Crafting With Feminism: 25 Girl-Powered Projects to Smash the Patriarchy by Bonnie Burton (2016, Quirk Books; 112 pages) Crafting with Feminism features 25 fun and somehow easy-to-make projects that celebrate everything about girls and women. The projects are not for everybody. You must feel comfortable wearing your ideology on your sleeve to create fierce merit badges and you need to believe that the political is personal with DIY power panties. If you are not so sure about the above, you may want to try to craft heroine finger puppets to honor great women like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, bell hooks, or Frida Kahlo. You can also make an "All Hail the Queen Crown," a "Huggable Uterus Body Pillow," or a very interesting "Nope Necklace" that invites you to stick up for yourself by saying "no," always a powerful feminist act. The book offers tips on everything from beginner sewing stitches to building an empowering party playlist. It also includes a forward by actress and writer Felicia Day, creator of the YouTube channel Geek & Sundry. She is a fan of crafting parties, especially lady friends crafting parties. She believes that feminism is about giving women the freedom to make the choices they want to make and to be what they want to be. Feminism has, according to Day, a million positive ideas that could drown the negative, and this book is a way to make sure that fun is a part of the cause. Not for everyone, but if you enjoy glitter, empowerment, and feminism, this book is for you. Find this title in our catalog: Crafting with Feminism Recommended by: Maite
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Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik (2015, Dey Street Books; 240 pages) Notorious RBG is one of the most enjoyable books I have had on my hands this past year. It has it all. It is fun, and it is packed with information about one of the most important civil rights figures of our time in America, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. When the reader finishes the last chapter, sadness pours over, you don´t want to stop reading about this incredible woman. In fact I wish there were one more chapter: one that would cover her year after the November 2017 election. If you admired RBG before you read this book, once you put your hands on this project that has been considered a deeply original mash-up of pop culture and serious scholarship, you will fall in love with her personality. The photos, her life story, the annotated dissents that open a world to the reader to understand the brilliant mind of this courageous woman, justice, and feminist. All of it is absolutely worthy. The reader will be amazed reading about how fiercely she fought to make sure that unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights were taken seriously into consideration. Anyone reading this book will understand why this feminist pioneer's dissents and incredible strength have inspired millions of men and women. Delightful anecdotes about the Justice's life bring into light an intimate portrait of the woman and her work. The reader will learn that she likes to write through the night, that her marriage was fascinating and inspiring, and that she exercises every day. Stories about her love for the opera and her friendship with other Justices, some of them from a very different political spectrum, are really interesting; every anecdote helps the reader to understand her life and her times. The conclusion is, of course, that Notorious RBG is exactly that, notorious, only in the Latin definition of the word, rather than the English, which has somewhat of a negative connotation. Great book, read it, read it! Find this title in our catalog: Notorious RBG Recommended by: Maite The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2008, Spiegel & Grau; 242 pages) "When I was young, my father was heroic to me, was all I knew of religion. His word was the difference between pancakes and oatmeal, between Speed Racer and yard work." The author of Between the World and Me shares a brilliant coming-of-age story that embraces the genres of poetry and memoir. Coates shares with the reader a fantastic universe, and he tells the story of his father, Paul Coates: a Vietnam vet and Black Panther, a radical publisher and a lover of lost histories. He had seven children, from different mothers, and his mission in life was to see them survive the Age of Crack in Baltimore. Coates' language is startlingly beautiful, and the memoir is both healing and haunting. The reader will find a blunt portrait of an adolescence filled with chaos and danger, and also a love story of a family, fathers and sons. This is a stunningly poetic book. Fabulous. It is dedicated to his mother, Cheryl Waters. Find this title in our catalog: The Beautiful Struggle Recommended by: Maite On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder (2017, Tim Duggan Books; 130 pages) The prologue of this tiny book is an essay on history and tyranny that helps the reader to understand the core of the author´s intention, to make sure that the reader understands that history does not repeat, but it does instruct. "The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they know, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century." The author adds: "We are not wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience." Mr. Snyder has written a book that presents twenty short lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today. Every lesson starts with a command: Do not obey in advance, defend institutions, beware the one-party state, take responsibility for the face of the world, remember professional ethics, be wary of paramilitaries, be reflective if you must be armed, stand out, be kind to our language, believe in truth and ten more commands based on democratic principles. The book is delightful, concise, precise, and necessary. Recommended. Find this title in our catalog: On Tyranny Recommended by: Maite Why We March: Signs of Protest and Hope -- Voices From the Women's March (2017, Artisan; 264 pages) This is a book dedicated to those who marched and those who continue to march, and it is a book about the voices from the Women's March, a historical event that happened on January 21 of 2017, when millions of women and men gathered and marched in all fifty states in the U.S. and in different places in the world on all seven continents. All the marchers together formed one of the largest demonstrations in political history. This book is a compilation of photographs of the signs they carried, which quickly circulated around the globe. The signs offer a unique answer to the question “Why do you march?” The examples are fantastic and inspiring. Grandmothers, mothers and daughters, immigrants, women and men of color, boys, dads, grandfathers. They all had a reason to march, and they all had a message to send on their signs, or with their outfits, with thousands of pink hats sending it. “I march for my future,” “You can try to divide. We will rise and unify,” “1968 is calling, don’t answer,” “Nope”, “No more nice kitty,” “Celebrate diversity, Love is Love,” “Healthcare and Justice for All,” “USA Expats in Solidarity with Sisters Everywhere,” “Hear US,” “Welcome to the Resistance Day!,” “I march for equality,” “Love looks pretty on you,” “I am You,” “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun-Damental Rights,” are a few of many messages that the book brings along to serve as a testimony of many powerful voices. The book is delightful and interesting even for those who may find the idea too political. Find this title in our catalog: Why We March Recommended by: Maite 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 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 The Trouble With Women by Jacky Fleming (2016, Andrews McMeel Publishing; 128 pages) "In the older days there were no women which is why you don't come across them in history lessons at school. There were men and quite a few of them were geniuses. Then there were a few women but their heads were very small so they were rubbish at everything apart from needleworkd and croquet." If you are intelligent, into satirical readings, and you need to laugh aloud at the end of a busy, rotten day, this is the book for you. You will actually roar, especially if you consider yourself a feminist. Questions like "Can women be geniuses?" or "are their arms too short?" or "why did we only learn about three women at school and what were all the others doing?" will be answered in this savagely funny book. This is a book illustrated throughout with pen and ink sketches reminiscent of Victorian cartoons. The drawings have a caricatural style, but they are witty, they are alive, they move and they enrich the stories and characters. Jacky Fleming's women have ballooning wide skirts and astonishing, tiny heads. After all: “Female brains were not only smaller, but they were made of soft, spongey, lightweight material.” But their faces have an incredible expression that tells you they are not happy, they are not sleeping, and they are ready to be part of history. This book is a must read, no matter what your age or gender is. Find this title in our catalog: The Trouble With Women Recommended by: Maite Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age by Amani Al-Khatahtbeh (2016, Simon & Schuster; 144 pages) Amani Al-Khatahtbeh is the founder and editor in chief of MuslimGirl.com, the number one Muslim women's blog in the United States. She regularly provides commentary on social, cultural, and political issues through outlets such as CNN, Al Jazeera, and the BBC, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, and more. This memoir is a harrowing and candid account of what it´s like to be a young Muslim woman in the wake of 9/11, during the never-ending war on terror, and through the Trump era. It is a portrait of Amani's journey through adolescence as a Muslim girl in the United States, from the Islamophobia she's faced on a daily basis to the website she launched that became a cultural phenomenon, to the nation's political climate in the 2016 election cycle. The voice in the book is powerful and the writing is fantastic. The author brings light to many questions that non-Muslims have. She discusses myths, like the one that says that a headscarf is a signifier for radicalism or oppression. She generously shares her own personal anecdotes, and her honesty is astonishing. Amani sends a vital message, an urgent one that is a deeply necessary counterpoint to the current political climate and rhetoric about the Middle East. A must read. Fantastic. Find this title in our catalog: Muslim Girl Recommended by: Maite |
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