A collection of essays accompanied by black-and-white photography from a diverse group of women on the moment they realized they were ready to fight for themselves—including Gloria Steinem, Lena Waithe, Joanna Gaines, Brandi Carlile, Beanie Feldstein, Cynthia Erivo, and Billie Jean King, among others.
The remarkable My Moment--moving, empowering and impossible to put down--collects those inspiring responses. Each of the more than 100 entries from a diverse group of women is paired with a striking black-and-white photograph of its author ... This stirring tribute to strength and perseverance will resonate with everyone, regardless of gender.
Its immense diversity offers numerous chances for readers to connect with the situations and people therein ... Some answers, however, hardly hold connection to the original question, 'What was the moment in your life when you realized you were ready to fight for yourself?' ... It doesn’t take but a handful of these stories to see that the form the responses take hardly matters. Actually, the oddballs among them serve to accentuate the theme of the whole book: These women have had enough and will do what they believe is right, even if — especially if — it doesn’t fit into the prescribed mold ... Variety aside, My Moment gets tiring and repetitive. After all, as the title says, there are over a hundred of them ... More monotonous sections would have benefited from simply rearranging the stories. Other sections resonated strangely and showed a lack of attention and care ... Despite having completely different messages, some essays were roughly clumped by a perceived shared theme. For example, four mismatched accounts of addiction, eating disorders, and healthy and unhealthy weight loss were all smoosh together in a confused confluence of morphed body and beauty perceptions. On their own, the stories are moving. Together, they're discordant ... Thankfully, the shortcomings of the text are not shared by the images. My Moment contains absolutely stunning pictures. The photographers are the authors themselves, their mother, sister, partner or best friend, and they capture the entirety of their subjects. Each portrait is loaded with personality and serves as a beautiful complement to the accompanying short essay ... If you’re looking for an empowering front-to-back read, this probably isn’t it. My Moment is a nice coffee table book — something to pick up and pick through a piece at a time, skipping to a section by a woman you admire or turning to a page at random to see where it takes you.
The diversity of voices is the greatest strength of this profoundly personal book, which also contains images of each contributor shot with cameras the editors gave them. The message of hope and courage they offer to all women is a powerful tonic to contemporary anti-feminism ... Uplifting reading for anyone, regardless of gender identity.
