Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution
One of NPR’s Best Books of 2022
One of Esquire’s 20 best books of the summer
Named a Most Anticipated Book by Bustle, Esquire, Nylon, and The Millions
Starred reviews from Library Journal and Booklist
“Intimate, thoughtful, and accessible to anyone struggling with the persistent, maddening inequities of contemporary sex.” —Rebecca Traister
“A gorgeous exploration of humanity and desire.” —Ashley C. Ford
“An intelligent and disarmingly honest book.” —Amia Srinivasan
At thirty-two years old, everything in my life, and in America, was in extreme disarray. My marriage was falling apart. My nuclear family was slipping away. My heart and libido were suffering from overexposure. Embroiled in an era of fear, reckoning, and reimagining, my assumptions of what “sexual liberation” meant were suddenly up for debate.
It was in that moment of personal and political sea change that I turned to the words of history’s sexual revolutionaries—including my late mother, early radical pro-sex feminist Ellen Willis. At a time when sex has never been more accepted and feminism has never been more mainstream, I asked myself: What, exactly, do I want? And are my sexual and romantic desires even possible amid the horrors and bribes of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy?
Bad Sex places my intimate history alongside my family history and other stories stretching back nearly two hundred years: those of ambivalent wives and unchill sluts, Free Lovers and radical lesbians, sensitive men and woke misogynists, women who risk everything for sex, who buy sex, reject sex, have bad sex and good sex. The result is a brave, bold, and vulnerable exploration of the enduring barriers to sexual freedom. This book lays bare the triumphs and flaws of contemporary feminism and also helps shine a light on universal questions of desire.
Read an excerpt at TIME magazine
Listen to me debate Michelle Goldberg about sexual freedom on NYT’s The Argument
The Essential Ellen Willis
by Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz
University of Minnesota Press, 2014
“No one sounded like Willis then, and no one sounds like her now: wry, playful, humble, genuinely searching, intellectually formidable.” —New York Times
“Gathering 53 career-spanning pieces, this is an act of reclamation, a reminder of what a piercing and brilliant writer Willis was.” — LA Times
“There’s only one word for Ellen Willis’s work—exhilarating!” —Barbara Ehrenreich
The Essential Ellen Willis gathers my mother’s writings that span her 40-year career. It’s wild how fresh and relevant they seem amid today’s seemingly intractable battles over sex, race, class, abortion, war, terrorism, and pop culture. The anthology features previously uncollected and unpublished works, including an unfinished book on psychoanalysis and politics. Also featuring essays by Ann Friedman, Irin Carmon, Spencer Ackerman, Cord Jefferson, Sara Marcus, and Stanley Aronowitz. The collection won the 2014 National Book Critics Circle award in criticism.
Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music
by Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz
University of Minnesota, 2011
“A timeless compendium of clear thinking and fresh, humane, and persuasive prose.”—Jonathan Lethem
“It’s like unearthing the holy grail of rock criticism!” —Kathleen Hanna
“One of the canonical documents of early pop music criticism.” —Evelyn McDonnell, New York Times book review
Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music is an anthology of my mother Ellen Willis’s music criticism. Besides being a radical leftist essayist, feminist, activist and professor, Willis was the first pop music critic for the New Yorker and a seminal writer on rock and roll. While most discussion of pop criticism at that time focused on the work of influential male writers (Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus, Lester Bangs), Willis was writing for a larger audience than almost any other critic, making her one of the few women to break into a predominately male rock criticism scene.
Out of the Vinyl Deeps reintroduces her critical acuity, vivid prose, against-the-grain opinions, and distinctly female (and feminist) perspective to a new generation of readers. Pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones wrote the foreword, and the book has earned accolades from the likes of Kathleen Hanna, Ann Powers, Rob Sheffield and Alex Ross. The book was SPIN’s #1 music book of the year, and one of the L.A. Times’ and The New Republic’s best books of the year. Out of the Vinyl Deeps won an ASCAP Deems Taylor award and was also nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award.
Girldrive: Criss-crossing America, Redefining Feminism
by Nona Willis Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein
Seal Press, 2009
“A rare glimpse of two friends searching to know themselves, their mothers and their generation.”—Chicago Tribune
“Luminous…insightful…the pair contribute sharp commentary on modern womanhood and gender issues.” —Publisher’s Weekly, starred review
“A vivid testimony to the brains, energy, curiosity, and imagination of young women.” —Rebecca Traister
Girldrive: Criss-crossing America, Redefining Feminism chronicles a road trip that my friend Emma Bee Bernstein and I took across the United States to find out what young women think about feminism. The book tells our generation’s story through luminous photos, profiles, and diary entries. It includes 127 women, a group as diverse as a sex shop clerk, a bible college student, a witch, a future nun, a former Air Force worker, and an anarchist. Girldrive tracks a conversation between the next generation and allows gutsy young women across the American cityscape to be seen and heard. It evaluates, through an intergenerational exchange, the current state of feminism and its many definitions. The book has gotten lots of praise, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly and a place on the Amelia Bloomer list.