Summary

Solnit sees 2014 as a long-awaited breakthrough of “feminist insurrection against male violence,” a year in which cases of violence against women received an extraordinary amount of attention, in some cases leading to change, and women’s voices were heard (69). In a society in which victims have long been ignored, blamed, or silenced despite the overwhelming extent and frequency of violence, one important question which the watershed of 2014 poses is why it took so long.

She compares this sudden eruption of longstanding tensions with the outbreak of the Arab Spring with the suicide of Mohammed Bouazizi and the protests against racism sparked by the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. As she puts it: “It’s the breaking loose of cumulative tension, the exhaustion of patience, the work of rage at what has been and the hope that there can be, must...