Women make up roughly 50% of the world, yet they are often underrepresented in the culture at large, as the title of one of this month’s selections (The rumors of our progress have been greatly exaggerated by Carolyn Maloney) points out. Women are our mothers, daughters, sisters, lovers, friends. They do amazing things, shameful things, interesting things, ridiculous things – both flawed and fantastic, they often change the world. This month, Mechanics’ Institute Library staff select books by and about all the whip-smart, rebellious, fascinating women who have changed our worlds.
Kristin recommends…
Flappers by Judith Mackrell (920.72 M159)
The 1920's as seen through the lives of six independent women. Flappers captures the giddy energy of the era, filled with parties, affairs, cocktails, and sadly – a few heartaches. Embrace your inner flapper and read this book!
Heather recommends…
We should all be feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (305.42 A235)
The author of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Americanah, Adichie offers up this slim book as a primer for the uninitiated. In straightforward prose, the author unpacks the widespread cultural resistance to feminism – showing how the idea of “the f-word” is so often limited by stereotypes, and how its concepts might form the basis for a fairer society in which all members of a community can be empowered to become truer to themselves.
STAFF PICKS BOOKS
FICTION
Ana Castillo Peel my love like an onion
Audre Lorde Zami: a new spelling of my name
Lisa Lutz The Spellman files
Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway
NON-FICTION
Antonia Murphy Dirty chick: adventures of an unlikely farmer 636 M978
Carolyn Burke No regrets: the life of Edith Piaf 780.92 P57bn
Phoebe Hoban Alice Neel: the art of not sitting pretty 750.92 N378
Patricia Albers Shadows, fire, snow: the life of Tina Modotti 92 M692
Deirdre Bair Anais Nin: a biography 92 N714b
Jean H. Baker Margaret Sanger: a life of passion 92 S223b
Evelyne Bloch-Dano Madame Proust: a biography 92 P968
Valerie Boyd Wrapped in rainbows: the life of Zora Neale Hurston 92 H9595b
Matthew Dennison Behind the mask: the life of Vita Sackville-West 92 S1215d
Kirstin Downey The woman behind the New Deal: the life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor & his moral conscience 92 P448d
Gillian Gill Nightingales: the extraordinary upbringing & curious life of Miss Florence Nightingale 92 N688
Mary Gordon Circling my mother 92 G6642
Francine du Plessix Gray Madame de Stael: the first modern woman 92 S778
Joan, Maid of Orleans 92 J43g
Diane Jacobs Her own woman: the life of Mary Wollstonecraft 92 G592j
Mary Karr Lit: a memoir 92 K187L
Maxine Hong Kingston The woman warrior: memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts 92 K563
Judith Mackrell Flappers: six women of a dangerous generation 920.72 M159
Benjamin Moser Why this world: a biography of Clarice Lispector 92 L769
Aife Murray Maid as muse: how servants changed Emily Dickinson's life & language 92 D553m
Roger Poole The unknown Virginia Woolf 92 W909po
The diaries of Dawn Powell, 1931-1965 92 P8825
Barbara Reynolds Dorothy L. Sayers: her life & soul 92 S2742r
Glynis Ridley The discovery of Jeanne Baret: a story of science, the high seas & the first woman to circumnavigate the globe 92 B248
Mary Robinson Everybody matters: my life giving voice 92 R663e
Julie Salamon Wendy & the lost boys: the uncommon life of Wendy Wasserstein 92 W32s
Stacey Schiff Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) 92 N11v
Miranda Seymour Mary Shelley 92 S5445se
Calvin Trillin About Alice 92 T829a
Jennifer Uglow George Eliot 92 E42u
The memoirs of Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun 92 V673
Evelyn C. White Alice Walker: a life 92 W177
Jeanette Winterson Why be happy when you could be normal? 92 W788
Marjane Satrapi Persepolis 92 S253 v.1
Hanne Blank The unapologetic fat girl's guide to exercise & other incendiary acts 613.71 B642
Lisa Krissoff Boehm Making a way out of no way: African American women & the second great migration 305.48 B671
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We should all be feminists 305.42 A235
David B. Axelrod, Carol F. Thomas, Lenny Schneir Merlin Stone remembered: her life & works 305.42 S879
Andrea Barnet All-night party: the women of bohemian Greenwich Village & Harlem, 1913-1930 305.4 B261
Anne Berest, Audrey Diwan, Sophie Mas, Caroline De Maigret How to be Parisian wherever you are: love, style & bad habits 305.4 B491
Susan Bordo Unbearable weight: feminism, Western culture & the body 305.42 B72
Geraldine Brooks Nine parts of desire: the hidden world of Islamic women 305.48 B87
Gail Collins When everything changed: the amazing journey of American women from 1960 to the present 305.4 C71w
Virginie Despentes King Kong theory 305.42 D468
Eve Ensler Insecure at last: losing it in our security-obsessed world 305.42 E59
The essential feminist reader 305.42 E78
Femen Femen 305.4 F328
Marilyn French From Eve to dawn: a history of women: volume 1: origins 305.42 F87 v.1
Vivian Gornick The solitude of self: thinking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton 305.42 S792
Linley Erin Hall Who's afraid of Marie Curie?: the challenges facing women in science & technology 305.43 H17
Ayaan Hirsi Ali The caged virgin: an emancipation proclamation for women & Islam 305.48 H66
Laura Kipnis The female thing: dirt, sex, envy, vulnerability 305.42 K57
Carolyn B. Maloney Rumors of our progress have been greatly exaggerated: why women's lives aren't getting any easier-- & how we can make real progress for ourselves & our daughters 305.42 M257
Wendy Merrill Falling into manholes: the memoir of a bad/good girl 305.4 M571
Nothing but the truth so help me God: 51 women reveal the power of positive female connection 305.4 N912
Deborah Siegel Sisterhood, interrupted: from radical women to grrls gone wild 305.42 S571
Rebecca Solnit Men explain things to me 305.42 S688
Women's letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the present 305.4 W871
Julie Zeilinger A little f'd up: why feminism is not a dirty word 305.42 Z46
Kia Afcari & Mary Osborne Sister surfer: a woman's guide to surfing with bliss & courage 797.32 A25
Kara Goucher Kara Goucher's running for women: from first steps to marathons 796.42 G688
