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About This Book
ISBN13: 9780143038702 |
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me) and Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed), Norah Vincent absorbed a cultural experience and reported back on what she observed incognito. For more than a year and a half she ventured into the world as Ned, with an ever-present five o'clock shadow, a crew cut, wire-rim glasses, and her own size 11 1/2 shoes — a perfect disguise that enabled her to observe the world of men as an insider. The result is a sympathetic, shrewd, and thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism that's destined to challenge preconceptions and attract enormous attention.
With her buddies on the bowling league she enjoyed the rough and rewarding embrace of male camaraderie undetectable to an outsider. A stint in a high-octane sales job taught her the gut-wrenching pressures endured by men who would do anything to succeed. She frequented sex clubs, dated women hungry for love but bitter about men, and infiltrated all-male communities as hermetically sealed as a men's therapy group, and even a monastery. Narrated in her utterly captivating prose style and with exquisite insight, humor, empathy, nuance, and at great personal cost, Norah uses her intimate firsthand experience to explore the many remarkable mysteries of gender identity as well as who men are apart from and in relation to women. Far from becoming bitter or outraged, Vincent ended her journey astounded — and exhausted — by the rigid codes and rituals of masculinity. Having gone where no woman (who wasn't an aspiring or actual transsexual) has gone for any significant length of time, let alone eighteen months, Norah Vincent's surprising account is an enthralling reading experience and a revelatory piece of anecdotally based gender analysis that is sure to spark fierce and fascinating conversation.
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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
-
titianlibrarian, December 15, 2007 (view all comments by titianlibrarian)
The subtitle of this book is: "One woman's journey into manhood and back again." Hmmm. I went to a women's college, and so I've been in my fair share of fascinating, yet endless, discussions on the importance of gender and how much it is dictated by society or by biology. The experience of dressing as a man for over a year must have been incredibly eye-opening and scary, but the majority of the book reads as plainly (and uninterestingly) as a food diary. For someone who really wants to delve into the differences between men and women's behavior and perceptions of each other, I'd recommend that you skip over the majority of the book and just read the chapter entitled "Dating."
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Shoshana, February 25, 2007 (view all comments by Shoshana)
+ Interesting sociological adventure and engaging first-person account
- Tiresome gender stereotypes, use of deceptive techniques
In the tradition of John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me and Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Norah Vincent disguised herself as a man and, for a year and a half, attempted to learn how men behave in their own company. While this is an intersting pursuit, and Vincent is not a bad writer, I was nonetheless disappointed by the fundamental triviality of her conclusions. Vincent seems to like neither men nor women as a group, and this antipathy is wearing after a while. Yes, she has something of a feminist outlook, but it is neither mature nor complex. Her observations about masculinity and femininity are not particularly nuanced and seem surprisingly naive for an adult. Her reported experiences with men prior to this experiment are scant, and those with women are stereotypical and suggest that women are mean and not to be trusted. Vincent fails to challenge this highly gendered world view; she masquerades as Ned in environments at the extremes of the distribution of stereotypical masculine behavior--a bowling league, an Iron John-inspired men's support group and retreat, a door-to-door commission sales job, and a Catholic monastery. I wish that she had included a wider range of settings where men congregate, alone or with women, such as an office job or bookstore. At that, why no gay men's group? Vincent compounds her stereotypes by dating women through web-based services; this is fine, but why not try to meet women through a mutual interest (books, birdwatching, sports, etc.) for a more balanced experience? I can't think much of Vincent's observations about women's neediness when she is overgeneralizing from a very small and specific pool. Disturbingly, she has sex with one of these women. No word on what her girlfriend has to say about this.
I was troubled by Vincent's deceptive techniques, but more troubled in some ways by her urge (and in some cases, she acted on this urge) to reveal herself. She sees it as confessional and perhaps as a way to seek forgiveness for the deception; I experience it as a form of taunting or narcissism disguised as confession.
Be sure to check out both the hardback and paperback covers for several views of Norah and Ned.
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Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780143038702
- Subtitle:
- One Woman's Year Disguised as a Man
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Penguin Books
- Subject:
- Women
- Subject:
- Gender Studies
- Subject:
- Personal Memoirs
- Publication Date:
- January 2007
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 290
- Dimensions:
- 7.94x5.34x.69 in. .54 lbs.
