Page Turner

"Rave On" is the Page Turner series that asks feminist writers, artists, musicians, activists, leaders, and scholars to talk about a book that completely rocked their world. Today we feature journalist and scholar Tiny, aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, on the novel Comfort Woman, by Nora Okja Keller.

I had heard about the brutal rape and enslavement of the "comfort women" from Korea in World War II from an Asian-American scholar. I remembered listening to a few words and my mind crumbling into small particles of despair. As the daughter of a tortured woman, I’m never able to hear about hurt inflicted on women and children, man or animal, without bits of mi Corazon y mi alma breaking apart.

It’s the well-worn, short-yet-storied line that’s become nearly cliché: "I’m not a feminist, but…"—one that’s now some kind of standard midpoint in our culture’s endless wrangling about the F word. Now "I’m not a feminist, but…" is being re-examined via comics in the forthcoming anthology The Big Feminist BUT, edited by Suzanne Kleid, Joan Reilly, and Shannon O’Leary. The anthology, which has a website, features comic artists’ takes on what the editors call the "contradictory ‘post-feminist’ playing field" we’re (apparently) living in today.

Page Turner interviewed O’Leary to learn just what it is about that big but that irks her and her co-editors, whether she thinks we really are living in a "post-feminist" playground, her picks of the best comics for comic-obsessed feminists, and (yes, it exists) sexism in the comics world. Read on for more!

"YA Lit Bitch" is the new Page Turner series about my ever-so-slight (or ever-so-obvious) obsession with young adult literature that’s not only good, but represents a wide-open range of teenagers’ lives with a feminist heroine (or 2, 3) thrown into the mix. The series features interviews with YA authors about their work as well as feminism, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and other issues.

This week we talk with author Laurie Halse Anderson, who’s written five YA novels, including the New York Times best-seller Speak, one of the most compelling depictions of the trauma of the interior space of a teenage sexual assault survivor. Anderson has been getting letters from teen rape and incest survivors ever since she published Speak, which was her first novel, ten years ago. Her latest,Wintergirls, covers the well-worn, adolescent terrain of eating disorders through the lives of two 18-year-old girls, Lia and Cassie.

Page Turner talked with Anderson about growing up feminist, what she loves about the teen audience, personal power in a consumer-driven culture, and how Wintergirls brought to light her own issues with disordered eating and body image.

Read on for more!

"Rave On" is the Page Turner series that asks feminist writers, artists, musicians, activists, leaders, and scholars to talk about a book that completely rocked their world. Today we feature writer Nona Willis Aronowitz on Rubyfruit Jungle, by Rita Mae Brown.

I was in the midst of a family vacation when I flopped on my parents’ bed and gave my mom puppy-dog eyes. "I’m bored," I whined. "I finished all my magazines. My Discman is out of batteries. And there’s no TV here!"

My mother, feminist writer Ellen Willis, smiled knowingly and dug through her book collection. "Here," she said, handing me a tattered copy of Rita Mae Brown’s semi-autobiographical Rubyfruit Jungle. "I promise you’ll love this."

"Rave On" is the Page Turner series that asks feminist writers, artists, musicians, activists, leaders, and scholars to talk about a book that completely rocked their world. Today we feature Estelle Freedman, Ph.D., the Robinson Professor in U.S. History at Stanford University, on Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, by Susan Brownmiller. Read on for more!

There may be no one better to teach girls how to rock than music and culture critic Jessica Hopper. She's clocked massive amounts of hours as a tour manager, band publicist, DJ, touring bassist, Girls Rock Camp booster, and fanzine publisher. Her "music-is-my-life" credo and infectious passion for young women and feminism are evident from even a split-second glance at her work.

Now she's just released her first book, The Girls' Guide to Rocking. Heard of it yet? Perhaps you've seen the kick-ass promo. Read on for more!

"Rave On" is the Page Turner series that asks feminist writers, artists, musicians, activists, leaders, and scholars to talk about a book that completely rocked their world. Today we feature make/shift co-editor and copublisher Jessica Hoffmann on Women, Race, and Class, by Angela Y. Davis. Read on for more!

Welcome to "Six Questions," a new Page Turner interview series with authors about their work. Today we talk with Jamaican-born writer, activist, and performance-poet extraordinaire Staceyann Chin about her new memoir, The Other Side of Paradise, a chronicle of Chin's childhood that includes her survival of parental abandonment, poverty, abuse, sexual assault, and her eventual coming out as a lesbian in her deeply homophobic homeland.

Page Turner talked with Chin about lessons of survival, otherness, the writing process, feminism, and her upcoming documentary on her quest to become a mama. Read on for the Q&A!

Welcome to Page Turner, a new blog on feminism and books here at Bitch's online headquarters. Here's my goal with Page Turner: to make it a collaboration between you, Bitch's readers, and me, your biblio-obsessed blogger. Page Turner is all about our love of books and feminisms, and all the many ways we interact with authors and their work in our daily lives. Read on for more!