Review by Booklist Review
Arrested at an antiwar protest in New York City in 1965, college freshman Dworkin was sexually tortured in jail by two doctors, an outrage she publicly decried, earning both support and notoriety, thus setting the template for her ardent and controversial life and work. As deeply analytical as she was radical, Dworkin proved to be a writer of "unshakable integrity" and courage and a tireless, often cruelly maligned advocate for women's equality. After a disastrous marriage in Amsterdam to a sadistic abuser, Dworkin channeled her trauma into the first of her provocative books, and never stopped challenging assumptions about gender and sexism, most infamously in her prolonged and complicated battle against violently misogynistic pornography. Accomplished biographer, historian, and gay-rights activist Duberman, who had first access to the archives of, and some acquaintance with, his subject, masterfully navigates the swift current of Dworkin's ahead-of-her-time insights, audacious work, endless skirmishes, anguish, and impact before and after her premature death in 2005. This compelling portrait comprises an essential chapter in the history of feminism and human rights.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bancroft Prize winner Duberman (Luminous Traitor) delivers an exhaustive, intimate, and admiring biography of feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin (1946--2005). He details Dworkin's upbringing by socially conscious Jewish immigrants in New Jersey, horrific mistreatment by male prison doctors after being arrested for protesting the Vietnam War, and abusive marriage to a Dutch anarchist before tracking her "meteoric" rise in the feminist movement beginning with the publication of Woman Hating in 1974. Duberman highlights Dworkin's reputation as a passionate--and sometimes shocking--orator, and documents her struggles to gain acceptance from her peers and mainstream publishers. He also notes her concerns over race and class divisions within the feminist movement, ties her presentation of gender as a social construct to an early understanding of trans issues, and categorizes her antipornography crusade as a pushback against the power of systemic patriarchy. Duberman defends against claims that Dworkin considered all intercourse rape, and discusses her relationships with men and women without shoehorning her into a queer identity. Selections from Dworkin's letters and autobiographical writings bring her own self-assessment into the picture, helping Duberman to push back against detractors who saw her as a one-note antisexuality crusader. Through this empathetic and approachable portrait, readers will develop a new appreciation for Dworkin's "combative radicalism" and the lifelong, unsteady truce she made with the feminist mainstream. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Veteran biographer and gay rights activist Duberman assesses the life and thought of the combative radical feminist. Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005) was among the most controversial figures in the second-wave feminist movement, caricatured by her critics as a man-hating lesbian who believed all heterosexual sex was rape. Duberman, who knew her personally, paints a much more nuanced picture, pointing out that Dworkin lived for 40 years in a nonexclusive, occasionally sexual relationship with a devoted male partner and that she was ahead of her time in seeing gender as a social construct that denied the fluidity of human sexual behavior. His account of Dworkin's childhood and youth depicts a precocious rebel with a deep commitment to social justice and a theatrical, confrontational personality that brooked no compromise or evasions. When she was subjected to a brutal and humiliating vaginal exam after being arrested at a sit-in protesting the Vietnam War, 18-year-old Dworkin wrote to every newspaper in New York City describing her ordeal and the conditions at the Women's House of Detention. It was the beginning of her lifelong battle to make the world face the fact that women were routinely mistreated and abused, culminating in her famous crusade against pornography. Duberman persuasively argues that Dworkin's position was misunderstood as a call for censorship when in fact what she advocated was the right of women who had been harmed by pornography to sue its purveyors--and their obligation to prove their case in court. Her response to free-speech absolutists gives a good sense of both her belligerence and her searching intelligence: "People have no idea how middle-classed and privileged their liberal First Amendment stuff is--how power and money determine who can speak in this society." These words resonate even more strongly today, and Duberman notes that after years of opprobrium, there is now "a modicum of acknowledgment of Andrea's insistent bravery, her mesmerizing public voice, her generosity of spirit." A sympathetic, cleareyed portrait that gives Dworkin her due without smoothing over her rough edges. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
