Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger, edited by Lilly Dancyger

 

Lynnie 

non-fiction, essays

Anger, specifically women's anger, is often criticized. Women who are vocally angry are called bitch, shrew, shrill, while men who express anger are strong, forceful, and powerful.

The 22 essays in Burn It Down, edited by Lilly Dancyger, are diverse not only in the demographics and culture of their authors but in the experiences they discuss. Essays are about how anger is expressed, or often withheld, based on a variety of inner calculations that most other people, particularly men, never consider. Women who are black, transgender, suffer from invisible illness, are visibly disabled, come from dysfunctional homes, experience sexual and/or physical violence, and even the anger that comes when our bodies enter menopause all experience and embrace the anger of not only their circumstances but of themselves. The inextricable link between anger and sadness, fear, and guilt is discussed throughout the book. 

I recognized myself in many of the essays and the words of these authors. Their essays made me both furious and understood while demonstrating that embracing our anger can be empowering and revelatory. As Leslie Jamison wrote in the essay , Lungs Full of Burning, "This anger isn't about deserving. It's about necessity: what needs to boil us out of bed and billow our dresses, what needs to burn in our voices, glowing and fearsome, fully aware of its own heat."