Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay (2017, Harper; 320 pages) Read The New York Review of Books review of Roxane Gay's best-seller, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, to get a sense of the work Gay is doing with her writing in general, and with Hunger in particular. The book addresses how Gay dealt with trauma in her young life by making herself what is medically termed "super morbidly obese." It is then an examination of what it means to live as a "super morbidly obese" person in our world. Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. Find this title in our catalog: Hunger Recommended by: Brooke
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The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit (2017, Haymarket Books; 192 pages) In a follow-up to her best-seller, Men Explain Things To Me, Rebecca Solnit grapples with the subject of silence when it is forced upon entire groups of people by a whole culture. In particular, she digs in to what it is to be a woman in our world, and how silencing has been a tool of the patriarchy to maintain systems of power. Solnit offers indispensable commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. An important and powerful read. Find this title in our catalog: The Mother of All Questions Recommended by: Brooke Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer (2016, Anchor; 416 pages) Acclaimed journalist Jon Krakauer examines several specific rape cases that occurred in Missoula, Montana, over a four-year period, and the responses of the communities and justice system to those cases. Taking the town as a case study for a crime that is sadly prevalent throughout the nation, Krakauer documents the experiences of five victims: their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the skepticism directed at them by police, prosecutors, and the public; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them. It is an unapologetic attempt to show the bias against women in the rape cases Krakauer explores, and it is done with the fine detail and research Krakauer readers have come to expect from him. Find this title in our catalog: Missoula Recommended by: Brooke |
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