women’s literature
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Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder’s beautiful book Mother, Creature, Kin brings to mind the essays of Barbara Kingsolver and Rebecca Solnit, and Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses. Steinauer-Scudder explores such topics as climate change, motherhood, seeking (and finding) one’s center as well as one’s place in the world. She asks her readers to consider their…
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“Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work” by Allison Tyra is an excellent book. She names and credits literally hundreds of women who were not recognized or rewarded for their achievements, from art to medicine to space exploration and beyond. As an amateur scholar of women’s history (i.e. I am not a student), I recognized…
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In Permission, memoirist Elissa Altman asks “Who has the right to tell a family’s story? Who “owns” a family’s history? Do we need permission to tell our story?” Altman says, “The writing of memoir is often fraught; our friends, colleagues, families, entire cultures turn writers into pariahs for what we create, for who we are,…
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My sister and I are proud Muffin Wallopers and set aside time every Sunday to engage in pursuits associated with this title. “What is a Muffin Walloper?” you ask. Allow me to enlighten you. Per WordGenius.com, “A “muffin-walloper” is an unmarried woman who gathers with friends to gossip. In the Victorian era, these conversations often…
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The masterly Natalie Haynes has gifted us with another incredible work of brilliance. I do not know if this is intended to be a companion book to her 2020 book Pandora’s Jar, but as I own both of them, I’ll continue to read them together. Her examination of female dramatis personae in Greek myth offers…
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This book explodes into your psyche. Wytovich takes her readers by storm, pulling them into a maelstrom of emotion and language and sensation. “My name is werewolf, death-cup, noise,” she screams charging through hordes of grinning demons.Ghost girls watch from garden shadows as you daintily sip poisoned tea; we dine with witches on thornapple, mushrooms,…
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Poet Katheryn Louise gifted me a special prelaunch copy of her beautiful collection Yet Still, She Shines. The anticipated release date is January 24, 2024, and I urge you to secure yourself a copy of this beautiful collection. Kathryn Louise’s Yet Still, She Shines is a masterpiece of imagery and emotion. She opens with a brilliant…
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Mimi Flood’s amazing, powerful book Provocative is a Girl’s Name is a commanding, painful book. Flood’s words are raw, shocking, and truthful. There is anger, there is rage, and hatred, and there is love as well: love for who she is, love for her fellow women. As a sexual violence survivor, this was a hard…
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Jessica Drake-Thomas’ Bad Omens is on my list of best books for the year. This poetry collection is steeped in mystery and folklore, with a dash of mythology and a hint of history. In other words, Drake-Thomas has managed to fit all of my favorite themes into her book. This is a very late posting…
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Buffy’s House of Mirrors by Kim Malinowski was a walk through unfamiliar territory for me. I did not watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer so I was not familiar with the character references, which I think helped me to approach these poems objectively. Malinowski imposes real-life emotion and need onto the fantasy world of demon-slaying, attaching…
This is the Mask: A Book Blog 