Author: Regan Penaluna Publisher: Grove Press, March 2023
BOOK REVIEW: How to Think Like a Woman: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind
Author: Regan Penaluna Publisher: Grove Press, March 2023
Review by Tom James, MD
The Speed Art Museum recently showed an exhibit entitled, Abstract Expressionists – The Women. This show featured the work of Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Vivian Springford, Grace Hartigan and Lee Krasner. While important in their own right, these five women artists were overshadowed by their significant others. At the same time KMAC, our contemporary art museum, presented new women sculptors, as part of an exhibition honoring Enid Yandell( 1869-1934). From Louisville, Enid, the daughter of Dr. Lunsford Pitts Yandell, a surgeon, was one of very few important women sculptors at the turn of the 20th century. Both of these exhibits demonstrate the bias in the arts community that women artists could not achieve the level of recognition as white males, even if the works were of better artistic equality.
It is against this backdrop that I picked up a copy of Regan Penaluna’ s salaciously titled book, How to Think Like a Woman. The subtitle gives more reassurance as to the directions being sought. Penaluna grew up in Iowa, writing,“ I was raised to believe the shape of my life would be different from the shape of my grandmother’ s and my mother’ s lives; and if anything held me back professionally, it wouldn’ t be my sex or gender.”
Even as a child, Penaluna was consumed by curiosity and by truth. Her first real challenge was the metaphysical relationship with God. This was driven by her family’ s switch from the Catholic church to Lutheranism. Over time she realized she was not looking for a personal God, but a truth that was real and tangible. In college she took her first class in philosophy. It was there that she found herself in the throes of the conflict between multiple philosophical constructs. With each higher-level class she took, she became certain that her ultimate goal was to complete a PhD in philosophy and become a professor.
As she gained maturity, she recognized that despite her youthful
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