Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Really enjoyed this analysis of greek and roman myths: not a simple mythology retelling, but a book that urges the reader to go into the deeper meaning of these "old" stories.
Highly recommend it to whoever loves mythology.

Wow! What a book. This literally encompasses every problem and every modern quandary that women of all ages, weights, sexuality (and so on) can encounter and talks us through it in a witty, kind and inventive way...whilst also relating it to ancient myths and most importantly teaching us!
How great is that?

I am an Ancient History graduate and was thrilled about going over ancient myths (much to my shame ...Many I had forgotten in the passage of time!) with a different perspective and seeing how easily relatable they are, absolutely delightful!

Helen Morales is brilliant! Everyone will have at least one chapter that will speak to them and..most will find, as I did, that although one chapter will speak the loudest, all chapters will resonate!

Chapter Three was this chapter for me.
The fascination with bigger being bad has really come to the forefront recently with Cancer Research saying it contributes to cancer. I am so very horrified with this. Especially as the many people I have known with cancer...not a single one has been overweight. And if they were...does that make it their fault? Of course not!

It's very strange the medical professions obsession with weight and blame and I found this so refreshing that not only did an academic have a different opinion but she also backed it up to research.
This is especially poignant during Covid 19.
It has again been decided overweight is a huge factor in it...but since the majority of people we have heard about are fit and healthy...it doesn't quite follow.
It is bordering on a hate campaign and I love that this was addressed here.
For anyone who witters on about obesity I am just forever more going to say...Read Chapter 3 of this book. End of. Nothing further needs to be said!

Though to be honest ..as I said before..
I felt that on every chapter. Just YES! FINALLY! Someone is saying it and in such a funny and clever way.

I was literally texting friends saying YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK! it spoke to me on every level. Growing up as a women...is a minefield and this book hits on every one of them and expose the stupidity that those social norms are... I love that!

Chapter 4 which mentions how inappropriate it is when schools dictate what girls wear in case they excite men...its appalling that can even be thought in this day and age yet its routinely stated in dress codes! I don't understand how anyone can have a say over what you wear...surely that's our own decision...what we do with our body..what we put on our bodies...so happy to hear someone so intelligent saying it!

When every subject is presented in the brilliant way it is shown in this book, you can see how ludicrous that everyday insistence on subjecting women to "norms" actually is!

Helen Morales weaves a beautiful narrative between modern and ancient and absurd. I really felt I was learning so much and think this book should be on every curriculum as it was learning but in an interesting and thoughtful way.

This took me a while to read...not because it wasn't interesting...in fact the opposite.. because I wanted to think about it and absorb it all. I've said it earlier in the review and will say it again.. all women should read this!

Just a note but due to the amount of references (understandably) the actual content finishes at 70% on the kindle...you have finished the book.. I double checked!

Thank you to the author, the publishers and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely fantastic. I'm a big fan of Greek mythology and have read a fair few books on it by this point, but this was just so fresh and I loved this take on exploring the myths. Much needed to be honest.

Antigone Rising was such an enjoyable read. Helen Morales is able to combine and use antiquity texts to analyse our current societal issues. From topics of diet culture, rape, trans lives, and even had a chapter covering Beyonce and racism.

It is perfect for those who know and love classical texts, and even for those who don't. Morales perfectly tells the stories and myths and what these can mean within the modern world. It's accessible for any young adult or adult who wants to read further, no matter their depth or knowledge on Greek myths or texts.

This has been one of my most favourite non-fiction books to read. Heartbreaking, humorous, and a very important book to read.

This was my surprise find of my Greek Mythology Challenge. It wasn't on my original list but I spotted it on Netgalley shortly after reaching my personal pain threshold in terms of reading about misogynistic violence. It's not that I was unaware that this was an element in Greek myths. It was more that it had danced below my eyeline as I usually focused more on the twisting family trees and tales of heroism. But even the supposed 'heroes' are, on closer inspection, fairly nasty bastards who leave a trail of dead women in their wake. So thank goodness for Antigone Rising, in which classicist Helen Morales explains how  the telling of the tale has led to this message of misogyny rather than the mythology itself.

The book's title refers to Antigone, the teenager from Sophocles' play who insisted on burying her brother Polynices despite being ordered not to on pain of death. Predictably, it ends well for no one. Despite this, the idea of the young girl resisting the state has remained iconic right down to the present day. Indeed, parallels continue to be drawn between Antigone and Greta Thunberg. Yet contemporary audiences would have pathologised Antigone as being hysterical due to her unmarried state just as the modern media ponders the significance of Thunberg's autism. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Morales explores ancient mythology both through the lens of her long research and teaching career but also as a parent to a teenage girl. If the next generation accepts mythology as it has been laid down, its relevance to our lives today risks being lost.  Antigone Rising explores why Greek mythology still matters - why did the Greeks stage these plays all those thousands of years ago and why is it that we still tell these stories today? Morales explores how ancient mythology has been 'read and misread, to serve (and resist) progressive agendas'. She also explores how mythology continues to re-imagined today, because these stories are not dead. The miracle of mythology is that it lives and breathes and still has the power to change the world if we can grab hold of it and take control.

The true challenge to my Greek Mythology reading list was the way I felt thwacked in the face by how much of these stories that I had loved as a child seemed to be rooted in a loathing of and a violence towards women. Morales underlines this by analysing the vast quantity of surviving Greek artwork which depicts them murdering Amazons. It's the earliest known fantasy of killing women. And the fantasy hasn't gone away - Morales admits that she was inspired to write the book when two of her students were murdered in the Isla Vista killings. The man responsible was an 'incel', a 'troubled loner', but Morales recognised the crime as the result of 'thousands of years of our telling the same stories about the relationships between men and women, desire and control'. Misogyny occurs around the enforcement and policing of 'patriarchal norms and expectations', it is less about the way that individuals think but more 'social forces that police norms and expectations of a patriarchal world'. And misogyny picks the 'good women' and punishes the 'bad women'. So Amazons, who rejected marriage, lived as nomads, enjoyed sexual relations where they pleased and rode to battle where they wanted ... they were 'bad women'. And so they had to be eliminated.

As a child, I had loved the story of Heracles and his Twelve Labours. But when you look again, his labours were a punishment for an unspeakable crime. In a 'fit of madness', he had murdered his wife and their children. One of his labours is to steal the war-belt of the Amazon Hippolyta. For the crime of killing a woman, he kills more women. And after his death, Heracles becomes a demi-god. How is it that a domestic abuser becomes the ultimate hero? These aren't tales of courage. This is the policing of the norms of the patriarchy. It's disgusting. Morales draws a clear line of delineation between 'heroes' like Heracles and men today who kill women. The Isla Vista killer, the Montreal killer, the Taliban members who shot Malala Yousafzai, Boko Haram - the list goes on and they are all over the globe. Think about that. All over the world, men and boys fantasise about killing women and girls 'as punishments for not needing men, for not being under men's sexual control, for daring to be educated, for living freely'. And some of them take it beyond fantasy. Some of them actually do it.

Subsequent chapters examine other mythological traditions, such as how the sex strike in Lysistrata had led to a reductive view of female-led political pressure groups, as if this is the only power that women can direct. Dress codes are another relic of antiquity, policing the way that women can access public spaces. Hippocrates' writing has been misread in order to shame people into dieting. In the Hippocrates chapter, Morales even analyses the late 19th century tradition in American female colleges of measuring students bodies to see who most closely resembled the measurements of the Venus de Milo. And again, the words of Caitlin Moran flash across my mind - if this is not something that could be reasonably expected of a man, it is probably sexist bullshit'. The way that society rates to women's bodies definitely falls into the category of sexist bullshit. If we aren't being measured to see if we are like Venus de Milo, then we're being asked if we're beach body ready. And if we're overweight, that really is all that the world sees.

Reading this and Caroline Criado Perez's Invisible Women back to back was instructive in the widespread issue of women suffering from endometriosis and similar who are all too often told by doctors that they just need to lose weight. My relationship with my body has always been a problem and I have a lot of food anxieties and phobias. I realised how deeply rooted a lot of them are when I started weaning my own child - I really want him to have a more positive relationship with eating. Within my own family, the message has always been that being overweight is a very bad thing to be. At one point, I realised that it had been nearly two years since I had had a conversation with a member of my immediate family without her bringing up the issues she had with my weight. Of course, this kind of behaviour is a guaranteed reflection of someone's own issues. And in the case of that particular relative, she had experienced a significant weight gain after an illness and it was thus easier to preoccupy herself with the metaphorical speck in her brother's eye. Several relatives told me when I was growing up that I would never marry due to my appearance. The other children at my childminders told me the same. We still teach girls from a very young age that this is the only thing that matters. I didn't have a positive view of how I looked for a very, very long time. Yet more recently, I have been able to think about things differently. My body carried my child safely for nine months and after that it nourished him - and still does. My body built the family that I had longed to be a part of for so long. It is easier to like who I see in the mirror. But we don't celebrate that the female body gives life. We only celebrate it for being small.

What's particularly worrying about this is the discourse it leads to about women and food. I remember as a teenager, we were on a Geography field trip and had been given packed lunches. Each of the lunches had a randomly selected packet of crisps. All of the girls who had ended up with a Worcestershire sauce flavoured packet rejected it. One of the boys sat down and ate seven packets of Worcestershire sauce crisps. We were all in awe of his eating prowess. Boys who could eat were applauded. No girl would have ever carried out such a feat. There are literal Facebook groups exposing women for the crime of eating on the Tube. I was once scolded by a family member and told to 'go easy' because I had eaten a single English breakfast muffin from a packet. Another time, I was talking with some friends about attitudes towards food and one mentioned her personal pet peeve - when women say that they are being 'naughty' by taking a biscuit or a cake. That has resonated with me since and Morales book made me think about it again. It is not naughty to eat something that you want to eat. Why have we been trained to believe that it is? Rather than misquoted Hippocrates, Morales points us instead towards Aristotle, who advises us to honour our hunger but to stop when we are full. Advice imbued less with shame and more with kindness. Know yourself. Is this hunger or is it just appetite?

Another important point though is the way that classical mythology glamourises sexual assault. Daphne ran from Apollo and could only escape by transforming into a laurel tree. And even then. Apollo used her branches to make himself a new lyre. There's the rape of the Sabine women, the rape of Europa, rape of the Philomela, rape of Persephone, the list goes on and on and on. Morales points out that 'there are more paintings displayed in art museums in Europe and North America that feature a mythological rape scene than there are paintings displayed by female artists of colour'. That's a depressing statistic. Even up in the sky, we see Zeus' victims up in the stars. There's Medusa, raped by Poseidon and punished for it by Athena by being rendered monstrous. Notice that Poseidon never had to deal with the consequences. The more things change ...

The message is clear through mythology that these women were 'asking for it'. They were too beautiful. The male gods could not help themselves. The temptations was too great. Think of Helen, abducted while very young by Theseus, then handed over in marriage to Menelaus without her consent, abducted again by Paris. Or was she? We will never know if she was a repeated victim or just a woman who decided to grab hold of her own destiny. The women of classical mythology could all nod their heads and agree, #MeToo but as Morales points out, they never get any such moment of unity. The women who do seek revenge such as Philomela and Procne are brutally punished. They are aberrations. Bad women. Flash forward three thousand years and we're still refusing to believe Christine Blasey Ford and America is led by a President who has Apollo murals all over his walls.

I was really intrigued though by how mythological figures are being re-appropriated in modern culture. The character Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games is a proto-Artemis figure. Then there is Diana, the mythical hunter of bus drivers. But further discord arises when modern screen adaptations use actors of colour to portray characters from classical mythology. Just as people cannot conceive of a Jesus of middle Eastern appearance, so it is apparently abhorrent to consider a black Zeus as in BBC's 2018 production Troy, Fall of a City. White people get very proprietorial about mythical figures. Why do we think that is? Morales quotes James Baldwin, 'Whiteness is a metaphor for power' and giving up the whiteness of statues would represent a loss of said power. Statues. Again.

It's funny though because if there is one detail from classical mythology that I would wish to be different, it would be for baby Astyanax to survive the fall of Troy. Yet I was unreasonably irritated when the 2003 film Troy showed him escaping in his mother's arms. The idea of changing up the story to make it feel better seemed 'wrong'. The Greco-Roman creation myth is a cornerstone of our cultural history. Even our current Prime Minister trots out his classical references as a sign of his supposed learning. So Antigone Rising is a very uplifting when it highlights the weaknesses to this perspective. The mythology is not so static as it seems. I could sense Morales' excitement as a classicist as she analyses Beyoncé and Jay-Z's takeover of the Louvre for their music video 'Apeshit'. Here were two African American performers appropriating Greco-Roman art and exerting their dominance. Having felt quite jaded through my Greek Mythology Challenge, it was heartening to recognise the resistance to the accepted narrative. You can reframe mythology. You can challenge it. You can take the bit that works for you and celebrate that bit and then cut out the rest. Ali Smith's novel Girl Meets Boy makes use of the myth of Iphis and Ianthe, one of various myths which can be meaningful to genderqueer people. There are many others like it.

One thing that I wished that Morales had touched on more was whether mythology had been consciously translated to promote a patriarchal message - I read an interview with Mary Beard which suggested that the pattern of mistranslations was so consistent as to rule out any other explanation. Another point though is that even when these stories were new, there was not just one version. And indeed, while Sophocles' version of Antigone sees it all end in doom, Euripides play appears to have ended with Antigone and Haemon marrying and having a child. There is no 'final version'. We can make the story what we want it to be. Antigone Rising signposts how the background of Greek mythology has dominated our thinking down the millennia but Morales also shows us how we can break the cycle. Take Artemis, Antigone and all those others who bring us strength. While mythological tradition has been a tool for oppression, we can repurpose it to break our chains.

I am delighted with Helen Morales’, Antigone Rising from Headline Books. I was initially a bit hesitant with the cover but the book is a tremendous effort to connect current cultural narratives and image making to centuries of gender and sexual norm reinforcement, dating back to Greek and Roman mythologies.

One of my favourite sections is about the history of policing women’s dressing as a way to excuse men of their lack of control from pre- Christian times till today’s debates around slut shaming female and diverse race students. Other great parts are about stopping sex as a form of protest or when anonymous women take justice in their hands, where the sensationalism overtakes years of resistance and suffering.

As you read through the book, you develop an appreciation of how myths need to be interpreted and reinterpreted in each generation to repurpose them for our times. Morales is a great researcher and a fluid narrator, who helps us navigate these complex tropes in an eminently readable book.
This is a must Buy book for those who care about art, gender politics and how narratives need to be re-owned like Beyoncé did with her pregnancy pictures.

Morales is both an antiquarian as well as an astute interpreter of contemporary popular culture. It is a well researched and well written book that you can read very fast or go slow and savour all her arguments. This is a pretty rare achievement. Antigone Rising is likely to be in my list of this year’s best reads.

Thanks NetGalley for giving me an ARC of the book in exchange of an honest review.

Thanks to Headline and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.
I was really excited to read this book when I first heard about it. I am currently doing my Masters in Classical Studies and I teach it at High School level too so anything which prompts deeper thinking or poses interesting questions I am 100% here for.

The book is split into eight chapters covering topics ranging from violence against women, war, dieting and body image, gender fluidity and…Beyonce. So far, so interesting.

The book starts by highlighting some of the current discourse around who “owns” Classics. I confess I find this old chestnut slightly irksome. Do we have to “own” something to be interested in and enjoy it? There seems to be a lot of handwringing about this issue and my view is if people think a group of old white men own Classics, well they do not. Just take it. I don’t understand this obsession with having to make ourselves part of something to truly appreciate it. I believe passionately that everyone can and should access the Classics but “owning” or “reclaiming” it is completely counterproductive and really rather pointless. No one is stopping anyone studying Classics, take your place at the table and get on with it.

Ok rant over.

So, there are some interesting themes explored here which link with some of the main social justice discourses of the present day. The chapter on misogyny was quite interesting but I am not sure if we can compare the attitudes of the ancient world to those of today in any meaningful way. There seems to be a suggestion that the violence that continues to influence Western culture today is as a result of ancient attitudes. I’m not sure this blame can be laid against Ancient Greece and Rome being that violence against women exists in all cultures and societies. Ho hum.

The Hippocrates chapter was interesting and raised questions that I had never really considered before. The Lysistrata chapter was also really thought provoking and when I watched Chi-Raq the next day I felt reading this chapter gave me a deeper insight into what its message was.
I thought the fawning Beyonce chapter was an absolute nonsense. The Beyonce Kool Aid had been well and truly drunk. Is Beyonce an interesting and creative woman? Yes, undoubtably. Is she a staggering creative and intellectual genius? Well…no. Sorry Beyhive but no. This kind of fawning adulation of the 1% just leaves me completely cold.

I thought some chapters worked better than others but I was left with the sense that there is nothing really new being said here and some arguments were a stretch to say the least. I wish there had been a more balanced analysis of myths in their original context to flesh things out a bit. A reader would have to be reasonably familiar with some of the background to the Classical references made to fully appreciate some of the arguments.

Did I enjoy it? Yes, I started out rather sceptical, but I’d say I was a convert by the end. Mostly.

Antigone Rising is a look at how Greek and Roman myths can influence radical and rebellious thought and narratives in the modern day. Classicist Helen Morales goes through a selection of myth (starting and ending with Antigone) to think about modern parallels and reimaginings and where myths or elements of them might be reclaimed or reused to look at modern issues around feminism, race, and gender. Some chapters look at rape culture and gender fluidity in mythology, especially Ovid's Metamorphoses, and how this relates to the modern day, including the issues in these texts and how people have or might reclaim them, and another considers art, race, and the figure of Venus in relation to Beyoncé.

There's nothing new in drawing contemporary comparisons with Greek and Roman mythology, but what Morales tries to do is to highlight some of the ways this can be done in resistance and for particular issues, and also suggest some of the problems with doing this too. It would've been interesting to get more about the problems of using myths like this (the book is quite short), but where she does engage with the complexity is more interesting than a 'this classical figure could be feminist' kind of analysis. The topics vary and the pace is quite fast, which makes this an easy book to read, and keeps it engaging. She doesn't assume knowledge of any of the myths, which is useful for a general audience, and the book would make a good introduction to looking deeper at where mythology can be updated and used in modern contexts for elements of protest and resistance.

Antigone Rising presents a slightly more complex idea of looking at Greek and Roman myths for modern day resonance, and touches on some interesting ideas, including on some of the limitations of doing this. It felt like it could've gone on for a lot more chapters covering other myths and topics, but the length makes it good as an introduction, and it has notes and mentions of other texts people could follow up on afterwards.

I struggle to properly review/rate these sort of books - partly because whether or not someone enjoys a particular non-fiction work seems more subjective and personal and also because I find it hard to give a star rating to anything that discusses important and heavy topics.

With that being said, I found the writing very compelling and read through it very quickly. The topics are heavy but also interesting and thought-provoking.

Each chapter is like a short essay on a different aspects of classical (Greek and Roman) myth and the various ways in which we can see how those myths have been used and changed in the modern western world.
The subjects tackled include misogyny, sexism, rape-culture, celebrity, racism and lgbtq culture. Sometimes Morales shows how these issues are things retained from classical culture. Other times how myths have been interpreted or reinterpreted to provide strength and power to marginalised groups.

A sharp, quick and thought-provoking read that is just as much about our modern world as the classical.

My thanks to Headline Wildfire for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Antigone Rising’ by Helen Morales in exchange for an honest review.

Subtitled: ‘The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths’ this is a fascinating collection of essays by Morales, a professor of Hellenic Studies. She
addresses the influence of ancient myths upon various aspects of society with special focus upon women.

Its bright, playful cover and witty chapter headings were clues that this wasn’t going to be a dry academic work, though there are copious notes and sources as well as a comprehensive index following the main text.

It proved a quick, highly engaging read that provided me with much food for thought.

I was quite fascinated by her chapter, BΣYΘNCΣ, GODDESS, that explores the ways in which Beyoncé Knowles-Carter had rewritten the ‘cultural script’ including casting “herself as Venus in a series of photographs published on her Instagram page to announce her pregnancy in 2017, it was a cultural intervention that put black womanhood at the center of the Greek and Roman iconography of beauty.” Morales also deconstructed an innovative video that the Carters filmed at the Louvre.

Quite a few times while reading this work I was inspired to look up her examples and references. The only omission that stood out for me was that she made no mention of Kamila Shamsie’s award winning 2017 novel, ‘Home Fire’, which is a modern retelling of the myth of Antigone.

Overall, a fascinating and accessible study of the power and continuing influence of ancient myths.

I expect that I will buy my own copy in due course to add to my works on mythology. Highly recommended.

I liked this collection of essays as it connected the world of Greek mythology to the contemporary world. The variety of essays was varied and it covered all the areas you could think of. It held my interest and Morales balanced between having an academic tone and being relatable to the average reader.

My initial reason for reading this book is my study of Sophocles Antigone towards my degree. If anyone else chooses this book for a similar reason I would say that you only really need to read the first chapter where some interesting points are made about how Antigone is received in modern times vs how it would have been received in Ancient Greece and why their viewpoint would have been different.

I did continue reading. Modern and more recent historic examples are given of women who stand against the law to do the right thing despite what the future will hold for them for doing so. Other Greek and Roman myths are also discussed and matched with modern-day examples that highlight sexism, racism, rape culture, misogyny and various forms of homophobia along with using mythology to hide and/or justify these behaviours.

I found some of the stories in this book absolutely shocking. The author's daughter is in a primary school and the girls get spoken to about the dress code so as not to distract the male teachers.

This book is a relatively quick read with plenty of references and what makes it great to read on Kindle is that touching the number on the word that has a reference takes you straight to that point in the book without you losing your place. I mention this because if you are not familiar with Greek and Roman mythology reading in this style makes it a lot easier.

I would have liked more focus on the play Antigone as that was why I chose the book but otherwise, this is a good read and is written in clear language so that anyone can read and appreciate the book. It's also really interesting to read about different myths and the different ways in which the same story was told.

I received a pre-release copy of #AntigoneRising by Helen Morales from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Published by #Headline this book will be available from tomorrow.

Greek myths are undergoing a real renaissance right now, with the huge popularity of books such as Stephen Fry’s Mythos and Heroes, and Madeleine Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Circe. Much as I’ve enjoyed the retellings that have come out over the past few years, though, Helen Morales’ Antigone Rising is the first book I’ve come across that engages critically with the representation of women, LGBT+ characters and ethnic minorities in the surviving versions of the myths.

This is no collection of straightforward, empowering stories for girl bosses. Some chapters paint a very bleak picture indeed: if violence against women by incels, the enforcement of dress codes that imply girls and women are deliberately provocative and boys and men can’t control themselves, and the dismissal of rape victims’ testimonies have parallels in the ancient stories, can we ever expect things to change?

Nonetheless, Morales is able to draw out positives from the stories: plenty of ancient Greek women can be seen teaming up against, and beating, their oppressors. In fact, strength in numbers is a key message of the book: Morales points out that one reason the eponymous Antigone’s story ends badly is because she acts only for herself.

Even when the myths appear to provide validation and support for LGBT+ people today, Morales doesn’t give them an easy pass. After all, it’s not ideal that Caneus is granted a different, impenetrable body just as he’s in danger of rape, and Iphis has to become male for her relationship with Ianthe to be acceptable to society.

However, Morales points out that these examples are open to interpretation and adaptation. In the case of Caeneus, it can be argued that he knew himself to be male long before his aforementioned opportunity to transition - and afterwards, he is so impenetrable he’s not even hurt by violent attacks - an inspiring allegory for modern-day transphobia.

As for Iphis and Ianthe, Morales reports, in Girl Meets Boy, Ali Smith’s update of the ancient story, the Iphis character is enabled to “escape the prison-house of the story” and be joyfully, beautifully non-binary (I’ve totally added this book to my reading list!). Another key message: myths can be reinterpreted, altered, and used to emphasise different points. The original tellers themselves, after all, reshaped the stories to suit their own agendas and sensibilities. Even Antigone’s tragic tale isn’t set in stone.

This book is a relatively quick read, yet Morales covers a huge amount of cultural ground. As well as her approving commentary on Girl Meets Boy mentioned above, she discusses how the 2015 film Chi-Raq positively updates the story of Lysistrata’s sex strike (yet fails to address the reality of domestic assault and rape against women taking such measures), covers the enduring influence of Greek myths in Mexico (including the story of real-life vigilante Diana, Hunter of Bus Drivers), lovingly dissects Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Apeshit video (did you know marble statues were actually brightly-painted, so it’s incorrect to regard them as depicting while people), and much more. I learned so much! I was surprised that Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire didn’t get a mention, though, based as it is on Antigone.

Antigone Rising is a wide-ranging treatise that demonstrates the power, nature and uses of stories and provides grounds for optimism.

It was a great and powerful read, full of food for thought and interesting reflections.
The author does a great job in making us think about the actuality of the ancient myths.
She made me reflect and I loved her style of writing and her reflections.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Thought provoking and well researched, this collection of ideas and essays examines the Greek myths in a more feminist light, determine if things really have changed for women in the last 2500 years or not. It's a detailed analysis on how the myths shaped and demonstrated how women were perceived during this era, as well as relating it all back to the present. It covers a wide range of topics, from dieting culture and the idea of beauty and its changing manifestation through time, to the idea that Antigone and the Amazonians were undesirable women for the time because of their ability to stand up to the patriarchy.

I took a great deal away from this, despite its short size. In particular it really challenges the reader to look beyond the superficial with regards to the myths and dig deeper into the meanings behind what is presented. To explore and look at things in a new way. It was deeply refreshing and compelling.

Thank you, NetGalley, for letting me read this book.

I've always enjoyed a bit of classical mythology. I read it unquestioningly as a child, and I've really enjoyed some of the modern reworkings of those ancient stories, exploring them from a more feminist perspective.

This is slightly different, and obviously written by someone who really knows her way around these stories. She explores the myths themselves, the way they resonate in - and are used by - modern society, but also explains the original context. Knowing that original context actually makes the myths more powerful - the transgressions are stronger, the social boundaries more important. It's great to have that explained.

My only real criticism is that I would have liked it to be longer.

I enjoyed this series of essays by Hellenic Studies professor Helen Morales which related well-known Greek myths to more modern concerns such as gender, sexuality, feminism and #metoo. I particularly enjoyed the thought-provoking comparisons involving the eponymous Antigone and how Morales re-viewed and re-analysed the old myths through today's lens.

The book actually got me to watch a Beyonce and Jay-Z video so that I could see how they reframe classical art in the Louvre in the context of protest by people of colour, which was fun.

Recommended for all your woke feminist friends!

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

I thought this was going to be a scholarly classical reception volume: it's not. Instead it's like a series of popular articles that might have a link (sometimes tenuous) or spring from a classical phenomenon (not always a myth) which Morales uses as a foundation for writing about our own cultural flashpoints, principally around feminist resistance to patriarchy but which also attend to other inclusive issues around race, gender and sexuality.

The writing is frequently fierce (and rightly so) with flashes of ironic humour (the terrible danger to men of a naked collarbone!) and the whole thing is easily read in 1-2 hours (there are footnotes at the end). I'd say that if you're already familiar with Greek and Roman culture and classical myths then there might be a bit too much storytelling rather than analysis here but that feels appropriate for a cross-over audience.

Much of the text is anecdotal rather than researched, and Morales adds stories from her own life and the experiences of her teenage daughter which make the whole thing intimate as well as having a wider import. With pieces on the policing of female bodies drawing on Hippocrates, Beyonce's subversion of goddesses, and resistant rape narratives, this can't help but be consistently interesting. Feminist classical scholarship over the last 40 or so years has been challenging traditional readings of Greek and Roman stories, myths and histories - it's heartening to see that crossing over into a general readership.