Women's History Month

 

Every March since 2014, I have read a selection for Women’s History Month. I have generally chosen works connected with Feminism. Although demonized by the Cultural Fundamentalist circles I was raised in (and sadly by an increasingly reactionary and fundamentalist Evangelicalism as well), it really shouldn’t be controversial. Feminism is simply this:


The Social, Political, and Economic Equality of men and women.


Of course, the problem with this for many is that this idea is anathema to them. Their worldview depends on a structural inequality of the sexes, one where men control the institutions of power and the money we use as a means of exchange. In order to justify this, they cling to ideas of a congenital inferiority of women (whatever euphemisms they use to deny this), whereby women are unfit for leadership, or even control of their own lives and destinies.


Here are my selections by year:


2014: Are Women Human? By Dorothy Sayers 

2015: A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft 

2016: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood 

2017: Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz by Barbara Babcock 

2018: The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher 

2019: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton 

2020: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

2021: The Second Sex (Part 1) by Simone de Beauvoir 

2022: The Second Sex (Part 2) by Simone de Beauvoir

2023:  The Group by Mary McCarthy

2024: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan


***


In addition, here are some other books that connect with feminism that I read. 


Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton

Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi

The Heavens’ Favorite Murderess by Mariah Jordan

We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

Woman Without Shame by Sandra Cisneros

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

Two Headed Woman by Lucille Clifton

Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Girls Kill Nazis by James Kopp

Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Girl Explorers by Jayne Zanglein

The Burgermeister’s Daughter by Steven Ozment

How to Create the Perfect Wife by Wendy Moore 

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey by Lady Fiona, Countess of Carnarvon

Nothing Daunted by Dorothy Wickenden

Oh My America by Sara Wheeler

On Gold Mountain by Lisa See

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Such A Strange Lady by Janet Hitchman

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

Uppity Women of Medieval Times by Vicki León

Broad Band by Claire Evans

The Mechanical Horse by Margaret Guroff

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

Sex and the Constitution by Geoffrey Stone

The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Koontz

Because of Sex by Gillian Thomas

The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti

All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister

Bold Spirit by Linda Laurence Hunt

Educated by Tara Westover










No comments:

Post a Comment