This week, we read a great
interview with Meg Wolitzer (whose just-released novel
The Interestings
is currently being enjoyed by more than one member of this office).
“Men,” she says, “with very few exceptions, won’t read books about
women.” Though not exactly a new idea, this pronouncement gains a little
force by coming hot on the heels of
GQ‘s “
The New Canon: The 21 Books from the 21st Century Every Man Should Read,”
which contains (you guessed it, drumroll please, etc.) three books
written by women. Though we won’t disparage any of the books that made
the list, we
will offer our own — as an attempt to work towards ameliorating the problem laid out by Wolitzer and neatly exemplified by
GQ. After all, though there are three books by women on their list, only the Munro could really be said to be primarily
about them. After the jump, 21 books by and about women that we think every man should read.
Margaret Atwood is essential reading no matter your gender, and this
chilling depiction of a dystopian future is one of her best. In the
Republic of Gilead, women’s rights have been completely eradicated, and
the country is ruled by a racist, homophobic, misogynist,
ultra-conservative cult. As our editor-in-chief Judy Berman quipped,
“This is every woman’s worst nightmare that men have never thought
about.” So think about it.
Gaitskill’s incredible collection is filled with women walking the
borderlands — of sexual experience, of self-actualization, of family.
This book digs under your skin, titillates, forces you to re-evaluate
everything you ever thought about sex and love and what it means to be a
person in the world. This book is terrifying.
This one doesn’t come out until May, but we’ll recommend it now for
good measure. Ausubel’s luminous collection is organized around the
origins of life — that is, the stages of love, conception, gestation,
and birth — but her stories aren’t as simple as all that. Men may never
be able to feel the fetus in their stomach and be sure that it is a
three-headed giraffe, but with this collection, they’ll at least get a
taste.
Everyone likes Tina Fey, so this shouldn’t be too hard a sell. The
comedian’s memoir is (obviously) hilarious, but also filled with
reflections on being an awkward girl, a woman in show business, and a
mother. You bros will be laughing so hard that you won’t even realize
you’re learning about what it’s like to be a real-life lady.
In her aforementioned interview, Meg Wolitzer laments, “Something
nebulous and thought-based – a book of ideas – people seem much more
willing to have that from a man than a woman.” Well, here is exactly
that: a loose, penetrating, ruthless, glorious novel about a young
journalist making her way through New York City.
The modern fairy tale, whether in retelling or creation, has become a
ripe area for feminist thought, for explorations of sexuality, for wit
and irony and vulgarity to seep out of what was once a prim little
moralistic package. No one does this better than Angela Carter, whose
rich retellings of the classic tales thrum with blood and language.
Here’s a special lure for all you male readers: girl racing
motorcycles across salt flats. Past that, the book is gritty and searing
and immediately essential, a subtle novel about art and love and truth
and a woman on a knife’s edge. Read it.
No one does wry brilliance better than Lorrie Moore. In this
collection, she will teach you everything you need to know: how to talk
to your mother, how to be an other woman, how to become a writer, how to
live. Darkly comic and dazzling, it’s a way inside the head of all the
smart women you’ve ever known.
In Heroines, Zambreno traces the impact — or rather, the
exiling — of the female experience on and from literature, untangling
the stories of “the mad wives of modernism” both historical and
fictional, “who died in the asylum. Locked away, rendered safe.
Forgotten, erased, or rewritten.” Enlightening and intense, it’s a
must-read.
In this novel, a 26-year-old modern black woman is suddenly (and then
repeatedly) transported back in time to a slave plantation in the
antebellum South, where she is subjected to all the harshest parts of
slavery as she protects the son of a slaveowner. Rarely does social
criticism come with such incendiary storytelling.
All right, we’re cheating with this one a little, since it can’t be
properly said to be about women at all — instead, it’s about a human man
who travels to an alien planet populated by a race of beings who are
genderless, or rather unisex, able to assume either binary gender during
reproduction. The novel is beautiful and filled with timeless
philosophical insights as to the nature of humanity and society — a
definite classic we’re happy to make an exception for here
Yuknavitch’s protagonist, the 17-year-old Ida, is a modern
reincarnation of Freud’s famous bisexual case study Dora, whom our most
famous shrink deemed “hysterical.” Ida may be a bit “hysterical” too —
but she’s taking back the term. She’s raunchy, irreverent, filled with
the desire to strip naked in the middle of “Nordfucks” or shave her
head, sidekicked by a beautiful gang of weirdos. “I want to create new
girl myths,” Yuknavitch
said of the book. We think everyone should read them.
“I hesitated a long time before writing a book on woman,” De Beauvoir
begins. “The subject is irritating, especially for women; and it is not
new. Enough ink has flowed over the quarrel about feminism; it is now
almost over: let’s not talk about it anymore.” This was in 1959 — and
the sentiment is as fresh now as it was then, just like (most of) the
rest of De Beauvoir’s lucid book, equal parts literary and
philosophical. All else aside, it’s one of the most classic feminist
texts in the language. And men should read more of those.
Maxine Hong Kingston’s take on the memoir blends her personal
experiences with traditional Chinese folktales, examining the
Chinese-American experience as well as the female one, taking on the
cultural source of oppression, something we could all do to think more
about. She writes: “There is a Chinese word for the female I — which is
‘slave’. Break the women with their own tongues!” So why even be a girl?
“I refused to cook. When I had to wash dishes, I would crack one or
two. ‘Bad girl,’ my mother yelled, and sometimes that made me gloat
rather than cry. Isn’t a bad girl almost a boy?” This is the kind of
thing most boys never have to think about.
It’s pretty much a given that everyone should read The Bell Jar, but we’ll just drive the point home again — it’s a look into the conflicted mind of a tortured genius snuffed out too soon.
There is so much in this book that carries over perfectly to the modern era. Sure, maybe not the idea of tableaux vivants
as party diversions, but the double standards for men and women, the
vicious social games women play with each other, the perils of depending
on another person — these issues are all alive and well. Plus, the
novel is phenomenal. Can’t go wrong.
John Updike, male of all males, called this high comedic novel “a
startling reminder that solitude may be chosen and that a lively, full
novel can be constructed entirely within the precincts of that
regressive virtue, feminine patience.” What the never-married, witty but
mild-mannered Mildred Lathbury would have to say about that, we cannot
say.
Though Colette’s frisky stories aren’t nearly as scandalous today as
they were when they were first printed, she is still a giant of French
literature, and her writing is just about as daring, sexy, gorgeous, and
smart as she. As this book’s introduction describes it, Colette is
“[a]ccessible and elusive; greedy and austere; courageous and timid;
subversive and complacent; scorchingly honest and sublimely mendacious;
an inspired consoler and an existential pessimist — these are the
qualities of the artist and the woman.” A must for any reader who sees
female writing as only one thing
Men love bar stories, right? Funny, smart, and insightful, Schaap’s memoir as a drinking buddy will make you a better person.
Some men might be put off by a “poet’s novel,” but we bet they’ll be
on board once they read that killer first line: “My English professor’s
ass was so beautiful.” Myles can be difficult, but she can also be
incredible, and in this story of a young poet’s self-actualization,
she’s both. Take note.
We maintain that Satrapi’s beloved graphic memoir of growing up in
Iran during the Islamic Revolution is a must-read for absolutely
everyone, so including it here is a no-brainer. What does it mean to be a
tough little girl into rock music in a country that suppresses their
women? What does it mean to be a tough little girl? Satrapi will tell
you with grace, humor and delightful illustrations.
Source: By
Emily Templ
