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“A seething read that burns to the bone.”
—Tia Levings, New York Times best-selling author of A Well-Trained Wife
"This is a book you'll be pressing into people's hands for years. Hartley traces her rage all the way back to its source and turns it into something that feels like a gift. Come for the memoir, leave with a whole new relationship to your own fury." — Amanda Montell, New York Times best author of Cultish, Wordslut, and The Age of Magical Overthinking
“Gemma Hartley’s account of unlearning fear, questioning faith, walking away from white patriarchy, and finding freedom on the other side is searing and compelling. Both personal memoir and cultural critique, this book is a courageous example of walking out of the only story you’ve ever been told and, an act of generosity, writing your own.”
—Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her and The Resilience Myth
Whether or not you’ve ever set foot in a church, Christian patriarchal norms have shaped American culture in ways that are far-reaching and insidious. From restrictive legislation that takes away women’s bodily autonomy to cultural norms that expect women to pick up after their husbands and joyfully give up their careers to care for children—these are all standards informed and fed by Christian culture.
Gemma Hartley grew up in an Evangelical household where she was raised to become an obedient wife from the time she was a little girl. A sexual assault as a teenager upended her evangelical world, and that coupled with an upbringing steeped in purity culture led her to internalize guilt, silence…and anger. The good girl conditioning of the church demanded that Hartley seek the narrow path of womanhood that emphasized service to others, to swallow the discomfort and rage that simmered just below the surface – but when political events reawakened her trauma, she began to come apart at the seams.
Here she unravels the threads of her upbringing to weave a new story, one where women’s anger is not sinful and dangerous – it is information, and often the most rational response there is. Tying together her Christian upbringing together with a feminist examination of society today, Hartley tells her personal story, but it’s bigger than that: No One Loves an Angry Woman is the story of a cultural awakening.
ALSO BY GEMMA HARTLEY:
Launching a heated national conversation with her viral article "Women Aren’t Nags; We’re Just Fed Up", journalist Gemma Hartley gave voice to the frustration and anger of countless women putting in the hidden, underappreciated, and absolutely draining mental work that consists of keeping everyone in their lives comfortable and happy. Bringing long overdue awareness to the daunting reality of emotional labor in our lives, Hartley defines the largely invisible but demanding, time-consuming, and exhausting "worry work" that falls disproportionately and unfairly on all women—no matter their economic class or level of education.
Synthesizing a wide variety of sources—history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology—Hartley makes the invisible visible, unveiling the surprising shapes emotional labor takes at work, at home, in relationships, and in parenting. With on-the-ground reporting, identifiable personal stories and interviews from around the world, this feminist manifesto will empower women to transform their inner dialogue and give all women the emotional fortitude and courage to ask for what we most want—without shame, without guilt, and without the emotional baggage.
Beyond naming the problem, Fed Up offers practical advice and solutions for teaching both men and women how to wield emotional labor to live more full and satisfying lives. Hartley helps us to see emotional labor not as a problem to be overcome, but as a genderless virtue we can all learn to channel in our quest to make a better, more egalitarian world for ourselves and most importantly, our children. Insightful, surprising, deeply relatable, and filled with all too familiar moments, this provocative, intelligent, and empathetic guide is essential reading for every woman who has had enough with feeling fed up.
