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

Emma is inmiddels in New York en ook hier verstoptte ze exemplaren van het boek ‘Mom & Me & Mom’ in de metro. Het boek dat ze momenteel leest voor haar boekenclub ‘Our Shared Shelf’.

@booksonthesubway @booksontheunderground @oursharedshelf #Mom&Me&Mom

Afgelopen week poste de familie van de overleden schrijfster Maya Angelou een bericht op facebook om Emma te bedanken. Het uitdelen van het boek in onderdeel van de Books on the Underground project.

“My mother’s gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin.” Maya Angelou from Mom & Me & Mom.
We the Angelou Johnson Family personally thank the wonderful actor Emma Watson for giving away 100 copies of Maya Angelou’s book “Mom & Me & Mom” in the London Underground this week. As part of the Books on the Underground project and Ms. Watson’s own feminist book club Our Shared Shelf our Matriarch’s book is being featured now through December. Books have even surfaced in New York City subways and hopefully in other cities around the world! The best part is after people find the book and read it, they are to leave it in the subway for another person to read and so on and so on. Keep sharing, giving and loving each other through these acts of immense kindness.

Galerij Links:
http//: Instagram 2016

Het boek dat Emma gaat lezen voor haar boekclub ‘Our Shared Shelf’ in november en december is bekend. Dit zal het boek ‘Mom & Me & Mom’ van schrijfster Maya Angelou zijn. Dit boek is niet vertaald naar het Nederlands maar wel te koop bij bol.com. Enkele andere boeken van de schrijfster zijn wel vertaald naar het Nederlands.

Dear Our Shared Shelf,

November and December’s book will be Mom & Me & Mom, Maya Angelou’s final work, published a year before her death, in 2013, when she was 85 years old. It was the first book to focus on her mother, Vivian Baxter, who abandoned Angelou when she was a child and it portrays their complicated relationship. The story is about the special connection between mother and child; both women found a way to move on and form a profound and enduring bond of love and support.

Many of you may be familiar with Angelou’s 1969 classic, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, but that was just the first of seven works of autobiography. And, despite the length of time between their publications, some have referred to Mom & Me & Mom as a spiritual sequel to this first book. Angelou revisits episodes and people in her life mentioned in her previous works in a different context and all focused around her relationship with her mother.

Vivian Baxter cuts a fiercely unapologetic figure, imperfect but admirable, and we discover not just how she had a hand in Angelou’s evolution as a black woman but also in her feminist perspective, her independence and self-awareness, all of which contributed to her unique way of looking at the world and the way she expressed herself on the page. As a result, this is perhaps the greatest window into what shaped Angelou as a writer and poet and a fitting end to a lifetime of amazing works.

This book is one I have read before and is one of my favourites – I can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

Emma x