You’ll Enjoy It When You Get There
Taylor’s stories usually take place around the home and centre on domestic issues, but I think that classifying her work as ‘domestic drama’ confers a feeling of banality that is quite unfair.
Women Authors
Most old books are written by men. These books were written by women.
Rattlebone
Rattlebone follows Irene Wilson, a young Black girl growing up in a Black neighbourhood in Kansas City during the 1950s. It’s not often I come across a narrative that is very distinctly and unmistakably character-driven, but this one definitely is.
Ain’t I a Woman?
A modern reader will perhaps be struck by the religious bent of her speeches and arguments that hinge on some outdated ideas, but it’s important to realize that Truth was an essential starting point for the fight for equality for women and for suffrage. She was the beginning of the evolution of what that fight became and how it continued.
Women of the Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance is a literary moment that is vital to study but it can be hard to determine where to start. The movement is lush and complex with many different facets that aren’t limited to literature alone.
HERmione
This novel was an examination of identity as Gart struggles to determine who she is and whether she is at risk of losing whatever grasp she has on herself in the face of Lowndes’ domineering presence.
Notes of a Crocodile
Academia provides a concrete backdrop for a constantly shifting narrative in which the narrator is struggling to come to terms with herself and asserting that self in a society that treats her like an aberration because of her sexuality.
Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket
I have mixed feelings when it comes to collections like this that include newer work, mostly because I find that usually there is not enough work included to be able to follow a writer’s evolution across time.
After a Funeral
Diana Athill’s After a Funeral details her experience of being friends with a man who is profoundly destructive both to himself and to everyone around him.
Ethan Frome
Ethan Frome is one of the shortest classics you can read. My Penguin Classics edition clocks in at only ninety-nine pages. However, despite the length it is a powerful and sharp narrative full of symbolism, depth, and atmosphere.
The Outcast and the Rite
I’ve gleefully noticed that for the last two or three years there’s been an emphasis on the forgotten women writers of weird fiction. It soothes a sore spot in my child-self.