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Shrill
288 pages
A hilarious, battle-tested manifesto for taking up space and refusing to apologize for it.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting at a bar with your smartest, funniest friend while she dismantles the patriarchy over a plate of fries. It is a brisk, cathartic experience that swings wildly between laugh-out-loud internet humor and gut-punching vulnerability. The essays move with a righteous energy, inviting you into a defiant atmosphere where shrinking yourself is no longer an option. The prose is sharp, conversational, and fiercely unapologetic, making heavy topics like online harassment, fatphobia, and grief accessible through a lens of radical warmth. It is a deeply empowering read tailored for anyone who has ever been told they are too loud, too big, or too much, offering a joyful roadmap to claiming your space in the world.
- Mood
- cathartic
- defiant
- warm
- empowering
- Tone
- hilarious
- righteous
- vulnerable
- unapologetic
- wry
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- radical self-acceptance · internet misogyny · taking up space · the politics of comedy · finding your voice
- The writing
- Conversational, fiercely intelligent, and laugh-out-loud funny, blending internet-era snark with deep emotional resonance.
- The arc
- Moves from painful self-consciousness and a desire to shrink to a loud, joyful, and defiant claiming of space.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave feminist cultural critique delivered with the intimacy, warmth, and sharp humor of a late-night conversation with a best friend.
Content notes
- fatphobia
- online harassment
- abortion
- misogyny
- grief
About the book
Coming of age in a culture that demands women be as small, quiet, and compliant as possible--like a porcelain dove that will also have sex with you--writer and humorist Lindy West quickly discovered that she was anything but.
From a painfully shy childhood in which she tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her big body and even bigger opinions; to her public war with stand-up comedians over rape jokes; to her struggle to convince herself, and then the world, that fat people have value; to her accidental activism and never-ending battle royale with Internet trolls, Lindy narrates her life with a blend of humor and pathos that manages to make a trip to the abortion clinic funny and wring tears out of a story about diarrhea. With inimitable good humor, vulnerability, and boundless charm, Lindy boldly shares how to survive in a world where not all stories are created equal and not all bodies are treated with equal respect, and how to weather hatred, loneliness, harassment, and loss--and walk away laughing.
Shrill provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.
Description from Open Library.
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