She Come By It Natural collects author Sarah Smarsh's four long-form essays about Dolly Parton and the beloved singer's connections to feminism through her roots in rural poverty in Tennessee (it's better than I'm setting it up, but that's the basic premise). These essays were the result of a Freshgrass Foundation journalism fellowship Smarsh won,... Continue Reading →
Memoir Mini Reviews: Wiving, Negroland
Wiving is poet Caitlin Myer's memoir about growing up Mormon with a skewed view of relationships with men based on religious tenets and how her own experiences developed, and how that changed as she came into her own and achieved a form of independence. It also covers her relationship to her mentally ill mother and... Continue Reading →
A Biography of Hillary Clinton Through Her Criticisms
The Hunting of Hillary, by Michael D'Antonio (Amazon) Time and again, [Donald Trump] resurrected his favorite enemy, Hillary Clinton, as if she possessed powers that made her more than human and thus someone to be feared despite her retirement from politics. Journalist, CNN commentator, and author of a number of histories and biographies Michael D'Antonio... Continue Reading →
The Complicated Story of Women, Alcohol, and Sobriety
Book review: Quit Like a Woman, by Holly Whitaker (Amazon / Book Depository) Women are drinking more than we ever have before. Between 2002 and 2012, the rates of alcohol addiction among women rose by 84 percent—as in, it nearly doubled. One in ten adult American women will die an alcohol-related death, and from 2007... Continue Reading →
Lindy West’s Irreverent Take on Politics, Pop Culture, and Patriarchy
Book review: The Witches Are Coming, by Lindy West (Amazon / Book Depository) If there is magic in Trump's ability to conjure reality out of hot air and spittle, there is an equally powerful magic in the opposite: in speaking the truth, unvarnished, about what we see, what we remember, what has been done to... Continue Reading →
4 New Release Mini-Reviews
Fall publishing season is in full swing and so many new books are out this month. Let's do some mini-reviews of a few October new releases, shall we? Vanity Fair's Women on Women, edited by Radhika Jones with David Friend, October 29 This book is full of women who are not like anybody else --... Continue Reading →
The “Haunting Melodies” of Liz Phair’s Life
Book review: Horror Stories, by Liz Phair (Amazon / Book Depository) We can be monsters, we human beings, in the most offhand and cavalier ways. I don't much like celebrity memoirs unless they're about escaping Scientology or Tina Fey's. The writing can drag and I don't care about behind-the-scenes stories, so I'd planned to skip... Continue Reading →
“Separating the Myth from the Medicine” in Women’s Health
Book review: The Vagina Bible, by Jen Gunter, MD (Amazon / Book Depository) Misinforming women about their bodies serves no one. And I’m here to help end it. The Vagina Bible is a book that should be owned by anyone who also owns a vagina, and read by anyone who has close contact with one.... Continue Reading →
Light Essays on Heavier Topics from Roxane Gay
Book review: Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay (Amazon / Book Depository) These essays are political and they are personal. They are, like feminism, flawed, but they come from a genuine place. I am just one woman trying to make sense of the world we live in. I'm raising my voice to show all the ways we... Continue Reading →
Witty, Sharply Smart Essays on All Kinds of Thickness
Book review: Thick, by Tressie McMillan Cottom (Amazon / Book Depository) Being too much of one thing and not enough of another had been a recurring theme in my life ... Thick where I should have been thin, more when I should have been less, a high school teacher nicknamed me "Ms. Personality," and it... Continue Reading →
12 New Nonfiction Titles to Look Forward to in 2019
I'm still working on compiling my favorites of 2018 booklist, but it's hard to focus on the past when 2019 has so much exciting new nonfiction on the way! Let's experience some Vorfreude (that wonderful German word describing the excitement of thinking about happiness to come) looking at some of 2019's upcoming releases in nonfiction. In... Continue Reading →
The Rain Began with a Single Drop
Book review: Daring to Drive, by Manal al-Sharif Book Depository It is an amazing contradiction: a society that frowns on a woman going out without a man; that forces you to use separate entrances for universities, banks, restaurants, and mosques; that divides restaurants with partitions so that unrelated males and females cannot sit together; that... Continue Reading →