Andrea Dworkin

“It’s the Nazism,” Andrea writes, that you “have to kill, not the Nazis. People die pretty easily, but cruelty doesn’t.”

Such an outstanding, emotionally raw and complex biography about one of our more brilliant, passionate and complicated feminist foremothers. As someone who has read most of Dworkin’s books (though not in years; I’ll have to rectify that) I was very pleased to see that the brilliance of her mind and the fire of her writing were fully depicted here.

The book starts with an intimate, upsetting but inspiring description of Dworkin’s foundations as a feminist, including a horrendous abuse at a women’s prison after a protest, a terrible abusive relationship, and more. This is all sensitively written and tied critically to many of her writings, and really helps the reader see how her brilliant philosophy was born.

The easy (and expected) way to go in this book would be to devote most of it to Dworkin’s controversial views and activism on pornography. I was so happy that this author clearly knows Dworkin was so much more than that one corner of her brilliant mind.

The book also has intriguing new (to me) and moving info on Dworkin’s lifelong relationship with John Stoltenberg. The two were in love in every way, mind, body and soul, for decades even though she identified as a lesbian and he identified as gay. I also loved, and lamented, some of the descriptions of the complexity of her relationships with other leading feminists of the era.

It also does a great job showing how particularly gross the word “feminazi” is as applied to Dworkin, who wrote a great deal of important work on anti-Semitism.

Oh - and! Now that the world knows who Allen Dershowitz REALLY is, hopefully people will see Andrea’s debates with him in a whole new way.

If anyone ever wrote a biography of me, I would want it to be every bit as intellectually rigorous, affectionate, and well-researched as this one. One of the best biographies I’ve read this year. Even if you think Dworkin might be a bit too radical for you, if you’re a feminist you should read this. She is it critical importance to the movement and perhaps even more relevant today, post #MeToo, than ever.

Thanks so much to Martin Duberman, The New Press, and NetGalley for the ARC of this beautiful work.