Book picks similar to
Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics by Michelle Ann Abate
essays
graphic-novels
media-studies-and-cultural-studies
non-fiction
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
Melissa V. Harris-Perry - 2011
Hurtful and dishonest, such representations force African American women to navigate a virtual crooked room that shames them and shapes their experiences as citizens. Many respond by assuming a mantle of strength that may convince others, and even themselves, that they do not need help. But as a result, the unique political issues of black women are often ignored and marginalized.In this groundbreaking book, Melissa V. Harris-Perry uses multiple methods of inquiry, including literary analysis, political theory, focus groups, surveys, and experimental research, to understand more deeply black women's political and emotional responses to pervasive negative race and gender images. Not a traditional political science work concerned with office-seeking, voting, or ideology, Sister Citizen instead explores how African American women understand themselves as citizens and what they expect from political organizing. Harris-Perry shows that the shared struggle to preserve an authentic self and secure recognition as a citizen links together black women in America, from the anonymous survivors of Hurricane Katrina to the current First Lady of the United States.
12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next
Jeanette Winterson - 2021
In her brilliant, laser focused, uniquely pointed and witty style of story-telling, Winterson looks to history, religion, myth, literature, the politics of race and gender, and computer science, to help us understand the radical changes to the way we live and love that are happening now.When we create non-biological life-forms, will we do so in our image? Or will we accept the once-in-a-species opportunity to remake ourselves in their image? What do love, caring, sex, and attachment look like when humans form connections with non-human helpers, teachers, sex-workers, and companions? And what will happen to our deep-rooted assumptions about gender? Will the physical body that is our home soon be enhanced by biological and neural implants, keeping us fitter, younger, and connected? Is it time to join Elon Musk and leave Planet Earth?With wit, compassion and curiosity, Winterson tackles AI's most fascinating talking points, from the algorithms that data-dossier your whole life to the weirdness of backing up your brain.
Repeal the 8th
Una Mullally - 2018
This anthology, a national bestseller, is the definitive collection of the writing and art inspired by the most pressing debate in contemporary Ireland, and beyond.· Between 1980 and 2015, at least 165,438 Irish women and girls accessed UK abortion services. In 2016, the figure was 3,265. · Any woman or girl who procures an abortion, or anyone who assists a woman to procure an abortion in Ireland can be criminalised and imprisoned for up to fourteen years. · A woman may not procure an abortion in Ireland if she is pregnant due to incest or rape, or to prevent inevitable miscarriage and fatal foetal abnormality.The movement to repeal the Eighth Amendment and make abortion legal in Ireland has grown massively over the last few years. This book shares the literature, personal stories, opinions, photography, art and design produced by the movement that catalysed 2018’s momentous referendum: it features prize-winning novelists, critically acclaimed poets, cutting-edge artists and journalists on the front line.Contributors include Lisa McInerney, Anne Enright, Louise O’Neill, Caitlin Moran, Tara Flynn, Aisling Bea, Sinead Gleeson and Emmet Kiran.
Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure
Eli Clare - 2017
It saves lives, manipulates lives, and prioritizes some lives over others. It provides comfort, makes profits, justifies violence, and promises resolution to body-mind loss. Clare grapples with this knot of contradictions, maintaining that neither an anti-cure politics nor a pro-cure worldview can account for the messy, complex relationships we have with our body-minds.The stories he tells range widely, stretching from disability stereotypes to weight loss surgery, gender transition to skin lightening creams. At each turn, Clare weaves race, disability, sexuality, class, and gender together, insisting on the nonnegotiable value of body-mind difference. Into this mix, he adds environmental politics, thinking about ecosystem loss and restoration as a way of delving more deeply into cure.Ultimately Brilliant Imperfection reveals cure to be an ideology grounded in the twin notions of normal and natural, slippery and powerful, necessary and damaging all at the same time.
Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class
Michelle TeaLis Goldschmidt - 2004
It was these concerns that prompted indie icon Michelle Tea--whose memoir The Chelsea Whistle details her own working-class roots in gritty Chelsea, Massachusetts--to collect these fierce, honest, tender essays written by women who can’t go home to the suburbs when their assignment is over. These wide-ranging essays cover everything from stealing and selling blood to make ends meet, to "jumping" class, how if time equals money then being poor means waiting, surviving and returning to the ghetto and how feminine identity is shaped by poverty. Contributors include Dorothy Allison, Diane Di Prima, Terri Griffith, Daisy Hernández, Frances Varian, Tara Hardy, Shawna Kenney, Siobhan Brooks, Terri Ryan, and more.
Willful Subjects
Sara Ahmed - 2014
One history of will is a history of attempts to eliminate willfulness from the will. Delving into philosophical and literary texts, Ahmed examines the relation between will and willfulness, ill will and good will, and the particular will and general will. Her reflections shed light on how will is embedded in a political and cultural landscape, how it is embodied, and how will and willfulness are socially mediated. Attentive to the wayward, the wandering, and the deviant, Ahmed considers how willfulness is taken up by those who have received its charge. Grounded in feminist, queer, and antiracist politics, her sui generis analysis of the willful subject, the figure who wills wrongly or wills too much, suggests that willfulness might be required to recover from the attempt at its elimination.
Handsome
Holly Lorka - 2020
She had questions: Was she a monster? Would she ever be able to grow sideburns? And most importantly, where was her penis?The problem was, it was the 1970s, so there were no answers yet.Here, Lorka tells the story—by turns hilarious and poignant—of her romp through the first fifty years of her life searching for sex, love, acceptance, and answers to her questions. With a sharp wit, endearing innocence, and indelible sense of optimism, she struggles through the awkward years (spoiler: that’s all of them) and discovers that what she thought were mistakes are actually powerful tools to launch her into a magical—and ridiculous—life.Oh, and she discovers that she can buy a penis at the store, too.
Well, This Is Exhausting
Sophia Benoit - 2021
Tired of trying so hard, Sophia finally let go of the crushing pressure to be perfect. She navigates the highs and lows of the dating world (high: being a beta tester for Bumble; low: hastily shaving her legs before a hotel hookup and getting blood all over the sheets), and walks the line between being a “chill” girl and making sure her boyfriend’s nonchalance about altitude sickness doesn’t get him killed. She learns what it means to be a feminist, how to embrace her own voice, and when to listen to women who have been through more and have been doing the work longer. With topics ranging from how to be the life of the party (even when you have crippling anxiety), to an ill-fated consultation with a dietician who deemed Sophia’s overindulgence in ketchup a serious health risk, to a masterful argument for why no one should judge you for having an encyclopedic knowledge of reality TV, Well, This Is Exhausting is not only “one of the funniest books you’ll read this year, but it’s also one of the most important” (Shondaland).
Motherhood Martyrdom & Costco Runs
Whitney Dineen - 2017
• Exhausting—when you realize you’ll most likely never sleep again--like EVER. • Explosive—OMG these kids spew from both ends! And that’s just the beginning. Whitney shares the ridiculous highs and excruciating lows of her catapult into motherhood. Enjoy the ride as this new mom vows to give up profanity while falling in love with… you guessed it, Costco. Be careful, because if you’re anything like Whitney, you may just pee a little. Motherhood Martyrdom & Costco Runs takes the reader on a roller coaster of emotions as Whitney plummets into postpartum depression, desperately tries to get her kids to stop yodeling in public restrooms, and comes to terms with the fact she’ll never quite be queen of her own kingdom. Get ready to laugh, cry, cheer, and pat yourself on the back for the sake of mommies everywhere. And while you’re at it, stop by Costco for a case of toilet paper and a Very Berry Sundae. You won’t regret it!
Goth-Icky: A Macabre Menagerie of Morbid Monstrosities
Michael J. Nelson - 2005
What is it about vampires, zombies, skeletons, and other mutants brought to life in the darkest recesses of the imagination? Goth-Icky celebrates modern-day goths, their culture, and the morbid monstrosities that inspire them. Containing over 200 images from the print and advertising archives of the Charles S. Anderson Design Company in combination with a hilarious text by the legendary Michael J. Nelson, this book is an amazingly rich and weird testament to the pervasiveness of goth aesthetics, the appeal of kitsch, and our love of horror.
The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order
Marcelle Karp - 1999
With contributors who are funny, fierce, and too smart to be anything but feminist, Bust is the original grrrl zine, with a base of loyal female fans--all those women who know that Glamour is garbage, Vogue is vapid, and Cosmo is clueless. The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order contains brand new, funny, sharp, trenchant essays along with some of the best writings from the magazine: Courtney Love's (unsolicited) piece on Bad Girls; the already immortal "Dont's For Boys"; an interview with girl-hero Judy Blume; and lots of other shocking, titillating, truthful articles. A kind of Our Bodies, Ourselves for Generation XX, The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order is destined to become required reading for today's hip urban girl and her admirers.
Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader
Gail Dines - 1994
Issues of power related to gender, race, and class are integrated into a wide range of articles examining the economic and cultural implications of mass media as institutions, including the political economy of media production, textual analysis, and media consumption.
Veil
Rafia Zakaria - 2017
Part memoir and part philosophical investigation, Veil unravels modernist assumptions that the seen is automatically the good and the free, while the veiled represents servility and subterfuge. Taking readers through personal encounters with the veil varying from France where it is banned to Iran where it is forced, Zakaria reveals how the veil's reputation as a pre-modern relic is being reconfigured to contest accepted ideas of meaning and morality. At the end, the veil emerges as an object transformed by post-modernity, whose myriad meanings can pose a collective challenge to the absolute truths of patriarchy.Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
America: A Narrative History
David E. Shi - 2016
The leading narrative history that students love to read, now made more relevant and accessible.
Girlosophy 2: The Love Survival Kit
Anthea Paul - 2002
An essential handbook on a favorite topic—love—it will help women understand the wider meaning of love as a tool, a resource, and a force. It encourages girls to love themselves first and then reflect on the significance of love outside the common perceptions of romantic love and its role in their friendships and the world at large. It is a road map for every woman to navigate long-distance relationships, determine the real Prince Charmings, overcome icon infatuations, rediscover childhood dreams, and rule in all affairs of the heart.