NPR Great Read of 2016
Author and Guardian US columnist Jessica Valenti has been leading the national conversation on gender and politics for over a decade. Now, in a darkly funny and bracing memoir, Valenti explores the toll that sexism takes from the every day to the existential.
Sex Object explores the painful, funny, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti’s adolescence and young adulthood in New York City, revealing a much shakier inner life than the confident persona she has cultivated as one of the most recognizable feminists of her generation.
In the tradition of writers like Joan Didion and Mary Karr, this literary memoir is sure to shock those already familiar with Valenti’s work and enthrall those who are just finding it.
“Jessica Valenti is a breath of fresh air. She offers the kind of raw honesty that can feel like a punch in the gut, but leaves you with the warmth of a deep embrace.” — Ms. Magazine
“One of the most visible and successful feminists of her generation.” — Washington Post
“A gutsy young third wave feminist.” — The New York Times
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“Valenti provides an unflinching description of her experiences with sexual assault and harassment, dysfunctional relationships, and objectification…A clear-eyed documentation of the author’s life as a woman in an urban setting where sexual objectification is rampant. While Valenti doesn’t claim that her experience is universal, she convincingly argues that her stories, while personal, are not by any means exceptional.”
— Library Journal
“In Sex Object, Jessica Valenti tells her truth with stunning vulnerability and courage, defying easy answers and daring us to look away. You won’t forget it.”
— Irin Carmon, New York Times bestselling author“A bold and unflinching road map of [Valenti’s] journey to become the woman she is…Powerful.”
— Publishers Weekly“Valenti describes her experiences with candor and seriocomic humor while offering continually entertaining quips, such as, ‘ignoring men—whether romantically or rhetorically—is existential violence to them’…An entertaining and shocking memoir from a leading feminist writer.”
— Booklist“Jessica Valenti is widely known as a feminist leader—with this stunningly brave and often funny memoir, we get a chance to know her as a human being. This is an incredibly powerful book. I can’t recommend it loudly enough.”
— Jill Soloway, writer, producer, creator of the Emmy-winning show TransparentBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Jessica Valenti is the author of multiple books on feminism and politics, and editor of the anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World without Rape. The founder of Feministing.com and a columnist for the Guardian US, her articles have topped the most-read lists at the Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Nation, and the Guardian US. She has also written for the New York Times, Salon, American Prospect, Bitch, Ms. Magazine, and the Toast. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.