Books I Recommend to My Friends on International Women's Day - III
In honor of International Women’s Day, I recommend 9 books to my friends on social media every year from 2018. And it is to remember where did Women’s Day come from, what do we still have to do for women’s rights and how do we continue.
This mini-series is a look back to these year’s of reading, and it’s a record of my recommendations in the past four International Women’s Day, and I hope these recommendations can inspire you to read more fiction and nonfiction about women’s rights, understand more about women’s rights and feminism, and exam our day to day life with a feminist lens.
Today, let’s talk about the books I recommended to my friends in 2019.
Watch this video to find out more about why I recommended these books back in 2020, and why I still recommend them today!
by Mary Beard
This essay collection discusses misogyny in society and its origin. Mary Beard pointed out whenever women acquire power, people tend to seek out the masculine traits within them, and gave us examples dated back to ancient mythologies, as well as in the recent political world.
She urged us that we can’t simply try to fit women into the male coded world, we have to challenge and change the structures and look at power differently, from the leaders to the followers.
WHEN I HIT YOU: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife
by Meena Kandasamy
In this book, the unnamed narrator escaped from her abusive husband and went to live with her parents. We followed now and then two timelines to explore her story, where she exams her hypocritical husband who is controlling and manipulative.
The author precisely showed us what a selfish and abusive man looks like, and also addressed the people around her who tried to sugarcoat the situation and kept pressuring her to go back to her husband.
INVISIBLE WOMEN: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
by caroline criado pérez
This book shows us the half-world that we normally don’t see, and how because the world is designed by and for men most of the time, women need to adapt themselves into this world that doesn’t fit their needs.
It provides us a lot of examples in government policy, medical research, technology, workplace, urban planning, media, etc where the designs exclude women.
by Winnie M Li
This is an own voice novel that based on the author’s real-life experiences.
The book follows a rape case that happened when the protagonist went on a hiking trip in Europe. It shows what happened during the attack and the aftermath, including the trial.
It also shows us the perspective of the rapist, how he was educated with no respect for women, and the surroundings of him may affect his decisions.
by Tara Westover
This is one of the most powerful memoirs I have ever read. Tara Westover was born and raised in a survivalist family, where her parents didn’t trust the government and public education system. So she didn’t set her foot in a classroom until the age of 17. But when she had the chance, she discovered her love for knowledge and devoured herself into study.
This book shows us how strong a person’s willingness to education can be. It’s stunning to learn about Tara’s early life when she was abused by her father but still thrived in the family. Also fascinating to see how she was able to continue her education after she made so many big or small mistakes when she first discovered the whole other world outside her family.
by Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet“, she dedicated her life to confronting and addressing the injustice of social issues. This book is her essay collection that pilled off the different layers of racism, sexism, and any discrimination in society.
No tools were developed to deal with other women’s anger except to avoid it, deflect it, or flee from it under a blanket of guilt
And Audre Lorde taught us how to deal with anger in social issues, and how there will be no ways to act to injustice if people avoid and neglect the anger of others.
THE WHITE DEVIL'S DAUGHTERS: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown
by Julia Flynn Siler
This book is about a dark chapter in San Francisco’s Chinatown when the Chinese Exclusion Act was still in use. Many young Chinese women are trafficked to the US working as slaves in brothels, and how the local women and the women who were fortunate enough to escape slavery ended up helping each other.
It also wrote about how Chinese immigrants then were able to rebuild San Francisco Chinatown after the 1906 earthquake which destroyed the city, and when the local non-Chinese community wanted to seize the opportunity to get rid of Chinatown as a whole.
This book reminds us about the history we should never forget.
by Andi Zeisler
This is Andi Zeisler’s feminism interruption about pop culture, and the discussion about “marketplace feminism”, where people and businesses using feminism as a tagline to promote their products and services, without making actual changes in the institutional discrimination.
She gives example like using the word “empowering” like a magic word, which made the word means next to nothing.
by Cho Nam-Joo
This is a South Korean novel, talking about a millennial everywoman Kim Jiyoung who recently quit her job to take care of her newborn at home. But peculiar things happened, she started to impersonate voices from other women. To find out the reason behind her behavior, we follow her story from kindergarten to now and experience all the misogynies she encountered during her lifetime.
This is a phenomenal book in both South Korean and Chinese reading communities. Because of the similarities between the two countries, the things that happened to Kim Jiyoung mirrored the reality and makes the book alarming and sad at the same time.
These are the books I recommended to my friends in 2020. This is the second to the last article about this mini-series of Books I Recommended to my friends on International Women’s Day each year. and next one will be the books on this year’s list :)