Appetites: Why Women Want - Softcover

Knapp, Caroline

4.05

3,280 ratings by Goodreads

9781582432267: Appetites: Why Women Want

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1582432260 ISBN 13: 9781582432267

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2004

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

A final work by the late author of Drinking: A Love Story considers the challenge of women to know and honor their wants in a culture that would control a woman's expression of desire, drawing on her experiences with anorexia to discuss the factors that shape a woman's relationship with food, love, work, and pleasure. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

The final and remarkable book of best-selling author Caroline Knapp underlines her gift of leveraging her life experiences into provocative lessons. On the surface, Appetites may appear to be about eating—-complete with Knapp's unflinching account of her anorexia. In fact, Knapp is writing about how every woman can decipher her hunger and loneliness by connecting with her desire to experience pleasure. She illuminates the ways in which cultural taboos about women who desire create vulnerability to disorders of appetite including food and alcohol addictions, compulsive shopping and promiscuous sex. In this expansive view, "one woman’s tub of cottage cheese is another woman’s maxed-out Master Card." Readers will nod in recognition as the author seamlessly weaves autobiography and anthropology, describing her family of origin, profiling women of appetite and countering what she calls "the culture of No!" that curbs and disguises women's desires. Knapp gets to yes by urging readers to ask: "What gives me delight and fully engages me?" Knowing that 42-year-old Knapp died of lung cancer makes this question all the more poignant. Such questions suggest Knapp’s brave and generous legacy. --Barbara Mackoff

About the Author:

Caroline Knapp is the author of Appetites: Why Women Want and the best-selling books, Drinking: A Love Story and Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs. She died in June 2002 at the age of forty-two.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.