solitary confinements

according to my goodreads account, I read Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own, by Kate Bolick, in March. maybe this is sort of cheating, to review it here today even though I have, technically, written a short review on goodreads already. I'll include that here, because why not?

I liked this incredibly much more than I thought I would. memoirs can be so narrow, but all the history woven through this was wonderfully interesting. all of it adds up to poke holes in my culture's assumptions. and some of my assumptions too. I want all my sisters and girlfriends to read this book.

what else do I have to say? well, one of the references Bolick makes in this memoir/history has stuck with me for months and months. it's the idea of a trap you walk into. a prison you are happy to be trapped in. coincidentally, a similar sort of thought came up around the same time I was reading this, on a RadioLab episode about Korean pop music and celebrity culture. I made a note of the cross-over, knowing I'd eventually blog about it from one angle or another.

Bolick brings it up along with a reference to Doris Lessing's book/lecture called Prisons We Choose To Live Inside, which I have never read and know next to nothing about.

maybe I should go look it up and see for myself what it's about.

the quote Bolick slices in there, though, is quite cool: "all of us, male and female, are 'part of the great comforting illusions and part illusions which every society uses to keep up its confidence in itself' " (p. 14)

that the traps-you-choose idea is still hanging out in my head is probably a sign I haven't thought about it as much as I want to think about it, yet. so many questions. if you know something is a trap, and you walk into it anyway, does it cease to be a trap? or will there always be walls and bars and invisible electric fences around that you somehow won't even notice or won't ever even be able to find? if you are happy in a cage, is that sad, or is it beautiful, or somewhere in between? maybe these are impossible to answer. so dependent on who and where, what's important to them, when, and why.

I'll keep thinking about it.