Where to Start with Rebecca Solnit: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Rebecca Solnit — whether to begin with Men Explain Things to Me or A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A complete reading guide to the essayist.
By Aisha Patel
Rebecca Solnit (born 1961) is the San Francisco-based author, historian, and cultural critic who has written more than twenty books on geography, history, politics, feminism, art, and ecology, and whose essay collection Men Explain Things to Me (2014) — containing the essay that effectively introduced the concept of ‘mansplaining’ to popular discourse — established her as one of the most widely read feminist writers of her generation. Solnit’s range is unusual: she writes equally well about walking, landscape, disaster, gender, and the relationship between art and politics.
Where to Start: Men Explain Things to Me (2014)
The essential Solnit for readers coming to her through feminist cultural criticism. The title essay describes an encounter at a party in which a man explained to Solnit, with great authority, the argument of a book he had not read — the book being one of Solnit’s own. This scenario — a man assuming his knowledge exceeds a woman’s before checking whether it does — gave the internet a name (mansplaining) and gave the essay its cultural traction.
But the book is more than its most famous essay. The essays that follow trace the connections between small acts of silencing — dismissing women’s knowledge, interrupting, talking over — and larger acts of violence: rape, domestic abuse, the murder of women who refuse or resist. Solnit’s argument is that the refusal to hear women is not a minor social irritation but a political condition that enables physical harm.
The final essays expand the frame: an examination of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own as a meditation on the conditions for creative freedom; a reflection on marriage equality and the evolving legal status of partnership; a meditation on the Cassandra myth as a template for the experience of women who see clearly and are systematically disbelieved.
The collection is short but dense; each essay rewards careful reading.
A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005)
The more literary Solnit — meditation on lostness, uncertainty, and the value of not knowing where you are. Lyrical, wide-ranging, and slower than Men Explain Things to Me; often cited as her most beautiful book. An excellent second read.
Why Men Explain Things to Me Is the Ideal First Book
For a reader new to Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me is an ideal first book because it is among her most influential and accessible works, a slim and powerful collection of essays that introduces her distinctive voice, her sharp intelligence, and her feminist insight. The title essay of Men Explain Things to Me gave rise to the popular concept of mansplaining and crystallized an experience that resonated widely, and the collection as a whole displays Solnit’s characteristic combination of personal reflection, cultural criticism, and feminist analysis in accessible, essayistic form. As an entry point, it offers a brief and powerful introduction to her voice and her concerns, the feminist insight, the cultural criticism, and the elegant, thoughtful prose. It welcomes the newcomer with its accessibility, its sharpness, and its resonance, drawing the reader into Solnit’s distinctive way of seeing. It is among her best-known and most accessible works and a fine introduction to her wide-ranging essays, so that the new reader encounters Solnit’s voice and concerns from the first. For the newcomer, then, Men Explain Things to Me is an excellent starting point.
What to Expect as a New Reader
As a new reader, you can expect Men Explain Things to Me to be a sharp, intelligent, and accessible collection of essays, displaying Solnit’s distinctive voice, her feminist insight, and her gift for cultural criticism. You can expect feminist analysis, for the collection examines questions of gender, power, and the silencing of women, and its title essay crystallized an experience, captured in the popular concept of mansplaining, that resonated widely. You can expect sharp intelligence and elegant prose, for Solnit is a thoughtful and graceful writer who combines personal reflection, cultural criticism, and analysis in her essays. You can expect accessibility, for the collection is brief and approachable, an ideal introduction to her thought. You can expect, beneath the accessibility, real depth and resonance, for Solnit’s essays illuminate their subjects with insight and power. Expect, in short, a sharp, intelligent, and accessible collection of essays that introduces Solnit’s feminist insight and distinctive voice, a powerful and resonant introduction to her work.
Going Deeper After Your First Book
Once Men Explain Things to Me has introduced you to Solnit’s voice, the reader who wishes to go deeper can explore her wide-ranging body of work, for she is a prolific and various essayist whose subjects extend far beyond feminism to encompass landscape, walking, hope, disaster, and much else. Her other books explore the experience of getting lost and the uses of uncertainty, the history and meaning of walking, the case for hope in dark times, and many other subjects, all in her characteristic combination of personal reflection, cultural and political analysis, and elegant prose. Reading these after Men Explain Things to Me reveals the remarkable range of Solnit’s work, the breadth of her curiosity, and the consistency of her thoughtful, graceful voice across many subjects. Her distinctive qualities, the sharp intelligence, the elegant prose, and the capacity to illuminate any subject with insight, run through her wide-ranging work. Building your reading journey through Solnit’s work is a matter of following her curiosity across the many subjects of her essays, from feminism to landscape to hope. The reader who begins with Men Explain Things to Me and continues through her work will discover one of the most wide-ranging and thoughtful essayists of our time.
Reading Rebecca Solnit
Begin with Men Explain Things to Me for her political and feminist criticism, or A Field Guide to Getting Lost for her more meditative, literary essays. Both are standalone and reward reading in either order.
For the full Rebecca Solnit bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Rebecca Solnit author page on Editors Reads.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Rebecca Solnit?
Men Explain Things to Me (2014) is the recommended starting point for most readers — Solnit's essay collection that gave the internet the concept of 'mansplaining' and established her as a leading feminist cultural critic. The essays range from the personal (a man explaining her own book to her at a party) to the political (the relationship between silencing women and violence against women). Widely read and influential. A Field Guide to Getting Lost is the more literary Solnit, for readers who want her at her most essayistic and reflective.
What is Men Explain Things to Me about?
Men Explain Things to Me is a collection of seven essays unified by the theme of women's voice and authority — or the suppression of it. The title essay describes the cultural phenomenon of men explaining things to women with unearned confidence; subsequent essays examine the relationship between gendered silencing and physical violence, the importance of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, marriage equality, and the Cassandra myth. Solnit draws connections between intimate and political power in a way that changed how many readers understood both.
What is A Field Guide to Getting Lost about?
A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005) is Solnit's meditation on lostness — geographical, psychological, and philosophical. The book moves between memoir (her own experiences of literal and metaphorical getting lost), natural history (the ecology of the American West), art criticism, and philosophical reflection on unknowing, uncertainty, and the value of not finding what you're looking for. More lyrical and personal than Men Explain Things to Me; less polemical and more contemplative. Often cited as her most beautiful book.
What makes Rebecca Solnit's essays distinctive?
Solnit's essays are distinctive for their range and their method: she moves between personal experience, political argument, ecological observation, art criticism, and historical research within a single piece, drawing unexpected connections between domains. Her sentences are precise and often arresting. She writes in a tradition of the essay as a form of thinking — genuinely exploratory rather than illustrative — and her books reward slow, attentive reading. She is widely regarded as one of the finest essayists working in American English.
