Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Sep 14, 2018
May 21, 2018
Jul 3, 2017
Apr 1, 2017
Nov 1, 2016
Sep 1, 2016
Jun 1, 2016
Oct 1, 2015
Dietland - Sarai Walker
Summary: "A fresh and provocative debut novel about a reclusive young woman saving up for weight loss surgery when she gets drawn into a shadowy feminist guerilla group called "Jennifer"--equal parts Bridget Jones's Diary and Fight Club"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
Although she is the advice columnist for a worldwide glamour media conglomerate, Plum Kettle is an unlikely source of wisdom. Morbidly obese and routinely humiliated by the stares and taunts of an insensitive populace, Plum plies her trade from her lonely apartment or, at best, at the corner café, where she knows the calorie count of each scone and latte on the menu. Having failed at every diet plan imaginable, Plum is seriously contemplating weight-loss surgery when she is handed a manifesto that ultimately leads her to a secret society of women fighting the constant assault upon women's sexuality, self-esteem, and independence. When a series of gruesome kidnappings and killings targets an international cast of the worst sexist offenders, Plum finds herself at the center of a global witch hunt. Through her protagonist, debut novelist Walker gives a plaintive yet powerful voice to anyone who has struggled with body image, feelings of marginalization, and sexual manipulation. Her robust satire also vibrantly redefines what it means to be a woman in contemporary society. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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Jun 1, 2014
The dinner party - Judy Chicago
Summary: "The official publication celebrating Judy Chicago's feminist art masterpiece, The Dinner Party installation at the Brooklyn Museum, and an introduction to outstanding women in history... The Dinner Party, a monumental triangular table, and the Heritage Floor on which the table rests, represents 1,038 women in history--39 by unique large ceramic plates and runners with another 999 names inscribed on the floor's ceramic tiles. It has been seen by more than a million visitors during its international exhibition tour, and has been a principal destination at the Brooklyn Museum since its permanent housing in 2007. A perfect companion to a revolutionary artwork, the book is a must-have for both long-standing fans of Judy Chicago's oeuvre and young artists and women looking for reflections of themselves in the history of Western Civilization."--www.Amazon.com.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
When noted feminist artist Chicago was an undergrad, one of her history professors declared: "Women's contributions to European intellectual history? They made none." As she explains in the introduction to the first book to represent her groundbreaking mixed-media installation "The Dinner Party" (1974-79), this comment inspired her to create an alternative history of women's cultural, political, and scholarly achievements. Consisting of 39 handmade place settings, celebrating notable women from the primordial goddess to Georgia O'Keefe, the installation has been permanent housed in the Brooklyn Museum's Sackler Center for Feminist Art since 2007. Chicago describes the work's genesis, evolution, its collective nature, problematic exhibition history, and public impact. Organized to mirror the exhibition, each section is divided into four chronological wings, rather than chapters, and includes a short description of the woman represented and a photograph of her plate and place setting. Surrounding the photographs are summaries of the other women whose 999 names are inscribed on the ceramic tile floor ("Heritage Floor") on which the triangular table rests. Many of the plates photograph well, particularly those for Sappho and Virginia Woolf, and handmade runners are spectacular. In this volume, published to coincide with her 75th birthday and including a foreword by Brooklyn Museum director Arnold L. Lehman, and essays by Frances Borzello and Jane F. Gerhard, Chicago offers a vibrant visual and textual encyclopedia of female achievement. 100 color illus. (Apr.)
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Feb 1, 2014
The invention of wings - Sue Monk Kidd
Summary: "The story follows Hetty 'Handful' Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid. "The Invention of Wings" follows the next thirty-five years of their lives. Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke (a feminist, suffragist and, importantly, an abolitionist), Kidd allows herself to go beyond the record to flesh out the inner lives of all the characters, both real and imagined"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Inspired by the true story of early-nineteenth-century abolitionist and suffragist Sarah Grimké, Kidd paints a moving portrait of two women inextricably linked by the horrors of slavery. Sarah, daughter of a wealthy South Carolina plantation owner, exhibits an independent spirit and strong belief in the equality of all. Thwarted from her dreams of becoming a lawyer, she struggles throughout life to find an outlet for her convictions. Handful, a slave in the Grimké household, displays a sharp intellect and brave, rebellious disposition. She maintains a compliant exterior, while planning for a brighter future. Told in first person, the chapters alternate between the two main characters' perspectives, as we follow their unlikely friendship (characterized by both respect and resentment) from childhood to middle age. While their pain and struggle cannot be equated, both women strive to be set free—Sarah from the bonds of patriarchy and Southern bigotry, and Handful from the inhuman bonds of slavery. Kidd is a master storyteller, and, with smooth and graceful prose, she immerses the reader in the lives of these fascinating women as they navigate religion, family drama, slave revolts, and the abolitionist movement. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Beginning with her phenomenally successful debut, The Secret Life of Bees (2002), Kidd's novels have found an intense readership among library patrons, who will be eager to get their hands on her latest one. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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Sep 1, 2013
The world according to Garp - John Irving
Summary: The World According to Garp is a comic and compassionate coming-of-age novel that established John Irving as one of the most imaginative writers of his generation. A worldwide bestseller since its publication in 1978, Irving's classic is filled with stories inside stories about the life and times of T. S. Garp, novelist and bastard son of Jenny Fields--a feminist leader ahead of her time. Beyond that, The World According to Garp virtually defies synopsis.
Kirkus Review
/* Starred Review */ Book-club spotlighting is bound to introduce Irving's particular brio to its largest audience yet; his newest book is characteristically broad and eager, Heir to a shoe-manufacturing fortune and a Wellesley dropout, Jenny Fields becomes a nurse, which isn't quite the thing for a girl of her station. Girls of her station also have some use for men, while Jenny uses one man for one purpose only and only once: she calculatedly gets herself impregnated by an accidentally lobotomized war-veteran patient, Technical Sergeant Garp. Moreover, Jenny defies convention by writing and publishing, late in life, a memoir (entitled "A Sexual Suspect") that quickly becomes a feminist bible. Her son, T. S. Garp (named for his father), grows up meanwhile with writerly instincts of Ids own; Jenny whisks him off to Austria for an education richer in life than college would afford, and Irving shuffles Jenny offstage in order to concentrate on young Garp: his marriage to bookish Helen, his two young sons, Helen's half-hearted affair with a graduate student, and then a grotesque accident involving the entire family that maims one son, kills the other, and (by plot-tinkering) literally dismembers the cuckolding grad student. Also offered are samples of Garp's manuscripts during this time, presumably objective correlatives to Garp's life at the time, but more like a handy hole for loose and incompatible prose efforts the book would not otherwise graciously host. Jenny comes back near book's end, getting herself assassinated at a feminist political rally, but it's Garp's (and Irving's) version of the world that's in control by then. That version is richly anecdotal--almost a brocade of digression--and mostly involved with the same basically inert topics that Irving's earlier books were made of: Vienna, wrestling, wife-swapping, boy's schools, novelists. Despite the withit trappings (feminism, etc.), Irving's wild stylistic scrabble up and down the keys resolves itself into a few leaden theme chords that his veteran readers will wish that he'd broken free of by now. But this hint of staleness will be all but totally disguised to first-time readers: Irving's style and zest remain superb, and his fondness for children--his anxiety over them and their welfare--is as rare and fine and affecting and pure as Heller's or Cheever's. (Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1978)
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