TueNight 10: Soraya Chemaly

Soraya at the Women’s Right to Rally. (Photo courtesy of Soraya Chemaly) 

Why are we so filled with rage, like, all the damn time? We can think of a few reasons… Soraya Chemaly‘s new collection of essays, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger hits at the root causes of that anger, how it affects us in every aspect of our lives, and how we might, in fact, celebrate it. 

Rage is something we’ve been trained to hide, suggests Soraya. In Rage she writes,”This desire not to be disliked or seen as crazy, irrational, or dangerous, masks the lack of control that we already live with as the result of the silencing, sublimating, denying, and social opprobrium.”
Time to let your rage flag fly.

An award-winning writer, activist, and director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project, Soraya has been traveling all over the country to promote Rage. “Being on book tour is so very different from writing a book,” she says, “It’s been fun, but hard to adjust from being basically solitary to being intensely social…One of the most interesting parts has been how difficult it is for people to think about anger in positive terms — to connect it to joy and compassion, justice and community. The tour, all about anger, has been filled with all of those!”

Here is her TueNight 10:

1. On the nightstand: Water, pictures, far, far, far too many books that I hope to read.

2. Can’t stop/won’t stop: Going to movies and eating Cadbury Fruit and Nut Chocolate bars.

3. Jam of the minute: Nitin Sawhney, “Days of Fire.”

4. Thing I miss: Being able to see the ocean every day.

5. 80’s crush: Debbie Harry

6. Current crush: My husband

7. Will whine about: Manic parenting

8. Will wine about: Anything

9. Best thing that happened yesterday: I spent the day with two friends, something we hadn’t done in years.

10. Looking forward to: Getting back home and writing again!

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