Books
post by blisick on January 24, 2013 - 11:30am;
I do like a close, confidential voice. It's very much like having an imaginary friend. Of course, I also love big 19th-century novels where God narrates from on high, dipping in and out of people's interior lives. But that was before movies—I really think film has changed fiction more than anything in the past fifty years. I'm not a fan of cinematic fiction writing, where we "see" everything, but we never really get inside a character's head. What's the point of writing a novel, then? Why not make a film? I love that visceral sense of being in someone's skin, along with all the secret shames and conflicts and fears and sensations and memories.
Here are a few key words regarding Jim C. Hines's The Stepsister Scheme. Snow White, promiscuous mirror witch. Sleeping Beauty, Middle Eastern assassin. Cinderella, Pregnant Prince-rescuer. Intrigued? I was, and also by the statement given me that this was "Feminist YA fantasy! Written by a DUDE!" when it was given to me. I was not disappointed. C'mon! Princesses with weapons, spells, and babies on board? I'M IN.
Feminist book-lovers will already be long familiar with novels depicting the rollback of reproductive rights, such as The Handmaid's Tale, The Misconceiver, and Woman on The Edge of Time. So is there room for another book looking at a the consequences of criminalizing abortion? Yes, there is—perhaps more than ever.
Let me start by saying that I'm a Hunger Games gal. I thought that series was the end for me; the top of the bold, brave mountain of perfect Young Adult (YA) literature. I would keep reading YA, I figured, but I would be standing at the top of Everest looking down to do it. How would it get better than Suzanne Collins' frenetic pacing, allusion to contemporary politics, consice, brutal descriptions, gasp-inducing action, and the name Katniss Everdeen? Let me tell you, friends. It could be about a war that has ALREADY HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE, equally terrible to Panem's child slaughter. It could have a female protaginist infinitely more invested in directing her own fate than Katniss was, Collins forgive me. It could still be as tightly wound as a top, as intricately plotted as any good twist-ending requires, and equally stupefying in violence and intrigue. It could contain the names of monarchs and spies, Nazis and codes. It could be Code Name Verity, the best book I've read this year, and the new YA Everest.
We've been posting for a couple of weeks about The Big Feminist BUT, a comics anthology about women, men, and feminism, and today's post is the last in our series. It's from Lauren Weinstein, author of Girl Stories, and the piece—titled "If This is All You Get"—is about one area where the many "buts" of feminism often converge—parenting.
Laurie Penny is an English journalist whose work on protest movements, sex, and desire has been at the forefront of feminist writing of the last few years. Molly Crabapple is a New York artist whose Victorian-inspired work includes Shell Game, a crowd-sourced series of ornate paintings of the 2011 financial-world metdowns and revolutions. This summer, these two kickass women travelled to Greece together, and their gorgeous new e-book, Discordia, is the result. The graphic novel–meets–travelogue pairs Penny's gritty, witty reportage with Crabapple's pen-and-ink drawings for an on-the-ground portrait of a nation adrift in both crisis and possibility. It's out now on Vintage Digital, and Emily McAvan chatted with the authors about meaning, mythologizing, and why Hunter S. Thompson owes a debt to his lady-journo forebears.
Whether you're shopping for a long-time comics reader or someone who's new to the world of graphic novels (maybe you're just looking for a good page turner for yourself, we won't tell), click through for some quality 2012 releases of the graphic persuasion.
Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in Her Own Words is a significant book because it is probably the only chance we will ever have to hear Wuornos’ life story the way she herself narrated it. Wuornos wrote to her close childhood friend, Dawn Botkins, from death row for over ten years. This prolific volume of letters has been abridged and reproduced by editors Lisa Kester and Daphne Gottlieb with Dawn’s permission and help. Dear Dawn comes a decade after Wuornos’ execution. Reading the letters in the book, one gets a sense that “Lee” was trying to grasp at the truths of her own life as she wrote them down for Dawn—to get her story on paper before her death.
Do you like comics? Do you like feminism? Do you think it's bunk that publishers have no compunction about saying things like, "We can't sell a book with the word 'feminist' in the title"? Then you might want to know about a new comics anthology called The Big Feminist BUT. Editors Shannon O'Leary and Joan Reilly explain:
Women now regularly run for the highest offices in the land, BUT turn the channel and we’re bombarded with Teen Moms and Real Housewives. Women can have any career they want, BUT they still have to contend with the tick tick tock of their biological clocks when it comes to their love lives. Of course, these days women can also choose not to have children at all, BUT will they really ever be truly fulfilled if they don’t? What do we really mean when we start a sentence with the disclaimers, “I’m not a feminist BUT…” or “I am 100% a feminist BUT…
What do our great big “BUTS…” say about where things stand between the sexes in the 21st Century?"
.gif)
.gif)
