Public library collections can be a great place to learn and reflect on your place in the world. There are a number of new books out about feminism and the women’s movement. Check these out and raise your consciousness!
Rebecca Traister’s new book, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, illustrates how the women’s movement in the last half of the twentieth century affected change that allows women to be independent and successful. Earning advanced degrees! Getting their own credit cards! Owning their own homes! Traister, a journalist, takes a thoughtful and research-based approach to looking at women’s lives and choices. Another book of hers that is worth a read is Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women, published in 2010.
Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear… and Why is Sady Doyle’s first book. In the preface, she discusses how famous women often don’t own their own narratives, and why and how that can be destructive. She invites us to examine our own fascination with stories about women whom the media defines as not “enough” in some way: not virtuous enough, not feminine enough, not moral enough. From pop stars to politicians, Doyle takes the stories of famous women and frames them so we see them in a whole new way.
If these books whet your appetite and you want to come to the library and browse, the best place to go is our non-fiction collection, and the Dewey number you are looking for is 305.4.
Of course, works of fiction are essential in the women’s studies canon as well:
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
