Letting Go

At a time when women are being exhorted to ""lean in"" and work harder to get ahead, Letting Go: Feminist and Social Justice Insight and Activism encourages both women and men to ""let go"" instead. The book explores alternatives to the belief that individual achievement, accumulation, and attention-seeking are the road to happiness and satisfaction in life. Letting go demands a radical recognition that the values, relationships, and structures of our neoliberal (competitive, striving, accumulating, consuming, exploiting, oppressive) society are harmful both on a personal level and, especially important, on a social and environmental level. There is a huge difference between letting go and ""chilling out."" In a lean-in society, self-care is promoted as something women and men should do to learn how to ""relax"" and find a comfortable work-life balance. By contrast, a feminist letting-go and its attendant self-care have the potential to be a radical act of awakening to social and environmental injustice and a call to activism.