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, Sarah Henstra''s debut adult novel arrives on the wings of furies" -- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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Quotes: “I kept drinking until I couldn’t feel my own skin, until I was wearing my own face strapped around my head.”
“So society sets up these rules and regulations to so-called protect women, but at the same time, everyone kind of expects a woman to be violated at any moment. If she gets raped, or killed, or beaten or whatever, then okay, a rule has been broken, but it’s seen as kind of natural for that to happen because she’s…permeable.” ( )