"part love letter, part manifesto, part confession, part wish---and those are just the raw materials."
I would say this introduction to the book is spot on. This anthology made me feel so many things all at once AND made my hand start to itch to write again. Loved it!

‘Women of Resistance: Poetry for a New Feminism’ is an engaging and poignant collection of poetry from diverse women. It is well-curated and both stories and writings are fantastic; however, they weren’t for me. I wanted to love and to connect with them and it just didn’t happen. It is more the way the poems were written than anything else.

An extremely timely collection, this poetry collection adequately captures the feeling of the moment.

3.5 Stars (I received an e-arc from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review)

This collection has a lot of different authors with some having a couple small poems, a lot of them unknown to me. But there are a range of identities, races, sexualities and life circumstances the most notable being Elizabeth Acevedo; one of my favourite YA authors. Sometimes there were some odd formats to the stories, with a few in slang that I am not a fan of and small pictures which I wished were enlarged (as I was reading it on my iPad). I found that I really started to connect with a lot of the poems near the end of the book and there I feel there is something that everyone can relate to.

I honestly don’t know how to start this review. I had high expectations for this poetry collection. It was one of my highly anticipated reads of 2018. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy Women of Resistance as much as I expected.

Women of Resistance is a collection of poetry and prose tackling feminism, motherhood, sexuality, gender, cultural appropriation, violence and more. I really love the themes explored in this book. Some poems were hard-hitting and remarkable. But there were lines that didn’t make sense to me and I just couldn’t feel interested in most of them. I tried so hard to enjoy this. But I just wanted to get this over with most of the time. Unfortunately, this collection just wasn’t for me. And I couldn’t be sadder about it.

I am not discouraging you from picking this up. If you like the themes that this collection tackles, you still might enjoy this.

This book is a solid collection of poems written by women. While I sometimes have a hard time connecting to poetry, I fou d myself deeply connected to a few of these and I enjoyed the experience.

We need more books like this. Ones about strong women we can aspire to be and model our daughters after.

Are these the best poems I've ever read? Nope. Did they still make me feel better? Yeah. They did. And sometimes, that's enough.

It was my privilege to read this, it was very beautiful. The Women of Resistance boy Danielle Barnhart, Iris Mahan was very good and appreciate that I was able to read it.

*Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.*

_” You thought to retire, having served us well l, we women who donned you like armor and strode proudly into spaces too spiked for dresses, too fragile for the curve of leg you held with such ease.”- Ode To The Pantsuit, Lauren K. Alleyne

Women of resistance is a collection of heart-breaking, inspiring, truthful, and beautiful poems. These feminist poems give ownvoice views into the struggles women have faced over the years, and still face to this day.

There are poems that discuss race, gender, sexuality, abuse and abortion. Each one just as powerful as the last.

“- that instead of you, what falls from above would find no one to endanger, no one to hunger, no one to harm.” - Ryka Aoki, January , After El Niño.

Even though it felt like my heart shattered through a good portion of these poems, I adored this anthology. Like most collections, there were some poems I didn’t like but, those were few and far between.

Overall: if you’re looking for something that shows you all the different ways women struggle throughout the world. A collection that highlights our pain but, also gives you hope. Then I highly recommend this book.

“- She will feel the borders of herself constricting. Not today. Springtime has come to the far north. Bloom and bloom and bloom.” - A women and her job.

THIS. IS. SO. IMPORTANT. FOR. EVERYONE.

Everyone must read this, I feel empowered as a woman and I feel like everyone (male and female) should read this book. Very powerful


“if this poem is the only thing that survives me

tell them i grew a new tongue
tell them i built me a throne

tell them when we discovered life on another planet
it was a woman
& she built a bridge, not a border

got god & named gravity
after herself.”

A very bold and important book.

The book contains poetry, which of course you have to be okay with, but if you are, then definitely go ahead and read this book. Me, I love poetry, so I definitely recommend this book. I thought it was a fresh take on the whole feminism-thing.

I didn't finish this. The formatting of the poems in Kindle format was difficult, and detracted from the poignancy of the poetry. I enjoyed what I got through, but unfortunately couldn't finish. I'd be willing to read it in physical form.

This was a very informative, interesting book that me and my brother both loved reading. I was glad I found a book both of us could share and learn so much from.

I enjoyed this book and learned a lot! A great read if you want to know more about important women and what they did.

Overall, I liked this book; who won't like to read about a book full of poems and short stories about feminism? There were really cool stories in this book, some of them hurt my heart to read, some of them I couldn't really get to it, maybe it was the writing of the author. But overall? Still a book that I would recommend all girls to read and what the heck I would recommend all boys to read it too because let's admit, being a feminism isn't not been a girl, right? Right!!!



3 out 5 stars...

I had high hopes from this book. Though this book is an important literary piece, it was certainly not for me. I am always intrigued by the books which talk about the topics such as feminism, sexuality and gender identity. That's what motivated me to pick up this book too.

The idea behind this book is amazing. It talks about important topic. But poetry is subjective and though the poems for okay, I didn't enjoy them. Most of the poems were rather bland for my taste and were boring. Perhaps, I might not be able to grasp it fully even after I tried so hard. I found myself skipping through most of the pages.

This book wasn't for me, but it doesn't means that it's not for you. If this is something that interests you, then do pick it up.

I'm not usually one for poetry but this is a very well put together and powerful collection about the lives of women today.

I enjoyed this read, but there were several poems which went straight over my head. I wasn’t sure what they were talking about and I, therefore, had problems connecting with the poems. Which in turn affected my enjoyment of the collection. I’m not sure if this is due to my ignorance of social issues or if it was my inexperience with poetry, but I was a little bit disappointed. The poems I did understand was pretty good.
I have a few favourites: Elisabeth Acevedo’s poem An Open Letter To The Protesters Outside The Planned Parenthood Near My Job on pro-lifers. I got this poem and I felt for the poet. I connected with it and felt angry toward pro-lifers (which I do normally anyway). Really enjoyed this poem.
My other favourite was more of an experience. It was Anne Waldman’s Matriot Act. It starts off with a list of words with a few descriptive words next to them. All the word are related or similar to Patriarchy. Then later in the poem the author twists it and starts all the word with ‘m’ not ‘p’. Boom! Feminist bomb right there. Well played! Really enjoyed that realisation!
I also loved how The Well of Loneliness was referred to in Jill McDonough’s poem There Are New Worlds.
Rachel McKibben’s poem Shiv was also a poem that hit a cord. It was on point!
As an ARC and e-book, the formatting wasn’t the best which I presume will be a lot better in a printed version and a final version. But as I was reading it, I couldn’t help but wonder how a poetry collection like this could work on audiobook? And I could imagen that. Have the author or poet recite their own poetry the way they intended it to be read. I think I would benefit a lot from that. If this book ever comes out in audiobook format, I might give it another try

Loved that this book provided inspirational stories of women throughout history. Loved the visuals and diversity represented.

(5/5 stars)