Rational Passions: Women and Scholarship in Britain 1702-1870: A Reader edited by Felicia Gordon and Gina Luria Walker is an important collection of the early written scholarship composed by women […]
Category: Book Reviews
Outsiders Still: Why Women Journalists Love and Leave Their Newspaper Careers by Vivian Smith.
The book Outsiders Still: Why Women Journalists Love and Leave their Newspaper Careers is a 2015 book by Vivian Smith that explores the experiences of women in the newspaper medium […]
Sapphic Fathers:Discourses of Same Sex Desire From Nineteenth Century France by Gretchen Schultz
Gretchen Schultz’s new book is an important work on the meeting between French literary representations and lived identity, in the case of LGBT women during history, and pushes the argument […]
“Three Daughters of Eve” by Elif Shafak
Mother and daughter together in the car, stuck in the thankless traffic of Istanbul, on their way to a dinner party. What appears to be an everyday situation soon turns into […]
Am I Blue: A Review Taster for Story Café Special: Sister Creatures!
Alice Walker’s 1986 short work Am I Blue is a poignant and thought-provoking story which, at surface level, details a woman’s friendship with a horse she names Blue, while, on […]
The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature and Culture by Bernadette Andrea
Bernadette Andrea’s historical text The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature and Culture traces it back to explore the lives of various Muslim women who came to Britain from the Medieval period onwards, either willingly or unwillingly to see how these early women were changed by and changed the lands they came to.
Thoughts on Brand New Ancients
Kate Tempest’s Brand New Ancients pushes the idea of what poetry can be, telling a complete story through verse rather than serving as a collection of individual poems. It’s the kind of story that deserves to be read all in one go, preferably with tea, and lose yourself into the world of these characters whose lives intersect in ways that are recognisable to the reader.
A Review of Marlena, the Debut Novel of Julie Buntin
Marlena is the stunning, intricately thought out début by young New Yorker Julie Buntin. Fresh with clearly remembered and intimately experienced details of the struggle and turbulence of adolescent life, […]
Thoughts on The Hate U Give
Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give tells the story of Starr, who witnesses her innocent best friend Khalil being shot wrongfully by police in her home of the “ghetto” of Garden Heights, and how she struggles to find her identity between her home and the suburban high school she attends. It describes how she handles her grief and how she deals with the legal enquiry to his death as the only witness to the incident.
Thoughts on Are You My Mother?
Alison Bechdel’s second memoir, Are You My Mother?, explores her relationship with her mother and her quest for her to understand their relationship. It discusses her experiences of therapy in her attempts both to understand herself from a psychoanalytical perspective and the way she and her mother interact with each other. It also covers her parents’ relationship, and her mother’s marriage to a closeted gay man as detailed in her first memoir, Fun Home.