The book’s title “Femonomic: Women Invite Crime” is a shot at society’s constant victim blaming as women are expected to resist or enjoy crime against them. No matter what happens, women are always either instructed or blamed for one or the other thing.
Book : Femonomic: Women Invite Crime
Publisher: Think Tank Books (1 September 2019)
Author : Lovey Chaudhary
Price : 125 INR
Format: Paperback & Kindle
Review by Swapna Peri
Book Cover
The cover of the book is an image of a young woman looking straight at you with courage and helplessness.
About the book
The book is a collection of poems that are like distinct fragrances of a flower, a perfect mixture of different emotions, boldness, and innocence.
Aesthetics, observation, and emotional balance are very important while penning a poetry-based book, and the author has excelled brilliantly in it. The poems appear to be inspired by real-life events, encounters, and most frowned upon subjects around the world. It seems as if most of them were personally experienced by the author.
Many poems in the book empower women to create a positive space in life and encourage society to do so as well. In a way, the book is a good medium for communicating the strong message the author planned to convey through her poems to the world.
The poetry talks about everything from body image to homosexuality, from the birth of a girl child to rape of that girl child, from anxiety to suicide, from love to sex, and from chocolate to French fries.
In the present scenario of the world, the violence and the increasing crimes against women are witnessed by everyone across the world in some or the other manner. It indicates the enormity and pensiveness of the monstrosity perpetrated against women in recent years. Most of the times the parents or the relatives of the woman suffering mask out the crime against her because they fear society. It is a myth that such atrocities happen only in the communities of less-educated people. It is most prevalent with the middle class and upper-middle class, in India or America. The changes in the living standards, lifestyle, imbalance in the economic growth, changes in social life are some of the reasons that contribute to a vicious outlook towards women due to which there is multiplication in crimes against women.
Some of the poems like To Love, Tumble, I don’t know what to name it, Who am I, The tragedy of self-love & Prostitution are really very well thought and incredibly written. Kudos to the author for picking up such themes.
Thus the author has taken the emotional turbulence as well as women’s issues that she might have witnessed directly or indirectly as the muse for each of her poems and presented them to the readers in the most unadulterated, authentic and powerful way. There are many poems that are written so intelligently that they will prick the bug in one’s mind.
What I like
- A perfect blend of raw human emotions towards subjects that everybody is aware of but no one talks about.
- Realism, perception and imagination are beautifully interwined.
- Poetry about contrasting topics in a unique way makes for a good read.
- The sense of thought provoking and probing poems is admirable.
- Reality of today’s world is described coherently and effectively.
- The mindset of today’s society towards women is seamlessly illustrated in words.
