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FatherCraneMadeMeDoIt

FatherCraneMadeMeDoIt

The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship - Theresa Donovan Brown, Marilyn Yalom

I received this book from GoodReads in exchange for an honest review.

This is kind of a difficult book to rate. While the text is informative, the overall narrative feels as though it is lacking. Part of the issue is clearly a lack of historical texts to use in order to determine changes in female friendship. This is mostly a history of white middle class friendship with a brief look at various "other" friendships such as "Friendship in the Workplace, Third-World Style", an unfortunately flippant title. Again, this is partly due to the lack of documentation outside of the dominant group, but I think the missing pieces were crucial to this history.

The historical connections to feminism were interesting, especially the chunk of the book dedicated to Eleanor Roosevelt, but as a whole the book felt a bit dull. The text was broken up well into digestible pieces, but some areas were heavier than others, leaving some sections unsatisfying thin. The section on modern friendships was incredibly short with very little depth.

A decent book, but the lack of concentration in certain areas left me unsatisfied as a whole.