PERMISSION TO SPEAK | Kirkus Reviews

A feminist approach to public speaking.

Drawing on her work with actors, academics, businesspeople, and politicians, speech and dialect coach Bay makes her book debut with an encouraging, practical guide to public speaking for women who have learned that to succeed, they must strive to sound “like a straight, white, rich, remarkably large man.” Because of the restrictiveness of the patriarchy, many women have retreated into silence or developed tics such as upspeak, hedging, and apologizing. In chapters that cover topics including pitch, tone, accents, word choice, and emotion, Bay focuses on how voices connect to power. “When I say power,” she clarifies, “what I mean is respect. When I say power, what I mean is control over our bodies and our finances and our destinies. When I say power, what I mean is the opportunity to run the show and feel our feelings.” The author liberally sprinkles the text with lively anecdotes about her many clients as well as the findings of researchers. She offers exercises, such as breathing, guided meditation, throat relaxation, and finding one’s optimum pitch, but she rejects the idea that women should artificially lower their pitch in order to sound powerful—as Margaret Thatcher and Elizabeth Holmes did. That strategy, she warns, validates “the hierarchical system that says high voices belong to small, cute things, and low voices belong to power. The solution is to reject that.” Similarly, Bay rejects the idea that women should tamp down emotion if they want to be taken seriously. When people speak with feeling, she writes, “they reveal that they are determined, angry, heartbroken, joyful, alive.” Audiences respond to strength and warmth, and the author consistently reveals her own warmth toward her readers. Coaching, she writes, involves “not facts but a huge hug of it’s-not-your-fault and you-are-not-alone validation, which is what I know actually frees our voices and allows for joy in communicating.”

A generous companion for building confidence.