6/22/2016

Feminist Book Club Reads | June



It's been a little while since I last compiled the feminist book club pickings into a blog post, mainly because I've been dipping in and out of them. I feel like with book clubs you shouldn't feel obliged to read everything they put forward, unless of course that's your style. Today I have a few of the recent books I've read from feminist book clubs, as well as one I'm planning on reading very soon...

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi-This book seems timely, given some of the recent news stories that have been developing in the world. Emma Watson set this book for June over on Our Shared Shelf. I'm not going to lie, because it was a graphic novel I decided to read it because I knew I'd be able to finish it easily. This autobiographical book follows Marjane's life growing up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution. It also follows her to Vienna where she moves to complete high school away from the midsts of war and her return to the post-war country she left behind. I didn't know a lot about this war and I found reading about that+the cultural viewpoint really eye-opening. It really got me thinking and reinforces the idea that extremism is really just a very, very small, unfortunate part in the fabric of much larger cultures. This is well worth the read.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson-Another one from Emma's book club, this one was May's read. I've spoken about this already on my channel so I'll keep it brief. Maggie Nelson wrote an account of living with a gender-fluid person, her husband. She also explores ideas of relationships and sexuality throughout the book with extracts from other researchers and theorists. It's not really a structured book and doesn't follow an extremely chronological pattern as such. I quite liked that though because it read like an endless stream of thought. 

You Can't Keep A Good Woman Down by Alice Walker-Now this is the one book I haven't read, yet. I am hoping to get to it very soon though. Alice Walker's name will be familiar to anyone who knows of The Color Purple, her well-loved novel. This book is a collection of short stories and judging from the reviews I read over on The Feminist Orchestra group it seems like people were a bit divided on this book. I have to admit I couldn't bring myself to finish The Color Purple. I found it distressing and couldn't quite get to grips with the writing style. Hopefully this read fares a bit better with me.

-Have you read any of these books before? What did you think of them?

No comments:

Post a Comment