Boys Don't Try? Rethinking Masculinity in Schools


Matt Pinkett - 2019
    The list of things to concern teachers is long. Disappointing academic results, a lack of interest in studying, higher exclusion rates, increasing mental health issues, sexist attitudes, an inability to express emotions.... Traditional ideas about masculinity are having a negative impact, not only on males, but females too. In this ground-breaking book, Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts argue that schools must rethink their efforts to get boys back on track.Boys Don't Try? examines the research around key topics such as anxiety and achievement, behaviour and bullying, schoolwork and self-esteem. It encourages the reader to reflect on how they define masculinity and consider what we want for boys in our schools. Offering practical quick wins, as well as long-term strategies to help boys become happier and achieve greater academic success, the book:offers ways to avoid problematic behaviour by boys and tips to help teachers address poor behaviour when it happenshighlights key areas of pastoral care that need to be recognised by schoolsexposes how popular approaches to "engaging" boys are actually misguided and damagingdetails how issues like disadvantage, relationships, violence, peer pressure, and pornography affect boys' perceptions of masculinity and how teachers can challenge these.With an easy-to-navigate three-part structure for each chapter, setting out the stories, key research, and practical solutions, this is essential reading for all classroom teachers and school leaders who are keen to ensure male students enjoy the same success as girls.

My Own Story


Emmeline Pankhurst - 1914
    Written at the onset of the First World War, My Own Story brings attention to Pankhurst's cause while defending her decision to cease activism until the end of the war. Notable for its descriptions of the British prison system, My Own Story is an invaluable document of a life dedicated to others, of a historical moment in which an oppressed group rose up to advocate for the simplest of demands: equality.Born in a politically active household, Emmeline Pankhurst was introduced to the women's suffrage movement at a young age. In 1903, she founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organization dedicated to the suffragette movement. As their speeches, rallies, and petitions failed to make headway, they turned to militant protest, and in 1908 Emmeline was arrested for attempting to enter Parliament to deliver a document to Prime Minister H.H. Asquith. Imprisoned for six weeks, she observed the horrifying conditions of prison life, including solitary confinement. This experience changed her outlook on the struggle for women's suffrage, and she increasingly saw imprisonment as a means of radical publicity. Over the next several years, she would be arrested seven times for rioting, destroying property, and assaulting police officers, and while in prison staged hunger strikes in order to gain the attention of the press and political establishment. My Own Story is a record of one woman's tireless advocacy for the sake of countless others.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Emmeline Pankhurst's My Own Story is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

The Power


Naomi Alderman - 2016
    But something vital has changed, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power - they can cause agonising pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world changes utterly.This extraordinary novel by Naomi Alderman, a Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and Granta Best of British writer, is not only a gripping story of how the world would change if power was in the hands of women but also exposes, with breath-taking daring, our contemporary world.

Feminists Don't Wear Pink (And Other Lies): Amazing Women on What the F-Word Means to Them


Scarlett Curtis - 2018
    By bridging the gap between feminist hashtags and scholarly texts, these essays bring feminism into clear focus.Published in partnership with Girl Up, the UN Foundation's adolescent girl campaign, contributors include Hollywood superstars like Saoirse Ronan, activists like Alicia Garza, a founder of Black Lives Matter, and even fictional icons such as Bridget Jones.Every woman has a different route to their personal understanding of feminism. This empowering collection shows how a diverse group of women found their voice, and it will inspire others to do the same.

Alias Olympia


Eunice Lipton - 1992
    But had this bold and spirited beauty really descended into prostitution, drunkenness, and early death--or did her life, hidden from history, take a different course altogether? Eunice Lipton's search for the answer combines the suspense of a detective story with the revelatory power of art, peeling off layers of lies to reveal startling truths about Victorine Meurent--and about Lipton herself.

Dietland


Sarai Walker - 2015
    And it’s armed. Plum Kettle does her best not to be noticed, because when you’re fat, to be noticed is to be judged. Or mocked. Or worse. With her job answering fan mail for a popular teen girls’ magazine, she is biding her time until her weight-loss surgery. Only then can her true life as a thin person finally begin. Then, when a mysterious woman starts following her, Plum finds herself falling down a rabbit hole and into an underground community of women who live life on their own terms. There Plum agrees to a series of challenges that force her to deal with her past, her doubts, and the real costs of becoming “beautiful.” At the same time, a dangerous guerrilla group called “Jennifer” begins to terrorize a world that mistreats women, and as Plum grapples with her personal struggles, she becomes entangled in a sinister plot. The consequences are explosive.Dietland is a bold, original, and funny debut novel that takes on the beauty industry, gender inequality, and our weight loss obsession—from the inside out, and with fists flying.

The Women Who Shaped Politics: Empowering stories of women who have shifted the political landscape


Sophy Ridge - 2017
    Never has the role of women in the political world ever been more on the news agenda, and Sophy has interviewed current and former politicians including among others, Nicola Sturgeon, Ruth Davidson, Betty Boothroyd gain exclusive insight into the role women play in politics at the highest level. The book also includes Theresa May's first at-length interview about her journey to becoming Prime Minister. These interviews have revealed the shocking truth about the sexism that is rife among the House of Commons both in the past and today, with sometimes shocking, and sometimes amusing anecdotes revealing how women in Westminster have worked to counter the gender bias. Sophy provides gripping insight into historical and contemporary stories which will fascinate not just those interested in politics but those who want to know more about women's vital role in democracy. From royalty to writers and from class warriors to suffragettes, Sophy tells the story of those who put their lives on the line for equal rights, and those who were the first to set foot inside the chambers of power, bringing together stories that you may think you know, and stories that have recently been discovered to reveal the truth about what it is to be a woman in Westminster. This book is a celebration of the differing ways that women have shaped the political landscape. The book also, importantly, sheds light on the challenges faced by women in government today, telling us the ways that women working in politics battle the sexism that confront them on a daily basis.

The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy; Women, Politics, and the Future


Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner - 2004
    In addition, decades of negative campaigns, excessively "messaged" issues, and hanging chads have all combined to make political apathy appear not only smart, but sexy. The result is that while they still bemoan the state of gender politics, gender equity, and the agendas of their local, state, and national politicians, nearly 19 million young women chose not to vote in the last presidential election.Yes, the face of feminism is changing, but to what end? Is a new generation taking for granted the rights hard-won only a generation before? And by focusing on culturalnot electoralpolitics, are young women giving their power away? In this pivotal book, Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, political and environmental consultant (and wife of Washington State s Republican senate majority leader), asks these critical questions, tracing feminism s distinguished past and asking what can be done to protect and further women s rights and freedoms."

Harpsong


Rilla Askew - 2007
    He steals their hearts with his music, and their daughter with his charm. Soon he and his fourteen-year-old bride, Sharon, are on the road, two more hobos of the Great Depression, hitchhiking and hopping freights across the Great Plains in search of an old man and the settlement of Harlan’s long-standing debt.Finding shelter in hobo jungles and Hoovervilles, the newlyweds careen across the 1930s landscape in a giant figure eight with Oklahoma in the middle. Sharon’s growing doubts about her husband’s quest set in motion events that turn Harlan Singer into a hero while blinding her to the dark secret of his journey. A love story infused with history and folk tradition, Harpsong shows what happened to the friends and neighbors Steinbeck’s Joads left behind.In this moving, redemptive tale inspired by Oklahoma folk heroes, Rilla Askew continues her exploration of the American story. Harpsong is a novel of love and loss, of adventure and renewal, and of a wayfaring orphan’s search for home—all set to the sounds of Harlan’s harmonica. It shows us the strength and resilience of a people who, in the face of unending despair, maintain their faith in the land.

A Little F'd Up: Why Feminism Is Not a Dirty Word


Julie Zeilinger - 2012
    Right?Wrong.FBomb blog creator Julie Zeilinger debunks these (and other) myths about modern youth in A Little F’d Up, the first book about feminism for young women in their teens and twenties to actually be written by one of their peers. In this accessible handbook, Zeilinger takes a critical, honest, and humorous look at where young feminists are as a generation, and where they’re going—and she does so from the perspective of someone who’s in the trenches right alongside her readers.Fun, funny, and engaging, A Little F’d Up is a must-read for the growing number of intelligent, informed young women out there who are ready to start finding their voice—and changing the world.

The Fifties: A Women's Oral History


Brett Harvey - 1993
    In fact, it was a time of great fear, especially for women, and especially the fear of not fitting in. As a woman, you were odd if you graduated from college without being married; if you were married you were odd if you didn't immediately have children; if you had children you were odd if you also wanted to work. Before the feminist movement, women were treated as second-class citizens whose roles were utterly restricted, and The Fifties: A Women's Oral History fully explores those roles, the women who lived them, and the women who broke the molds.

Trickster Feminism


Anne Waldman - 2018
    Waldman summons Tarot's Force Arcana, the Bible's Miriam, the passion of the suffragettes, and various messengers and heroines of historical, hermetic, and heretical stance. Melpomene, the muse of tragic poetry, is highlighted as an inspiration for dirge, prophecy, and imagination in action. Mythopoetics, shape shifting, quantum entanglement, chance operation, magic, and divination play inside the field of these poems. Tricksters turn many ways, as does poetry, and in Waldman's rendering, a female trickster's manipulation may be apocalyptic.

There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé


Morgan Parker - 2017
    The poems weave between personal narrative and pop-cultural criticism, examining and confronting modern media, consumption, feminism, and Blackness. This collection explores femininity and race in the contemporary American political climate, folding in references from jazz standards, visual art, personal family history, and Hip Hop. The voice of this book is a multifarious one: writing and rewriting bodies, stories, and histories of the past, as well as uttering and bearing witness to the truth of the present, and actively probing toward a new self, an actualized self. This is a book at the intersections of mythology and sorrow, of vulnerability and posturing, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence.

How Not To Be a Boy


Robert Webb - 2017
    Rules for being a man:Don't Cry; Love Sport; Play Rough; Drink Beer; Don't Talk About FeelingsBut Robert Webb has been wondering for some time now: are those rules actually any use? To anyone?Looking back over his life, from schoolboy crushes (on girls and boys) to discovering the power of making people laugh (in the Cambridge Footlights with David Mitchell), and from losing his beloved mother to becoming a husband and father, Robert Webb considers the absurd expectations boys and men have thrust upon them at every stage of life.Hilarious and heartbreaking, How Not To Be a Boy explores the relationships that made Robert who he is as a man, the lessons we learn as sons and daughters, and the understanding that sometimes you aren't the Luke Skywalker of your life - you're actually Darth Vader.

Gender Medicine: The Groundbreaking New Science of Sex-Related Diagnosis and Treatment


Marek Glezerman - 2016
    These differences have become culturally obsolete with the overturning of traditional gender roles. But they are nevertheless very real, and they go well beyond the obvious sexual and reproductive variances: men and women differ in terms of digestion, which affects the way medications are absorbed. Sensitivity to pain is dependent on gender. Even the symptoms of a heart attack manifest differently in a man than in a woman.And yet the medical establishment largely treats male and female patients as though their needs are identical. In fact, medical research is still done predominately on men, and the results are then applied to the treatment of women. This is clearly problematic and calls for a paradigm change—such a paradigm change is the purpose of Gender Medicine.