Women Unbound Reading Challenge: The List

Women Unbound Reading Challenge.

The challenge is this: Participants are encouraged to read nonfiction and fiction books related to the rather broad idea of ‘women’s studies.'

What a fantastic challenge and truly ideal for me. Perhaps my NOW-Boston book club will dovetail nicely with this. I often gravitate to books by and about women. Lately I've been grumbling that I've been reading too many (!) books by men and even interviewing too many men for my site.

I also graduated from Simmons College, a women's college in Boston, with a B.A. in English/Political Science. I still have a list from an English Professor of books to read by women. I should get that out.

The challenge runs from November 2009-November 2010.

My reader level-- Suffragette: read at least eight books, including at least three nonfiction ones.

I've looked at books I own already and books I want to read and the lists of others. Below is a tentative list from which I may choose some reading.

NON-FICTION

Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks [already requested from the library-- suggested by Eva at The Stiped Armchair]
--I'd also like to highly recommend Brooks's non-fiction Nine Parts Desire about women in the Middle East

The House by the Sea: a Journal by May Sarton

Edith Wharton: a biography by Hermione Lee

Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon

The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America by Susan Faludi

Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival in Prep School by Abigail Jones and Marissa Miley

Insecure at Last: A Political Memoir by Eve Ensler

The Female Thing by Laura Kipnis

Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi (memoir)-- completed 11.2

FICTION

I am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto

The Love Children by Marilyn French

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Daughter of Earth by Agnes Smedley

Waterlily by Ella Cara Deloria

Rape: a love story by Joyce Carol Oates

I also have this well-worn GO TO GUIDE: 500 GREAT BOOKS BY WOMEN


Another good resources is:

The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature



some suggestions:-- I could go on and on but I don't know if people will even read these!

fiction--
The Education of Harriet Hatfield by May Sarton-- an older woman open's a woman's bookstore in a working-class Boston neighborhood-- I ADORE May Sarton
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates [based on Kennedy and Chappaquiddick incident; seen through the girl's eyes]
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton-- Lily is unwilling to play by societal rules and during the Gilded Age causes a stir and more
My Antonia and A Song of a Lark by Willa Cather- strong and independent women
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark-- very satirical as much of Spark's writing is. Set during WWII (1945) at a home for young women.
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte [has to be one of my all-time favorite books that shines a light on the poor conditions of workers and women]
Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker-- moving novel about female circumcision
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath-- because depression affects more women than men
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner-- it's about choice
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros-- short stories about a girl growing up in a Spanish-speaking area of Chicago (fiction)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin-- unhappy woman feels stifled by her life
The Pink Instituition by Selah Saterstrom-- five generations of a Mississippi family


non-fiction--
Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks-- on Middle Eastern women, Brooks served a foreign correspondent in the Middle East
The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Craft-- written by a female slave in the 1850s.
Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty-- the writer looks back at 70
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
The Diary of Anne Frank [is there anyone out there under 18 who hasn't yet read this?]
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women by Susan Faludi
Money: a memoir by Liz Perle- author gets divorced and finds she's pretty much in the dark about finances
The War Against Women by Marilyn French