To get to Brooklyn in Rebecca Solnit’s New York City, you’d catch the 6 train at Eleanor Roosevelt station, take it to Fran Lebowitz, then transfer to a B train heading toward Marisa Tomei.
Solnit, the author of "Men Explain Things to Me" who very recently appeared in a protest outside Trump Tower, published a reimagined subway map in the New Yorker Wednesday to rectify what she thinks is a serious problem: New York City doesn't memorialize its great women.
“No woman is a bridge or a major building,” Solnit writes in "City of Women," her New Yorker essay that will soon to be published in her upcoming book, “Nonstop Metropolis.”
“New York City is, like most cities, a manscape.”
Solnit's pink subway map is not. Each stop is named for a famous woman who worked, learned or haled from the area.
Eleanor Roosevelt has Union Square, Beyonce is in the West Village. Serena and Venus William get the stops near Arthur Ashe Stadium. Jennifer Lopez and Sonia Sotomayor share the east Bronx. And one stop past Foxy Brown in Brooklyn will land you at the Wendy Wasserstein station.
“I can’t imagine," Solnit writes, "how I might have conceived of myself and my possibilities if, in my formative years, I had moved through a city where most things were named after women and many or most of the monuments were of powerful, successful, honored women.”
The map quickly made the rounds on Twitter and even reached the mayor’s office.
💁🏻🙅🏼🙆🏽🙋🏾🙎🏿 + 🗽 = greatness. We ❤️ this map from the @NewYorkerhttps://t.co/7VMZ5dATmd
— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) October 12, 2016
And several New Yorkers, both men and women, got pretty excited about the new names of their neighborhood stations.
My subway stop would be PAT BENATAR!!! City of Women https://t.co/BYru3ygz7o via @newyorker
— Sam Biederman (@Biedersam) October 12, 2016
@nprfreshair Terry Gross is my favorite new NYC subway stop!https://t.co/kIsBP5cYvy
— MEWintle (@MEWintle) October 12, 2016
See you at the corner of Edith Wharton and Edna St. Vincent Millay -- Rebecca Solnit in @newyorker https://t.co/nQ416xG6S4 pic.twitter.com/rQajrmSzJX
— Sheelah Kolhatkar (@sheelahk) October 12, 2016
This reporter's stop is Barbara Stanwyck, which is excellent.
