Rebecca Solnit
Author of Men Explain Things to Me {updated edition}
About the Author
Rebecca Solnit writes extensively on photography and landscape. She is a contributing editor to Art Issues and Creative Camera and is the author of three books. She has contributed essays to several museum catalogues including Crimes and Splendors: The Desert Cantos of Richard Misrach and the show more Whitney Museum's Beat Culture and the New America. She was a 1993 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Rebecca Solnit
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (2009) 1,009 copies, 33 reviews
Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility (2023) — Editor — 174 copies, 4 reviews
Solnit, Rebecca Archive 1 copy
Associated Works
Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America (2017) — Contributor — 250 copies, 10 reviews
Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation (2017) — Contributor — 227 copies, 7 reviews
Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays (2022) — Introduction, some editions — 190 copies, 4 reviews
Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet (2018) — Foreword, some editions — 131 copies, 3 reviews
These United States: Original Essays by Leading American Writers on Their State within the Union by John Leonard (1995) — Contributor — 101 copies, 1 review
Celebrate People's History! The Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution (2010) — Foreword, some editions — 81 copies, 1 review
Trust Kids!: Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy (2022) — Contributor — 75 copies
After the Ruins, 1906 and 2006: Rephotographing the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire (2006) — Contributor — 61 copies
No Ordinary Land: Encounters in a Changing Environment (2005) — Introduction, some editions — 37 copies
The World According to Tomdispatch: America In The New Age of Empire (2008) — Contributor — 31 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Solnit, Rebecca
- Birthdate
- 1961-06-24
- Gender
- female
- Education
- San Francisco State University (B.A.)
University of California, Berkeley (M.A.|1984) - Occupations
- essayist
memoirist
author - Organizations
- The Guardian (contributor)
Third Act (advisor) - Awards and honors
- Lannan Literary Award (Nonfiction ∙ 2003)
National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism (2004)
Sally Hacker Prize (2004)
Mark Lynton History Prize (2004)
Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction (2018)
Windham-Campbell Prize (Nonfiction, 2019) (show all 7)
Corlis Benefideo Award for Imaginative Cartography (2015) - Agent
- Frances Coady
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA
- Places of residence
- San Francisco, California, USA
Novato, California, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- California, USA
Members
Reviews
I've never read a book where I was so tempted to underline passages or add comments in the margin - in fact, I've never been tempted to do this - until now. Resisting, my book is now bristling with post-it notes. Solnit touches on many topics: climate change, women's suffrage, art, social conditions, nature, all in some way connected to Orwell, his roses, politics, and opinions. This is an excellent celebration of Orwell who took pleasure in the simple life while fighting against the big show more things. Solnit has reminded the reader that there is more to Orwell than his handful of novels but that his substantial essays, diaries, letters, and reviews provide a bigger picture from which she has drawn for this articulate book.
Includes an index, something I always appreciate.
Personal note: the first time I heard about George Orwell was when I was in my early teens. My father, in defence of my question about why he was buying roses from Woolworth's, which seemed to me to be a strange source, told me about Orwell's article in Tribune and again in the essay A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray where he praised Woolworth's roses for price and success. show less
Includes an index, something I always appreciate.
Personal note: the first time I heard about George Orwell was when I was in my early teens. My father, in defence of my question about why he was buying roses from Woolworth's, which seemed to me to be a strange source, told me about Orwell's article in Tribune and again in the essay A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray where he praised Woolworth's roses for price and success. show less
I tweeted* the other day that sometimes reading is sheer bliss, and linked to my Sensational Snippets from Rebecca Solnit's Orwell's Roses. It's been a while since I interrupted The Spouse's to read an excerpt from a book, but I'll start this review by quoting the most recent, from Solnit's chapter about visiting a rose factory in Colombia:
Isn't that just brilliant? Solnit's book about Orwell (and other things) is full of striking turns of phrases like that. Quite apart from the originality of her ideas and her passionate commitment to important values, it makes for intense pleasure in the reading.
It's an unconventional biography. That chapter about the industrialisation and corporatisation of floristry is relevant to a book about Orwell and his writing because Orwell, from the time he penned The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937, was hyper-alert to the ugliness that lay behind Britain's prosperity, international status, military power and its empire. In a biography that disposes of the dour prophet of doom and introduces Orwell as a man who loved beauty and the joys of the garden, Solnit shows how we in the 21st century are just as oblivious to the ugliness behind much of our comfortable lives, just as Britons were oblivious to the human and environmental costs of producing coal. (Reviewer Gaby Hinsliff at The Guardian took exception to this chapter, but I thought it was wonderful.)
It is, however, indicative of Solnit's discursive style. If, like me, you have a mind like a butterfly, flitting from one loosely related topic to another, with ideas fertilised apparently at random, you will love it. I enjoyed reading chapters which seemed to have nothing to do with anything and then finding that — apart from being interesting in their own right — actually they illuminated some aspect of Orwell's life and writing in ways I hadn't thought of before.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/08/26/orwells-roses-2021-by-rebecca-solnit/ show less
The workers have a slogan, "The lovers get the roses, but we workers get the thorns." A rose is beautiful, but a greenhouse with thousands upon thousandsshow more
of roses, a place producing millions per year, with stems and leaves and petals all strewn on the floor and heaped together in bins as byproduct, was not. Insofar as these roses were beautiful, their beauty was meant to occur somewhere else, for someone else, a continent away. Some of them were grown in paper bags to protect the petals from light, and we saw a row of rosebushes whose stems culminated in brown sacks, like divas backstage with their hair in curlers. (p.202, underlining mine.)
Isn't that just brilliant? Solnit's book about Orwell (and other things) is full of striking turns of phrases like that. Quite apart from the originality of her ideas and her passionate commitment to important values, it makes for intense pleasure in the reading.
It's an unconventional biography. That chapter about the industrialisation and corporatisation of floristry is relevant to a book about Orwell and his writing because Orwell, from the time he penned The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937, was hyper-alert to the ugliness that lay behind Britain's prosperity, international status, military power and its empire. In a biography that disposes of the dour prophet of doom and introduces Orwell as a man who loved beauty and the joys of the garden, Solnit shows how we in the 21st century are just as oblivious to the ugliness behind much of our comfortable lives, just as Britons were oblivious to the human and environmental costs of producing coal. (Reviewer Gaby Hinsliff at The Guardian took exception to this chapter, but I thought it was wonderful.)
It is, however, indicative of Solnit's discursive style. If, like me, you have a mind like a butterfly, flitting from one loosely related topic to another, with ideas fertilised apparently at random, you will love it. I enjoyed reading chapters which seemed to have nothing to do with anything and then finding that — apart from being interesting in their own right — actually they illuminated some aspect of Orwell's life and writing in ways I hadn't thought of before.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/08/26/orwells-roses-2021-by-rebecca-solnit/ show less
Given recent political events, it seemed a good time to revisit Rebecca Solnit. I'd read the opening essay in Men Explain Things to Me and a few other articles by her and she has an ability to cut to the heart of an issue and clearly explain what is going on. The title essay begins with her encounter of an older, well-to-do man at a party who, upon hearing she'd written a book about a fairly esoteric subject, proceeded to lecture her about a very important book on the subject that had just show more been published. When she was finally able to interrupt him long enough to communicate that the book he was telling her about was indeed the book she had written, and which he had only read a review of, his reaction was not to apologize and ask her questions, but to continue his lecture. While this is a particularly blatant example of the phenomenon she discusses in this essay, it's something that happens more often than one would suspect. Her initial essay on the subject led to other women working in academia to also talk about their similar experiences, and then to the coining of the term "mansplaining." Solnit has, as a result, become a polarizing figure.
Which is a shame, because her writing is balanced and relentlessly fair. There's no broad sweeps being made at any group. She's interested in how the conversation surrounding equality has moved forward, and there's no doubt, she says, that we have moved forward, and compares where we were as a society in the 1970s when it came to racial, sexual or gender equality. We are still working towards a more just society, but what we're fighting for has changed.
Solnit is an academic and historian and so her essays are serious and well-reasoned. She's interested in the environment and anti-war activism as well. Men Explain Things To Me is a hopeful and determined look at our progress toward a more just world, with a clear-eyed look at where we are now and why it matters. show less
Which is a shame, because her writing is balanced and relentlessly fair. There's no broad sweeps being made at any group. She's interested in how the conversation surrounding equality has moved forward, and there's no doubt, she says, that we have moved forward, and compares where we were as a society in the 1970s when it came to racial, sexual or gender equality. We are still working towards a more just society, but what we're fighting for has changed.
Solnit is an academic and historian and so her essays are serious and well-reasoned. She's interested in the environment and anti-war activism as well. Men Explain Things To Me is a hopeful and determined look at our progress toward a more just world, with a clear-eyed look at where we are now and why it matters. show less
In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit examines the differing ideas of being lost and how one finds one’s place in the world. The book is part memoir and part philosophy, examining moments in her own life as well as themes from historical and philosophical thought. She writes, “The question then is how to get lost. Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction, and somewhere in the terra incognita in between lies a life of discovery” show more (pg. 14). Furthermore, “Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing” (pg. 22).
Discussing the work of a historian, Solnit writes, “It could be best served not by claiming an authoritative and disinterested relationship to the facts, but by disclosing your own desires and agendas, for truth lies not only in incidents but in hopes and needs” (pg. 58). In her analysis of what it means to get lost and how we pass on these ideas, Solnit examines colonial captive narratives from Spanish North America and Puritan New England, dissecting both the loneliness their authors experienced as outsiders on a different continent and how readers interpreted the stories once they entered print. She writes, “Eduardo Galeano notes that America was conquered, but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place in our time. This suggests that most European-Americans remained lost over the centuries, lost not in practical terms but in the more profound sense of apprehending where they truly were, of caring what the history of the place was and its nature” (pg. 66). This, according to Solnit, led colonists to impose an outside system upon the New World, importing names, foodways, and more to recreate the places they left and alleviate a feeling of being lost.
Discussing both the cultural drive to discover lost worlds and the loss of those places as maps filled in, Solnit writes, “Into the nineteenth century, people continued to seek places that had been made up out of imagination and desire. It had already been discovered that the magical Cibola, whose name appears above New Mexico in the old maps, was only Kansas, that Paradise was not located in Central America as Columbus thought, once he admitted that the topographies he had bumped into were not Asia. But even in the 1840s John C. Fremont claimed to be looking for the Buenaventura River that led from the Great Salt Lake into the Pacific” (pg. 166). Though she doesn’t discuss them, one can apply Solnit’s paradigm to the International Polar Year and the later International Geophysical Year, which helped to fill in the rest of the map and extend it out into space through events like the launches of Sputnik and Explorer 1.
Solnit concludes, “It is in the nature of things to be lost and not otherwise” (pg. 185). She gives the examples of lost languages, lost histories, and lost places. We know a great deal about Shakespeare’s plays but little about the author. We can see and study the Nazca lines, but don’t know their purpose or much about those who made them. Of her own historical writing, Solnit finds two purposes: “one was the historian’s yearning to hang onto everything, write everything down, to try to keep everything from slipping away, and the historian’s joy in retrieving out of archives and interviews what was almost forgotten, almost out of reach forever. But the other stream is the common experience that too many things are vanishing without replacement in our time” (pg. 188). show less
Discussing the work of a historian, Solnit writes, “It could be best served not by claiming an authoritative and disinterested relationship to the facts, but by disclosing your own desires and agendas, for truth lies not only in incidents but in hopes and needs” (pg. 58). In her analysis of what it means to get lost and how we pass on these ideas, Solnit examines colonial captive narratives from Spanish North America and Puritan New England, dissecting both the loneliness their authors experienced as outsiders on a different continent and how readers interpreted the stories once they entered print. She writes, “Eduardo Galeano notes that America was conquered, but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place in our time. This suggests that most European-Americans remained lost over the centuries, lost not in practical terms but in the more profound sense of apprehending where they truly were, of caring what the history of the place was and its nature” (pg. 66). This, according to Solnit, led colonists to impose an outside system upon the New World, importing names, foodways, and more to recreate the places they left and alleviate a feeling of being lost.
Discussing both the cultural drive to discover lost worlds and the loss of those places as maps filled in, Solnit writes, “Into the nineteenth century, people continued to seek places that had been made up out of imagination and desire. It had already been discovered that the magical Cibola, whose name appears above New Mexico in the old maps, was only Kansas, that Paradise was not located in Central America as Columbus thought, once he admitted that the topographies he had bumped into were not Asia. But even in the 1840s John C. Fremont claimed to be looking for the Buenaventura River that led from the Great Salt Lake into the Pacific” (pg. 166). Though she doesn’t discuss them, one can apply Solnit’s paradigm to the International Polar Year and the later International Geophysical Year, which helped to fill in the rest of the map and extend it out into space through events like the launches of Sputnik and Explorer 1.
Solnit concludes, “It is in the nature of things to be lost and not otherwise” (pg. 185). She gives the examples of lost languages, lost histories, and lost places. We know a great deal about Shakespeare’s plays but little about the author. We can see and study the Nazca lines, but don’t know their purpose or much about those who made them. Of her own historical writing, Solnit finds two purposes: “one was the historian’s yearning to hang onto everything, write everything down, to try to keep everything from slipping away, and the historian’s joy in retrieving out of archives and interviews what was almost forgotten, almost out of reach forever. But the other stream is the common experience that too many things are vanishing without replacement in our time” (pg. 188). show less
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Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 47
- Also by
- 32
- Members
- 17,046
- Popularity
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- Rating
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- Reviews
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- ISBNs
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