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Feministing Reads: What We’re Reading

Happy Book Lover’s Day! Here’s what we’ve been reading this summer.

71BALKUgoULSenti: Currently midway through Roxane Gay’s Hunger, and fuck is it heartbreaking, raw, beautiful, painful, and Roxane like we’ve never read her. Her smart, straight, no-bullshit style is very much there, but there’s also so much vulnerability in how she explores the ways in which her body, her weight, her trauma, and her assault relate to each other and have impacted how she moves through the world. This book is some kind of miracle, and I would recommend it to everyone.

9780307947901_p0_v3_s1200x630Sejal: I’m reading Dark Money, by investigative journalist Jane Mayer, who spent five years meticulously researching the far-right billionaire Koch brothers’ massive, secretive political machine. Fun beach reading, I know. The sheer scope of it is shocking: Mayer shows how a few very wealthy families — including the Kochs’, Coors’, and the DeVos’ – are remaking our courts, academic spaces, and political institutions from your local school board all the way to Congress. It’s as terrifying as it is essential.

Screen Shot 2017-08-09 at 10.10.42 AMJuliana:  I’m reading Naomi Klein’s new No Is Not Enough — and telling absolutely everyone I know about it. I’m also halfway through Luiza Sauma’s Flesh and Bone and Water, which follows two periods in the life of a man named André Cabral, when he is a privileged and reckless teenager in Rio de Janeiro and a depressed, divorcee in London. All his regrets seem to center around a relationship he had with the daughter of the domestic worker who lived with his family in Rio, Luana — which is why I’m not sure I’m ready to endorse the book. So far it’s dealt with the hugely unequal power dynamics in a very limited way; I’m waiting to finish it and see how André ultimately understands his relationship with Luana.

41CCBADmBZL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_Dana: I just finished Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies. Before that, I was lost in the world of Elif Batuman’s naive, brilliant, and utterly wonderful protagonist, Selin, in The Idiot. Come for the reminder of how goofy, pretentious, and confused you were as a college first-year; stay for Batuman’s stunning insights on language, subjectivity, and the stories we tell about ourselves.

Sam: I’m really excited about the sourcebook just published in conjunction with the exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85, on view now at the Brooklyn Museum. It collects a ton of incredible essays, manifestos, and other artifacts both canonical and obscure, many reproduced in their original formatting. It’s also significantly more affordable than the typical exhibition catalog!

Here’s what some of our readers are reading:

New Haven, CT

Dana Bolger is a Senior Editor at Feministing and the co-founder of Know Your IX, the national youth-led organization working to end gender violence in schools. She's testified before Congress on Title IX policy and legislative reform, and her writing has appeared in a number of outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. She's also a student at Yale Law School, and you can find her on Twitter at @danabolger.

Dana Bolger is a Senior Editor at Feministing and a student at Yale Law School.

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