Rebecca Solnit is one of my favourite essayists, so her memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence was on my anticipated releases of 2020 list. So much so, that I have read it twice since its publication last March.

Yes, it has taken me a year to actually review it! I read loads and took copious notes last year, but my concentration didn't stretch to writing full reviews so I am playing catch up.

Many of the experiences Solnit shares are centred around the studio apartment in San Francisco that was her home for over twenty years. It is here that she grapples with the realisation that the "nonexistence" she feels is as a result of the patriarchy.

That her instinct to disappear, by blending into the background of whatever situation she is in, is an attempt to avoid the wrath of men. An instinct, she contends, that many, if not all, women have because we internalise the idea that our actions are responsible for the abuse - in all its forms - we receive from men.

Rationally we know that it isn't true but we have been socialised to act as if it is nonetheless.

As with her essays, the themes Solnit explores here include gender based violence, feminism and its continued evolution, environmental justice, queer activism and politics, and the impact of fear and trauma on creativity.

Recollections of My Nonexistence is an assured study of how Solnit found her voice; as a woman, as an activist, as a feminist, and ultimately as a writer.

Solnit skilfully blends the personal, the political, and the cultural giving us an engaging memoir about reclaiming our power by stepping out of the shadows.

Having read a few of Rebecca Solnit's collections, I'm used to her meandering mind or circular style of narrative, so while this might have a #memoir tag that indicates a book recounts a slice of the author's life, Solnit's essays are less 'slice of life' and more 'thought bubbles' as she starts out recalling her early adult life, eight years in a neighbourhood of San Franscisco, the people she came into contact with, the situations she avoided as a woman and then pauses now from years afar and wonders about her impact on that neighbourhood, her contribution to its demise, to its gentrification removing its diversity, colour, vibrancy and ultimately affordability.

The title perhaps pays homage to Diana di Prima's Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years, a feminist beatnik poet I first came across earlier in 2020 when I was reading all I could about the year 1968, the year she wrote Revolutionary Letters, a series of poems composed of utopian anarchism and ecological awareness, scribbled from a spiritual, feminist perspective. All touch points within Solnit's reportoire, however she writes in and of a different era, scratching at the surface of our nonexistence, how that is actively contributed to by others and of her/our own hand.

Recalling a sensation of disappearing, as if on the verge of fainting; rather than the world disappearing she senses herself disappear. Thus introduces the metaphor of nonexistence and discovers/exposes the many ways it is enacted.

"In those days I was trying to disappear and to appear, trying to be safe and to be someone, and those agendas were often at odds with each other."

Because of the meandering style, it's not easy to recall which particular vignette or essay has the most impact, however I note that I've highlighted 107 passages, her words provoke, recollect, igniting the reader's memory and own experience.

She struggles writing poetry as a young woman, not doing it well, but ferociously, unaware of what or why she was resisting, often resulting in a murky, incoherent, erratic defiance, something she observes today, as young women around her fight the same battles.

"The fight wasn't just to survive bodily, though that could be intense enough, but to survive as a person possessed of rights, including the right to participation and dignity and a voice. More than survive, then: to live."

And though we all know we learn from our own experiences, there is something reassuring in reading or hearing of those who've trod a similar path; she expresses a desire that the young women coming after her might skip some of the old obstacles, that some of her writing exists to that end, at least by naming those obstacles.

Discussing harassment and violence towards women, particularly young women, she ponders how and what she is able to do differently being an older woman, compared to how she reacted and behaved in youth.
So much of what makes young women good targets is self-doubt and self-effacement.

Observing how we strengthen our purpose over time, gaining orientation and clarity, she recognises something like ripeness and calm flowing in, as the urgency and naiveté of youth ebb. I think of this her book The Faraway Nearby where she revisits childhood and a difficult mother, unrecognisable in the woman she then tends, neither of them who they once were, there is no need to hang on to the earlier version. Ripeness was a metaphor here too, one she desired to observe mature fully, she left a pile of apricots picked from the trees on the floor of a room, like an art installation, left to mature, rot, transform.

In the collection she looks back at her own evolution as a writer, and recalls for example the conversation that provoked the essay 'Men Explain Things to Me' that went on to become that new word that has now become mainstream 'mansplaining'.

She rereads photocopies of letters in handwriting that is no longer her own and meets a person who was her, but no longer exists, who didn't know how to speak.

"The young writer I met there didn't know how to speak from the heart, though I could be affectionate...She was speaking in various voices because she didn't yet know what voice was hers, or rather she had not yet made one."

Furnishing her mind with readings, they become part of the equipment of imagination, her set of tools for understanding the world, creating patterns, learning enough to "trace paths though the forests of books, learn landmarks and lineages." She celebrates the pleasure of meeting new voices, ideas and possibilities that help make the world more coherent in some way, extending or filling in the map of one's universe, grateful for their ability to bring beauty, find pattern and meaning, creating pure joy.

Discussing patterns of how women were portrayed in novels by men she read in the past, she becomes aware of relating to the part of the male protagonist, where

'women devoured to the bone are praised; often those insistent on their own desires needs are reviled or rebuked for taking up space, making noise. You are punished unless you punish yourself into nonexistence.'

It was Nella Larsen, author of Quicksand and Passing who said:

“Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it.”

and Rebecca Solnit carries that thought further observing the astonishment of reading:

"about that suspension of your own time and place to travel into others'. It's a way of disappearing from where you are...a world arises in your head that you have built at the author's behest, and when you're present in that world you're absent from your own...It's the reader who brings the book to life."

She finds research exciting and piecing together a nonfiction narrative like craft and medicine combined, a combination of creativity and healing.

"Research is often portrayed as dreary and diligent, but for those with a taste for this detective work there's the thrill of the chase - of hunting data, flushing obscure things out of hiding, of finding fragments that assemble into a picture."

Even if some of this is familiar from previous works, it is the reworking of the landscape of her mind, the rearranging of those experiences, interviews, a more mature awareness and wakefulness that makes her work so readable, engaging and accessible and relevant to what is happening in the fast changing world we inhabit.

"Nonfiction is at its best an act of putting the world back together - or tearing some piece of it apart to find what's hidden beneath the assumptions or conventions...recognizing the patterns that begin to arise as the fragments begin to assemble."

Highly Recommended.

Not for me.

I love Solnit and I don't know if this is because I read it in the lock down or what, but I just didn't connect to it at all. It describes San Fransisco beautifully and made me long to go there again, but was heavy handed in the perils (sexual harassment, rape, murder) and I had to take a piece at a time. And it wasn't anything that I haven't read 100 times before.

It was written so clear, as if to make sure the details were precisely portrayed, but I found this gave it a staid tone. I found it hard to connect with her and this journey. It was written differently to the other books of hers I read.

I'm not happy about writing this, as I'm sure this review is an insight that I can't hold a candle to Solnit, but besides not being what I expected, polemic and pithy, I just wasn't interested in what she was writing. And usually, I'm punching my first in the air and screaming YES when I read what she writes. Just not here.

I love Rebecca Solnit so much, and this is only my third book by her. I started with Men Explain Things and moved onto Call Them By Their True Names and thought I could read Solnit write about just about anything, but wondered how she might write about her own life. Solnit's essays, as far as I had read, weren't particularly personal, and I felt I knew nothing about her. And interestingly, I felt I didn't know a whole lot more after finishing.

This is a memoir, not about the events of a life but of a constant erasure and rebuilding, of trying to see oneself in glimpses, turning sharply around to catch something before it disappears before all that is left in the mirror is a two dimensional seeming picture of a person you basically recognise ad yourself. Solnit's memoir is like a hall of mirrors, where we learn about her life and her personality through the subjects that inform and permeate her writing, for example her writing on domestic and gender based violence which is a topic of study in many of her books, but also something that has affected her own life.

She also takes her discovery of the non fiction form itself to be a subject matter, as well as a sort of epiphany about her work and its contribution to the world. She says that non fiction is "at its best an act of putting the world back together - or tearing some piece of it apart to find what's hidden beneath". This does not seem to her to be a narrow focus on a topic but a way of seeking out and exposing patterns over time and space. Similarly, meeting new people isn't subject for anecdote in this memoir, instead she writes that she believes in capacities strangers have to be messengers and mirrors in which you see possibilities". This really feels like a memoir of a writer of non fiction, as opposed to a memoir of a person in a traditional sense, and while unexpected, was exaxtly what I wanted from Solnit.

Rebecca Solnit's back catalogue is amongst the best of modern feminist literature. Her essay 'Men Explain Things To Me' swept the globe with feminist rage and recognition. Recollections of My Non-Existence is no different. This memoir captures Solnit's experiences as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco in which the writer found herself part of a movement in responding to violence against women. This is Solnit at her best.

Recollections of My Non-Existence is admirable but not as spectacular as I expected. I have not read any of Solnit's essays before but was interested to see she was doing a talk at my local theatre (before coronavirus hit!). I felt the writing was disjointed and had no real flow but some words certainly resonated with me like, 'A landscape full of places named after women and statues of women might have encouraged me and other girls in profound ways.' Overall, there are some great activism words of wisdom but they are few and far between. It is definitely recollections but, I feel, a memoir.

“Most urban women, you know, live as though in a war zone …”

When I started Recollections I expected to find some passages exaggerated or unpalatable. There is plenty about this book that is unpalatable – not the least of which is the gruesome collections of statistics of abuse, rape, murder with female victims a virulent flow largely unstaunched by law making institutions.

What I found instead was a picture of my own life as a young woman only without Solnit’s awareness. I have lived my own life in fear but considered it normal. I lived unaware of the compromises I routinely had to make, so normalised were they, adapting what I ‘should’ wear, the things I ‘should’ talk about – especially any needs or wishes of my own.

I have left unvisited places I could not safely visit alone or at night – pretty much anywhere in the city in which I live. The adjustments to my everyday life in order to remain unmolested, unraped, I have made almost unknowingly. Although, not quite.

Even if it is ‘only’ a constant stream of wolf whistles and inappropriate comments that are faced when a woman walks down the street, the message is the same. They are entitled. She puts up with it. Or complaints, and faces ridicule – no hostile disbelief - and inaction.

A war zone indeed, and one from which the only escape is to grow old.
Read the rest of this review at https://volatilerune.blog/

Recollections of My Non-Existence by Rebecca Solnit is about her finding her voice as a feminist and as a writer.

Recollections of My Non-Existence is the foundational story of an emerging artist struggling against patriarchal violence and scorn. Recalling the experience of living with fear, which Solnit contends is the normal state of women, she considers how oppression impacts on creativity and recounts the struggle to find a voice and have it be heard.

From the start I walk to talk about how Solnit can paint a scene so beautifully. How she describes what she sees and how she feels throughout this book makes me really appreciate her writing so much - her use of words here really allows you to fall into her writing throughout this book and it makes for such captivating reading.

In this writing she captures her life, the American West and San Francisco historically so beautifully. How she writes what she has experienced throughout the book is sadly common but still continues to pull you in. Going from the harassment on the street she endured to how she wrote her essay ‘Men Explain Things To Me’, this book trully allows Solnit’s voice and others to really stand out - her style is unique and keeps you pulled in.

Another great book from Solnit, her writing and how she delivers every word still stands out as one of the best out there right now.

Rebecca Solnit essays are honest open revealing.Told in her unique manner she shares her formative years.She draws us into her small apartment he neighbored her thoughts and life as a young woman.This is not her autobiography these essays move from topic to topic place to place.This is involving revealing and amazing.I enjoy al her essays and highly recommend her latest.#netgalley#granatabooks

Recollections of My Non-Existence by Rebecca Solnit is a palate cleanser of a book. It is a series of essays that create a memoir. The collection, whilst being specific to Rebecca Solnit’s life equally acts as a record of social change dealing with issues such as sexual assault, gentrification, race, and feminism.

Some essays are more enjoyable than others but it is an interesting collection.

Recollections of My Non-Existence by Rebecca Solnit is available now.

I have been an avid reader of Rebecca Solnit's essays and was not disappointed with this longer memoir.
Her use of language and her growth as a writer and feminist are heavily influenced by her early life in San Francisco .
Throughout her memoir she demonstrates the struggles she had in becoming a journalist and a writer and as the title suggests there is not a lot of personal information with the focus being more on the people she met, her experiences and the places she lived in the 1970's/80's and the influence they had on her as a woman, a person and a writer.
As with her other books this one needs another read to catch all the gems I missed in the first reading.

Recollections of My Nonexistence retraces Solnit's journey to the prominent writer she is today, assured in her voice in a world that would prefer her silence.

Through formative years in San Francisco, of the home where she was transformed, the power of punk and the communities in which she was liberated, she speaks to bigger issues of violence, identity, credibility, trauma, authority, the ongoing battle to thrive.

On youth vs adulthood as an evolution and not a final state, how credibility is a survival tool, the many obstacles she's faced and lessons learned, it's a great memoir with a lot to take away. Every sentence felt like a revelation.

I am grateful to #netgalley for my copy of this book, which I was offered in exchange for an honest review.

How we read depends on how we feel: what we’re drawn to, how we’re spending the time during a week in March when it’s raining nonstop and all the talk in the news seems negative. Would it have been different for me to read this memoir during a bright week in June, with a bit more hope in the air?

So maybe it wasn’t the right time for me.

This is a memoir by Rebecca Solnit, an American writer whose work I’ve wanted to dip into. She has written widely- on walking, activism, the environment, feminism, art. The term #mansplaining was inspired by her 2008 essay ‘Men explain things to me’ which is worth reading. It’s sharp, funny & true. As a woman, like most of us, I’ve had the experience of ‘mansplaining’, someone explaining things to me from my field of work (which they’re not involved in). So I’m with her on that.

But despite my hope with this book, it didn’t work for me. I look to memoirs to imagine myself in a person’s life. Their everyday life; how things feel to them when they happen. That’s missing here. This reads like a coming of age story about Solnit becoming a writer- but told from a distance. There is little detail, texture, everydayness here. I could see what Rebecca Solnit’s politics are, but I couldn’t capture what she’s like as a person. I couldn’t get a sense of her.

Solnit is at her best when discussing her love of reading:

“Alone, immersed in a book, I was faceless, everyone, anyone, unbounded, elsewhere, free of meetings. I wanted to be someone, to make a face and a self and a voice, but I loved these moments of reprieve”.

Going back to my own mood & expectations when reading this, I note one more phrase from the book:

“It’s the reader who brings the book to life”.

Solnit writes what is essentially feminist theory but in such a readable, accessible and understandable way. Recollections of My Non-Existence is part feminist theory and part memoir, told in a brilliantly non-linear “hopscotch: back up a little, cover the same ground again” way that I absolutely love. The book also explains that Solnit finds it easy to write on the serious subjects of sexual assault and misogyny because of the passion and drive she has for making invisible voices heard, which I found very moving. I’ve previously read Men Explain Things to Me but I’m going to seek out more of Solnit’s work after reading this.

Rebecca Solnit has written prolifically on feminism, politics and art, and while not a traditionally written biography, 'Recollections of my Non-Existence' is an interesting insight into her formative years, charting a journey of enlightenment, experiences and friendships that have influenced her writing and activism.

Everything Rebecca Solnit writes is worth reading. There's lots to enjoy and admire in this tracing of how she became the writer and activist she became and the struggles to establish herself (the "non-existence" of the title. In particular, the sheer quantity of the accounts of verbal and physical violence against women are as shocking as they are unsurprising As ever, it's very quotable: "this has been my life's work, the pursuit of patterns and the work of reconnecting what has been fractured"; "I'd eventually realize that what I was doing could equally be characterized as stealing away the best excuse for doing nothing". What is missing for me is some of the humour and sense of joy that she describes in relating her conversations with friends and colleagues, but this is an important addition to an increasingly influential body of work.

"I have no regrets about the roads I took, but a little nostalgia for that period when most of the route is ahead, for that stage in which you might become many things that is so much the promise of youth, now that I have chosen and chosen again and again and am far down one road and far past many others. Possibility means that you might be many things that you are not yet, and it is intoxicating when it's not terrifying."

Solnit walks that fine line of educating and empowering, while also encouraging to believe in the potential for change.

One of the iconic stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses is the terrible tale of Philomela, raped by her brother-in-law and then silenced by him hacking out her tongue so that she can't accuse him or speak out about her ordeal. It's this classic intertwining of violence against women and the muting of female voices which drives Solnit's memoir.

Don't come to this expecting anything like a conventional autobiography: Solnit retains a sense of privacy with regard to her personal life. Instead this is a kind of biography of her voice, how she moves from a young woman harassed on the streets of 1980s San Francisco and aware of violence against women all around her to the advocate, essayist and outspoken feminist writer she is today.

Solnit may not be a supreme stylist but she is intelligent, honest, compassionate and empathetic: she has that ability to reach out via her words, to move from the individual to a voice for other women, but without appropriating others' experiences as her own. She can be funny, too, not least when recounting how she came to write her classic essay 'Men Explain Things To Me'.

Sharp but accessible, thoughtful, committed - a must-read for Solnit groupies and those new to her writing.

I really loved this, like everything Rebecca Solnit writes - it's clear, intelligent, compassionate, she's just such a wonderful human being. Don't expect a linear or very precise autobiography, it's really more a series of memories and experiences but you get a good idea of what made Rebecca Solnit Rebecca Solnit through her youth in San Francisco in the 1980s, her education, the people she met. It was a really beautiful and enjoyable memoir.