About the author:
Sonora Jha, Ph.D., is a novelist, essayist, researcher, and a Professor of Journalism at Seattle University. Sonora was born in India, where she had a career as a journalist in Mumbai and Bangalore before moving to Singapore and then to the United States.
Sonora’s academic research on the emerging intersections of the press, politics, and the Internet has been published in top-tier national and international scholarly journals.
Part memoir, part manifesto, How to Raise a Feminist Son is a confluence of the author’s life, her rich inner life, family life, and feminism. With discussions on media, race, sexuality, sexism, racism, and everything in between, the author leaves almost nothing un-inspected. Sonora writes through a trained feminist lens, and her love and empathy for her son and others is felt on the page.
How to Raise a Feminist Son
Sonora Jah |
About the book:
Amazon – Beautifully written and deeply personal, this book follows the struggles and triumphs of one single, immigrant mother of color to raise an American feminist son. From teaching consent to counteracting problematic messages from the media, well-meaning family, and the culture at large, the author offers an empowering, imperfect feminism, brimming with honest insight and actionable advice.
Informed by Sonora’s work as a professor of journalism specializing in social justice movements and social media, as well as by conversations with psychologists, experts, other parents and boys–and through powerful stories from her own life–How to Raise a Feminist Son shows us all how to be better feminists and better teachers of the next generation of men in this electrifying tour de force.
Includes chapter takeaways, and an annotated bibliography of reading and watching recommendations for adults and children.
Publishers Weekly – Sonora, who writes of growing up in an abusive patriarchal system in India, frequently draws on her own experience as she implores parents to raise boys outside of gender stereotypes.
To counter misogyny and toxic masculinity, she and advocates for reshaping masculinity into a gentler version in which boys are “free to experience and express the whole spectrum of human emotion.”
Finding examples in movies and nursery rhymes, she identifies teaching moments to start boys on the right track at a young age (“Why was the queen not in the counting house, counting all her money?); guides readers through talking about sex, urging them to start early to create a sense of openness; and examines such issues as parental guilt and childhood slip-ups: “Teaching a boy to expect to make mistakes and to expect to be held accountable when he makes mistakes is the key.
Teaching a boy to be able to laugh at himself… wouldn’t that be such a gift?” Concise to-do lists round out each chapter. At times touching and always impassioned, this is an excellent resource for like-minded parents.
Raw footage of the interview with Sonora Jah
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