"Recollections of My Nonexistence," by Rebecca Solnit

The unique writer and activist Rebecca Solnit has just published a fascinating memoir, “Recollections of My Nonexistence” (Viking, 2020). I especially enjoyed her loving and detailed tribute to San Francisco, where she has lived most of her adult life, as have I. In addition, she is a highly original, thoughtful, and inspiring thinker and writer. She has written numerous books and articles. I have always particularly appreciated her attention to gender and feminism, a major topic interwoven throughout this current book. But I have also appreciated and learned from her dedication to engaging with ideas about “nature and landscape and gender and the American West” (p. 146). Solnit always has an original take on a topic, and always makes connections among ideas and experiences in ways that are not obvious. I have read two of her previous books (see my posts of 3/18/11 and 9/10/14 - the latter about the book titled "Men Explain Things To Me," the inspiration for the phrase "mansplaining") as well as many of her essays, and have heard her speak and even briefly met and chatted with her after a talk she gave at my university a few years ago; she is a compelling speaker. She definitely deserves the title of “public intellectual,” although as I write this, I realize that the term is most often by far used about men rather than women, and that the term has certain pompous associations. Still, I want to apply the term to Solnit, meaning it in the best sense of the phrase, and in my very small way, attempting to rescue the term from negative connotations and from sexism.