Susan Faludi

Susan Faludi's 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women argued that the 1980s saw a backlash against feminism, especially due to the spread of negative stereotypes against career-minded women. Faludi asserted that many who argue "a woman's place is in the home, looking after the kids" are hypocrites, since they have wives who are working mothers or, as women, they are themselves working mothers. This work won her the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction in 1991.[12] The book has become a classic feminist text, warning women of every generation that the gains of feminism should not be taken for granted.[13] In 2014, high-profile women such as journalists Jill Abramson and Katha Pollitt, actress/writer Lena Dunham, and feminist novelist Roxane Gay, among many others, reread each of the chapters of the book and examined their contemporary relevance. In September 2015, Bustle.com included Backlash among its list of "25 Bestsellers from the last 25 years you simply must make time to read."[14] Reflecting on the legacy of the book in The New Yorker in July 2022, Molly Fischer called Backlash "an era-defining phenomenon" that "presented a damningly methodical assessment of women’s status in Reagan-era America."[15] Backlash has also been translated into several foreign languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, German, Finnish, Korean, and Italian.[16]

In Faludi's 1999 book Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, Faludi analyzes the state of the American man. Faludi argues that while many of those in power are men, most individual men have little power. American men have been brought up to be strong, support their families and work hard. But many men who followed this now find themselves underpaid or unemployed, disillusioned and abandoned by their wives. Changes in American society have affected both men and women, Faludi concludes, and it is wrong to blame individual men for class differences, or for plain differences in individual luck and ability, that they did not cause and from which men and women suffer alike.[17]

In The Terror Dream, Faludi analyzes the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in light of prior American experience going back to insecurity on the historical American frontier such as in Metacom's Rebellion. Faludi argues that 9/11 reinvigorated in America a climate that is hostile to women. Women are viewed as weak and best suited to playing support roles for the men who protect them from attack.[18][19] The book was called a "tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned work that gives feminism a bad name" by The New York Times principal book reviewer Michiko Kakutani.[20] Another New York Times journalist, John Leonard, stated "In The Terror Dream a skeptical Faludi reads everything, second-guesses everybody, watches too much talking-head TV and emerges from the archives and the pulp id like an exorcist and a Penthesilea."[21] Sarah Churchwell in The Guardian says, "Ultimately Faludi is guilty of her own exaggerations and mythmaking, strong-arming her argument into submission."[22] On the other hand, Kirkus Reviews claimed that the book was a "rich, incisive analysis of the surreality of American life in the wake of 9/11" and that it was "brilliant, illuminating and essential."[23] Reviewing the book for Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan praised Faludi for her "characteristic restraint and depth of research" and for her "rigorous insistence on truth".[24]

Faludi's most recent book, published in 2016, is In the Darkroom with Henry Holt & Co; it is about the "fluidity and binaries" of "modern transsexuality", inspired by Faludi's father coming out as a transgender woman.[25] Writing in The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg called Faludi's book a "rich, arresting and ultimately generous investigation of her father."[26] Writing in The Guardian, Rachel Cooke described the book as "an elegant masterpiece" and "a searching investigation of identity barely disguised as a sometimes funny and sometimes very painful family saga."[27] In the Darkroom won the 2016 Kirkus Prize for nonfiction[28] and was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Biography.[29] The book has been translated into multiple foreign languages, including Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, Polish,[30] Portuguese, Hungarian, Turkish, Dutch, and Chinese.[31]

• Faludi, Susan (1991). Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Crown.
• Faludi, Susan (1999). Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. New York: William Morrow.
• Faludi, Susan (2007). The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America. New York: Metropolitan Books.
• Faludi, Susan (2016). In the Darkroom. New York: Metropolitan Books.

• Faludi, Susan, "Feminism Made a Faustian Bargain With Celebrity Culture. Now It’s Paying the Price." New York Times. June 20, 2022.
• Faludi, Susan (April 15, 2013). "Death of a revolutionary : Shulamith Firestone helped to create a new society. But she couldn't live in it". American Chronicles. The New Yorker. Vol. 89, no. 9. pp. 52–61.
• Faludi, Susan (2013). "Facebook feminism, like it or not". Carnival of Buncombe. The Baffler. 23 (23): 34–51. doi:10.1162/BFLR_a_00166. JSTOR 43307858.
• Faludi, Susan, (October 2010) "American Electra: Feminism's Ritual Matricide" Harper's: 29–42.
• Faludi, Susan (May 16, 1990). "The Reckoning: Safeway LBO Yields Vast Profits but Exacts a Heavy Human Toll". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on August 20, 2015.