Book picks similar to
I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris by Elizabeth Hall
non-fiction
essays
poetry
nonfiction
Remembering The Bone House
Nancy Mairs - 1989
Lyrical, intense, and particular, flouting taboos and self-censorship, this acclaimed memoir explores the spaces that have shaped a life, including the "bone house" of her body.
Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir
Terry Galloway - 2009
No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whether onstage or off, to defy and transcend her reality. With disarming candor, she writes about her mental breakdowns, her queer identity, and living in a silent, quirky world populated by unforgettable characters. What could have been a bitter litany of complaint is instead an unexpectedly hilarious and affecting take on life.From the Trade Paperback edition.
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.
Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England
Sharon Marcus - 2006
They pored over magazines that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few had sexual relationships with each other, exchanged rings and vows, willed each other property, and lived together in long-term partnerships described as marriages. But, as Sharon Marcus shows, these women were not seen as gender outlaws. Their desires were fanned by consumer culture, and their friendships and unions were accepted and even encouraged by family, society, and church. Far from being sexless angels defined only by male desires, Victorian women openly enjoyed looking at and even dominating other women. Their friendships helped realize the ideal of companionate love between men and women celebrated by novels, and their unions influenced politicians and social thinkers to reform marriage law.Through a close examination of literature, memoirs, letters, domestic magazines, and political debates, Marcus reveals how relationships between women were a crucial component of femininity. Deeply researched, powerfully argued, and filled with original readings of familiar and surprising sources, Between Women overturns everything we thought we knew about Victorian women and the history of marriage and family life. It offers a new paradigm for theorizing gender and sexuality--not just in the Victorian period, but in our own.
Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement
Nadya Okamoto - 2018
They’re taboo. They’re embarrassing. They’re gross. And due to a crumbling or nonexistent national sex ed program, they are misunderstood. Because of these stigmas, a status quo has been established to exclude people who menstruate from the seat at the decision-making table, creating discriminations like the tampon tax, medicines that favor male biology, and more.Power to the Period aims to explain what menstruation is, shed light on the stigmas and resulting biases, and create a strategy to end the silence and prompt conversation about periods.
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Judith Butler - 1989
This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world.
How to Be a Woman
Caitlin Moran - 2011
“Half memoir, half polemic, and entirely necessary,” (Elle UK), Moran’s debut was an instant runaway bestseller in England as well as an Amazon UK Top Ten book of the year; still riding high on bestseller lists months after publication, it is a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Now poised to take American womanhood by storm, here is a book that Vanity Fair calls “the U.K. version of Tina Fey’s Bossypants….You will laugh out loud, wince, and—in my case—feel proud to be the same gender as the author.”
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
Charlene Carruthers - 2018
Her debut book upends mainstream ideas about race, class and gender and sets forth a radically inclusive path to collective liberation. Her inclusive story about Black struggle draws on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions including the Haitian Revolution, U.S. Civil Rights, and Black and LGBTQ Feminist Movements. Bold and honest, Unapologetic is an inside look from an on-the-ground activist and movement leader about how to move people from the margins to the center of political strategy and practice.
Love Is Love: A Comic Book Anthology to Benefit the Survivors of the Orlando Pulse Shooting
Marc AndreykoPhil Jimenez - 2016
Co-published by two of the premiere publishers in comics—DC and IDW, this oversize comic contains moving and heartfelt material from some of the greatest talent in comics, mourning the victims, supporting the survivors, celebrating the LGBTQ community, and examining love in today’s world. All material has been kindly donated by the writers, artists, and editors with all proceeds going to victims, survivors, and their families. Be a part of an historic comics event! It doesn’t matter who you love. All that matters is you love.
The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s
Maggie Doherty - 2020
Acclaimed writer and Harvard lecturer Maggie Doherty introduces us to five brilliant friends--poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, painter Barbara Swan, sculptor Mariana Pineda, and writer Tillie Olsen--who came together at the Institute and would go on to make history. Drawing from their notebooks, letters, lecture recordings, journals, and finished works, Doherty weaves from these women's own voices a moving narrative of friendship, ambition, activism, and art. Beautifully written and urgently told, The Equivalents shows us where we've been--and inspires us to go forward.
Intimations
Zadie Smith - 2020
This is not any of those—the year isn’t half-way done. What I’ve tried to do is organize some of the feelings and thoughts that events, so far, have provoked in me, in those scraps of time the year itself has allowed. These are above all personal essays: small by definition, short by necessity.”Crafted with the sharp intelligence, wit and style that have won Zadie Smith millions of fans, and suffused with a profound intimacy and tenderness in response to these unprecedented times, Intimations is a vital work of art, a gesture of connection and an act of love—an essential book in extraordinary times.
The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions
Larry Mitchell - 1977
Part-fable, part-manifesto, the book takes place in Ramrod, an empire in decline, and introduces us to the communities of the faggots, the women, the queens, the queer men, and the women who love women who are surviving the ways and world of men. Cherished by many over the four decades since its publication, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions offers a trenchant critique of capitalism, assimilation, and patriarchy that is deeply relevant today.
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Janet Malcolm - 1993
Janet Malcolm brings her shrewd intelligence to bear on the legend of Sylvia Plath and the wildly productive industry of Plath biographies. Features a new Afterword by Malcolm.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath - 2000
PublicationA major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath, published in their entirety for the first time.Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. The complete Journals of Sylvia Plath is essential reading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's life and work.
Not That I'd Kiss A Girl: A Kiwi girl's tale of coming out and coming of age
Lil O'Brien - 2020
Half an hour later she found herself on the side of the road, with instructions to come back and pick up her suitcase the next day.What follows is a heartbreaking yet hugely funny story of a young Kiwi girl - the deputy head girl from a posh private school - coming to grips with her sexuality in the face of stark disapproval from her parents.Bit by bit, Lil finds the inner strength to pull herself into an entirely new world. Along the way she's called out for looking too straight in a gay bar, tries to break in to the lesbian in-crowd and figures out how to send her internet lover back to America. She falls in lust over a knotted soccer shoelace, explores how the hell to have sex with a girl and dates four women at once - unsuccessfully.Lil's story is an insightful and honest look at how you figure out whether you're gay, bi or whatever - and deal with what comes next. It's an essential read for anyone who's had to fight for who they are and what they believe in.