julianne@lacrosse.EBay.Sun.COM (Julianne Coleman) (03/03/90)
This is my first posting. Nice intro statement they have to try to keep you from sending out trash. Apparently not enough people are scared by the cost and send trash anyway. I have recently started reading great classics and more recent great books by amazing women writers. I have realized that I completely missed out on this in school. I realize that this is a very general kind of request, but could some of you out there make some suggestions about authors or books of feminist writing? I am more interested in fiction (more fun to read) but will take anything. As a point of reference: The Handmaids Tale, another book that has menwim and wim (forgot the title) were great. I have picked up Alcott, Austen, Wharton (not that they are feminists, but they fit the women classic writers category). Walker, Zora Neal Hurston (?) also great. The thing is with these books that it is inspiring to read classics written by women, especially after realizing that all that I read in college and most of what I read in high school was written exclusively by white men (not that they don't have value). It is also empowering to read stories where women are treated with respect and honor and not depicted as they so often are today. But my list is fairly short now and I need a new source of ideas, could you help me out? ps: Why is this group so quiet? Julianne Julianne Coleman Julianne@ebay.sun.com **no fancy .sig yet, hope that address works
turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) (03/06/90)
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These are all interesting and enlightening non-fiction with a
feminist theme.
Marilyn French, "Beyond Power: On Men, Women, and Morals"
A modern feminist tome. Ambitious, well written,
thoughtful, and moving.
Gerda Lerner, "The Creation of Patriarchy"
Historical examination of the origin of Judeo-Christian
ideas about sex and gender. Illuminating. ("When God
was a Woman", whose author I forget, is an easier read
along the same lines.)
Hester Eisenstein, "Contemporary Feminist Thought"
Survey with some comments on famous feminist writers
(de Beauvior, Brownmiller, etc). Describes the different
feminist stances, and makes apparent how they conflict.
As far as fiction goes, there is one author I would like to recommend,
even though she may not qualify as a feminist. Dorothy Parker wrote
short stories, poems, and book reviews. She was a contemporary of
Mencken's and had an even more biting wit. One of her short poems
ends this posting.
Russell
Life is a glorious cycle of song,
a medly of extemporania,
Love is a thing that can never go wrong,
and I am Marie of Roumania.kupstas@unc.cs.unc.edu (Eileen Kupstas) (03/06/90)
You might try books by Frances Trollope; she is not as well known as her son,Anthony Trollope, but she wrote a remarkable number of books during her life.
Not all of them are "art" and are not popular today for real reasons. Others of
her books, though, are quite interesting as studies of a culture during a
particular period. Her best known work is _Domestic Manners of Americans_
written around 1830 during a several year visit to America.
Her life story is quite remarkable -- she took to writing in order to
support her family after her husband's work ended and his poor financial
sense drained their remaining savings. She travelled extensively by herself
and with her children BUT without the male escort dictated at the time. She
was quite a strong woman, regarded as strange by many in her time. I forgot
who wrote the biography I read (a woman, I know) but the title is
_The Triumphant Feminine_ (sic, I'm pretty sure -- the author's grammar
is fine in the book). I got a lot out of reading this.
Other more current authors I enjoy are Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing.
Atwood's more recent work has a lot to say about life from a woman's point of
view. Her characters are not heroines, just normal folk dealing with things.
I especially liked _Cat's Eye_ and _Blue Beard's Egg_. I can't give any
specific recommendations about Doris Lessing; her early work is science fiction,
the latter is just plain fiction. _The Golden Notebook_ was good.
One other I like is Jane Bowles. I've only read her collection
_My Sister's Hand in Mine_. It isn't specifically about women but is good
reading.
I'll post more as I think of them (have to go home and look at my shelves).
Hope this helps!
Eileen
nadel@aerospace.aero.org (Miriam H. Nadel) (03/12/90)
I'm new to the group, so forgive me if I repeat anything that anyone's already said. Last semester, I took a course "Women in Literature." The previous year that it was taught, either none or one of the books were written by women, but this year, all of the books were. The professor (Ruth Perry) and all of the students were female, which was unprecedented in my experience. In one of my other classes, I was the only female. I loved a number of the books we read. In my opinion, the best were: _Their Eyes were Watching God_ by Zora Neale Hurston _The Street_ by Alice Walker (?) _Middlemarch_ by George Eliot The first two of these are by and about black women. I was amazed that nobody had ever pointed such wonderful books out to me before. I hadn't believed that great stories written by blacks or women were delegated to the sidelines (i.e. only in classes on women's literature or Afro-American literature), but I do now. Other very good books we read were: _The Awakening_ by Kate Chopin _Summer_ by ??? Books I didn't particularly like but that others loved were: _To the Lighthouse_ by Virginia Woolf _Country of the Pointed Firs_ by ??? _The Golden Notebooks_ by Doris Lessing -- Not one of the 85% of Americans who didn't see Halley's comet. nadel@aerospace.aero.org
marla@lucerne.Eng.Sun.COM (Marla Parker) (03/13/90)
In article <10965@june.cs.washington.edu> twinsun!june.cs.washington.edu!amy (Amy Martindale) writes: >.... >I got started in this direction when I noticed Carolyn G. Heilbrun's >_Writing_a_Woman's_Life_ in the bookstore. "That's Amanda Cross!" I enthusiastically second this recommendation. I'm glad to hear that _Writing_a_Woman's_Life_ is short because I want to read it before sending Heilbrun fanmail about a book she wrote earlier, _Reinventing_Womanhood_, which I found positively inspiring. It is non-fiction and scholarly but I whizzed through it. It is a source of other titles to read, also, because at one point she analyzes women by the sort of fiction they write. She makes the point that most of the protagonists created by women are male, but that protagonists created by men may be male or female. She speculates that this is because it has been so hard for women to imagine other women, or sometimes even themselves, leading their own, independent existence rather than existing as a supporting character in some man's life. This book made me feel very literate because I had actually read something of every author that she mentioned except one or two. One of the exceptions was E.M.Forster, whose _A_Room_With_A_View_ she used as an example of an independent female protagonist created by a male author. After reading her analysis of this book, I picked up feminist commentary in the text that was not obvious in the movie, although the movie is surprisingly faithful to the book considering it was written in 1909. Usually books and movies are so different. In this case, both are great. Marla Parker (415) 336-2538 marla@sun.com