Susan Faludi

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARWINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE 2017From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author of Backlash, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father and the larger riddle of identity.In 2004 feminist writer Susan Faludi set out to investigate someone she scarcely knew: her estranged father. Steven Faludi had lived many roles: suburban dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. Living in Hungary after sex reassignment surgery and identifying as 'a complete woman now,' how was this new parent connected to the silent and ultimately violent father who had built his career on the alteration of images?Faludi's struggle to come to grips with her father's metamorphosis takes her across borders - historical, political, religious, sexual - and brings her face to face with the question of the age: is identity something you "choose" or is it the very thing you cannot escape?

Sommaren 2004 började jag utforska en person jag inte kände särskilt väl: min pappa. Projektet tog avstamp i bitterhet, i vreden hos en dotter vars förälder hade försvunnit från hennes liv. Jag var på jakt efter en ful fisk, en slug slingrare som hade smitit från så många saker - ansvar, kärlek, skuld, ånger. Jag förberedde ett åtal, samlade bevis inför en rättegång. Men någonstans på vägen omvandlades åklagaren till vittne.

Så inleder Susan Faludi sin djupgående och berörande undersökning av familj, kärlek och identitet. När hon får reda på att hennes 76-årige pappa - som hon inte haft kontakt med på en kvarts sekel - har genomgått en könskorrigering och flyttat tillbaka till sitt hemland Ungern bestämmer hon sig för att söka upp henne. Kunde det verkligen stämma att den explosive machoman som hon växte upp med numera lever som "en fullständig kvinna" i det land fadern en gång flydde ifrån?

Faludis kamp för att förstå sin fars förvandling tar henne över flera gränser - historiska, politiska, religiösa och sexuella - och ställer henne inför vår tids största fråga: är identitet något du kan välja, eller det enda du inte kan undkomma?

"Mörkrummet är en absolut strålande memoar" - New York Times

"Ms Faludi avslöjar sin fars historia likt handlingen i en deckare." - Wall Street Journal

"(...) ett elegant mästerverk" - The Guardian

"(...) väver samman de olika narrativen med sömlös skicklighet" - Financial Times

"En fascinerande krönika (...)" - Economist

"Övertygande" - Sunday Times

"Välskrivet (...) rörande (...) övertygande" - The Times

"En enastående, unik bok som borde vara oumbärlig läsning för alla som vill undersöka transsexualitetens plats i den samtida kulturen" - Irish Independent

"Det är en gripande och ärlig personlig resa" - Entertainment Weekly

"Mörkrummet är en unik, djupt rörande och vackert skriven bok, full av värme, intelligens och (...) humor" - The Saturday Paper

"En rörande och djupgående undersökning av den mångbottnade kampen för identitet, sammanhang och autenticitet." - Kirkus Reviews

With the publication of Backlash, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Susan Faludi became a world-renowned authority on the gender war, and 'backlash' in the gender sense became a household word. Stiffed picks up where Backlash left off. It seeks to understand male behaviour in order to close the chasm between the sexes, and asks the all important question - why? Why are men so fearful and aggressive in the face of women's independence? Why is a little liberation seen as too much? What is it that men really fear, and why? Where other theorists have looked at The Woman Question, Faludi shows us that we should really focus on The Man Question; at the end of the millennium, it is men who are in crisis. With her sharp historical sense, meticulous documentation and lively, probing reportage, and with a remarkable empathy, she argues that men as well as women are at the mercy of social forces distorting their lives. She takes us on a journey through the modern masculine landscape, with unexpected revelations along the way - from the shuttered shipyards to the mass lay-offs of the defence industries, from Hollywood action heroes to gang-torn streets, from militia men to Promise Keepers, praying husbands to male porn actors.

What has made women unhappy in the last decade? Faludi writes 'is not their equality' - which they don't yet have - but the rising pressure to halt, even worse, women's quest for that equality.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash-an unflinching dissection of the mind of America after 9/11In this most original examination of America's post-9/11 culture, Susan Faludi shines a light on the country's psychological response to the attacks on that terrible day. Turning her acute observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged but bedrock societal drama shot through with baffling contradictions. Why, she asks, did our culture respond to an assault against American global dominance with a frenzied summons to restore "traditional" manhood, marriage, and maternity? Why did we react as if the hijackers had targeted not a commercial and military edifice but the family home and nursery? Why did an attack fueled by hatred of Western emancipation lead us to a regressive fixation on Doris Day womanhood and John Wayne masculinity, with trembling "security moms," swaggering presidential gunslingers, and the "rescue" of a female soldier cast as a "helpless little girl"?The answer, Faludi finds, lies in a historical anomaly unique to the American experience: the nation that in recent memory has been least vulnerable to domestic attack was forged in traumatizing assaults by nonwhite "barbarians" on town and village. That humiliation lies concealed under a myth of cowboy bluster and feminine frailty, which is reanimated whenever threat and shame looms.Brilliant and important, The Terror Dream shows what 9/11 revealed about us-and offers the opportunity to look at ourselves anew.

The classic work on women’s health and how the medical establishment helped to justify sexism, by the authors of Witches, Midwives, and Nurses.From Barbara Ehrenrich, New York Times-bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed, Bright-Sided, and other titles, and Deirdre English, former editor of Mother Jones, this book delves into the history of how women have been diagnosed, defined, and often dismissed, by doctors, a problem that persists even today. From claiming scientific proof of female inferiority to prescribing the “rest cure” to labeling patients as “hysterical,” the medical profession treated women as weak and pathological—and here, the authors of the “underground classic” Witches, Midwives, and Nurses (Kirkus Reviews) show how this biomedical rationale was used to justify sex discrimination throughout the culture, as well as how its vestiges are still evident in abortion policy and other reproductive rights struggles.

PULITZER PRIZE FINALISTONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARWINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZEFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash, comes In the Darkroom, an astonishing confrontation with the enigma of her father and the larger riddle of identity consuming our age."In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things-obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness." So begins Susan Faludi's extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of identity in the modern world and in her own haunted family saga. When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father-long estranged and living in Hungary-had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who identified as "a complete woman now" connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known, the photographer who'd built his career on the alteration of images? Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her father's many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. When the author travels to Hungary to reunite with her father, she drops into a labyrinth of dark histories and dangerous politics in a country hell-bent on repressing its past and constructing a fanciful-and virulent-nationhood. The search for identity that has transfixed our century was proving as treacherous for nations as for individuals. Faludi's struggle to come to grips with her father's metamorphosis takes her across borders-historical, political, religious, sexual--to bring her face to face with the question of the age: Is identity something you "choose," or is it the very thing you can't escape?