The Change: the must read debut feminist fiction novel and crime thriller of 2022!

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Learning to express the pain I've felt without shame, and wield my anger not against myself (or others) but against patriarchal society, isn't something that can change overnight. But bell hooks' wisdom has opened up new possibilities for me and for all men, and it's up to us to take the initiative, educate ourselves, get in touch with our own emotions, our own human-ness and connection to others in a non-dominating way, and work together in love and resistance. We don't just owe it to women, trans and genderqueer folks, we owe it to ourselves. When the three women find the body of an innocent 17-year-old discarded like trash, they come together to use their powers to serve women whom the justice system has failed. I hope The Change finds a large audience. I for one will be recommending it, and have already been telling people about it as I was in the midst of reading it.

Die fehlenden Quellen und Falschaussagen sind wohl das, was mich am meisten an diesem Buch gestört hat. Oft hat man das Gefühl, dass hooks einfach irgendwas raushaut, was ihr gerade gut in den Kram passt und ihr Narrativ fördert. Damit macht sie sich natürlich auch für Kritiker*innen angreifbar, die ihr genau dies vorwerfen können.

Harriett shrugged. “Good, bad—they’re mostly meaningless concepts. Baker is a pest,” she said. “I should have done worse. I guess I always still could.” But the book raises points that I just have never seen anywhere else, and I've read a lot of feminist writing. How can one of the biggest problems in human history be so ignored, so swept under the rug? I always turn to bell hooks when I’m looking for internal peace around certain topics and she always offers up the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes we’re able to deal and sometimes we’re not, hence the stopping and starting.

Es gibt aber auch deutliche steilere und potentiell gefährlichere Thesen, die hooks unbelegt einfach so raushaut: "Bilder von männlicher Gewalt und Dominanz in den Massenmedien führen zu gewalttätigen Jungen, die wahllos morden." Das wage ich zu bezweifeln, da es vor allem im Zusammenhang mit Ego-Shootern und Amokläufen viele Studien gibt, die belegen, dass es keinen Zusammenhang zwischen medialen Darstellungen von Gewalt und dem realen Akt des Tötens gibt. Es ist einfach schade, dass hooks solche Aussagen macht und dann nicht weiter auf sie eingeht.That all being said, I do have a concern regarding The Change‘s effect on the series as a whole. For example, in “The Venetian Dialectic”, Venice survived the Change, one of the few major cities to do so. Granted they accomplished this goal by expelling every non-Venetian from the city to face certain death, but they survived and at the time of the story are quite prosperous. Yet I don’t remember any mention of Venice during any of the times Stirling referenced Italy and the surrounding areas. Its possible he has somewhere else, but it concerns me that the world has become a bit more crowded. For boys this issue of control begins with the mother’s response to his penis; usually she does not like it and she does not know what to do with it. Her discomfort with his penis communicates that there is something inherently wrong with it.” (p. 80) Really? Seriously? What basis is there for making this claim? Plenty of children in the past grew up on farms and knew quite a bit about the sexual habits of a range of animals. Plenty of children grew up in one-room cabins or tenements; if anyone in the household had sex, everyone would have been in the room for it. People were born, got ill, convalesced, died, and were prepared for burial AT HOME, and kids would have seen bodies in such states.