Download or read book The Fictional Woman written by Tara Moss and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-06-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The no.1 Australian bestseller! Tara Moss's first work of non-fiction -- a fascinating mix of memoir and social comment -- is sparking conversation everywhere. What are your fictions? In her tenth book and first work of non-fiction, Tara Moss blends memoir and social analysis to examine the common fictions about women. She traces key moments in her life -- from small-town tomboy in Canada, to international fashion model in the 90s, to bestselling author taking a polygraph test in 2002 to prove she writes her own work -- and weaves her own experiences into a broader look at everyday sexism and issues surrounding the under-representation of women, modern motherhood, body image and the portrayal of women in politics, entertainment, advertising and the media. Deeply personal and revealing, this is more than just Tara Moss's own story. At once insightful, challenging and entertaining, she asks how we can change the old fictions, one woman at a time. 'Hits its mark with sharp-shooting precision ... Moss' skill is in marshalling the evidence and communicating it in a way that is accessible, warm, open, lucid and passionate ... Moss is a serious thinker' Dr Clare Wright, the Age 'A remarkable book - the kind that rewires your brain and its preconceptions in the best way possible. Intelligent, riveting and invigorating' Benjamin Law, Australian journalist and author 'This is a book which needs to be read by men and women. Well written, clearly argued, informative, powerful and thought provoking. Forget everything you thought you knew about Tara Moss, with the Fictional Woman, ttara sets the record straight and takes her place as one of our generations great commentators' John Purcell, Booktopia 'The most insightful book about women since the Feminine Mystique' Eve Mahlab, AO

Download or read book Why Women Read Fiction written by Helen Taylor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ian McEwan once said, 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.' This book explains how precious fiction is to contemporary women readers, and how they draw on it to tell the stories of their lives. Female readers are key to the future of fiction and—as parents, teachers, and librarians—the glue for a literate society. Women treasure the chance to read alone, but have also gregariously shared reading experiences and memories with mothers, daughters, grandchildren, and female friends. For so many, reading novels and short stories enables them to escape and to spread their wings intellectually and emotionally. This book, written by an experienced teacher, scholar of women's writing, and literature festival director, draws on over 500 interviews with and questionnaires from women readers and writers. It describes how, where, and when British women read fiction, and examines why stories and writers influence the way female readers understand and shape their own life stories. Taylor explores why women are the main buyers and readers of fiction, members of book clubs, attendees at literary festivals, and organisers of days out to fictional sites and writers' homes. The book analyses the special appeal and changing readership of the genres of romance, erotica, and crime. It also illuminates the reasons for British women's abiding love of two favourite novels, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Taylor offers a cornucopia of witty and wise women's voices, of both readers themselves and also writers such as Hilary Mantel, Helen Dunmore, Katie Fforde, and Sarah Dunant. The book helps us understand why—in Jackie Kay's words—'our lives are mapped by books.'

Download or read book The Life and Loves of a She Devil written by Fay Weldon and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'ONE OF OUR VERY BEST WRITERS' Sunday Times 'A tour de force' The Times 'Intoxicating' Daily Telegraph 'Devilishly delightful' New York Times Book Review 'Beautifully and compellingly written' Sunday Express 'Audacious' Times Literary Supplement The bestselling classic tale of a woman scorned, from a much-loved British author Ruth Patchett never thought of herself as particularly devilish. Rather the opposite in fact - simply a tall, not terribly attractive woman living a quiet life as a wife and mother in a respectable suburb. But when she discovers that her husband is having a passionate affair with the lovely romantic novelist Mary Fisher, she is so seized by envy that she becomes truly diabolic. Within weeks she has burnt down the family home, collected the insurance, made love to the local drunk and embarked on a course of destruction and revenge. A blackly comic satire of the war of the sexes, The Life and Loves of a She Devil is the fantasy of the wronged woman made real. PRAISE FOR FAY WELDON 'She's a Queen of Words' Caitlin Moran 'A national treasure' Literary Review 'The literary equivalent of a stiff drink, a dip in the Atlantic in January, a pep talk by a mildly sadistic coach' New York Times 'Times have changed and Weldon is one of the people who have changed them' The Times 'One of the great lionesses of modern English literature' Harper's Bazaar 'Fay Weldon's voice is as unmistakeable as her acerbic wit' Financial Times

Download or read book Geek Girls Don t Cry written by Andrea Towers and published by Union Square + ORM. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an entertainment writer, “an enjoyable read for anyone interested in pop culture, with particular relevance to those working to overcome struggles.” (Booklist) What does it mean for a woman to be strong—especially in a world where our conception of a “hero” is still so heavily influenced by male characters like Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman? Geek Girls Don’t Cry outlines some of the primary traits heroic women can call upon, like resilience, self-acceptance, and bravery, pulling in stories from real-life women as well as figures from the pop-culture pantheon. Written by Andrea Towers, who has worked for Marvel Entertainment and written about superheroines for such outlets as Entertainment Weekly, Geek Girls Don’t Cry also includes interviews with the creators of our favorite fictional heroines, who discuss how they came up with their inspiring characters and how their creations continue to inspire them. “In a market flush with biographical anthologies of awesome, powerful, and sometimes unknown women, Towers’ book stands out. She puts the creative in creative nonfiction as she takes the biographical details of fictional female characters and associates them with various real-life issues to empower and comfort readers.” —Booklist

Download or read book A Room of One s Own written by Virginia Woolf and published by Modernista. This book was released on 2024-05-30 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virginia Woolf's playful exploration of a satirical »Oxbridge« became one of the world's most groundbreaking writings on women, writing, fiction, and gender. A Room of One's Own [1929] can be read as one or as six different essays, narrated from an intimate first-person perspective. Actual history blends with narrative and memoir. But perhaps most revolutionary was its address: the book is written by a woman for women. Male readers are compelled to read through women's eyes in a total inversion of the traditional male gaze. VIRGINIA WOOLF [1882–1941] was an English author. With novels like Jacob’s Room [1922], Mrs Dalloway [1925], To the Lighthouse [1927], and Orlando [1928], she became a leading figure of modernism and is considered one of the most important English-language authors of the 20th century. As a thinker, with essays like A Room of One’s Own [1929], Woolf has influenced the women’s movement in many countries.

Download or read book Female Performers in British and American Fiction written by Barbara Straumann and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The female performer with a public voice constitutes a remarkably vibrant theme in British and American narratives of the long nineteenth century. The tension between fictional female performers and other textual voices can be seen to refigure the cultural debate over the ‘voice’ of women in aesthetically complex ways. By focusing on singers, actresses, preachers and speakers, this book traces and explores an important tradition of feminine articulation. Drawing on critical approaches in literary studies, gender studies and philosophy, the book conceptualizes voice for the discussion of narrative texts. Examining voice both as a thematic concern and as an aesthetic effect, the individual chapters analyse how the actual articulation by female performers correlates with their cultural visibility and agency. What this study foregrounds is how women characters succeed in making themselves heard even if their voices are silenced in the end.

Download or read book The Lodger written by Louisa Treger and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dorothy Richardson is existing just above the poverty line, doing secretarial work at a dentist's office and living in a seedy boarding house in Bloomsbury, when she is invited to spend the weekend with a childhood friend, Jane. Jane has recently married a writer who is on the brink of fame. His name is H.G. Wells, or Bertie, as they call him. Bertie appears unremarkable at first. But then Dorothy notices his grey-blue eyes taking her in, openly signalling approval. He tells her he and Jane have an agreement which allows them the freedom to take lovers, although Dorothy can tell her friend would not be happy with that arrangement. Not wanting to betray Jane, yet unable to draw back Dorothy free-falls into an affair with Bertie. Then a new boarder arrives at the house- beautiful Veronica Leslie-Jones-and Dorothy finds herself caught between Veronica and Bertie. Amidst the personal dramas and wreckage of a militant suffragette march, Dorothy finds her voice as a writer.

Download or read book Women s Space written by Melanie A. Marotta and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-01-17 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Star Wars expanded universe to Westworld, the science fiction western has captivated audiences for more than fifty years. These twelve new essays concentrate on the female characters in the contemporary science fiction western, addressing themes of power, agency, intersectionality and the body. Discussing popular works such as Fringe, Guardians of the Galaxy and Mass Effect, the essayists shed new light on the gender dynamics of these beloved franchises, emphasizing inclusion and diversity with their critical perspectives.

Download or read book The Female Man written by Joanna Russ and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four alternate selves from radically different realities come together in this “dazzling” and “trailblazing work” (The Washington Post). Widely acknowledged as Joanna Russ’s masterpiece, The Female Man is the suspenseful, surprising, darkly witty, and boldly subversive chronicle of what happens when Jeannine, Janet, Joanna, and Jael—all living in parallel worlds—meet. Librarian Jeannine is waiting for marriage in a past where the Depression never ended, Janet lives on a utopian Earth with an all-female population, Joanna is a feminist in the 1970s, and Jael is a warrior with claws and teeth on an Earth where male and female societies are at war with each other. When the four women begin traveling to one another’s worlds, their preconceptions on gender and identity are forever challenged. With “palpable anger . . . leavened by wit and humor” (The New York Times), Russ both employs and upends genre conventions to deliver a wickedly satiric and exhilarating version of when worlds collide and women get woke. This ebook includes the Nebula Award–winning bonus short story “When It Changed,” set in the world of The Female Man.

Download or read book Why Boys Fail written by Richard Whitmire and published by AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected as one of the Top 5 Educational Books by Literacy News The signs and statistics are undeniable: boys are falling behind in school. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the biggest culprits are not video games, pop culture, or female-dominated schools biased toward girls. The real problem is that boys have been thrust into a bewildering new school environment that demands high-level reading and writing skills long before they are capable of handling them. Lacking the ability to compete, boys fall farther and farther behind. Eventually, the problem gets pushed into college, where close to 60% of the graduates are women. In a time when even cops, construction foremen, and machine operators need post-high school degrees, that's a problem. Why Boys Fail takes a hard look at how this ominous reality came to be, how it has worsened in recent years, and why attempts to resolve it often devolve into finger-pointing and polarizing politics. But the book also shares some good news. Amidst the alarming proof of failure among boys-around the world-there are also inspiring case studies of schools where something is going right. Each has come up with realistic ways to make sure that every student-male and female-has the tools to succeed in school and later in life. Educators and parents alike will take heart in these promising developments, and heed the book's call to action-not only to demand solutions but also to help create them for their own students and children.

Download or read book The Handmaid s Tale written by Margaret Atwood and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011-09-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning.

Download or read book Jam on the Vine written by LaShonda Katrice Barnett and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “captivating saga” of the post-Reconstruction era, a black female journalist blazes her own trail—“unforgettable; gripping; an instant classic” (Elle). Ivoe Williams, the precocious daughter of a Muslim cook and a metalsmith from central-east Texas, discovers a lifelong obsession with journalism when she steals a newspaper from her mother’s white employer. Living in the segregated quarter of Little Tunis, Ivoe immerses herself in the printed word until she earns a scholarship to the prestigious Willetson Collegiate in Austin. Finally fleeing the Jim Crow South to settle in Kansas City, Ivoe and Ona, her former teacher and present lover, start the first female-run African American newspaper, Jam On the Vine. In the throes of the Red Summer—the 1919 outbreak of lynchings and race riots across the Midwest—Ivoe risks her freedom and her life to call attention to the atrocities of the American prison system. Inspired by the legacy of trailblazing black women like Ida B. Wells and Charlotta Bass, LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s Jam On the Vine is both an epic vision of the hardships that defined an era and “an ode to activism, writ[ten] with a scholar’s eye and a poet’s soul” (Tayari Jones, O The Oprah Magazine).

Download or read book Women Power written by Mary Beard and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2017-11-02 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An updated edition of the Sunday Times Bestseller Britain's best-known classicist Mary Beard, is also a committed and vocal feminist. With wry wit, she revisits the gender agenda and shows how history has treated powerful women. Her examples range from the classical world to the modern day, from Medusa and Athena to Theresa May and Hillary Clinton. Beard explores the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, considering the public voice of women, our cultural assumptions about women's relationship with power, and how powerful women resist being packaged into a male template. A year on since the advent of #metoo, Beard looks at how the discussions have moved on during this time, and how that intersects with issues of rape and consent, and the stories men tell themselves to support their actions. In trademark Beardian style, using examples ancient and modern, Beard argues, 'it's time for change - and now!' From the author of international bestseller SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.

Download or read book Girl Woman Other written by Bernardine Evaristo and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE “A must-read about modern Britain and womanhood . . . An impressive, fierce novel about the lives of black British families, their struggles, pains, laughter, longings and loves . . . Her style is passionate, razor-sharp, brimming with energy and humor. There is never a single moment of dullness in this book and the pace does not allow you to turn away from its momentum.” —Booker Prize Judges Bernardine Evaristo is the winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and the first black woman to receive this highest literary honor in the English language. Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain’s colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean. The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London’s funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley’s former students, is a successful investment banker; Carole’s mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter’s lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class. Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see, one that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.

Download or read book Dealing in Dreams written by Lilliam Rivera and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A novel exploration of societal roles, gender, and equality.” —School Library Journal (starred review) The Outsiders meets Mad Max: Fury Road in this “daring and dramatic” (Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling) dystopian novel about sisterhood and the cruel choices people are forced to make in order to survive. At night, Las Mal Criadas own these streets. Sixteen-year-old Nalah leads the fiercest all-girl crew in Mega City. That role brings with it violent throwdowns and access to the hottest boydega clubs, but Nala quickly grows weary of her questionable lifestyle. Her dream is to get off the streets and make a home in the exclusive Mega Towers, in which only a chosen few get to live. To make it to the Mega Towers, Nalah must prove her loyalty to the city’s benevolent founder and cross the border in a search of the mysterious gang the Ashé Riders. Led by a reluctant guide, Nalah battles crews and her own doubts but the closer she gets to her goal the more she loses sight of everything—and everyone—she cares about. Nalah must choose whether or not she’s willing to do the unspeakable to get what she wants. Can she discover that home is not where you live but whom you chose to protect before she loses the family she’s created for good?

Download or read book Revelations of a Lady Detective written by Illune Press and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2023-04-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in 1864, this novel set in London depicts Victorian women under a new light thanks to "the initiative in works of progress" of the times, that challenged what was considered not to be "a woman's work". In this novel the English police started employing women in their task force as undercover detectives. Here in the Victorian London we meet Mrs. Paschal, a widow in financial trouble, who "verging upon forty" reinvented herself and "became one of the much-dreaded, but little-known people called Female Detectives". Under cover she bravely chases thieves to secret vaults full of gold, spies on an Italian secret society, solves crimes and rescues the day.

Download or read book Buffy to Batgirl written by Julie M. Still and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-09-06 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science fiction and fantasy are often thought of as stereotypically male genres, yet both have a long and celebrated history of female creators, characters, and fans. In particular, the science fiction and fantasy heroine is a recognized figure made popular in media such as Alien, The Terminator, and Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Though imperfect, she is strong and definitely does not need to be saved by a man. This figure has had an undeniable influence on The Hunger Games, Divergent, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and many other, more recent female-led book and movie franchises.Despite their popularity, these fictional women have received inconsistent scholarly interest. This collection of new essays is intended to help fill a gap in the serious discussion of women and gender in science fiction and fantasy. The contributors are scholars, teachers, practicing writers, and other professionals in fields related to the genre. Critically examining the depiction of women and gender in science fiction and fantasy on both page and screen, they focus on characters who are as varied as they are interesting, and who range from vampire slayers to time travelers, witches, and spacefarers.