By Alexandra Brodsky • @azbrodsky • 9 years ago

Feministing Reads: What We’re Reading

After three weeks of final exams, I’ve finalized emerged from under the rock that was my second year of law school. The first item on my to-do list? A drink. The second? Catching up on all the reading I’ve missed when buried in textbooks. For some ideas, I turned to the Feministing crew. Here’s what we’re reading this month:

Jos: I’m currently reading Blackmail, My Love, written and illustrated by Katie Gilmartin, which is a noir mystery set in 1950s queer SF that’s full of interesting historical info. I might actually write a full review of that one. Also reading The Second Coming: A Leatherdyke Reader, an anthology put together by The Oucasts in SF (formerly SAMOIS). It feels both dated and still super relevant.

ARGONAUTSLori: I’m currently reading The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. Bluets is one of my favorite books, and I can’t wait to read Nelson’s latest, which centers on her relationship with the gender non-conforming artist Harry Dodge.

Katherine: Thérèse and Isabelle by Violette Leduc. It’s a classic erotic novel, by a protege of Simone de Beauvoir, about the titular characters’ forbidden romance, and the Feminist Press published Sophie Lewis’ excellent translation just this year.

Maya: I’m alternating between Marilynne Robinson’s latest novel, Lila, and The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, which I guess betrays my secret desire to move the countryside and contemplate the meaning of life/creation/God/whatever. I’m not very far along yet, but I’m looking forward to grappling with Berry’s complicated views on feminism.

outlanderSuzanna: Just finished Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale For the Time Being I feel conflicted suggesting this because there should be a massive TW for really terrifying scenes of abuse, suicide, harassment, assault (especially concerning teenage girl culture). But at the same time, it’s an incredible book about family, buddhism, Japanese culture, the environment, and yes even, quantum physics. As a fun fact – Ruth Ozeki is a Buddhist nun herself.

Also picked up The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by  Heidi W. Durrow, which as a disclaimer, features a pretty terrifying death (not spoiling anything) but focuses a lot on race, specifically having a white mom and a dad of color and dealing with those dynamics particularly during adolescence. Pretty similar with “Everything I Never Told You” by  Celeste Ng. Again features a scary death, also about growing up with a white mom and a dad of color and having to deal. (If you can’t tell, 24 years later, still processing where I fit with my own white mom and dad of color…)

Finally, I polished off Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale (throwback, am I right ?) for a book club. We focused some of our discussion on how its whacked up culture is as could obviously be attributed to Christian conservatism but also to wealthy women finding a way to have it all, but at the expense of other women’s humanity. Thought it was a great read especially as election season continues to pick up…

Juliana: I’m currently reading Outlander, after and I can’t put it down. The story is – literally – a modern feminist woman’s take on Highland Scotland, filled with almost endless feminist sex scenes, a fair amount of sexual violence (trigger warning) portrayed through a feminist lens, and just a great story. I highly recommend it, along with the show.

Courtney: I just read The Last Interview with James Baldwin; sounds pretty much exactly like the title — collection of interviews, including the last one before he died.

Also, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. How we understand death in America, from hospice, to ICU, to med school, to grieving and death with dignity laws, all from the perspective of a doctor who watched his father die from cancer. If we switched the way we viewed/ approached all of these “arenas” of death and dying, could we transform it?

Dana: I just finished Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer on, well, envisioning just feminist, queer, crip futures! In it, she explores if/how/why utopia, by definition, has been understood to exclude disability and illness.

Veró: Currently reading Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. I’m a lover of Octavia Butler’s body of work, and a believer in sci-fi as a way to re-imagine explore our world. Stories are kinda hit or miss tbh but the good ones are so good!

Chloe: I’m reading The Sex Myth, by Rachel Hills. It will make you feel like you finally understand what the hell Foucault was going on about.

Washington, DC

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com. During her four years at the site, she wrote about gender violence, reproductive justice, and education equity and ran the site's book review column. She is now a Skadden Fellow at the National Women's Law Center and also serves as the Board Chair of Know Your IX, a national student-led movement to end gender violence, which she co-founded and previously co-directed. Alexandra has written for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Nation, and she is the co-editor of The Feminist Utopia Project: 57 Visions of a Wildly Better Future. She has spoken about violence against women and reproductive justice at campuses across the country and on MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, ESPN, and NPR.

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com.

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