In this it becomes a guidebook to Ahmed’s Feminist Killjoy manifesto/persona having been written alongside her continuing blog, with all the dialogue it produced – much of it comradely, some of it far from even civil. I'm not going to say it's a bad one, as some of what it had to say had so much relevance to recent events in my life that the read was as painful as it was vindicating. On the I love Sara Ahmed and I love everything she says in this book, but it is too loaded with academic jargon and unnecessary and overwrought symbols.

Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed is not a book about feminist theory; rather, it's about the experiences of feminists in real life. She knows, because she has been there: to be unseated by the tables of happiness can be to find yourself in that shadowy place, to find yourself alone, on your own. You are taught to be careful: to be full of care as to become anxious about the potential to be broken. Poyser, we might become clumsy and fall because others are impatient with us, because we are too slow; falling as falling behind.In this chapter, I share some of the experiences that led me to feminism, which I would describe as a bumpy rather than smooth process of coming to register something that is difficult; these experiences provided the raw materials of my feminist instruction.

It is hard labor to recognize sadness and disappointment when you are living a life that is meant to be happy but is not happy, which is meant to be full but feels empty. Anyone at odds with this world—and we all ought to be—owes it to themselves, and to the goal of a better tomorrow, to read this book. In my time at university, I have read a lot of feminist theorists, and learned a lot of really important things about how to view institutionalised sexism and how to view the world in an intersectional light.The documentary takes this form: we are introduced to many of the characters by snapshots attached to stories gathered by a surveillance team; the voice-over introducing each character as a suspect, as if to the police; different individuals who make up the Women’s Army, who are protesting against this new regime. He did not stop; he just carried on cycling as if nothing had happened, as if he had not done anything. Stranger danger is an effective as well as affective script: some bodies become dangerous, others endangered.