Reviews for A Feminist Tarot

The average rating for A Feminist Tarot based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-11-03 00:00:00 Gilles Salmon This is for the 1981 edition of this very important feminist work on the approach to the practice of Tarot. Honestly, the best part of this book is the excellent introduction, which is like a beautiful history lesson in feminist, lesbian movement of the 1970's. When I actually dug down deep into the actual tarot "re-visioning" (using the Rider/Waite deck) I actually found this book quite lacking and not very feminist at all. I know that back then, just the fact of bringing up the idea that the cards could have a unique female aspect was revolutionary, but things have moved along so much further since then and this book feels really old-fashioned. But what a great piece of feminist history!

Review # 2 was written on 2013-10-05 00:00:00 Mattias Fornander A poorly executed book with little content or redeeming value. Having finished Thousand and One Night Stands: The Life of Jon Vincent, which was told in a straight-forward, direct way, I moved right into this book hoping for more insight into the late 1990’s world of gay porn stars from someone who was there. I was disappointed. As LaRue says: “I have had sex with some of the stars of this industry, but I’m not going to name names here. Sorry if this disappoints you, but I’ve never liked kiss-and-tell books, and I’m not going to write one. That’s unfair to the other people involved. If they want you to know, let them tell you.” I wasn’t so much looking for a kiss-and-tell book as just a tell. The best story in the book is about Ryan Idol threatening her with a baseball bat and that’s told in about one sentence. The whole book is short vignettes with a few paragraphs and then a page break, and rather than tell a linear story the book is grouped into categories like how to direct a porno or popular drag queens of 1996. The woman’s met Prince, Madonna, Cher, Jeff Stryker, Ryan Idol and tons more and each gets about a paragraph. LaRue’s humour very occasionally comes out: “Bradley’s also gotten me addicted to fans, the little handheld spreading kind that classy women throughout history have fluttered when swooning with the vapors or watching their plantations burn down.” But the humour is too infrequent and I don’t know how well it translates to the page. The book was written with a ghost writer and I have no idea what he did, he certainly didn’t help flush out the narrative. There’s a reason people usually write these books at the end of their career. LaRue seems so concerned with stepping on people’s toes that nothing gets said.