Tag Archive for "Not Oprah’s Book Club"

Posts Tagged Not Oprah’s Book Club

Not Oprah’s Book Club: In Wonderland

For far too long, surrealism has been associated with solely male minds. Exhibit A: Wikipedia’s accounting of the infamous crew: Paul Éluard, Benjamin Péret, René Crevel, Robert Desnos, Jacques Baron, Max Morise, Pierre Naville, Roger Vitrac, Gala Éluard, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Hans Arp, Georges Malkine, Michel Leiris, Georges Limbour, Antonin Artaud, Raymond Queneau, André Masson, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prévert, and Yves Tanguy.

Notice anything? Yeah, not a lot of ladies in the house. But in fact, as this powerful new collection proves, female artists in the movement were a powerful force–delving deeply into their own subconscious and dreams. In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States, edited ...

By Miriam • 12 years ago

Not Oprah’s Book Club: Straight

So I’m kind of cheating on this one, because I haven’t actually read Hanne Blank‘s new book, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality. But I know her work, and I know how fabulously important this topic is, so I’m endorsing it sight unseen.

A recent interview with Hanne in Salon gives a flavor of what the book covers:

Men and woman have been having sex for as long as there have been humans. So how can we talk about there being a “history” of heterosexuality?

We can talk about there being a history of heterosexuality in the same way that we can talk about there being a history of religions. People have been praying to God for a really ...

By Samhita • 12 years ago

Not Oprah’s Book Club: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Mindy Kaling has been making people laugh for a while–and from what I read in her memoir it wasn’t always on purpose. Kaling, a comedian, writer and sometimes actor in the awesomely hilarious show The Office, has a book out, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me. It is a memoir of sorts, that is a series of lists, memories, pictures and anecdotes about growing up in the suburbs, hard work, girlfriends, boyfriends and getting her dream job. It is a coming of age story–the kind that defines a type of American experience (which must be why it is ranked number 1 on Amazon in “american history” cuz that like totally makes sense…uh).

So, while I was on ...

By Chloe Angyal • 12 years ago

Not Oprah’s Book Club: Agorafabulous! Dispatches From My Bedroom

I’m a long time fan of Sara Benincasa, who I interviewed last year. She’s a comedian, a sex advice columnist, a feminist, and she does a mean Peggy Olsen impression. She’s also a recovering agoraphobic, and her book Agorafabulous! Dispatches From My Bedroom, out in February, is based on her one-woman comedy show of the same title.

The book traces the origins of Benincasa’s phobia, which began with increasingly severe panic attacks in her adolescence, and culminated when Benincasa, as an undergraduate, locked herself in her apartment, became afraid to leave her bed, stopped eating, and considered suicide.

These days, Benincasa gets on stage in front of hundreds of people and makes them laugh. But for much of ...

I’m a long time fan of Sara Benincasa, who I interviewed last year. She’s a comedian, a sex advice columnist, a feminist, and she does a mean Peggy Olsen impression. She’s also a recovering ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 12 years ago

Not Oprah’s Book Club: Out of the Vinyl Deeps

Feminist rock critic Ellen Willis testing an album by dancing in front of the mirror.

In 1968, when Ellen Willis was 26 years old and pop music criticism was barely even a thing yet, she was hired as The New Yorker’s very first rock critic. One of the only women in the male-dominated scene, Willis wrote 56 columns over seven years and greatly influenced the nascent genre.

By the ‘80s, however, Willis had moved on to focus on the sharp feminist and political writing for which she’s best known. But now, thanks to her daughter and Feministing friend Nona, her impressive collection of music criticism can be found in place: Out of the Vinyl Deeps.

I ...

Feminist rock critic Ellen Willis testing an album by dancing in front of the mirror.

In 1968, when Ellen Willis was 26 years old and pop music criticism was barely even a thing ...

By Courtney • 12 years ago

Not Oprah’s Book Club: Blueprints for Building Better Girls

The girls and women who animate the stories of Elissa Schappell are so real, so familiar, that there were times that reading her work almost frightened me. It wasn’t so much a clever turn of phrase–although there’s no question that Schappell can write her ass off; it was more the texture and aliveness of her characters that stunned me. I found myself reading about a scene at a college party and flashing back to long forgotten moments of my own, stories of girls I’ve known that I had long buried under the bureacracy of my real world life. All the sudden, there we all were, lost, self-destructive, euphoric, hungry.

And it wasn’t just the characters in isolation that struck me ...

By Samhita • 12 years ago

Not Oprah’s Book Club: Sister Citizen

We at Feministing have long been fans of Melissa Harris-Perry who has become a voice for young women in politics and specifically for young women of color who were tired of feeling invisible in political conversations. Her political analysis is on point, but she is also unconventionally honest, which sometimes makes her controversial. And she is not afraid to walk that line between academic rigor and mainstream accessibility. (She also blurbed my book–which was an honor since I am a long time fan).

So, when I sat down with her new book Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes and Black Women in America, I was already expecting her usual rigorous, forward-thinking candor in laying out the ways that black women’s identities ...

We at Feministing have long been fans of Melissa Harris-Perry who has become a voice for young women in politics and specifically for young women of color who were tired of feeling invisible in ...