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With her trademark engaging style, at once accessible and provocative, Cynthia Enloe draws on first-hand experiences of war in countries as diverse as Ukraine, Syria and Northern Ireland to show how women’s wars are not men’s wars, and why feminist campaigners remain active – against all odds – in the midst of armed violence.
Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own – when she uncovers his forgotten wife, it’s a revelation. Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work and her practical nous saved his life. But why – and how – was she written out of the story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells’ marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WWII in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell’s private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer – and what it is to be a wife.
When 34-year-old Ms Shibata gets a new job in Tokyo to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that, as the only woman at her workplace, she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day, she announces that she can’t clear away her colleagues’ dirty cups – because she’s pregnant and the smell nauseates her. The only thing is – Ms Shibata isn’t! Pregnant Ms Shibata doesn’t have to serve coffee to anyone. Pregnant Ms Shibata isn’t forced to work overtime. Pregnant Ms Shibata rests, watches TV, takes long baths, and even joins an aerobics class for expectant mothers. But pregnant Ms Shibata also has a nine-month ruse to keep up. Helped along by towel-stuffed shirts and a diary app on which she can log every stage of her ‘pregnancy’, she feels prepared to play the game for the long haul. Before long, though, the hoax becomes all-absorbing, and the boundary between her lie and her life begins to dissolve.
Rome 1611. A city where women are seen but not heard. Artemisia Gentileschi dreams of becoming a great artist. Motherless, she grows up among a family of painters – men and boys. She knows she is more talented than her brothers, but she cannot choose her own future. She wants to experience the world, but she belongs to her father and will belong to a husband. As Artemisia patiently goes from lesson to lesson, perfecting her craft, she also paints in private, recreating the women who inspire her, away from her father’s eyes. Until a mysterious tutor enters her life. Tassi is a dashing figure, handsome and worldly, and for a moment he represents everything that a life of freedom might offer. But then the unthinkable happens. In the eyes of her family, Artemisia should accept her fate. In the eyes of the law, she is the villain. But Artemisia is a survivor. And this is her story to tell.
Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies, what is their language, what are the materials we need to transcribe it? Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this challenge, ‘Art Monsters’ is a landmark intervention in how we think about art and the body, calling attention to a radical heritage of feminist work that not only reacts against patriarchy but redefines its own aesthetic aims. Lauren Elkin demonstrates her power as a cultural critic, weaving daring links between disparate artists and writers – from Julia Margaret Cameron’s photography to Kara Walker’s silhouettes, Vanessa Bell’s portraits to Eva Hesse’s rope sculptures, Carolee Schneemann’s body art to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s trilingual masterpiece DICTEE – and shows that their work offers a potent celebration of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political.
Thousands of years ago, the gods told a lie: how Persephone was a pawn in the politics of other gods. How Hades kidnapped Persephone to be his bride. How her mother, Demeter, was so distraught she caused the Earth to start dying. The real story is much more interesting. Persephone wasn’t taken to hell: she jumped. There was no way she was going to be married off to some smug god more in love with himself than her. Now all she has to do is convince the Underworld’s annoyingly sexy, arrogant and frankly rude ruler, Hades, to fall in line with her plan. A plan that will shake Mount Olympus to its very core. But consequences can be deadly, especially when you’re already in hell.
Caitlin Moran is known for her brave and brilliant writing about the intimate truths of women’s lives. But in recent years, as conversations about male violence and toxic masculinity have raged, she has found herself asking another question: what about the men? In this funny, fascinating and moving book, Caitlin explores the challenges and dangers of modern manhood, but also looks hopefully at the possibilities for a future of compassion and allyship in her frank and inimitable style.
When Emily meets the enigmatic and dazzling actress Tamsin, her life changes. Drawn into Tamsin’s world of Soho living, boozy dinners, and cocktails at impossibly expensive bars, Emily’s life shifts from black and white to technicolour and the two women become inseparable. Tamsin is the friend Emily has always longed for; beautiful, fun, intelligent and mysterious and soon Emily is neglecting her previous life – her work assisting vulnerable women, her old friend Lucy – to bask in her glow. But when a bombshell news article about a decades-old sexual assault case breaks, Emily realises that Tamsin has been hiding a secret about her own past. Something that threatens to unravel everything.
When we look to the past, we often expect to be disappointed. In the history of language, we expect to find misogyny around each corner, a disdain for or absence of the voice of women. But the history of women’s words, as it turns out, is full of surprises. From the monthly flux or flowers to the mgs that experience them, from the original helpmeet, Eve, to the viragos who fronted early feminism, it is undeniable that there was a wealth of riches for describing our experiences, our lives and our selves. In fact, as women have made slow progress towards equality, we’ve paradoxically lost some of the most expressive and eloquent bits of our vocabulary. Here, Jenni Nuttall shines a light on them, to dust them off and see if we’ve any use for them today. ‘Mother Tongue’ is a rich, provocative and entertaining history of women’s words – of the language we have, and haven’t, had to share our lives.
June, 1955. The Leader has been dead for two years. His assassination, on British soil, provoked violent retribution and intensified repression of British citizens, particularly women. Now, more than ever, the Protectorate is a place of surveillance and isolation – a land of spies. Every evening Rose Ransom looks in the mirror and marvels that she’s even alive. A mere woman, her role in the Leader’s death has been overlooked. She still works at the Culture Ministry, where her work now focuses on the outlawed subject of Poetry, a form of writing that transmits subversive meanings, emotions and signals that cannot be controlled. Therefore all Poetry is banned and Rose is appointed a Poet Hunter. A government propaganda drive to promote positive images of women has been announced. Queen Wallis will be spearheading the campaign, and Rose has been tasked with visiting her to explain the plan.
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