Soraya deftly explains why women are full of rage and why the world, including those close to us, try to minimize that rage to make others more comfortable. This book came at just the right time in my life, personally and politically, that I had to put the book down many times to scream, "YEEEES!" then swiftly picked it back up to keep reading. Rinse and repeat until the end.

Women are encouraged to be demure, but this book shows us how to channel our anger, our rage, towards social justice and social change.

Yes. Yes to more books like this. This book opens up a discussion that needs to be had. It presents valid points in why we, as women, should be allowed to express our outrage and anger in situations. In truth, this is just another level to feminist literature that needs to be put out there for general consumption. Bravo Chemaly! Keep these types of ideas and well thought out theories coming.

Rage Becomes Her is at once the worst and best book to have started in the midst of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation. I was already enraged and this book has so much more to make me angry, but it also puts it into context. Of course, the best thing Soraya Chemaly does with Rage Becomes Her is encouraging us to see our anger as healthy.

Chemaly begins by reclaiming anger. Women are supposed to be sad, not angry. We are not supposed to have the power of anger. Anger is a demand, sorrow is acceptance. Then she spends several chapters reminding us why we should be angry, from pay differentials, the women tax, sexual assault, health care inequities, and the flat-out misogyny that impinges so much on our lives. I would read a bit and then have to get up and chop onions VERY HARD or take a short walk just to walk off some of the anger so I could read some more.

It’s not that I didn’t know a lot of this, but concentrating it is an intense experience. However, Chemaly does us the service of ending with a chapter on turning our anger into more than a fiery furnace so that it is instead, the optimistic demand for justice that righteous anger can be.


It took me far longer than usual to read Rage Becomes Her. This is not because this is not a good book, it’s because it is so very intense. Seriously, if you could measure injustice per column-inch, this book is near the saturation point. In spite of bringing all the scholarly receipts, Rage Becomes Her is a very readable narrative. Chemaly brings herself and her family into the narrative, telling of seeing her mother’s evident, but unexpressed rage and finding herself falling into the trap of perpetuating the ‘good girl” socialization with her own daughter who was being bullied. This kind of honest self-reflection reifies many of the broader themes.

This is not a happy book and it will make you angry, but you should read it anyway. We really need to see the bigger picture. We really do need our anger and we need to employ that anger to make the world less unfair and better for women, not just for us, but for the next generations.

I received a copy of Rage Becomes Her from the publisher through NetGalley.

Rage Becomes Her from Atria Books
Soraya Chemaly at Women’s Media Center

RAGE BECOMES HER by Soraya Chemaly is subtitled "The Power of Women's Anger" and Chemaly writes about using rage as a catalyst for change against both political and personal repression. She begins her text with a story of her preschool daughter who repeatedly builds a tower that a young male classmate knocks down each time without reprimand, concluding "Even in this early and relatively innocent setting, he ... was running roughshod, with no sense of consequences, over the people around him. By default, his feelings were prioritized, and he was not only allowed but also encouraged to control the environment." Her penultimate chapter, "A Rage of Your Own," lists ten helpful tools and suggestions for pursuing anger competence like develop self-awareness; distinguish between anger, assertiveness, and aggression; cultivate body confidence; trust other women and accept a desire for power.

Perhaps reflecting generational differences, Chemaly's work is an interesting counterpoint to the very inspirational film RBG where Bader Ginsburg notes the importance of "being a lady" and therefore not showing anger. RAGE BECOMES HER is well researched (over fifteen percent of the book is devoted to source notes and there is an extensive index). This title received starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus; Library Journal aptly describes RAGE BECOMES HER as "a timely, politically charged account of what it means to be an American woman today."

Anger is a Gift

** Trigger warning for discussions of sexism and misogyny, including sexual assault. **

“Ask yourself, why would a society deny girls and women, from cradle to grave, the right to feel, express, and leverage anger and be respected when we do? Anger has a bad rap, but it is actually one of the most hopeful and forward thinking of all of our emotions. It begets transformation, manifesting our passion and keeping us invested in the world. It is a rational and emotional response to trespass, violation, and moral disorder. It bridges the divide between what ‘is and what ‘ought’ to be, between a difficult past and an improved possibility. Anger warns us viscerally of violation, threat, and insult. By effectively severing anger from ‘good womanhood,’ we choose to sever girls and women from the emotion that best protects us against danger and injustice.”

“Anger is usually about saying ‘no’ in a world where women are conditioned to say almost anything but “’no.’”

“Because the truth is that anger isn’t what gets in our way—it is our way. All we have to do is own it.”

— 3.5 stars —

After nearly ten years of marriage, and more than fifteen years together, my husband suddenly and unexpectedly passed away last year – leaving me a widow at the ripe old age of thirty-eight. The grief and shock quickly gave way to anger; in the process of reconciling his estate, I discovered secrets he’d been hiding from me. These were like a steady drip-drip-drip of awfulness that continued to pummel me in the weeks and months following his death.

My aunt – one of the relatives who came out for an extended stay as part of “Kelly Duty,” and who had a front seat to the dumpster fire that my life had become – said something that will always stick with me, and not in a good way. She was reading some paranormal/urban fantasy book at the time, and apparently the MC was not a fan of anger. She proceeded to give me this long speech about how anger poisons you from the inside out, and the only way to move on is through forgiveness. I’m sure she meant well, but the whole thing came off as insensitive, clueless, even manipulative. (I’m already feeling powerless, like I have zero control over anything in my life; now I don’t even get to decide how I feel about things?) I was still in the thick of things then, with bad news coming at me on the daily. Even a year and a half on, I am absolutely seething with anger.

Anyway, I didn’t know quite how to answer her at the time – probably I didn’t even have the energy for a rebuttal, and just let it go – but today, I am highly tempted to send her a copy of Soraya Chemaly’s book (possibly in conjunction with Mark Oshiro’s ANGER IS A GIFT, from which I borrowed the title for this review). Except I can’t hardly afford it, which is the source of some of my anger. This isn’t unusual, either, as I’ve learned from reading RAGE BECOMES HER: poverty, powerlessness, and a lack of authority are all associated with unexpressed anger. My continued rumination? Also par for the course.

RAGE BECOMES HER is an interesting mix. Chemaly both explores the sources of women’s anger (rape culture, the wage gap, the caring mandate, unpaid/undervalued care work – described as “the single greatest wealth transfer in today’s global economy” – sexualization and objectification, discrimination against pregnant or potentially pregnant women, the denial of women’s physical pain, etc. etc. etc., so on and so forth), as well as the effects that unexpressed anger can have on a body, a psyche, a relationship, and a society (depression, anxiety, heart failure, physical pain, abuse, divorce, inequality, authoritarianism).

In some ways, this reads a lot like EVERYDAY SEXISM, and similar books that catalog, interrogate, and challenge sexism and misogyny in modern culture. (In fact, Laura Bates and the Everyday Sexism Project do get a shout-out here. If you do any amount of feminist reading online, no doubt you’ll recognize some of the activists mentioned in this book.) However, there’s an added dimension that makes RAGE BECOMES HER unique: anger. In contrast to a lifetime’s worth of social conditioning that teaches girls to smile and be nice, Chemaly encourages women and girls to acknowledge and embrace our anger, harnessing it in a constructive way, as a tool of social change.

At least this is what Chemaly seems to be going for. I would’ve like to have seen more information on anger itself – examples of how activists have channeled it for positive change, for example – and less background information, for lack of a better word, on why women should be angry in the first place. Let’s face it: most of the folks picking up a book provocatively titled RAGE BECOMES HER probably have a good enough grasp of feminism 101, right? (But I do really appreciate her emphasis on intersectionality, which is something all of us could use a continued refresher in.)

Of course, as Chemaly herself points out, there’s a dearth of research on the mediating effects of gender (and race and class) on emotions, particularly anger (not to be confused with assertiveness and aggression, which are behaviors) – so that book might be difficult to write, at least at this point in time. As it is, RAGE BECOMES HER is a good enough place to start.

Fwiw, I read this book as an ARC. While I assume that it was thoroughly researched – as evidenced by a bibliography that comprises 21% of the Kindle file – the review copy did not contain footnotes, or even a suggestion of where they might go. This threw me for a loop since I’m the kind of dork that reads those things. I’m trying not to hold it against the finished copy, but it’s a struggle.