Key feminist texts for me to read and leave lying about the house for dd?

[HRHQueenElizabethII]

Spurred on by musings from another thread: I've read almost no feminist writings, and was one of those women in my early 20s who rejected the term; through not understanding it.

I've been extraordinarily lucky - I've had strong female role models, but find myself more feminist than them, and have married a man who's clearly a "natural" feminist - though he hasn't read the literature either. But so much of what I read and see makes me want to buy some key texts, past and current, so that dd will have access to them as she grows up, and so understand the contexts and conditions which will influence the choices she makes in the future, and those made by people she comes into contact with.

Anyone fancy giving me a reading list?

Though mind you I do remember Eva Figes' Sex & Subterfuge with great fondness, I did find it rather inspirational in fact. Excellent. All clear now.

FrannyandZooey - Shere Hite opened my eyes considerable too!

yy seeker it did me a great favour as young woman to read that
and things were not half so bad then as they are for today's young women
[gloom]

I thinks 100x was right to raise that question. It has taken me 12 weeks to truly convince a room of 20yr-olds that literature is a comment on the world it is produced in, and, potentially, a spur to change.

Maybe, as a self-selecting broadly feminist group here, we are readers comfortable with that because of what feminist lit has already told us.

Feminist lit. crit. can continue to make that case to the uninitiated ...

Interesting that that's another Irish example, Pen.

Ah Robes. I am enjoying this thread, everything is becoming clear. Thank you for that. I am playing catch-up all the time. I agree re fiction. I actually find most kinds of critical theory a bit limiting with their 'one approach' means of dissection, but am not an academic type so probably tire easily in this respect.

Agree with Franny on Dworkin. Her anger leaps off the page. What an invigorating rwead she is.

Fiction:
Janice Galloway - the Trick is to Keep Breathing

Marge Piercy - Woman on the Edge of Time

Jeanette Winterson - Oranges are not the Only Fruit / Sexing the Cherry / The Passion

Are you new, Skater? Thanks for posting, and welcome to MN!

One of the reasons I want to read some non-fiction is that I'm a bit scared of it - I imagine it as very man-hating in parts, and that I find quite off-putting. BUT (a) that's no doubt a gross over-simplification (b) you have to read things you find uncomfortable sometimes to get to what you really think which is (c) I don't have to agree with it, just because it's written by a clever woman. I'm a clever woman too, and I'm not always right!

"In terms of political worth, an essay on a text is almost always more honest about its political motivations than the text itself and therefore potentially more erm consciousness-raising."

Bat, I'm sure that is often true, but on balance I find story-telling itself so much more instructive in every way than any critical analysis of it. For on thing, lit crit is probably massivley more constrained by inadequately examined political conditioning and academic fashion than great literautre is.

And for another, I do think that there are things which can be shown much more fully than they can be said -- that the act of analysis is destructive and impoverishing.

How interesting. What did the 20 y-olds think to begin with, at the start of the 12 weeks I mean?

There are so many!

A big fan of Germaine Greer, I would totally recommend

1. The Whole Woman, fantastic book

2 The Change

Also, funnily enough, Jean Rhys and Doris Lessing, novelists.

1. Also Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, Heartbreak:Memoirs of a feminist Militant - i haven't read these (only her book "Right Wing Women" but am looking forward to reading these).

1. Kate Millet "Sexual Politics"

I was quite feministy in my 20s I guess, but have returned in a way recently. I am saddened that as well as the gains women have made in the workplace, they are being eaten up with eating disorders, obssessiveness about appearance, materialism and (basically) being reduced to sexual objects, rambling on about botox, plastic surgery, handbags and shoes..

It can be, Robespierre. But good criticism fizzes, and enriches the text which it critiques.

There's bad literature and bad criticism.

I'm agreeing with Robes now.

Rather, good criticism enriches the reading experience of the text it critiques.

Though, I suppose, if we starting talking reception theory, we never get back to the text anyway...

I wonder why the 20 y-olds didn't understand that about literature though.

Criticism has it's place, but it's not the Real Deal is it.

HRH are you taking notes? What does your list look like so far?

have you got Backlash, or that New Feminism book by gaby wood on there? What was it called that book?

My list is terrifyingly long! But this discussion is v. valuable in itself.

I mean Natasha Walter.

Well they are doing literature for one part of their jouranlism degree. They equate fictional books with 'escapism', and living in a dream-world etc. Remember these are reality-TV, celeb-biography readers who have been taught to associate reality with truth becuase of trends in broadcasting in the last 10-15 years.

Robespierre= Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is the woman for you. She starts to account for the ways in which the different categories of people who are oppressed by patriarchy operate in the complex world where those categories are not fixed. eg what are the dynamics of power between a middle-class black woman to a white working-class man. Off to find a link ...

There is the experience that the reader has when reading. That fizzes, so much so that it is tempting to think of a whole new creation over-and-above the book -- the reading of the book. That is a work of art too. But it is essentially experienced and sensual. It can be destroyed by analysis, too, just like the book can. I think I'd like lit crit if it was just a passionate shared experience of a book.

The Color Purple is accessible for teens but covers plenty of feminist topics. We did it for A level and it made me think at that age.

And i can still remember the story whereas i couldn't tell you what happens in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook I'm afraid.

Thanks Your Majesty.

As the OP's daughter is still small, what about Charlottes Web?

Charlotte rocks.

It's something of a hall of mirrors, I know, but good criticism should remind you that literature deceives as much as it reveals (even as, being literary itself, criticism does the same ). Good criticism is like detective fiction.

Were there really 145 messages on this subject on one day (scary - in a good way!!!!!)

p.s. i also liked alot of fay weldon's writings - Down Among The Women i read over 20 years ago and loved it. as someone wrote though i was only in my late teens, it spoke to me, because it was about women (revolutionary!)

FWIW, I never enjoyed lit crit - hence my study of English language, rather than lit. I think it can have value, and can be rather introspective and deadly if done badly. But if done well it can open your eyes to layers in a book that you just didn't see before - this was certainly true for me with Shakespeare.

Ah, but Robes, I think we agree at heart - cf my "They are two entirely different orders of being."

You might be creating an unnecessary false
dichotomy thingy

great work of literature - hugely important.
great criticism of great work of literature - potentially equally powerful - but crucially cannot really be experienced in a Romantic 'response to art' way. So no point comparing it to the great work of literature.
great criticism of poor work of literature - potentially v powerful, as above.