Your favorite feminist books?
My "pro-choice book club" is looking for books for next year's reading list. We don't limit ourselves to choice related books, but since that was our common bond from the beginning of the group, we try to stay with books that deal with feminist issues, are by feminist authors, or will somehow let us discuss feminist topics!
So - what was on your reading list this past year (or will be for next year) that you think is worth reading? New titles, old favorites... any recommendations you have will help us enrich our list for next year!
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It's not about choice issues, but it's totally a feminist book. I love it.
One of my favorite books is "Mercury 13", about the women who trained to be astronauts in the 50's but were denied. It is an amazing part of history. It isn't presented as a feminist book, necessarily, but it is sure to provoke lots of talk.
A good fiction pro-choice book is "The Birth House" by Ami McKay.
For non-fiction, I have 2 books on my wish list right now about abortion:
"Abortion and Life" by Jennifer Baumgardner
Product Image
"Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion" by Karen E. Bender (Editor), Nina de Gramont (Editor)
I haven't read those two yet, so I don't know if they are good or not.
Haha, oops the fourth line "Product Image" shouldn't be there. I was copying/pasting from my Amazon wish list.
Old favourite (and a somewhat depressing one) is A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
Funny, in the nineties I started thinking it was a bit quaint, because it seemed the fetus fetishists had fallen by the wayside. But I re-read it a little while back, and nope, still relevant.
~Sula by Toni Morrison
~The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
~The Color Purple by Alice Walker
~I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
~Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
~Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
~Giant by Edna Ferber
~So Big by Edna Ferber
Anything by Bell Hooks
Oh, oops, sorry-
I just realized you were looking for pro choice books.
My list is of favorite feminist books.
Not choice specific.
I second The Color Purple and The Handmaid's Tale. If you like Atwood, you should totally read Alias Grace. Also, I always recommend Persepolis -- so wonderful. Another of my all time faves is My Antonia by Willa Cather.
Good for discussion, and some really great fantasy is Black Jewels Trilogy. An interesting take on what if women were seen as the stronger sex, some kick-ass female characters, and a great story.
For shorter but more obviously feminist and much deeper would be anything by James Tiptree Jr/ Raccoona Sheldon/ Alice Sheldon. Awesome short stories, fantastic writing and a good range of seriously deep to obviously feminist.
Dammit, you stole my suggestion! Kidding, of course. But an emphatic seconding of the recommendation for Black Jewels. Very feminist fiction. Some great discussions of gender roles and balancing power between them. Also just a kickass good read. I think they should be just as much required reading as Hemingway or Shakespeare in high schools.
As a pro-choice activist in Kentucky, I was really glad when i heard about a new book, "Standing Up For Reproductive Rights: The Struggle for Legal Abortion in Kentucky" by Fran Ellers. I picked it up at a local bookstore (Carmichael's, for those of you in the 502), but it's probably available online. It really gives me hope to see that I'm not alone in my opinions in this red state, even though it feels like it sometimes.
It's pretty interesting, and has a very neat perspective.
Funny, I just realized by your posting name that I know you. Definitely check out the Fran Ellers book.
Most of what I read, right now, is non-fiction. Not about choice, per se, but definitely feminist titles that I've liked are:
The War on Women, by Brian Vallee. It's about domestic violence. The specific events mentioned in the book are from Canada, but the information is relevant no matter what country you're in. Fair warning, though, this book is not light reading. I had to put it down a couple times and go hug my cat, because it was too heavy to continue. Might be triggering. Well worth reading, though.
The Terror Dream, by Susan Faludi. Awesome book. It looks at how the media portrayed the 9/11 aftermath, and especailly how women were portrayed.
My two feminist favorites are definitely in the "oldy but goody" section:
The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer. Not the best written book ever, but radical and fascinating.
and
The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir. Slightly dated, but more thorough and eye-opening than any other feminist book I have ever read. Or maybe any book I've ever read.
I would recommend (fiction) Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison.
Fiction:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg
Towelhead by Alicia Erian
Poetry:
The Collected Poems of Anne Sexton (break it up over a month or six; it can be too intense to read all at once)
The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
Ariel and The Colossus and Other Poems, both by Sylvia Plath
Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts by Jorie Graham
Jane Hirshfield and Kim Addonizio are also awesome.
Nonfiction:
How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America by Cristina Page
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide by Andrea Smith
Sexism and the War System by Betty Reardon
Anything by bell hooks. She's a killer writer and an inspiring thinker.
Pornified and Female Chauvinist Pigs were easy to read and engaging books related to the feminist issue of the objectification and hyper-sexualization of women's bodies, especially in pornography. Getting Off is another favorite book on the same topic.
Erm... I'm pretty sure I know you too. Also, How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America is great. And A Handmaid's Tale (Atwood) is basically required feminist reading, but also really easy to read.
The best book I've read recently is In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. This is AMAZING historical fiction.
(Pardon me, I don't know how to make italics)
The Women's Room by Marilyn French
two great non-fiction choices:
no turning back by estelle friedman-gives a large picture of womens history across cultures and the development of womens movements-i like it because it compares what was going on with women all over the world at different times
americas women by gail collins-this book looks big but i've read it like three times already; it's just such an interesting and engaging read about women throughout the history of our own country. there are so many interesting little tidbits of history that I had never known before that each time I read it I just devour it!
i'll be sure to get In The Time of Butterflies. Lexington and Louisville being as small as they are, we probably know each other too.
Cunt Cunt Cunt Cunt Cunt! Read Cunt, by Inga Muscio! I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it yet... maybe I'm just still in level one of my feminist book-reading and it's like an unspoken assumption that everyone's read it already, I dunno.... :)
But foreal, if you haven't read it yet, you should! It's a very easy fun read, and I promise you'll learn something.
I'm a fan of Ursula K. LeGuin. Left hand of darkness, of course. But you could also consider reading The Telling.
I haven't read Octavia Butler, but from what I've read about her work, it deals with PoC as well as gender.
"Nervous Conditions" by Tsitsi Dangarembga ... this is probably one of my favorite books, it's about a girl growing up in Rhodesia just before independence (when it became Zimbabwe).
"House of the Spirits" by Isabel Allende, is about the women's lives across several generations of a family living in Chile.
"Disgraced" by J.M. Coetzee, about a professor in South Africa, his relationships with his daughter and other women in his lives, and it also deals with post-Apartheid race relations.
I love pretty much everything by Naomi Wolf, but Fire with Fire is probably one of my favourites.
"Wide Sargasso Sea" - Jean Rhys (Jane Eyre told from the prospective of Rochester's wife)
"Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen" - Kates Shulman
And only because it bears repeating, gotta read The Handmaid's Tale. There's also a movie if you can find it.
I recommend The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan. A really powerful story that stuck with me and would seem to work well for your book club.
"Valley Of the Dolls." Just kidding..
Anything by Tamora Pierce! She usually writes for a younger audience (think teenagers) but her books are all about awesome female characters, and are really interesting.
Borrowed Light, by Anna Fienberg, is about a 16 year old girl who has an abortion. Gingerbread, and its sequel, Shrimp, by Rachel Cohn, are about the same thing. Very good books. In Borrowed Light, the heroine is pregnant by her loser surfer boyfriend, who while never abusive, doesn't treat her with the respect she deserves, including mocking her intelligence and being condescending, calling her 'crazy' in faux-endearment when she talks about astronomy, which is a large part of the book. He also makes her lie on newspaper the first time they have sex, because she's a virgin and he doesn't want her to bleed on his bed or couch. Her grandmother is supportive and kind after her abortion. In Gingerbread, the heroine is a quirky girl who doesn't fit in with her wealthy family, and gets kicked out of her prep school after being caught having sex with her boyfriend. She chooses to have an abortion, and she befriends an older woman at a nursing home who tells her about her own back-alley abortion, and is firm in her lack of regret. Much of the novel is centered around her attempts to build a relationship with her absent father, who paid for her abortion. In the sequel, Shrimp, she tells her mother about the abortion and her mother is surprised, but tells her that 'when it comes to you health, don't be ashamed or embarrassed, you can trust me with that.' Her boyfriend proposes to her in the end of the second book, and she turns him down, deciding she's too young for marriage, even though she loves him. Great books, both of them, and no one ever mentions them! Neither of the girls are bad for enjoying or having sex, or for making the best choice for their futures. Definitely influenced my life, in positive ways. I'd say they're ok for girls as young as middle school.
Borrowed Light is darker and more serious in tone, more mature, while Gingerbread is a bit lighter, and the heroine is easier for younger girls to identify with, because she's a bit younger-sounding at times. It's worth noting that both girls have mixed feelings at times about their choices, but in the end, they ultimately know they made the right choice. They both express the desire to choose motherhood, when it's right for them.