Cecile Richards (1957–2025)

I am in awe of this woman, but this book actually makes her more real and down to earth to me. She probably has Hillary Clinton’s personal cell phone number and was in the middle of the hell that was November 2016, but the stories she remembers and shares are of unknown people fighting everyday battles. Her grit and tireless energy are inspiring.

Inferior got me revved up, now I need someone to tell me what to do with my ire.

Whatever else it may prove to be, the book is fundamentally a political memoir. As such, it's got that tone they all have: "let me tell you about this remarkable person I met, [full name], and share this enlightening anecdote about this one person that will perfectly illustrate the greater point I am making." I get that it works, but I dislike it in the same way I dislike the way famous women become progressively show more more blonde in middle age.

However, my distaste for the form should not be read as a distaste for Richards. I have nothing but admiration for a woman who spent a significant portion of her life organizing workers in some of the worst conditions in the US. I have very little patience for anyone who denigrates unions, and none whatsoever for those enjoying the benefits of collective bargaining while they complain. Weekends, the forty-hour week, medical insurance: I am well aware that these benefits came at a painfully high cost. And that the USians with the worst pay and most dangerous working conditions are those still without unions.

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Two best things I've gotten from this book so far: in activism all the little stuff makes a great deal of difference, the phone banking, the envelope-stuffing, the bumper stickers and yard signs, and just plain turning up; cumulatively they are significant. And maybe this is one everyone else already knew that I have just missed all these years, but in activism one is going to lose most of the time, but there's no way to predict which one you win, so you have to be there for every one. show less

Excellent book on both Cecile Richards life, and on how to organize an activist group and fight for human rights. Abundant quotable thoughts and opinions. Cecile is aiming for a broader human rights force. The author has many flashbacks to how her mom did things and how she is both following in her footsteps as a leader but also increasing the range of possibilities for women and workers expectations. A very positive approach to activating the general population to do what is best for everyone.

The famed activist tells her life story.

With emphasis on her subject’s early development, Shamir here carefully adapts Richards’ bestselling 2018 memoir (written with Peterson) for a younger crowd, hoping to inspire fledgling activists to follow Richards’ pathbreaking example in introducing social change. The eldest of four and a “classic all-A’s first child…raised by troublemakers,” Richards was born in 1957 in Texas to “rabble-rousing” civil rights lawyer David Richards show more and Ann Richards, who went from “frustrated housewife” to “the first woman elected in her own right as governor of Texas.” Exposed early on to then-segregated Dallas’ “rampant” racism and homophobia and given her progressive pedigree (“we looked like the quintessential upper-middle-class Dallas family. But while other families bowled, we did politics”), Richards richly details the varied calls to action for social causes she’s answered throughout her career. She started “Youth Against Pollution” in seventh grade in Austin and a food co-op while at Brown University, where she “majored in history” but “minored in agitating”; fought to keep religion out of Texas public schools and nationally to register voters; joined Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s staff; and headed Planned Parenthood for 12 years (2006-18)—not to mention getting married and parenting three children along the way. Throughout the memoir, Richards lends solid practical advice for resisting and organizing while offering a fascinating window into contemporary social struggles.

Gritty, accessible, and sure to strike a chord with action-oriented Gen Z (Memoir. 10-18)

-Kirkus Review show less