Books shelved under “Feminism”

This book was published when I was five years old, yet it remains timeless and in a way prescient. My second bell hooks book, I read this for the book club I’m a part of. Teaching to Transgress is quite a different vibe from All About Love. This one is more practical, more focused on work rather than personal life (though hooks, of course, blurs those lines). I value both books but in different…

When I requested the eARC of this book from NetGalley and publisher Saga Press, I was apprehensive. From the publicity pitch alone I was nervous this would be one of those white feminist books that purport to provide deeper commentary on social issues but lack an awareness of intersectionality. Then I learned a bit more about Chana Porter, particularly that they are a Lambda Award winner, and I was reassured. Indeed, The Thick and the…

Often people ask me what I would recommend if I am no longer recommending Invisible Women. Usually my response is the unhelpful, “Dunno, figure it out.” But really, the amount of books I read? There must be more books about technology and bias out there, especially in the four years since that one was published. So when I heard about More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech, I…

This is one of those questions that gets asked of you at a certain time in your life. Sherronda J. Brown introduced me to the term chrononormativity when I read Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, and that made a lot of things click for me. So When Are You Having Kids?: The Definitive Guide for Those Who Aren't Sure If, When, or How They Want to Become Parents is a practical guide for addressing a very…

My bestie Rebecca lent this to me, and I am glad she did—I don’t think I would have picked it up otherwise, and that would have been my loss. Lessons in Chemistry stands out. It is quite a literary novel, full of narrative tricks and idiosyncrasies and enough contrived character circumstances to make John Irving or Heather O’Neill jealous. But Bonnie Garmus is on a mission in this book. She’s laser-focused on the unfairness of…

Where do I start? Do I lament sheepishly how I’ve slept on bell hooks my entire adult life, and it is only now, at thirty-three, now that she has passed, that I’ve made time to read even one of her books? Do I confess that this was a revelation, that it was exactly the book I needed here and now? This review will be purely encomium, for that is what I feel about All About…

Much like author Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell discusses in the preface to this book, I adore wearing dresses (and skirts, though I find them slightly more difficult because you then need the right top). She’s preaching to the choir when she talks about wearing them pretty much exclusively. For me as a trans woman, dresses are my way of embodying and expressing my femininity (they are not, of course, the only way to be feminine). I’ll talk…

Famously, I was told the internet is for porn. That can’t be true, of course, because as far as I am concerned, the internet is for writing book reviews! Anyway, The Pornography Wars: The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Obscene Obsession is yet another entry in a long line of books that looks at how people have lined up against one another to support or oppose the creation, distribution, and consumption of pornography. Some…

I received this book nearly a year ago (maybe a whole year ago) from my friend and former teaching colleague Emma. I had gifted her Come As You Are, Dr. Emily Nagoski’s earlier book about sex. Burnout is, as the title implies, about the sustained sensation many of us feel when we have overextended ourselves and depleted our resources. As the subtitle implies, this book promises to deepen our understanding of burnout. It is…

This might be one of those books where I have had it on my to-read list almost since it came out … eleven years ago. Finally got around to reading it! Beauty Queens is a rollicking young-adult satire of reality television, beauty pageantry, and the corporate hostile takeover of feminism. Libba Bray brings a lot of humour and sweetness to these pages. I enjoyed it. Yet I also think it has a lot of limitations,…

Word on the street is that young adult books are “too woke” now. I chortle every time I hear such patently absurd allegations, for anyone who levels them clearly has spent little time around not only young adult literature but also young adults themselves! Adolescents and young adults are passionate and aware about social justice. They want to learn, want to share, want to act to make the world a better place. All too often,…

Once again I find myself wrecked by Louise O’Neill’s ability to tell stories about how our society messes up women and girls. I expected this. I’ve pre-ordered this book but was delighted to receive an eARC on NetGalley because I could not wait. Shout out to the Sam Miller I knew when I taught in England (aside from being a blonde white woman, she was nothing like this Sam Miller).

Sam Miller is a wildly…

Audre Lorde is one of those people whom we white people find so quotable yet seldom do we stop to listen to her words (we have done this to Martin Luther King, Jr. as well). Every time I see a quotation from Lorde or another prominent Black activist on a T-shirt, I cringe. One of the insidious aspects of whiteness is how it appropriates the radical language of oppressed people (just look at the evolution…

This is a book I have been waiting for. I don’t just mean in the sense that I pre-ordered it (though I did); I mean that I am very much interested in books about trans liberation as opposed to personal memoirs. I know Shon Faye’s The Transgender Issue is far from the first book on this subject. However, it is current and cogent. In her prologue, Faye makes the case clearly:

The demand for true

…

Although I would have picked this up on my own once I heard about it, I sought out and read White Tears/Brown Scars as a part of an antiracist book club that I joined for the month of June. Comprising mostly educators in Ontario, the book club’s organizer picked this book because our profession is predominantly white women, so white tears are a problem. As a white women, I’m a part of that problem,…

Despite not enjoying The Mirror Empire to the point of not finishing it, I was still eager to read this collection of essays by Kameron Hurley. One of the reasons I was so disappointed about The Mirror Empire was that I really wanted to enjoy Hurley’s novels based on what I had seen from her on Twitter, her blog, etc. So I still wanted to try The Geek Feminist Revolution, and I’m glad that…

Sex good. Pornography bad. With such utterances we begin to draw the lines that marked the “sex wars” of the 1980s, in which feminism schismed over how to approach sexual expression and the pornography industry. For some feminists, porn amplified the potential for violence against women—porn was essentially as bad as rape. For other feminists, the fight against porn was a fight against freedom of sexual expression, freedom to openly and intensely celebrate women’s sexuality.…

In my Grade 11 and 12 English class for adult learners, I always try to do at least a week on media literacy. We talk about bias and stereotypes, particularly as they relate to race, gender, and disability. One of my favourite activities regarding gender stereotypes involves examining ads and asking students to identify stereotypes present in those ads. It always provokes enlightening and interesting conversations from them. The hypersexualization of women as sex objects,…

One of my goals last year was, and for this year remains, to read more works by transgender authors, particularly about trans issues. I have been following Julia Serano on Twitter for a while now, so during my latest shopping expedition I decided to pick up Whipping Girl, which has also been on my radar for a while. Serano is not only a trans woman but also a molecular biologist, providing her with insights…

In a dramatized conversation between Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth in season 4, episode 1 of The Crown, Thatcher, the UK’s first female prime minister, avers that she has found women “in general not to be suited to high office.” Thatcher climbed the ladder that feminism had built, but she saw herself as rising above the frailties of her sex—an exception that proved the rule—to be more like a man, and she and…