Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies – ed. by Scarlett Curtis

This is a nice collection of essays on feminism, edited by Scarlett Curtis. A large number of celebrities, artists, activists, and others are all explaining what feminism means to them (52, I believe). This means you get a very diverse range of responses, and there’s something in here for everyone. It’s been published with the UN’s Girl Up Foundation, and all profits got to them.

The book is divided into sections Epiphany, Anger, Joy, Poetry Break, Action, and Education. No surprises that my favourite essays were in Anger and Action.

I felt strongly that the first section would be a great read for someone just starting to realise they are a feminist, and may help someone who is just starting to understand the issues involved. I found this section to be personally the least interesting, although it is good to hear from younger women about how they discovered they were feminists.

The later sections were where I really connected with a lot of the writing. Particularly I loved Jameela Jamil’s essay on raising boys, and Keira Knightly’s on her daughter. Both very moving, and very powerful. Both obviously issues that are very important and close to my heart as I have a son and a daughter.

I, of course, also loved the essay on Co-Parenting by Sharmadean Reid. She states the case for separated parents to share child rearing responsibilities 50/50. It’s so obvious, yet it’s unusual. I have been in this situation for a few years now, and from the break up we have shared parenting 50/50. It’s great, honestly. I see so much resistance to it from people I know. Often from the mother who doesn’t trust the father with this responsibility. I can see where this may be valid (from both sides too, with useless mothers and fathers existing), but mostly you chose a decent person to procreate with. Let them shoulder half the job. Don’t let them swoop in for a fun weekend every fortnight. Let them have to remember when parents evening is, or when they need a packed lunch sending in, or when a birthday party is and a present must be bought for it. Don’t take the day to day care away from the other parent. Let them parent too.

There are benefits for everyone involved. The kids still get half the time with both parents. The Father (because it’s mostly the father who ends up in this low contact time situation) gets to parent just as much. And you get HALF YOUR TIME TO YOURSELF. Rejoice. You can get shit done. You can date, and have a life, and run a business, whatever you like with this regained time. In Reid’s essay, she says she wouldn’t have been able to set up and run her successful business without this parenting arrangement.

Who wrote the rule that single fathers only see their children every other weekend? This was a plot line that I scrubbed out of my life. I am not going to pretend it was easy. I would budget five years of emotional hardship for you to hold on to consistency and routine, and to discover with your co-parent what works for you both and your child together as a family. It’s not an easy ride, but stand firm! I promise, it’s worth it.

This is just one of the 52 essays in Feminists Don’t Wear Pink, and honestly is covers such a broad range of topics, it’s just the parenting ones that currently say the most to me and my life.

Another stand out essay for me was Dismantling and Destroying Internalized Misogyny: To-Do List by Dolly Alderton. Now I need to read her book immediately.

I also loved the essay Baker-Miller Pink in the Education section (written by Scarlett Curtis). I hadn’t. even. heard. of. this. before. Suddenly I want to paint my house in it.

Baker-Miller Pink: the calming colour

Overall, a huge coverage of issues in Feminists Don’t Wear Pink. An enjoyable, informative, eye opening, celebratory, collection of essays.

Books Bought and Read April 2019

Slowly catching up with these!

Books Bought

The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder by Sarah J. Harris. This was for May book club. I ended up not getting around to reading it, and not being able to attend the book club. 😦

And that’s it! I’m doing very well with the not buying books thing. Shame I’m also reading the slowest ever, so hardly shifting any of the tbr!

Books Read

Click on the book title to go to my review of the book.

Cold Bath Street by A. J. Hartley

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m reading sooooooooooo sloooooooowwwwlllllyyyyyy this year!

Other Blog Posts

The Jhalak Prize Longlist.

I wrote about this great prize because it was won last year by the great Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge (my review here). It’s a prize for writers of colour, and two of my favourite books from last year, were on the longlist. Happily one of them won, In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne (my review is here).

The Dark Dark – Samantha Hunt

A collection of really creepy, bizarre, thoughtful, short stories. Some of these have stayed with me for weeks after reading them, and those are the sort of short stories I love.

I am currently reading more short stories because I’m doing a short story writing course with UCLAN and Comma Press. This gave me the motivation to finally pick up The Dark Dark – a book I’ve had waiting to be read for about a year.

The back of the book describes it as:

Step into The Dark Dark, where an award winning , acclaimed novelist debuts her first collection of short stories and conjures entire universes in just a few pages  – conjures, splits in half, mines for humor, destroys with absurdity, and regenerates. In prose that sparkles and haunts, Samantha Hunt playfully pushes the bounds of the expected and fills every corner with vibrant life, imagining numerous ways in which the weird might poke its way through the mundane. Each of these ten haunting, inventive tales brings us to the brink – of creation, mortality and immortality, infidelity and transformation, technological innovation and historical reinvention, loneliness and communion, and every kind of love.

Laced with lyricism, hope, and Hunt’s characteristic sly wit, illuminated by her unflinching gaze into the ordinary horrors of human existence, The Dark Dark celebrates the mysteries and connections that swirl around us. It’s never all the same, Hunt Tells us. It changes a tiny bit every time. See for yourself.

I love stories that are a bit dark and a bit odd, and a bit feminist, and just a bit creepy and weird. Honestly, the short stories I’ve read recently that are about someone just wandering about thinking about their lives (I’m looking at you, Joyce). or some other dull events, just don’t do it for me. But clones, and really weird, mind bending recursion within a story, or… robots… Yes.  In fact, just flicking back through the book, I’ve just realised two of the stories contain the same start! I really need to reread the whole thing. I loved this collection.

I’m being careful to not spoil any of the stories, so what I’m about to describe is extremely vague! One story ends with a very emotional experience of the main character, but it is overshadowed by world events happening around them. I loved this, it was heartbreaking. There are so many moments from these stories that I keep finding myself thinking about, and that is really telling me how great they were.

I would definitely recommend this collection.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid

A young journalist, Monique Grant, is unexpectedly requested to interview Evelyn Hugo – rich, reclusive, old time Hollywood Mega Star. We know from the beginning that she must have been chosen for some reason, but we don’t know what that is…

I enjoyed Seven Husbands. I didn’t get the reveal until it was revealed, so that was pleasing. If *I* manage to guess what is going to happen, then it really must be tragically obvious.

The book is set up with this mystery about why Monique has been chosen to interview Evelyn. We go back to the present every now and again, but the focus of the book is on Evelyn telling her life story. The book is split into sections named after each of Evelyn’s husbands. Each with adjectives describing the husband. I liked this as a way of introducing the tone of the next marriage. There are also occasional newspaper articles on Evelyn and her life.

I suggested Seven Husbands for my book club. It was generally thought of as OK, but there’s not much to discuss about it, other than it was an enjoyable story. The funniest thing was someone noticing that it was the number 1 book in erotic bisexual fiction on Amazon. I’m afraid this might have left a few people a bit disappointed by the content! It’s, sadly, an extremely tame book in this respect!

It’s essentially a good read. Hollywood love story, fame, love that can’t be made public, part mystery, glamour, dark secrets, it’s got a lot going on. Just don’t pick it for book club!

 

 

Pussy: A Reclamation – Regena Thomashauer

Oh wow. This is like self help on the strongest drugs currently available. To empower myself I need to locate my inner Goddess. She is accessed via my pussy. We are reclaiming that word by the way, and therefore it must be said 100 000 times over the course of the book.

I’m not normally one for such insanity. Really, really, it is not my thing. At one point it is claimed that via accessing the energy of your pussy, the outcome of a national sporting game can be influenced. I mean, urgh, come on. That is clearly BS of the highest order.

Having said that, 95% of this book is just hardcore female empowerment. Fucking the patriarchy, standing up for other women, and having the power to do what you want with your own life. I am totally on board with this.

She is basically trying to give women the power to make decisions that are the best thing for them, regardless of how society, or other people around them, will react. Live your best life sisters.

Combined with this, and how you become so empowered, is by harnessing the power of your pussy, and the goddess within you. Stay with me, I know we are heading into the land of batshit crazy. But we stay on just the right side of this line. Juuuussstt about. Although it’s all dressed up a bit crazily, the message is sound. Part of being a strong, empowered women, is being in touch with your own sexuality, and sexual power. There a chapter where Thomashauer takes you through some exercises you can do to get in touch with this part of yourself. Frankly, I know a lot of women who could do with taking this advice.

Thomashauer runs The School of Womanly Arts, in New York, as Mama Gena. Is this Hogwarts for female empowerment?? I’d like to think so. We hear a lot about it in Pussy, and honestly, I would attend a class at it if I could.

In summary, this is a REALLY EXCELLENT book on the power of female empowerment and truly embracing equality. It gives sound advice on putting yourself first and helping smash the PWC (the patriarchal world culture). It talks utter sense on being at one with your own body and embracing your sexuality. It absolutely then encourages you to support other women and help them free themselves from a lot of this PWC bollocks (sister goddesses, yes). And even though there was quite a lot of fluff and bullshit, that I have barely any tolerance for, it was still a great book full of sound advice. Yes, I managed to even cope with talk of the GPS (the great pussy in the sky). please read the book for further details. Haha. Then buy it for your friends who need it.

The Psychology of Time Travel – Kate Mascarenhas

Four scientist women discover how to time travel. They successfully keep control of the technology and therefore become very rich and powerful, except one who is ostracised after the very first successful time jump.

We follow the women’s stories throughout their lives, and through their descendants.  Of course, not in any completely sensible linear way, because half of the characters are time travellers.

It’s a really good, quite thrilling read and I enjoyed a slightly unusual take on time travel. There’s no danger of anyone messing up the timeline because they live in a deterministic Universe. So we don’t have to deal with the Grandparent paradox or any classic time travel dangers. No split timelines, or parallel universes. It’s a nice straightforward way to do time travel! And yet, somehow, even though the events are predetermined, there’s still quite a good exciting story line!

Because there are no dangers associated with someone seeing themselves in this Universe, it means someone can hang out with themselves from different times. This leads to some great scenes, and some of my favourite moments of the book. For example, two characters are newly entering a relationship, when an older version of one of the characters shows up at their flat to restock the kitchen and do a bit of cleaning.

I had a little bit of trouble keeping up with all the characters – this would probably be ok if I had a paper copy of the book, rather than an ebook, because I would have just flicked back to remind myself who everyone was. It wasn’t that confusing though really 😀

Over all I enjoyed this book. An interesting, fun take on time travel, weaved into a thrilling adventure. Great fun.

Books Bought and Read – January 2019

Books Bought

I ordered The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid for book club. Although it still hasn’t arrived! So I have just cancelled the order and ordered it from elsewhere. Hope it turns up soon…

It did eventually turn up! but not until near the end of february!

Also purchased The Rough Guide to the USA in preparation for a trip. I can’t travel unprepared, so this gets an exemption from the not buying books rules.

Books Read

I only finished two books in January. But I did spend most of the month reading a quite dense history book! I just didn’t finish it until February. Click on the book title to go to the review:

Marching Powder by Rusty Young

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Other Blog Posts

I published a few of my 2018 wrap up posts in January:

My 2018 Reading in Statistics

2018 Reading Bingo

A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn

An American history book written from the perspective of people’s movements rather than great leaders and politicians. A People’s History of the United States is an EXCELLENT book, taking us from Columbus (a massive twat btw, really didn’t know enough about him before) all the way to 9/11.

On a coach to Washington DC

And considering the time span of the book, it’s not too bad at around 700 pages. It’s dense text though, as you’d expect, and it took me around 6 weeks to read. I’m normally a book a week kind of reader. So it’s messed up my reading stats, but it’s been well worth it.

Why did I want to read a book on American history? Two main reasons. Firstly, the lovely politics department at college allowed me to accompany them on a politics trip to New York and Washington. I said I’d better learn something about US history and politics before going, and they recommended this book. Secondly, I am part of an online quiz league and American history is one of my weakest areas. And I want to be better at that.

Zinn’s book is apologetically told from the perspective of the people. It is biased toward a certain world view and he says this is fine, because 99% of other history books are biased the other way to great leaders, usually men, dictating the course of history. Zinn also wanted to make this book accessible to most readers (and it is), by not having footnotes scattered through the text. It is very easy to read.

I felt a bit shocked by the first chapter on Columbus. Shocked and embarrassed that I didn’t already know just how horrific the actions of early European settlers were. I’ve studied history before, but it was modern European history mostly. I’m so ignorant about a lot of what has happened in the rest of the world, and I am trying to change that. In the Columbus chapter, Zinn explains some of his choices with regard to what he decided to include in his book. Sorry this is a bit of epic quoting, from across 4 pages in the book, but I think it really sets out the tone of this book:

To emphasis the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves – unwittingly – to justify what was done.

… the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Horoshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilisation; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all) – that is still with us.

The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) – the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress – is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders.

..in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

…I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the viewpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish-American war as seen by the Cubans,the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America. And so on, to the limited extent that any one person, however he or she strains, can “see” history from the standpoint of others.

… this book will be skeptical of governments and their attempts, through politics and culture, to ensnare ordinary people in a giant web of nationhood pretending to common interest.

Other things I found particularly eye opening: the Clinton years, US foreign policy for the last 100 years, just how little difference it makes whatever party is in charge – they are all basically following the same pattern of keeping the few percent up at the top.

New York hotel room reading

I imagine there are people reading this review who are rolling their eyes at me not knowing all this already. But, there you go, I’m a physicist, so know a lot about that, and I do try to continuously educate myself about new things, and I think that’s a good thing 🙂

Special shout out to the Iroquois society, where land was owned and worked in common, women were important and respected, and the family line went down through the female members. Zinn quotes from Gary B, Nash:

This power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society

Ahhh, just imagine.

 

Overall, I am really glad I have read A People’s History of the United States. I feel like it was well worth the effort and time. I should probably read something similar for the UK. What should I read??

light bed time reading

The Tattooist of Auschwitz – Heather Morris

This is the story of Lale Sokolov, an Auschwitz survivor who met and fell in love with Gita Furman, another prisoner. They meet after the war and spend the rest of their lives together. Lale had a privileged position in Auschwitz due to his role as the tattooist of new arrivals.

Lale told his story to Morris when he was an old man. His story has been verified with records from Auschwitz, but I feel it’s important to note that this is a work of fiction, and isn’t presented as a memoir. There are many historical inconsistencies and it isn’t an attempt to present a real history at all.

It’s a nice enough story. But it left me weirdly emotionally unmoved. And considering this is a book about the actual holocaust, that’s really strange. You couldn’t get a setting that should automatically have me weeping through the story. But I just wasn’t feeling it at all. It felt like an easy read. Too easy. Lale’s Auschwitz experience seemed charmed compared to most stories.

book club

It read like Holocaust-lite. And that was just bizarre. Also, a lot of the details of the story just seemed fanciful and unreal. This was a book club read, and it split the book club. Seems you either really like it or hate it.

I really wouldn’t recommend this book, I could recommend many books with the same setting that are so moving. I would actually be unhappy to thing someone might read this and think it gave a great representation of what life in Auschwitz might have been like. Read Night by Elie Wiesel instead.

Review of my 2018 Reading Challenge

What even was my challenge?? ahhh yes… the popsugar reading challenge. I didn’t take a single bit of notice of this for the whole year. I need to choose a reading challenge more wisely in the future.

The End.