She Wants It
Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy
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4.5 • 14 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Editors’ Choice
In this poignant memoir of personal transformation, Jill Soloway takes us on a patriarchy-toppling emotional and professional journey. When Jill’s parent came out as transgender, Jill pushed through the male-dominated landscape of Hollywood to create the groundbreaking and award-winning Amazon TV series Transparent. Exploring identity, love, sexuality, and the blurring of boundaries through the dynamics of a complicated and profoundly resonant American family, Transparent gave birth to a new cultural consciousness. While working on the show and exploding mainstream ideas about gender, Jill began to erase the lines on their own map, finding their voice as a director, show creator, and activist.
She Wants It: Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy moves with urgent rhythms, wild candor, and razor-edged humor to chart Jill’s evolution from straight, married mother of two to identifying as queer and nonbinary. This intense and revelatory metamorphosis challenges the status quo and reflects the shifting power dynamics that continue to shape our collective worldview. With unbridled insight that offers a rare front seat to the inner workings of the #metoo movement and its aftermath, Jill captures the zeitgeist of a generation with thoughtful and revolutionary ideas about gender, inclusion, desire, and consent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This intimate, funny memoir from Soloway, the creator of the Amazon TV series Transparent, is many things at once: a behind-the-scenes look at the entertainment industry, a sometimes tumultuous but ultimately positive coming-out narrative, a wry and reflective family history, a cri de coeur about gender-based societal strictures, and a success story of, after some missteps, building a workplace culture around allyship. Soloway, who is nonbinary and uses the pronoun they, identified as female when they created Transparent a show about a Jewish family managing life after the revelation that the person family members knew as their father and husband identifies as a woman based on their own then-recent experiences with the parent they now call "Moppa." Soloway explicitly addresses the backlash regarding the casting of cis man Jeffrey Tambor as transwoman Maura Soloway originally chose him because of the resemblance he bore to their moppa, Carrie and their handling of accusations of sexual harassment by Tambor. But this is more than just a showbiz chronicle; it's a personal reflection, and Soloway shows incredible warmth toward almost everyone in their circle and toward their past self, even when it's clear they're looking back on professional or romantic choices they would not have made in retrospect. Soloway's sharp humor carries the day in an unusually kind and self-aware memoir that will both make readers laugh and leave them optimistic.
