Het boek dat Emma gaat lezen voor haar boekclub ‘Our Shared Shelf’ in september/oktober is bekend. Dit zal het boek ‘Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body ‘ van schrijfster Roxane Gay zijn. Dit boek is wel vertaald naar het Nederlands als ‘Honger: De geschiedenis van mijn lichaam’ en is te koop bij bol.com.

Dear Our Shared Shelf,

Roxane Gay describes her book ‘Hunger’ as a “memoir about my body”. It traverses many of the issues surrounding our human bodies, the sexual experiences we have, our relationship with food, how we feel about our own bodies and the difference gender has to play on a body… When exploring how society treats people of her size, Gay asks: “What does it say about our culture that the desire for weight loss is considered a default feature of womanhood?”

What struck me the most about the book is Roxane’s searing honesty. We know that there are many people of all genders who do not feel they can talk about their experiences – who live their lives carrying the huge burden of abuse and trauma. As the author suggests, many people do not realise the suffering that follows an act like the one Roxane experienced, and how it can completely alter the way the victim identifies with themselves and others.

While parts of the book are difficult to read, it highlights the very real damage done by sexual violence and puts you in the mind and body of someone that has to move through the world in a different way. A small insight or perspective I feel grateful for now having and understanding a little bit better.

I am also re-reading essays from Gay’s ‘Bad Feminist’. We put such high expectations on ourselves as feminists, on other feminists, and the movement as a whole. It feels like such a relief to take ownership of words like “nasty woman” and “bad feminist”. They don’t have so much power this way and maybe they remind us not to hold ourselves and others to unreasonably high standards – we are all human after all and at different moments of our learning journeys. We need to feel free to be on those journeys and make mistakes. I hope if you get time you’ll enjoy what she has to say about this too.

Love,
Emma

Het boek dat Emma gaat lezen voor haar boekclub ‘Our Shared Shelf’ in juli/augustus is bekend. Dit zal het boek ‘The Beauty Myth’ van schrijfster Naomi Wolf zijn. Dit boek is wel vertaald naar het Nederlands maar niet meer echt makkelijk te koop. De Engelse versie welk wel makkelijk te koop bij bol.com.

Dear Our Shared Shelf,

A myth this month, by Naomi Wolf.

Hope you enjoy,
E xx

Het boek dat Emma gaat lezen voor haar boekclub ‘Our Shared Shelf’ in mei/juni is bekend. Dit zal het boek ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ van schrijfster Margaret Atwood zijn. Dit boek is vertaald naar het Nederlands als ‘Het verhaal van de dienstmaagd’ en is te koop bij bol.com. Er komt in juni een serie uit gebaseerd op het boek op de Amerikaanse streamingsdienst Hulu.

Dear Our Shared Shelf,

Our next book – Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – is a gripping read, but it won’t make you feel comfortable. It is set in a dystopian future where a society (which was once clearly the USA) is ruled by a fundamentalist religion that controls women’s bodies. Because fertility rates are low, certain women – who have proved they are fertile – are given to the Commanders of the ‘Republic of Gilead’ as ‘handmaids’ in order to bear children for them when their wives cannot. The novel purports to be the first-person account of a handmaid, Ofred, who describes her life under this totalitarian regime. Flashbacks to her past, when she took it for completely for granted that she could be a working mother and have an equal relationship with her husband, show how easy it was for women’s rights to be revoked once a period of social chaos arose. As tension builds, the reader desperately hopes that the underground resistance will come to Ofred’s aid and rescue her.

Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale over thirty years ago now, but it is a book that has never stopped fascinating readers because it articulates so vividly what it feels like for a woman to lose power over her own body. Like George Orwell’s 1984 (a novel that Atwood was inspired by) its title alone summons up a whole set of ideas, even for those who haven’t read it. As Atwood has said in an interview: ‘It has become a sort of tag for those writing about shifts towards policies aimed at controlling women, and especially women’s bodies and reproductive functions: “Like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale”.’

Well, here’s our chance to read beyond the ‘tag’, and share our thoughts about how we think its dystopian vision relates to the world of 2017. Atwood has called it ‘speculative fiction’, but also says that all the practises described in the novel are ‘drawn from the historical record’ – i.e. are things that have actually taken place in the past. Could any of Atwood’s speculations take place again, or are some of them taking place already? Are the women in the book powerless in their oppression or could they be doing more to fight it? I can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

Emma x

Het boek dat Emma gaat lezen voor haar boekclub ‘Our Shared Shelf’ in maart/april is bekend. Dit zal het boek ‘Women Who Run With the Wolves’ van schrijfster Clarissa Pinkola Estes zijn. Dit boek is vertaald naar het Nederlands als ‘De wolfsvrouw vertelt’ en te koop bij bol.com.

Dear Our Shared Shelf,

When WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES was first published in 1993, it created a furore about the idea of the Wild Woman archetype and how women had lost our connection to our natural, instinctual selves. Jungian psychoanalyst, poet, and keeper of old stories Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book went to sell over 2 million copies, but today her fascinating book is rarely discussed. Estes’ ideas are both ancient and completely new. She points to storytelling, our ancient narratives, as a way for women to reconnect to the Wild Woman all women have within themselves, but have lost.

As a young girl growing up in northern Michigan, Estes felt most at home in the woods where she often heard wolves howling. Instead of scaring her, the animals’ cries comforted her in a way she was later able to express in this book. Wolves and women share many qualities: playfulness, strength, curiosity, bravery, they are adaptive, and each care deeply for their young. But both wolves and women have suffered a similar fate of being hounded, harassed, exhausted, marginalized, accused of being devious and of little value. How does one reconnect with our deepest, most true selves when today’s world demands us to conform to ridiculous expectations? Estes retells ancient myths and fairy tales from around the world and in doing so shines a light on a path which leads us back to our natural state — and help us restore the power we carry within us.

Emma x

Het boek dat Emma gaat lezen voor haar boekclub ‘Our Shared Shelf’ in januari en februari is bekend. Dit zal het boek ‘The Vagina Monologues’ van schrijfster Eve Ensler zijn. Dit boek is vertaald naar het Nederlands als ‘De Vagina Monologen’ en te koop bij bol.com.

Dear Our Shared Shelf,

This book isn’t strictly just a book – it’s a play that became a political movement that became a world-wide phenomenon. Just say the title The Vagina Monologues and, even now, twenty years after Eve Ensler first performed her ground-breaking show, the words feel radical. I’m very excited about spending the months of January and February reading and discussing a book/play that has literally changed lives.

The first person’s life it changed was the feminist playwright Eve Ensler’s. She says she didn’t so much ‘write’ her play as act as a conduit for other women’s stories. She had become fascinated by how the word ‘vagina’ was never spoken, and how the vagina itself was kept in the dark as if it was something shameful to discuss. So she started interviewing women about their vaginas – getting them to open up to her. Once women started talking, the stories came thick and fast, and Eve put them together into a series of monologues to be performed on stage.

When the play was first performed in 1996, it was a small, off Broadway production. But soon it began to make huge and controversial waves. It was the time of the Bosnian war and terrible stories were emerging of the systematic rape of Bosnian women. One of the monologues was inspired by these stories, and out of those first performances of The Vagina Monologues grew the V-Day movement to stop violence against women. The first V-Day was on Valentine’s Day 1998 when a group of well-known actresses got together to perform Eve’s monologues. Since then the V-Day movement has become international, with The Vagina Monologues being performed in theatres and on college campuses worldwide. Even today there are people trying to ban those performances.

I’m so interested to see which monologues we all like best, and which ones still shock us. Has the world moved on in twenty years, or are there still aspects of women’s sexuality we can’t talk about, through our own fears or because others try to stop us? Do we think art can change the world?

Emma x