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Comment on Contribute your Lines of Flight by Damien Hughes

Damien Hughes — Thu, 27 May 2010 11:22:41 +0000

I’ve been interested in feminism for a long time but was always put off by the language, essays, critiques that all seemed a world away. It is like trying to listen in on the Gods as they speak in some divine un-knowable language, referencing discussions from prehistoric, arcane books.
Which is why bell hooks’ ‘Feminism Is For Everybody (Passionate Politics)’ was such an eye opener. Here was someone explaining the history of (American) Feminism, where feminism is now and where we should take it next in a simplistic, critical yet hopeful manner. It was inspiring reading about how Feminism organically grew and in some ways failed, how race, class and intellectual flash points moulded feminism into what it was and what it became. I cannot exaggerate how amazing this book was for someone with little real experience of feminism. Or how important it is that more feminist thinkers bring their thoughts and hopes to the masses of people who have been scared off by ivory castle writing. I was so impressed by the book that I sent a copy to my younger sister in London.

I also read ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the rise of raunch culture’ by Ariel Levy. A critique of how modern feminism has been taken under the yolk of corporate control and bleached of it’s soul until only the parts that can be sold are left. I am paraphrasing of course. Ariel is a strong thinker who is not afraid to question the norms of her fellow women in an intelligent, sympathetic, funny yet devastating manner. She sticks to her guns even when it seems like she’s the only woman in America who hasn’t bought into the porn aesthetic. Her critique of powerful women who connect their power to their perceived maleness whilst degrading their femaleness and that of others is a perceptive angle.
On the front cover India Knight is quoted: “In an ideal world this would be compulsory reading in schools.” I couldn’t agree more.

One thing that I will say about these books is that they are very American orientated. Which is fine. But I would like to read more British/European referenced feminism. I suppose in Ariel’s book her referencing of Jenna Jameson could be paralleled to Britain’s obsession with Jordan and perhaps the adage that whatever happens in America is sure to cross the Atlantic is true. Still, British feminism is popularly attached to the Suffragettes but they can seem a bit like ancient history and also a bit white middle class. Perhaps that’s my own prejudice but I’d like to have read books like these that reference feminists of the latter half of the 20th century

bell hooks

Feminism is For Everybody: Passionate Politics

South End Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2000

Ariel Levy

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the rise of raunch culture

Great Britain, pocket books, 2006

Comment on Contribute your Lines of Flight by Laura Tansley

Laura Tansley — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 10:38:04 +0000

Inspiring essays tracking a great journey of searching for inspiration:

Alice Walker
In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose
Phoenix, London, 2005

Comment on Contribute your Lines of Flight by Caroline Halliday

Caroline Halliday — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:35:37 +0000

The book that inspires me most at the moment is Nicole Brossard’s These Our Mothers/the (S)our mothers/the Sea our mother, and the quote that keeps me going is

‘Crossing through the symbol while I am writing. An exercise in deconditioning that leads me to acknowledge my own legitimacy. The means by which every women tries to exist: to be illegitimate no more.”

Comment on Contribute your Lines of Flight by Kate Temple

Kate Temple — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:37:20 +0000

The Passion According to G.H.
Clarice Lispector
University of Minnesota Press
1964

‘Coming to Writing’ in Coming to Writing & Other Essays
Helene Cixous
Harvard University Press
1991

Comment on Contribute your Lines of Flight by Susannah Thompson

Susannah Thompson — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:06:33 +0000

And:
Kate Chopin
The Awakening
Oxford World Classics

Comment on Contribute your Lines of Flight by Susannah Thompson

Susannah Thompson — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:05:51 +0000

Non-fiction

Griselda Pollock
“Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity”
Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art
London, 1988

Harriet Jacobs
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Penguin Classics, 2005

Fiction

Tsitsi Dangarembga
Nervous Conditions
The Women’s Press, 1988

Los Bros Hernandez
Love and Rockets: Music for Mechanics
Fantagraphics, 1985

Documentary

Lady Pink in Wildstyle (Charlie Ahearn: 1983)

Comment on Contribute your Lines of Flight by Fiona Byrne-Sutton

Fiona Byrne-Sutton — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:49:51 +0000

Poetry

Window for a Small Blue Child
by Gerrie Fellows
Carcanet Press 2007
ISBN: 978 1 85754 888 4

The Powerlines
by Gerrie Fellows
Polygon, 2000
ISBN 0 74866278 2 (paperback)

Other

In Sibyl’s Cave: The female ceramicist as story teller
by Fiona Byrne-Sutton
Glasgow School of Art Dissertation, 2008

Women and Ceramics: gendered vessels
by Moira Vincentelli
Manchester University Press, 2000
ISBN: 071903840 5

From the Beast to the Blonde
by Marina Warner
Vintage, 1995
ISBN: 0 09 947951 6

The Subversive Stitch, Embroidery and the making of the feminine
by Rozsika Parker
The Women’s Press, 1984

‘Matrifocality’
by Nancy Tanner in Women Culture and Nature
Stanford University Press, 1974

Fiction

Return to laughter
by Elenore Smith Bowen
Victor Golancz, 1956

The Bloody Chamber
by Angela Carter
Penguin Books 1987