Feminism and feminist theory Books

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Book SynopsisThere is love in this place, just like there is love everywhere we care to look for it. There is beauty and there is hope and there is a boy and there is a mother and there is the past and there is the future but most importantly there is the now, and everything that exists between them that has got them from one moment to the next. The now is where we find the golden glow where, for the briefest of moments, the sky rips open and we see what it is we are made of.Tell me a story, he asked me.And so I began.Clementine Ford is a person who has loved deeply, strangely and with curiosity. She is fascinated by love and how it makes its home in our hearts and believes that the way we continue to surrender ourselves to love is an act of great faith and bravery. This tender and lyrical memoir explores love in its many forms, through Clementine's own experiences. With clear eyes and an open heart, she writes about losing her adored mother far too young, about the pain and confusion of first love - both platonic and romantic - and the joy and heartache of adult love. She writes movingly about the transcendent and transformative journey to motherhood and the similarly monumental path to self-love. 'We love as children, as friends, as parents and, yes, sometimes as sexual beings, and none of it is more important than the other because all of it shows us who we are.'How We Love is heartfelt, funny, confessional, revelatory, compassionate - and essential reading. It shows us to ourselves in moments of unwavering truth and undeniable joy.'Sensitive, soulful and utterly captivating.' -Jamila Rizvi, author and editor of The Motherhood 'Such gorgeous and powerful storytelling your heart will feel tender, shattered, and whole-all at once.' -Michelle Andrews and Zara McDonald, Shameless podcast'Clementine Ford is a phenomenon, unmatched in her fearlessness. Every time I read her work, it feels like I'm putting on armour.' -Benjamin Law, author of The Family Law'Ford reminds us that, even when they hurt, our feelings are the very meat of life.' -Yves Rees, author of All About Yves: Notes from a Transition 'Everything in How We Love pierced me as I read - the humour, the honesty, the blistering detail. I laughed, and my heart ached.' -Alice Robinson, author of The Glad Shout

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Book SynopsisQuebec spoils its families, according to some, with those “long” parental leaves—a full year for mothers—well-subsidized childcare, and more. Marilyse Hamelin challenges that restrictive view. But she adds that although progress has been made compared to other places in North America, stop-gap measures are not the answer. Women deserve and expect more. And the fight for women’s rights and equality is taking place here and now, in Canada and the US, and not in some distant Third World country. Why can’t woman have it all? Why can’t the labor market and the entire infrastructure that sustains it be adapted to meet the needs of mothers—and fathers? What does that mean in practice? What are the causes of the lasting inequality between men and women? Why does our radar blank out women working at minimum wage or less? Marilyse Hamelin answers those questions and proposes solutions, bringing to bear numerous studies, statistics, and interviews.Trade ReviewJournalist and blogger Hamelin’s debut on systemic gender inequality is a timely reminder that, despite decades of incremental changes, stereotypes and other significant barriers continue to plague women in the workplace... a worthy contribution that rejects the notion that women’s equality has been achieved, while also proposing changes to reach that still elusive goal." —Publishers Weekly"An admirable boldness infuses Marilyse Hamelin's Motherhood, The Mother of All Sexism... Hamelin has done a great service" —Kerry Clare, Quill & Quire"...vastly interesting, informative, and most importantly, perspective-altering. A particularly significant and relevant book for the times." —James Fisher, The Miramichi Reader

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Book SynopsisGirls and women played an important role in the industrialization of Canada—particularly in the cotton textile industry concentrated in Quebec. Until the end of World War I, they accounted for more than half of the workers who toiled in the province’s cotton mills. Contrary to conventional wisdom that women were most often quiescent, short-term workers who undercut unions’ organizing efforts, female cotton workers demonstrated remarkable levels of labor activism and militancy across time. Through their participation and their changing roles within working-class families, these girls and women were instrumental in helping to transform Quebec into the increasingly modern industrial society associated with the Quiet Revolution. Central to the author’s research are 84 oral interviews with women workers who were employed in two important manufacturing centers, Valleyfield and Magog. Complementing the rich body of information obtained from the interviews, the author has used an array of primary and secondary sources to explore the textile companies’ motivation for employing girls and women, their recruiting methods, the demographic composition of the labor force, and working conditions. Patterns of continuity and change are examined within the context of prevailing economic conditions, cultural and social attitudes, and technological developments. Through The Mill, one of few in-depth studies of the lives of women industrial workers in Canada, is an invaluable contribution to feminist labor history.

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Book SynopsisFeminist Parenting is a collection of writings from women around the globe who offer unique standpoints on feminist theory, intersectional feminist parenting, and empowerment, through poetry, research, and prose. Global perspectives include Anwar Shaheen's research on parenting inequality in Pakistan, Marlene Pomrenke's examination of Aboriginal single mothers attending University, and Iza Desperak's insights on single motherhood in Poland. The collection offers Johanna Wagner's witty, self-reflective essay on her ambivalence toward her new role as a lesbian parent, and Sarah Keeth's abortion fantasy sonnet 'Tomatoes' in which she describes a pregnant woman who desires, yet struggles with her pregnancy. Feminist Parenting brings together unique voices and provides riveting perspectives on an institution in flux. The anthology pulls back the veil on power dynamics in relationships and exposes some of the challenges of feminist parenting in society. Authors shed critical light on long-held parenting conventions such as unpaid carework labor, gender roles, and family power dynamics, and expose how particular conventions reproduce gendered inequality. Feminist resistance strategies are offered by authors for 'doing parenting,' to increase 'mother-power' in the family. This collection raises important questions about contemporary women's roles and adds to the current literature on feminism, parenting, gender, and family diversity.

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Book SynopsisFeminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond asks and considers: What is feminist parenting? Is it something for all parents? What does it mean to be a feminist parent in practice? The collection aims to fill a gap on feminist parenting in the existing literature by bringing timely post-Western perspectives. More specifically, the anthology’s main contribution is its explicit focus on feminist parenting from the margins to the global periphery: from Africa and its diaspora, from the Global South to Europe and America. The 27 parents from diverse backgrounds, walks of life and countries gathered in this anthology share powerful responses to the above questions by narrating their experiences of some of the challenges, dilemmas, promises and compromises of parenting with a feminist perspective. The volume is the one of the first collections published with first-person essays describing very touching, beautiful and sometimes painful stories of what it means and more importantly what it costs to become a feminist parent with an intersectional approach. In doing so, the authors of this book aim at (re)claiming parenting as a necessarily political terrain for subversion, radical transformation and resistance to patriarchal oppression and sexism.

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Book SynopsisQueer parenthood: It's multifaceted. It's complex. And it is constantly changing, as laws and culture shift around us. What's in a Name? reflects on this complexity through the voices of nonbiological/non-gestational queer mothers/parents who explore our experiences parenting across our different social and familial locations. The authors have all taken different routes to parenting, live in different countries, and understand our relationships to parenting through our own personal experiences. What we share is a commitment to parenting beyond the limits of biology, and of building families that are drawn together and maintained by the love and labour of parenting.The fifteen essays in this book address three key moments in our parenting journeys. First, we examine the routes we took to parenting, with many of us specifically focusing on the experience of being the "other" mother while our partners were pregnant, and the particular fears, anxieties, and triumphs that come with it. Second, we locate ourselves "in the thick of it" as parents, where the experiences shared among parents are colored by our particular experiences as nonbiological/non-gestational mothers/parents. Finally, we reflect on our identities, including the identity of "mother," and how those grow, shift, and develop throughout our parenting journeys.

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Book SynopsisBody stories capture a nuanced, interconnected, interactive and complex telling of our understanding, perception and experience of and through our bodies. Plenty has been published on body image but image suggests a static fixed body unmitigated through our social interactions and varying times and spaces. This book is not a 'how-to' guide for fat confidence. It's not a compendium of fat suffering. It's simply a collection of narratives about what it's like to survive in a weight-hating world. It resists the ways that marginalized bodies are being written and researched and put into other people's ideas about our existence. The stories in this book are celebratory and are painful. They look at intersections of race and queerness; they destabilize womanhood by presenting a range of possible female embodiments. They explore issues of disability and madness. The full range of possibilities that are collected here give a picture of what it means to live in a society with strong and powerful messages about size, about normalcy, about what a moral and healthy life and body look like.This book is a snapshot of its place and time, but these stories remind us that we're here to stay. The body stories will change but we will keep owning our own narratives. While story, especially written by women, is often seen as outside the academic canon, these stories, these creative offerings, are theory, are research, and are activism. They are nothing less than the blueprint for liberation. Writing about fat and about bodies outside of medicalized narratives, without ignoring the impact of race, sexuality, class, ability, gender, fashion, appearance and beyond, is radical and rigorous.It is impossible to think about the future without wishing for liberation. Liberation can come in many forms. It can mean an awareness, the ability to confront. The stories in this book display the ways that liberation isn't a finish line or a thing we can complete - rather it is a million small actions and understandings in aid of a renewed and hopeful world.

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Book SynopsisIn a world full of messages about the joys of motherhood, ticking biological clocks, pronatalist ideologies and socio-cultural imperatives for women to mother, what does the alternative look like? That is, what is the experience of women who choose, or find themselves without progeny, when they are deemed 'other', instead of being a 'mother'? This anthology of interdisciplinary work links to sociology, anthropology, psychology, demography, religion, language, literature, popular media, medicine and child and family studies. Are women that choose to be childfree always narcissistic, self-obsessed, and lonely? Or can they be free, mobile, and successful? Do all women who choose to be childfree do it in the same way or have the same motivation? What is the role of age, partnership status, trauma or poverty in this decision? Using techniques such as literature review, ethnographic interviews, autoethnography, and textual analysis and reframing, these sixteen authors from around the globe unpack largely pronatalist, racist, sexist and heteronormative views and assumptions about childfree women.

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Book SynopsisGone Feral: Unruly Women and the Undoing of Normative Femininity is an edited collection that probes the concept of ferality as it relates to and intersects with traditional, patriarchal dictates of normative femininity. The collection, appropriately, is a creative hodge-podge of feral representations and enactments that span multiple disciplines and social and existential dimensions and utilizes textual and intertextual analysis, creative non-fiction, feminist theory, critical animal studies, literature, media analysis, poetry, and artwork to explore the complex and contradictory nature of ferality as it exists within, outside, and on the margins of patriarchal culture. Ultimately, the collection seeks to understand and showcase how the concept of ferality may be understood as an inevitable consequence of, and potential resistance to, patriarchal culture and the dictates of normative femininity that have long snared feminine potential, caged feminine spirits, and neutered feminine authenticity.

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Book SynopsisWhen the French government passed a ban on the veil in 2011, surprisingly few French feminists spoke out against the racist measure. Christine Delphy--the sociologist who Simone de Beauvoir once described as "France's most exciting feminist writer"--was one of the notable few. Castigating humanitarian liberals for demanding cultural assimilation of the women they were purporting to "save," Delphy showed how criminalizing Islam in the name of feminism was fundamentally paradoxical. Dominating Others is Delphy's manifesto against this tendency, and for a fluid understanding of political identity that does not place different political struggles in a false opposition. Dismantling the absurd claim that Afghanistan was invaded to save women, alongside the notion that homosexuals and immigrants alike should reserve their self-expression for private settings, Dominating Others is a call for a true universalism that sacrifices no one at the expense of others.Trade ReviewFrance's most exciting feminist writer. -- Simone de Beauvoir

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Book SynopsisHillary Rodham Clinton is one of the most powerful women in world politics, and the irrational right-wing hatred of Clinton has fed her progressive appeal, helping turn her into a feminist icon. To get a woman in the White House, it's thought, would be an achievement for all women everywhere, a kind of trickle-down feminism.In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, the mantle of feminist elect has descended on Hillary Clinton, as a thousand viral memes applaud her, and most mainstream feminist leaders, thinkers, and organizations endorse her. In this atmosphere, dissent seems tantamount to political betrayal.In False Choices, an all-star lineup of feminists contests this simplistic reading of the candidate. A detailed look at Hillary Clinton's track record on welfare, Wall Street, criminal justice, education, and war reveals that she has advanced laws and policies that have done real harm to the lives of women and children across the country and the globe. This well-researched collection of essays restores to feminism its revolutionary meaning, and outlines how it could transform the United States and its relation to the world.FAQThis is a book critical of Hillary Clinton. Is this book sexist?No. The contributors are radical and feminist, and almost all are women. But sometimes even men write things about Hillary that are not sexist. Aren't you helping the Republicans?Only if you think that even one person will read a book by a coven of leftwing feminists, find it convincing, and conclude that she should vote for one of those misogynistic reactionaries.Isn't this the wrong time?No. It's never too late or too soon to criticize someone who is about to become the most powerful individual on earth. If you think there's ever a time to withhold comment on such a person, you might be an authoritarian. Don't you care about feminism?Yes. That's why we did this.Trade ReviewThis book isn't just a feminist indictment of Hillary Clinton . It's an indictment of a left that has failed to reckon with capitalism's dark side. -- Amanda Erickson * Washington Post *This collection of essays deconstructs Hillary's problematic history as a candidate who professes to be a feminist but whose policies have been pretty straight garbage for the nation's vulnerable since the start. -- Holly Wood * Medium *A feminist critique of a feminist candidate . devastating. * Kirkus Reviews *Intensely engrossing for Hillary Clinton's left-wing opponents-and for left-leaning readers still on the fence . The powerfully critical essays reject the 'ruling class feminism' of Clinton in favor of a 'left feminism rooted in an understanding of women's material conditions' . A damning portrait of both Clinton and American politics. * Publishers Weekly *A refreshing read with a defiant tone [that] pulls no punches when it comes to the Clinton record, from the time she entered the corporate and political world up until her work as Obama's secretary of state . This book will give you the confidence to say: not in our name . The authors who contributed to False Choices provide us plenty of good company in the battles ahead. -- Leia Petty * Socialist Worker *False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton is a good reminder of all of the ways, through a long political career, Clinton has valued power over justice.As False Choices makes clear, this election is not a progressive advancement, it is simply more of the same. -- Jessa Crispin * The Smart Set *

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Book SynopsisOn the eve of International Women's Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for 37 days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre, with Hillary Clinton speaking out on their behalf, and activists inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Feminist Five are only symbols of a much larger feminist movement of civil rights lawyers, labor activists, performance artists and online warriors that is prompting an unprecedented awakening among China's urban, educated women. In Betraying Big Brother, journalist and scholar Leta Hong Fincher argues that the popular, broad-based movement poses the greatest threat to China's authoritarian regime today.Through interviews with the Feminist Five and other leading Chinese activists, Hong Fincher illuminates both the challenges they face and their "joy of betraying Big Brother." Tracing the rise of a new feminist consciousness through online campaigns resembling #MeToo, and describing how the Communist regime has suppressed the history of its own feminist struggles, Betraying Big Brother is a story of how the movement against patriarchy could reconfigure China and the world.Trade ReviewFincher focuses on the history of a small group of female activists known as the Feminist Five, who have been hounded by the authorities for innocuous acts such as trying to hand out stickers on International Women's Day. She argues persuasively that the activism the five awakened is already challenging the authoritarian state, with more and more women taking control of their bodies and rejecting 'China's patriarchal institutions of compulsory marriage and child-rearing.' -- Keith B. Richburg * The Washington Post *In Hong Fincher's estimation, the official hostility toward feminists in China as part of a global rise of authoritarianism and backsliding of democracy will affect not only China's women but its economic future and will have worldwide repercussions. This is a fascinating and earnest book. * Publisher's Weekly *Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China shows how the [feminist] movement has risen on social media and taken root abroad and in cities like Guangzhou. Hong Fincher argues that the Chinese Communist Party relies on patriarchal crackdowns for its post-Soviet survival-and, further, that "anyone concerned about rising authoritarianism globally needs to pay attention to what is happening in China. * Harvard Magazine *In Betraying Big Brother, journalist Leta Hong Fincher examines the feminist movement that's rising in mainland China, and explores how the Feminist Five continue to covertly educate other women to confront and resist the country's sexist policies. -- Evette Dionne * Bitch Media *In Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China...Hong Fincher explains that far from a small movement on the fringes of Chinese society, feminism is on the rise, from the burgeoning and ongoing #MeToo movement, to increasing calls for protections for survivors of domestic violence... to protests against workplace discrimination. -- Esther Wang * Jezebel *In her sprawling and detailed recent book, "Betraying Big Brother", Fincher aims to tell the story of the women's rights movement in China through their saga. Fincher bases her narrative on interviews with [the Feminist Five] and their allies, while supporting their stories with deep research into the roots of the government's crackdown on feminism. * Bookforum *The book brings the clash between China's grassroots women's movement and the state's manipulation of women to life. Hong Fincher explores the struggles of young feminist activists who are detained and vilified for seemingly innocuous campaigns - handing out stickers warning against sexual harassment on public transport, or parading through the streets in soiled wedding dresses to protest domestic violence..This book is a pertinent primer for anyone who wants to understand the aftermath of China's one-child policy, and the country's fledgling feminist movement. -- Katrina Hamlin * Reuters *Through interviews with China's famous Feminist Five, arrested in 2015 on orders of the Chinese government, and other leading Chinese activists Hong Fincher draws a portrait of the modern Chinese feminist movement and its pushback against interpersonal, governmental and digital control over their lives. * Autostraddle *A deeply affecting book.... Hong Fincher's vivid, blow-by-blow account of the women's experiences is a valuable work of journalism, and she offers interesting evidence of a wider feminist awakening. -- Susan Greenhalgh and Xiying Wang * Foreign Affairs *A compelling piece of original research...Leta Hong Fincher, an American journalist-turned-academic, argues that the same party that pushed through the elevation of women's status in the 1950s is now trying to engineer their return to the kitchen. [for Leftover Women] * The Economist *Important and interesting...gender relations, in many ways so much more advanced in China than in India, are going backwards as traditions that were seemingly flattened by Mao re-emerge. [for Leftover Women] * Financial Times *Leftover Women should carry a health warning: this book will severely raise your blood pressure. Leta Hong Fincher's subject - researched through statistical analysis, sociological surveys and extensive first-hand interviewing - is the toxic vitality of sexism in China today. [for Leftover Women] * The Guardian *A chilling account of the pressures on Chinese strivers ... One hopes that Leftover Women will soon be translated into Chinese, as it is likely to resonate deeply with urban educated women. It seems the party has forgotten the Mao-era dictum: 'Women Hold Up Half the Sky' [for Leftover Women] * New York Times *In Leftover Women, Leta Hong Fincher convincingly argues that an orchestrated state campaign co-opts women to marry and buy marital homes, often to the detriment of their careers and financial independence. [for Leftover Women] * Wall Street Journal *In clear, concise chapters, Fincher, whose previous books include Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China, lays out the origins of the movement and its exponential growth, as well as the Chinese government's violent attempts to extinguish it. The U.S. president may be walloping China via trade war, but Leta Hong Fincher argues that the most existential threat to Xi Jinping's regime comes from within. -- Claire Landsbaum * Vanity Fair *A necessary read to understand the role of women in Chinese society and why the feminist movement may be one of the few social movements to overcome the Chinese government's persecution. -- Elizabeth M. Lynch * China Law and Policy *

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Book SynopsisThe surrogacy industry is worth an estimated 1 billion dollars a year, and many of its surrogates work in terrible conditions, while many gestate babies for no pay at all. Should it be illegal to pay someone to gestate a baby for you? Full Surrogacy Now brings a fresh and unique perspective to the debate. Rather than making surrogacy illegal or allowing it to continue as is, Sophie Lewis argues, we should be looking to radically transform it. Surrogates should be put front and centre, and their rights towards the babies they gestate should be expanded to acknowledge that they are more than mere vessels. In doing so, we can break down our assumptions that children necessarily belong to those whose genetics they share. This might sound like a radical proposal, she admits, but expanding our idea of who children belong to would be a good thing. Taking collective responsibility for children, rather than only caring for the ones we share DNA with, would radically transform notions of kinship. Adopting this expanded concept of surrogacy, helps us to see that it always, as the saying goes, takes a village to raise a child.Trade ReviewRooted in historical, site-based, narrative, and political accounts, Full Surrogacy Now is the seriously radical cry for full gestational justice that I long for. This kind of gestation depends on realizing the implications of knowing that we all actually, materially, make one another, and that this labor continues to be exploited, extracted, and alienated-unequally-at every turn in Capitalism and Patriarchy. Full of brilliant, generative, and also shamelessly biting critique of both bourgeois and communist tracts, feminist and otherwise, Lewis's voice is unique and bracing. I need it; it fills my whole self with reimagined possibilities for making oddkin who are not property. Lewis set out to write an immoderate, utopian, partisan, anti-authoritarian communist defense of surrogates and surrogacy in ramifying registers of meanings and practices, and she has succeeded. Lewis asks the necessary questions, "Can we parent politically, hopefully, nonreproductively- in a comradely way?" Can we become full surrogates for and with each other? In a book full of fierce demystifications and sharp dissections of injustice masquerading as humanitarianism, nonetheless Lewis convincingly and radically affirms: "Everywhere about me, I can see beautiful militants hell-bent on regeneration, not self-replication." -- Donna HarawayGiving birth is commonly called labor. What happens if all of human pregnancy and gestation is thought from the labor point of view? That's the challenge of Full Surrogacy Now. If it is all labor, then how can that labor be freed from now global regimes of colonial and commodity exploitation? Lewis takes one of the most everyday things about being human and thinks it through from the point of view of a cyborg communism. This book goes far into places where few gender abolitionists have ventured and brings us a vision of another life. -- McKenzie Wark, author of A Hacker ManifestoFull Surrogacy Now is more than an intervention, it is a landmark text of visionary feminist thinking. Sophie Lewis tears down decades of essentialist and contradictory presumptions on labor, motherhood and ownership to offer us the possibility of new ways to live with and for each other. This book is as breathtaking as it is necessary. -- Natasha LennardFull Surrogacy Now arrived and I could not stop reading. The crises of our time are crises of reproduction. Radical that she is, Sophie Lewis gets right to the root of the matter--and, radical that she is, finds its roots to be intersecting and entangled, "lovely, replicative, baroque", as one of her own gestators, Donna Haraway, might put it. But the gestator? Lewis moves expertly through decades of debates, as well as a rapidly growing body of empirical research, on surrogacy to carry us beyond the by-now familiar refrain that this or that activity "is work." Her goal could hardly be more ambitious: to rethink the "natural" gestation that every one of us comes from. I will reread this book for the sense it gives me that new ways of making one another and the world new might, in fact, be possible. Its verve and wit make me feel sure that Lewis' reproductive commune will be fun. -- Moira Weigel, author of Labor of Love: The Invention of DatingAn instructive and moving book about the work of babymaking and the best possible future for birthing and raising children. It offers both a convincing polemic about surrogacy's past and present, and a vision of how to make it both more common and more mutually beneficial. Lewis treats surrogacy as a signal example of what will be integral to any common human flourishing to come: unmaking gender and the family as we know them, to build new kinds of sociality and care for what is not "biologically" "ours." I was floored by it. -- Sarah Brouillette, author of Literature and the Creative EconomySophie Lewis is at the top of a new generation of scholars and activists thinking the transformation of gestational labor within contemporary pharmacopornographic capitalism. Neither simply natural nor banally cultural, gestation appears as the unthought core of gender and sexual politics, and the key of a forthcoming womb revolution: trans-Marx meets mammal's politics! -- Paul B. Preciado, author of Testo JunkiePregnancy. Babies. Families. Nature itself. Like capitalism, communism knows no bounds. Relentless in the task of seizing of the means of reproduction, Sophie Lewis is the Right's worst nightmare. * George Ciccariello-Maher, author of Building the Commune *Sophie Lewis and her expansive vision of feminism are desperately needed right now. She makes the work of undoing what "womanhood" has come to mean look possible and irresistible. -- Melissa Gira Grant, author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex WorkFull Surrogacy Now makes a significant contribution to the pressing political project of advocating for the rights of those workers whose labour is so often delegitimised, exploited and criminalised... join[ing] such texts as Juno Mac and Molly Smith's Revolting Prostitutesin combating the white, liberal, trans-exclusionary, whorephobic, 'feminist' discourse which is currently dominating conversations around sex work and gestational labour. * Vector *Lewis is attempting to do for pregnancy what the Wages for Housework movement did in reconceptualizing the unpaid labor done by women in the home as work. And recognizing surrogacy as work and surrogates as workers is a necessary first step, for if surrogacy is work, then isn't, by extension, every pregnancy? -- Esther Wang * Jezebel *The radical openness of these dreams is alluring ... [Full Surrogacy Now]leaves one with the beautiful, liquid possibility of a world that recognizes "our inextricably surrogated contamination with and by everybody else". * Times Literary Supplement *A thrilling new intervention ... by placing reproductive labour at the centre of her vision in Full Surrogacy Now, Lewis confronts a central issue that continues to be sidelined in the male-dominated field of futurism. * New Humanist *Theoretical, devious, a mix of manifesto and memoir. -- Jessica Weisberg * The New Yorker *Incisive and exciting...a must-read for those interested in queer feminist engagements with family, reproductive labour and global class relations. * LSE Review of Books *For a business that deals in common ingredients and a mature technology, surrogacy is curiously expensive... Nevertheless, the price tag remains high, as do the hoops to jump through, adding to already compelling human drama. Full Surrogacy Now is a prosurrogacy tract that finds plenty to fault in the current situation. -- Lela Edlund * Population and Development Review, Vol 46, No 3 *

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Book SynopsisFor nearly fifty years, Vivian Gornick's essays, written with her characteristic clarity of perception and vibrant prose, have explored feminism and writing, literature and culture, politics and personal experience. Drawing writing from the course of her career, All That is Given illuminates one of the driving themes behind Gornick's work: that the painful process of understanding one's self is what binds us to the larger world.In these essays, Gornick explores the lives and literature of Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Diana Trilling, Philip Roth, Joan Didion, and Herman Melville; the cultural impact of Silent Spring and Uncle Tom's Cabin; and the characters you might only find in a New York barber shop or midtown bus terminal. Even more, All That Is Given brings back into print her incendiary essays, first published in the Village Voice, championing the emergence of the women's liberation movement of the 1970s. Alternately crackling with urgency or lucid with insight, the essays in All That Is Given demonstrate one of America's most beloved critics at her best.Trade Review"Gornick's language is so fresh and so blunt; it's a quintessentially American voice, and a beautiful one." -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times *She deserves as much credit as any writer alive for codifying the current form of the personal essay -- Nora Caplan-Bricker * The Cut, New York Magazine *She presents her interview subjects like characters in literature, as the protagonists of their own experience, and, for that reason, the book is not simply documentary but a work of literature, too, rich, moving, and contradictory. -- Alexandra Schwartz * The New Yorker *Her unrepentant belief in strong feeling as the heartbeat of any political approach to the world explains why, though many good histories of American communism have appeared since Romance, none have captured, elevated, and lit up the experience in quite the same way. -- Lana Dee Povitz * Los Angeles Review of Books *Written with her usual cogency, verve, and elegance -- George Scialabba * Boston Review *Vivian Gornick is more than a formidable intelligence, she's an entire sensibility. The essays collected here show how a mind shapes and becomes itself in engagement with the writers, thinkers, social facts and theories of her many days. The voice, at once her own and the expression of an entire culture-New York, working class, feminist, Jewish, both open-minded and skeptical-is a gift to be handed down from one generation to the next. You're holding that voice in your hands. -- Marco Roth, author of The ScientistsWe all talk the talk about public intellectuals nowadays. Vivian Gornick walks the walk. The essays in Taking a Long Look could not be more direct, more authoritative, more alive with the pleasures of discovery or alert to the ambiguities of argument. Whether writing literary or political criticism, memoir, or feminist polemic, her mastery is assured. -- George Scialabba, author of How to Be Depressed[Taking a Long Look] is illuminating and a welcome addition to the astute critic's oeuvre. * Publishers Weekly *Vivian Gornick is more than a formidable intelligence, she's an entire sensibility. The essays collected here show how a mind shapes and becomes itself in engagement with the writers, thinkers, social facts and theories of her many days. The voice, at once her own and the expression of an entire culture-New York, working class, feminist, Jewish, both open-minded and skeptical-is a gift to be handed down from one generation to the next. -- Marco Roth, author of The ScientistsThe lasting value of her work lies in her commitment to the question of what it means to feel "expressive": to experience the feeling that tells a person "not approximately, but precisely" who they are. -- Dayna Tortorici, The New York Review of BooksVivian Gornick is one of the most important essayists of all time. Whether writing on the self, feminism, isolation or politics, she is urgent, sharp-eyed and vital. A superb collection. -- Sinéad Gleeson, author of ConstellationsAn engaging collection of sharp, lively essays. * Kirkus Reviews *Taking A Long Look is a magisterial volume of essays which span fifty years of cultural and feminist interrogation. -- Lauren LeBlanc * Observer *An exhilarating trip. -- Elodie Rose Barnes * Lucy Writers *Gornick's work is frequently an examination of the seams of history and her unflinching focus shows how things might have been shaped, and perhaps still could be. * Morning Star *Incisive * New York Times *Magisterial -- Lauren LeBlanc * Observer *To read Gornick is to firstly fall in love with the act of reading ... The closeness of her reading resembles an archivist collecting items to store, cataloguing little details invisible to others ... In Gornick's hands, everything has a story to tell. -- Barathi Nakkeeran * Chicago Review of Books *In having another occasion to consider Gornick, there are more opportunities to celebrate what makes her writing so distinctly her own-she is the rare writer who always wants to find, in a chorus, a voice. -- Haley Mlotek * Hazlitt *Vivian Gornick's brilliant half-century writing career can't be captured in a single essay or volume. To engage with her writing is to be left wanting more of her writing. -- Liza Featherstone * Jacobin *Reading Vivian Gornick often feels like watching someone paint: you're not sure, at first, what it's going to be, but you're happy to follow her brushstrokes as the picture emerges ... Gornick repeatedly goes further, looks longer, risks more. -- Claire Lowdon * Times Literary Supplement *Taking a Long Look [shows] Vivian Gornick's consistency as a searing writer and canny thinker. -- Nell Beram * Shelf Awareness *Captivating. Through Gornick, we observe and understand the undertow of politics in an individual's everyday life; we glimpse pain, loneliness and hopefulness. -- Lynn Enright * Irish Times *Gornick is well regarded as a stylist, and her sentences, elegant and precise, are sometimes complex but never unnecessarily ornate ... [Her essays] are lively, well observed, and particularly recommended to students of 20th-century intellectual history. -- J. Oliver Conroy * The Washington Examiner *Gornick has a sharp, authoritative mind and doesn't mince words. -- Michael Quinn * Red Hook Star-Revue *Gornick never deals the simplistic, polemical blow; instead, she mines her own hard-won experience and profound and honest ambivalence about great writers (with great flaws) to illuminate their significance as well as our collective life and times. -- Melissa Benn * Books of the Year 2021, New Statesman *This compulsive collection functions as a primer to a mind whose vitality is hard to match ... [Gornick's] insights have lost none of their brilliance. -- Hephzibah Anderson * The Observer *

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Book SynopsisFeminist City is an ongoing experiment in living differently, living better, and living more justly in an urban world. We live in the city of men. Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies. There is little consideration for woman as mothers, workers or carers. The urban streets often are a place of threats rather than community. Gentrification has made the everyday lives of women even more difficult. What would a metropolis for working women look like? A city of friendships beyond Sex and the City. A transit system that accommodates mothers with strollers on the school run. A public space with enough toilets. A place where women can walk without harassment. In The Feminist City, through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities are built into our cities, homes, and neighbourhoods. And offers an alternative vision of the feminist city.Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out a feminist intersectional approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future. It is time to dismantle what we take for granted about cities and to ask how we can build more just, sustainable, and care-full cities together.Trade ReviewA damning stab at the subtle and overt manipulation of women in urban spaces. Kern's interwoven references to her personal experience through childhood, adulthood, and motherhood make her deeply researched and whip-smart work infinitely readable. Kern shows that the ability of all women to exploit the city fully is a valuable, necessary gauge for city worth -- Lezlie Lowe, author of No Place To GoThis original study of the gendering processes occurring in the neoliberal city is a significant addition to scholarly debate on cities and gender. Empirically grounded in the intricacies of the condo market in Toronto, it both adds to, and updates, the pathbreaking work around gendered critical urban analysis. An accessible and incisive text that will no doubt instigate future discussions -- Loretta Lees, Cities Group, Department of Geography, King’s College, London * [for Sex and the Revitalised City] *How do we begin to reckon with and ultimately reimagine our public realm in the #MeToo era? We can start by lifting up a greater diversity of experiences and voices that influence our thinking about what makes a place equitable, fun, accessible, safe, and dynamic for all. Kern's exploration is honest, timely, and intentional in acknowledging the work of women-fellow urbanists and others-in advancing the feminist city -- Lynn M. Ross, AICP, urban planner and feministThe next-generation urbanism book I've been waiting for! Leslie lays out a comprehensive guide to feminist world-building that our cities so desperately need. A must-read for all city officials and budding urbanists alike as we move into the female future of our urban environments. -- Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation, Drexel UniversityCities aren't built to accommodate female bodies, female needs, female desires. In this rich, engaging book the feminist geographer Leslie Kern envisions how we might transform the "city of men" into a city for everyone. Let's all move there immediately.' Lauren Elkin, author of Flaneuse -- Lauren Elkin, author of Flaneuse[An] insightful scholarly work ... This provocative analysis will resonate with theoretically minded feminists. * Publishers Weekly *This book totally opened my eyes! Feminist City is an incredibly incisive look at cities and urban design through the lens of gender, while also inspecting how acts of claiming urban space affect other marginalized groups. Combining academic and lived experience, Leslie Kern's intersectional approach clearly lays out just how cities are failing and what it might mean to imagine a more just urban life. Feminist City made me see my own experiences in a whole new light, and Kern makes the field of feminist geography completely accessible and exciting to the average city slicker. Anyone who considers themselves a feminist or activist should read this book! -- Julia DeVarti * Literati Bookstore *Approachable and based in thorough research ... In eye-opening detail, [Feminist City] argues that the privatization of security and heightened police presences endanger women of certain demographic groups, while marketers, who present condo living as the safest way to exist in a city, ironically turn women into accomplices in gentrification, forcing low-income women out of safer areas and into environments that are more dangerous. -- Tanisha Rule * Foreword Reviews *An optimistic, pragmatic book, which points to already extant solutions and looks forward to a more just, joyous urban future. -- Stephanie Sy-Quia * Tribune *In Feminist City, Kern imagines a world where public spaces are designed with women and equity in mind. * Bitch *Kern resists drawing a blueprint for a new master-planned feminist city. Instead, she believes we ought to take a closer look at how cities perpetuate inequality from the perspective of race, gender, ability, and class. -- Diana Budds * Curbed *An intersectional analysis of our urban environments through a combination of personal narrative, theory, and pop culture analysis. -- Leilah Stone * Metropolis Magazine *[Feminist City] examines the city's paradoxical ability to oppress and emancipate-how an environment teeming with gendered inconvenience, racial discrimination, and sexual violence can also be a locus of queer independence, community care, and emancipatory feminist world-making. ... Heavily researched but accessibly written, the book is a dynamic mix of high and low, facts and feelings, research and reality. * Hazlitt *Kern delves into the interlocking inequalities and systems of oppression that take concrete shape in cities, using an intersectional feminist approach to explore the gendered aspects of urban space...an enjoyable and accessible book that not only contributes to urban feminist geography, but to urban planning and policy more broadly * LSE Review of Books *Feminist City is brilliant because of the ways it lays out, quite clearly, the fact that cities are designed to discriminate in both overt and hidden ways and that it's possible to imagine something new-something that is more inclusive of different bodies and experiences. -- Evette Dionne * Bitch *[Feminist City is] a small but provocative book. It is both an introduction to feminist geography and to modern feminism, with its multiple meanings and numerous contradictions. ... In a world where the male gaze is so often the only gaze considered, so much so [that] most people don't even think of it as being gendered in any way, Feminist City is revelatory. -- Ron Jacobs * CounterPunch *Charting the physical aspects of the city that work against women, from inefficient public transport to a lack of supportive care networks for working mothers, Kern argues that there are ways to transform the city that would advance the liberation of women and marginalized people. ... Kern's analysis seems especially timely as we debate the role of police in our society and how we can better protect marginalized people. -- Nicole Froio * Bitch Media *Looking through the lens of geography, pop culture and public and personal history, the book exposes how female bodies are ostracised in urban spaces. * Refinery29 *Feminist City balances descriptions of our environment with the internal conversations or anxieties we feel as we wait for the bus, rush to pick up our child before daycare closes, and navigate space that's designed to keep us inside. -- Elizabeth Whitton * Greater Greater Washington *A joy to dip into * The Developer *There should be more books like this...Feminist City is wide-ranging and sophisticated, brief and engaging. * ICON Magazine *[Kern's] message is that thoughtful planners can and, eventually will, arrive at the feminist city as long as women's voices get the attention they deserve. -- Josh Stephens * California Planning & Development Report *A wide-ranging survey of social inequalities exacerbated by one-size-fits-all urban planning-inequalities ripe for improvement. -- Britta Shoot * KQED *Kern [wants] to envi­sion a more inclu­sive city that con­sid­ers the phys­i­cal and cul­tur­al needs of its most mar­gin­al­ized mem­bers. -- Apoorva Tadepalli * In These Times *[Kern] introduces readers to a number of different ways the city is at once emancipatory and endangering. She deploys an intersectional lens to explore such themes as mobility, protest, adolescence, and friendship, weaving together an impressive array of sources from academic writings and popular culture (Doreen Massey appears alongside Two Dope Queens). -- Sophie Gonick * Public Books *Feminist City presents a comprehensive analysis of how people of color are the folks that make our cities work, and yet, they are not the folks our cities were designed for. -- Audrey Kalman * The Daily Emerald *Reminds us that our cities are moulded by male fantasies and designed to serve gender-based structures. * New Welsh Review *A good introduction to reading the city from a feminist perspective. * Urban Design Group *So much to digest here - cities old and new, politics old and new. -- Rosita Sweetman * Irish Times *Feminist City is a call for gender equity in planning (and for intersectionality), and it's one that planners of all genders should heed. * Planetizen (The Top Urban Planning Books of 2020) *Kern works to identify what a feminist city actually is as she pushes readers to thinkbigger, to think more radically, to think in terms of proactive world- and community-building ratherthan reactionary, incrementalist, or singularly policy-based world-adjusting. ... Feminist City provides a fundamental critique of contemporary society through a feminist and urbanist lens. Itshould be considered a significant contribution to both fields of study. -- Anna Parnigoni * Journal of Urban Affairs *An excellent contribution ... Leslie Kern's clear laying out of feminist urban theory and empirical work generates both a personal and critical understanding of the city. * Gender & Development *I was hooked by this deep dive into how women's freedom is curtailed by the design and culture of man-made cities - and how we can reclaim space -- Moya Crockett * Stylist Loves *[Feminist City] encourages people to look around their community and ask: Who are these spaces meant for? Who feels included and safe and welcome, and who might feel excluded, unsafe or even pushed out of the city? -- Vawn Himmelsbach * Wheels.ca *Importantly, Kern shows how sexism in cities is also inextricably linked to other systems of privilege and oppression, particularly racism, classism, homophobia and ableism ... a noteworthy book for our times * The F-Word *Essential . Kern an excellent example of a writer who wants to amplify marginalised voices . Feminist City urges women to take up space in their environments and not to be afraid of the unknown. -- Becky Little * Bright Green *

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Book SynopsisNew York is a centre of creative production for an exciting, emerging generation of women artists. Their work investigates themes such as the body as medium and subject matter; the deconstruction of the existing patriarchal order of the art world; the appropriation of earlier art historical references; and the use of so-called abject and everyday materials. New York New Wave investigates the relevance of earlier feminist practice for this 'new' generation, asking: Does gender difference still play a role in today's practice? How can younger women artists embrace a radical political ideology and yet remain market friendly? How far have these artists diverged from the established feminist "tradition"? Artists discussed include: Firelei Baez, EV Day, Ruby LaToya Fraser, Diana Al-Hadid, K8 Hardy, Valerie Hegarty, Cindy Hinant, Dawn Kasper, Anya Kielar, Liz Magic Laser, Narcissister, Alix Pearlstein, Aurel Schmidt, AL Steiner and W.A.G.E.Trade Review'For a clear, organized book about the current generation of young feminist artists and what they owe to the previous generations you can’t do better than Kathy Battista’s new book. Thoroughly researched and well written, this book will be referred to for years.' -- Betty Tompkins, artist'An important book … it goes beyond a mere scholarly examination of feminist art, but accounts for a key feminist text itself.' -- Anja Foerschner, G12HUB Gallery, Belgrade'Battista’s unique understanding of an exciting new wave of feminist artists in New York dissects the umbilical cord connecting them to radical practitioners of the 1970s.' -- Catherine James, Lecturer in Academic Practice, University of the Arts LondonI recommend reading this carefully researched new book which chronicles both classic and the emerging new generation of feminist artists. You’ll find, surprisingly, some of the most recent work to be both sexy and very entertaining. The book contradicts the common notion that feminist artwork can be dismissed as being just politically correct. -- Dan Graham, artist, writer, male feministTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Feminism: The New Wave 2 Re-envisioning a Feminist Practice for the Twenty-first Century 3 The Artist is Present: The Body in Feminist Performance, Then and Now 4 Avant-Drag: The (Fe)male Body Reconsidered for the Twenty-first Century 5 Rewind/Repeat: Reconsidering the Postwar Male Canon in Contemporary Feminist Practice Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe scholarship, research, and criticism of women who developed key theories of communication and methods for the study of media.The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women’s Contributions to Media Studies offers a fresh perspective on the intellectual history of the field of media studies, a broad scholarly field that encompasses the interdisciplinary and overlapping fields of media studies, cultural studies, and communication studies. By recovering the work of the diverse group of women who labored at the margins of media studies as it took shape during the formative years of communication research between the 1930s and the 1950s, and providing scholarly contexts for this work, The Ghost Reader shows that “intersectional considerations” were key modes of engagement for intellectuals, academics, and activists who happened to be women. They did so decades before feminist perspectives were reintegrated into histories of the field.

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Book Synopsis“Mothers Under Fire: Mothering in Conflict Areas” examines the experiences of women mothering in conflict areas. The aim of this collection is to engage with the nature and meaning of motherhood and mothering during times of war and/or in zones experiencing the threat of war. The essays in the collection reflect diverse disciplinary perspectives through which scholars and field practitioners reveal how conflict shapes mothering practices. One of the unique contributions of the collection is that it highlights not only the particular difficulties mothers face in various geographic locations where conflict has been prevalent, but also the ways in which mothers display agency to challenge and negotiate the circumstances that oppress them. The collection raises awareness of the needs of women and children in areas affected by military and/or political violence worldwide, and provides a basis for developing multiple policy frameworks aimed at improving existing systems of support in local contexts. —Kristen P. Williams, Clark University

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Book SynopsisThis edited collection seeks to initiate a dialogue on South Asian mothering. The chapters in this book explore how South Asian cultural norms and values, as well as social constructions such as gender, race, class, caste, sexuality and ability inform South Asian mothers’ perceptions and practices of mothering, both in South Asia and in the diaspora. This book will appeal to multiple audiences as contributors with backgrounds in academia, activism, public policy, and the media draw from theory, research and lived experiences to illuminate the complexity of South Asian mothering.

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Book SynopsisNot Exactly As Planned is a captivating, deeply moving account of adoption and the unexpected challenges of raising a child with fetal alcohol syndrome. Linda Rosenbaum’s life takes a major turn when her son, adopted at birth, is diagnosed with irreversible brain damage. With love, hope and all the medical knowledge she can accumulate, she sets out to change his prognosis and live with as much joy as she can while struggling to accept her new reality. Not Exactly As Planned is more than a story of motherlove. It’s about birdwatching, bar mitzvahs, the collision of ’60’s ideals with the real world, family secrets and woodcarving.

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Book SynopsisSuppressed rage, fear, injustice, and passion-the silent screams associated with the Disease of The Family of Origin. Christa Ryan takes readers on a roller coaster ride, offering them many places to find their own identities. She sorts through her past, showing how one episode after another contributed to the chaos of her adult life. She recounts how she matured into better person rather than perpetuate the victim cycle. Her candid storytelling reflects how actions are so tragically linked to this Disease of The Family of Origin and how patterns of hurts, hang-ups, and habits are carried forward into the next generation. Christa was able to break this cycle through the powers of willingness, love and forgiveness. In this remarkable story, she encourages readers to face and overcome the silent screams of their everyday struggles.

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Book SynopsisEnjoy a precious, invaluable, divine gift from Helene Rothschild, psychotherapist, spiritual teacher/healer, and channel. Be inspired by her fascinating true story of how she became an Angel on Calland walks with the angelic beings in trust, faith, ease, and grace. Experience the loving, channeled messages from Sananda (the Spirit of Jesus), Mother Mary, and the Arcturians.FIND OUT HOW TO: Experience the joy of enlightenment Enhance your intuition Clear and protect yourself Meet your angels Safely channel your angelic guides Fulfill your mission with ease and grace Ghost Bust with love And much more! "The love element in Helene's book makes it so special! The information, like a ringing bell reverberating, awakens the knowing and becomes part of you. I would like everyone to have the same transformational experience I did." ~ Debra Findley, CPPF, Certified Geriatric Case Manager"Helene is truly an angel, whose service has changed and continues to change lives. In her latest book, Helene shares with us a beautiful and wondrous message-that we are all angels waiting to serve-and that we can be called at any moment, as long as we are open and listen. Through her example, we are one step closer to spreading our wings." ~ Cynthia Warger, PhD"I found Helen Rothschild's book to be truly inspiring. It contains stories and techniques that you will find highly motivating and helpful—daring you to live out your dreams too. I thoroughly recommend Angel on Call as an excellent guide to joyous living." ~ Joana McCutcheon, Healing Minister, ArtistTrade Review"Helene is truly an angel, whose service has changed and continues to change lives. In her latest book, Helene shares with us a beautiful and wondrous message-that we are all angels waiting to serve-and that we can be called at any moment, as long as we are open and listen. Through her example, we are one step closer to spreading our wings." -- Cynthia Warger, Ph.D.

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Book SynopsisOn Shirley Hazzard is a vibrant and personal tribute in which the Miles Franklin Award-winning novelist Michelle de Kretser offers a masterclass in writing and reading. She celebrates the precision and musicality of Hazzard’s prose and illuminates the humor and humanity in her work. This exhilarating book is both a brilliant introduction to Hazzard and a gift for her longtime readers.On Shirley Hazzard reveals Michelle de Kretser’s lively intelligence at work and her distinctive wit. This testament to her sustained engagement with Hazzard’s work is, at its core, an appreciation of the significance and joy of good fiction. Receptiveness when reading is a prerequisite for perceptive analysis, according to both de Kretser and Hazzard. And for prose, the “simple and precise,” the “transient and insignificant” are key qualities: “Not moonlight but the glitter of broken glass,” for de Kretser as for Chekhov. Selective biographical details about Hazzard are relayed, too—her leaving Australia and formal education at the age of sixteen, her working, unhappily, at the United Nations in Manhattan, her long friendship with Graham Greene. Hazzard’s morality is also invoked—“solidarity with the vulnerable” and pacifism being of prime importance.Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1961. The magazine continued to publish her work in the decades thereafter, including excerpts from her most successful and beloved novel, the bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award winner, The Transit of Venus (1980). Michelle de Kretser’s insightful and provocative appreciation does Hazzard fine justice.

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