Well this was engaging yet wildly depressing, and I highly doubt that was the author’s goal here. It’s one of my favorite nonfic blends of memoir, biography, and women, and it covers philosophy which I never really studied so was intrigued. If people haven’t gotten the memo that academia and the PhD track are wretched, you’ll find out about it here; of course then you get tons of typical misogyny thrown in there for you too. I think it was the defeatism which was depressing for me, but I can also see the need to pivot in life as well; if nothing else I guess it was a relatively honest if not exactly empowering read. ( )

2023, nonfiction, women, women’s literature, feminism, history, philosophy ( )

How to Think Like a Woman by Regan Penaluna is an interesting book as a bit of history and a memoir, and less so as a book on philosophical thought.

I guess I was fortunate to have gone to a school with a less prestigious philosophy department, because during my undergrad in the early 90s I became familiar (though admittedly not very) with three of the four main philosophers Penaluna concentrates on. The male-centric presentation of philosophical thought meant I got little more than a brief introduction, but I didn't have to stumble across them on my own, they were part of my formal study. This doesn't take away from the bigger point, namely that women, as both subjects of study and as members of faculty within philosophy departments, are tremendously underrepresented, even now after decades of trying to fix it.

Just because the recovery work on these philosophers is more for Penaluna than an actual recovery for academia itself doesn't change the role they played in her growth. And that aspect of the book is probably the most interesting, the memoir part. I didn't care for her authorial voice but ending up in journalism partially explains it. The writing itself is fine, I just never really felt the kind of trust one needs in a memoirist to fully appreciate it. Every memoirist does a bit of image construction, just as we all tell our own stories with a bias toward ourselves. I just didn't completely trust the personal parts, even when I had no doubt the infrastructure around her was not designed to support her or any other woman.

I would recommend this to readers who want a memoir and a bit of a history of women in philosophy, particularly those readers who don't have a philosophy background and thus will be unfamiliar with the philosophers covered.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )