A Year of Feminist Classics

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OK, clearly my eyes are bigger than my stomach (brain?) when it comes to reading challenges. But this Feminist Classics Challenge is so cool! I have to do it too. This is another one that I can pick and choose from, but they all look interesting. At first I was happy because they had chosen The Feminine Mystique, which is one of those books I've always meant to read, but then they realized they needed more worldwide literature, which is also excellent. Anyway:

The project will work a little like an informal reading group: for the whole of 2011, we’ll be reading a book a month from this list of classic feminist fiction and non-fiction, and each of us will be in charge of the subsequent discussion for three months.

These discussions will be structured as follows: at the beginning of the month, the host in charge of that month will write an introductory post on this blog, reminding participants of what we’ll be reading and providing some historical context.

Then, later that month, she will post a series of discussion questions and invite readers to use them as points of departure for their own thoughts. You don’t necessarily need to answer these questions when sharing your impressions of the book; you may either integrate them in our post or use another approach altogether (and perhaps add to the discussion by bringing up points the host hasn’t thought of herself). Participants can either join the discussion on the comments section or post on their own blogs, which means you don’t necessarily need to be a book blogger yourself to join in.

Finally, at the end of the month, the host will post her thoughts on the book either here or on her own blog, as well as write a round-up post and collect the links of all the participants who decided to join in for that particular title.

Interested in joining us? Remember that you don’t have to commit for the whole twelve months – you’re more than free to pick only the books you’re interested in. Because we want to encourage interaction between participants, we’ve set up an In Linky where you can sign-up. However, you can join in at any time even if you haven’t signed up beforehand.

And here are the titles:

January: A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollestonecraft AND So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba - Amy
February: The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill - Ana
March: A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen - Emily
April: Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Iris
May: A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf - Ana
June: God Dies by the Nile by Nawal Saadawi - Amy
July: The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir - Iris
August: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston - Emily
September: The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf - Amy
October: Ain’t I a Woman? by bell hooks AND Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism Anthology - Iris
November: Gender Trouble by Judith Butler - Ana
December: Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde - Emily

Some of these won't be easy for me to get from the library, so I'll be depending on the magic of InterLibrary Loan.

Comments

  1. SuzanneDecember 14, 2011 at 12:17 PM

    While I appreciate her ideas, I, too, find her prose awkward (this from someone well-versed in theory and criticism).

    ReplyDelete

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