This coming week is International Women’s Week (7-11th March), and Tuesday is International Women’s Day. There are a bunch of great events being held on Penryn campus that you can check out here on the FXU’s facebook event page- try and pop along to a few to support such a great cause!
The critical theory module on my English course has been quite eye opening this term, none more eye opening than the week we discussed gender theory. As a result of those discussions, and my own wider reading, here are six book recommendations I think would give you a rounded understanding of feminist discourse in the past hundred years; feminism has a tumultous history of multiple generations and waves, and I can’t stress enough how important it is to at least attempt to understand this history.
1) “A Room Of One’s Own”, Virginia Woolf.
“Women and fiction remain, so far as I’m concerned, unsolved problems.”
2) “The Second Sex”, Simone de Beuavoir.
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
3) “Gender Trouble: Feminism And The Subversion Of Identity”, Judith Butler.
“There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.”
4) “Bad Feminist”, Roxane Gray.
“When feminism falls short of our expectations, we decide the problem is with feminism rather than with the flawed people who act in the name of the movement.”
5) “Feminist Theory: From Margin To Center”, Bell Hooks.
“There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few.”
6) “How To Be A Woman”, Caitlin Moran.
“I’m neither ‘pro-women’ nor ‘anti-men’. I’m just thumbs up for the six billion.”
Amen to that, Caitlin.
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