Am I a Woman? A Skeptic's Guide to Gender
“A compelling, engaging, witty primer on gender—and its uses and misuses—that nicely demystifies all those qualities labeled ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine.’” --Bitch magazine
“Reading Cynthia Eller’s latest book is like having a spirited late-night talk with a close friend. . . . Eller’s conversational tone demystifies the statistics and will leave readers of either gender questioning the roles we so readily assume each day.” --Elle.com
“Why should this [book] matter? Because, Eller writes, only 14 percent of Congress is female; few among the Fortune 500 CEOs are women; a woman’s right to an abortion is still under attack and 683,000 rapes occur each year in the United States.” --Los Angeles Times
“Eller . . . hits the bulls-eye with brilliant, amusing truisms about the sexes.” --Library Journal
”In Am I a Woman? Cynthia Eller takes the reader on a very personal and very readable tour through these ideas, seeing how they apply to her own life and to the lives of the people around her - friends and parents, like herself, watching their young children behave in seemingly 'male' or 'female' ways. Because Eller's great gift as a writer is an extraordinarily clear mind and prose style, she makes these sometimes abstruse ideas, and their implications for our own lives, very clear.”--TSO Online Bookshop
“I invited Cynthia Eller to speak at Bennington College as part of a lecture series titled ‘Radical Critiques.’ Other speakers included Congressman Bernie Sanders, former Weatherman Jeff Jones, and urban critic James Howard Kuntsler. Eller was a sensation. She led the students in a spirited and often hilariously frank discussion of sexual dimorphism, social differentiation, stereotyping, and subjectivity. I concur with the opinion voiced by many of my students that her presentation was the highlight of the series. I can imagine no better or more entertaining introduction to the vital complexities of gender theory.”—Brad Verter, Bennington College
“Cynthia Eller writes with brilliance and humor, and her book enables us to look at womanhood—among other things—with new eyes. As I read this delightful and subversive book, I often felt the ground shifting beneath me. Am I a Woman? contains equal measures of fine scholarship and common sense. One of the best books on gender—or anything—written this year.” —Jennifer Finney Boylan, Professor of Creative Writing and American Literature at Colby College, Maine, and author of She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders
“In this breezy, funny treatise, Eller draws from her own ‘normal’ life to demonstrate the myriad mundane ways in which gender is not cut and dried. Behind this provocative inquiry is her hope to bridge the gap between women who call themselves feminists, and the ones who (believe in dignity, independence, and equality, but . . .) don’t.”—Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, coauthors of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future
"In this warm, informal text, Eller notes the growing instability of the outlines that once confined women. Gender being a performance each individual owes society, if the language isn't clear, spectators feel cheated. but according to Eller, women are now having to ad-lib with tremendous ambivalence around their roles, and resent the mounting pressure for acceptance they feel from an increasingly confused and confusing audience."--Bust
“A compelling, engaging, witty primer on gender—and its uses and misuses—that nicely demystifies all those qualities labeled ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine.’” --Bitch magazine
“Reading Cynthia Eller’s latest book is like having a spirited late-night talk with a close friend. . . . Eller’s conversational tone demystifies the statistics and will leave readers of either gender questioning the roles we so readily assume each day.” --Elle.com
“Why should this [book] matter? Because, Eller writes, only 14 percent of Congress is female; few among the Fortune 500 CEOs are women; a woman’s right to an abortion is still under attack and 683,000 rapes occur each year in the United States.” --Los Angeles Times
“Eller . . . hits the bulls-eye with brilliant, amusing truisms about the sexes.” --Library Journal
”In Am I a Woman? Cynthia Eller takes the reader on a very personal and very readable tour through these ideas, seeing how they apply to her own life and to the lives of the people around her - friends and parents, like herself, watching their young children behave in seemingly 'male' or 'female' ways. Because Eller's great gift as a writer is an extraordinarily clear mind and prose style, she makes these sometimes abstruse ideas, and their implications for our own lives, very clear.”--TSO Online Bookshop
“I invited Cynthia Eller to speak at Bennington College as part of a lecture series titled ‘Radical Critiques.’ Other speakers included Congressman Bernie Sanders, former Weatherman Jeff Jones, and urban critic James Howard Kuntsler. Eller was a sensation. She led the students in a spirited and often hilariously frank discussion of sexual dimorphism, social differentiation, stereotyping, and subjectivity. I concur with the opinion voiced by many of my students that her presentation was the highlight of the series. I can imagine no better or more entertaining introduction to the vital complexities of gender theory.”—Brad Verter, Bennington College
“Cynthia Eller writes with brilliance and humor, and her book enables us to look at womanhood—among other things—with new eyes. As I read this delightful and subversive book, I often felt the ground shifting beneath me. Am I a Woman? contains equal measures of fine scholarship and common sense. One of the best books on gender—or anything—written this year.” —Jennifer Finney Boylan, Professor of Creative Writing and American Literature at Colby College, Maine, and author of She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders
“In this breezy, funny treatise, Eller draws from her own ‘normal’ life to demonstrate the myriad mundane ways in which gender is not cut and dried. Behind this provocative inquiry is her hope to bridge the gap between women who call themselves feminists, and the ones who (believe in dignity, independence, and equality, but . . .) don’t.”—Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, coauthors of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future
"In this warm, informal text, Eller notes the growing instability of the outlines that once confined women. Gender being a performance each individual owes society, if the language isn't clear, spectators feel cheated. but according to Eller, women are now having to ad-lib with tremendous ambivalence around their roles, and resent the mounting pressure for acceptance they feel from an increasingly confused and confusing audience."--Bust
