Susan Faludi
Susan Faludi
Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and the author of the bestselling Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man; and The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. In In the Darkroom, Faludi investigates her transgender father’s lifetime of identity transformations, and the larger mysteries of identity—personal, political, and cultural—transfixing our times.
Backlash, published in 1991, played a formative role in the revival of a national discussion about feminism. The book puncturs popular myths about the “costs” of women’s independence that have been repeatedly deployed to discourage women from pursuing equality. In Stiffed, Faludi turns her attention to the social pressures placed on men, analyzing the contemporary forces that warp men’s lives and attitudes. Her 2007 book, The Terror Dream, is one of the most original dissections of the post-9/11 American psyche in the media, popular culture, and political life. All of her work challenges convention and stereotype and encourages readers to re-evaluate their own views and convictions.
Susan Faludi was born in New York City. Raised in Yorktown Heights, New York, Susan discovered a love for journalism while editing her high school paper. She attended Harvard University on scholarship and majored in American and English history and literature. In addition, she served as managing editor of The Harvard Crimson, and graduated summa cum laude. Her career quickly progressed, starting at The New York Times and including roles at The Miami Herald, The Atlanta Constitution, The San Jose Mercury News, and The Wall Street Journal. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism while at The Wall Street Journal. Her award-winning story was about the painful human consequences of a leveraged buyout of Safeway Stores.
Faludi’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Harper’s, and The Nation, among other publications. For the last several years, she has taught gender studies, first at Harvard University and then at Bowdoin College.
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PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE
When feminist writer Susan Faludi learned that her seventy-six-year-old father—long estranged and living in Hungary—had undergone sex reassignment surgery, the revelation would launch her on an extraordinary inquiry i...Read More
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It has become clear over the years that the reaction of America's politicians and media to the attacks of 9/11 was bizarrely misdirected and dangerous to our national security. But no one has fully probed its cultural roots. Until now. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Susan Faludi brilliantly demonstrates how our culture's...Read More
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In the Darkroom of Identity
Faludi discusses her struggle to come to grips with her father’s many identity transformations—from Holocaust survivor to suburban dad to household despot to trans woman at the age of 76—and how that led her to explore the larger preoccupation with identity that consumes our age.
From the Lowell ‘Mill Girls’ to Lean In: The Long Dance of Feminism and Capitalism
Capitalism birthed feminism, and Faludi explores the hidden ways that, for better or worse, women’s rights are still shaped by the marketplace.
Read why The New York Times thinks In the Darkroom is “New & Noteworthy.”
“Susan Faludi: the feminist writer on trans issues, Donald Trump and masculinity”
“Not Their Mother’s Candidate”
“Susan Faludi: getting to know my father, the woman”
“In ‘The Darkroom,’ A Writer Comes To Grips With Her Dad’s Gender Transition”
“Susan Faludi’s ‘In the Darkroom’”
“Our day with Susan was just magical! Her talk was just brilliant—words meticulously crafted, story ingeniously woven, background politics and history engrossing. The audience was with her at every word. Her manner was warm and honest, and she brought us to her hopeful, uplifting conclusion carefully and naturally. A talk like that doesn’t just happen and we appreciated (and heard audience comments about) how well-prepared she was. Her presentation to the students was candid and wise…she was so generous with her time and her insights with everyone she encountered whether donors at the reception, fans in the signing line, students, staff, volunteers, and more. Several folks who knew her at Harvard/The Crimson were elated by her kindness and meaningful connection.”
— Stephanie Flom, Executive Director, Pittsburgh Arts & LecturesPraise for In the Darkroom
“An absolute stunner of a memoir—probing, steel-nerved, moving in ways you’d never expect.”
— The New York Times“Faludi’s eloquent, timely, and sweeping-yet-intimate new book . . . is a mash-up of genres and themes about family secrets, masculinity, and femininity, feminism, violence, the Holocaust, taking revenge. Knitting it all together are questions of identity: Who—or what—makes us who and what we are? How immutable is the end result?”
— Elle“Many great writers eventually turn to biography, but rarely does it so directly crash into their lifelong intellectual pursuits. . . . very few can dissect a prevailing cultural norm as well as Faludi can.”
— Washington Post“Penetrating and lucid . . . In the Darkroom is Faludi’s rich, arresting, and ultimately generous investigation of her father.”
— The New York Times Book Review (front page)“In this riveting book about a very complicated subject, Ms. Faludi . . . does a remarkable job tracking down the truth about her father, a person of multiple and contradictory identities . . . Ms. Faludi unfolds her father’s story like the plot of a detective novel.”
— The Wall Street Journal“Reticent and elegant and extremely clever . . . an out-and-out masterpiece of its kind . . . Faludi’s mighty new book . . . is a searching investigation of identity barely disguised as a sometimes funny and sometimes very painful family saga.”
— The Guardian (UK)“Sometimes, reality delivers up not just a remarkable story, but a remarkable story containing a set of parallel motifs that seem too absurdly perfect to be credible. . . . Most of In the Darkroom, and the best of it, consists of the epic battle, and eventually the epic rapprochement, between Susan and [her father] Stefánie—an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.”
— Slate“In the Darkroom is an intensely personal journey for Faludi, and despite the intimate subject matter, she never loses her reportorial edge. . . . Through her father’s experiences, she explores the larger questions of transgender politics and sexual identity in a nation whose past has detrimentally shaped its present”
— Shelf Awareness“Ultimately this book is an act of love . . . a fascinating chronicle of a decade spent trying to understand a parent who had always been inscrutable.”
— The Economist (UK)“Extraordinary: part riveting family memoir, part revelatory Holocaust history, but most of all a profound meditation on human identity. . . . In the Darkroom is nothing if not timely. It is also highly significant. . . .We live in an age overflowing with bitter battles over identity—with too little of Susan Faludi’s humane desire to understand.”
— National Book Review“A wrought and multi-layered memoir . . . Powerful and absorbing.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred)“Moving and penetrating . . . A gripping exploration of sexual, national, and ethnic identity.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred)“Wow. Susan Faludi’s new book is so good. Like a really dry martini. Pow!”
— The Observer (UK)“Astonishing, unique . . . should be essential reading.”
— The Irish IndependentBook This Speaker
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