Because the book Fruits of Wrath will turn your feminist anger into fuel

It is a collective of female arsonists at heart who sign the book Fruits of anger, embrace our excesses, published on October 12, 2022 in the Les Insolentes series (ed. Hachette). In the preface, Pauline Harmange, whom the general public was able to get to know through her essay I men, I hate them released in 2020 and who directs this new work, presents its fiery co-authors:

“The fiction of Lucille Bellan he doesn’t introduce us to a frozen woman, on the contrary. Under the placid exterior of a woman forced to hold off her life – and that of her home – a pent-up and slowly terrifying rage simmers. […]

Fatima Ouassak offers a powerful alternative strategy, pleasant, if always nuanced, because full of dilemmas. […]

In turn, Sweet Dibondo he wonders what to do with this anger, and finds answers that link the emotional to the political, with intelligence and sensitivity. […]

The anger that discovers and shares Daria Marx it is a powerful emotion that, when reclaimed, leads to love. Surprising perhaps, so logical, nonetheless. […]

To start the party in style, what could be better than the bright and restorative poetry of Kiyemis ? »

Indeed, in addition to the opening poem and the closing poem by Kiyémis, the texts follow one another, but are not the same, sometimes fictitious, sometimes manifest, always burning. Their common thread remains the same: that of feminist anger, like a trail of lava.

“The Hour of Rage” by Lucile Bellan

The first text is a fiction Time of anger “, signed Lucile Bellan, psycho-sex journalist. She recounts 24 hours of a woman’s life, compressed by her spouse, children and society, feeling “ like an empty vessel waiting for others to pour their emotions, their frustrations, their anger into it – without caring what it does to him. Hour after hour, grain after grain, like an hourglass that can’t be turned over until the next day, his cup fills up, overflowing with anger held back for too long. Up to committing the irreparable?

“Strategy of anger”, by Fatima Ouassak

Comes after” anger strategy by Fatima Ouassak, public policy consultant, anti-racist and feminist political scientist. The co-founder of the Front de mères collective, (parents’ union in popular neighborhoods) thinks about how to direct, structure and use her anger as a woman and mother, even more so racialized, without it being brutally repressed and silenced. In your opinion, ” after all, the right to be angry is the right to exist politically. But it is this right that is denied to people who are minorities. To produce discretion and nip legitimate anger in the bud, it is necessary to make social injustices and violence seem normal, natural. And the best strategy against this, according to Fatima Ouassak, lies in the collective: “ Individually, anger can eat us from within and serve to disqualify us, to lock us away. Carried by a collective, it becomes an instrument of liberation. »

“The Paradox of Violence and Anger” by Douce Dibondo

The Afrofeminist and queer journalist, author and poet Douce Dibondo signs the third text which is entitled ” The paradox of violence and anger “. It recalls the role of slavery in the development of modern societies since it allowed the emergence of industrial capitalism, built on a new hierarchy according to social races. It also evokes how violence in our societies is not random, indeed, very often the structure , and serves to maintain the worst social dynamics.He gives the example of the polite violence of Newspeak (the fictitious language of the science fiction novel 1984 from George Orwell in the beginning, the expression now designates the empty linguistic elements of political figures and technocrats, full of euphemisms and detours to distance themselves from reality), which swarms from the political class to the media and even to the school. Against this necroeconomic violence there are other ways of fighting that can find their roots in anger, which can be an expression of a silent dignity: ” The state of anger that I like best is that of the lava which spreads irreparably and consumes what does not vibrate with justice, in a sort of dignified fatality. »

“A Little Intimate Story of Anger”, by Daria Marx

Then comes the text of feminist and anti-fathobia activist Daria Marx, “A Little Intimate Story of Rage” which tells of a long journey, littered with anger and eating disorders, towards self-love. The testimony opens like this: I have suffered from bulimia since childhood. I compensate for all that I collect during the day in night excursions: my efforts, my frustrations, my small and big traumas. I eat whatever they leave me no room to say, I cook myself an all-inclusive buffet of repressed emotions. Daria Marx then questions the notion of compulsory cisheterosexuality, before recounting her own lesbianism which broadened her feminism and unleashed her rage. Which allows him to question the aftermath of #MeToo:” It is by giving women back their right to anger that we will bring about a global revolution, it is by allowing women to be heard when they speak, to be supported when they fight, that we will achieve some semblance of equality. They wanted us to believe that talking was enough for things to change, but how many #MeToos will we know, how many testimonials will we read? »

Once the temperature has risen to this point, the fire of anger contained in this book no longer burns our fingers, on the contrary, it warms them, strengthens the fists that we want to raise even higher to fight again, make people feel, demand respect. and above all enforce it.

Front page photo credit: Les Insolentes.