Why are women so likely to be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes? Feminist and transcendentalist with strong family ties to Massachusetts, Louisa May Alcott is best known for her 1868 novel about four sisters, "Little Women," based on an idealized version of her own family. Thank you! In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose, is a powerful read and gives an insight into Walker’s sexual politics and the concept she has famously coined ‘Womanism’. Hailed as the ‘the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World’, Saadawi is an Egyptian feminist author. I see a lot of dating tips dripping with archaic gender roles. A lesser known novel Possessing the Secret of Joy tells the story of Tashi, a minor character in The Color Purple, who undergoes facial scarring and mutilation as a part of her community ritual and her harrowing memories of the same. What can’t you agree on? [1] For this reason, postmodernism and feminism have always had an uneasy relationship. Alyssa Milano revived a movement on Twitter with the hashtag #MeToo. And did you see the article about how car crash test dummies are modelled on men, meaning that safety stuff in cars is actually less safe for women? She empowers the female body in her writings and the admirers of her work include her contemporary feminist poet Adrienne Rich. Harvey Weinstein, an American film producer and former film executive, who co-founded Miramax entertainment company, is facing sexual assault and harassment allegations. Feminism isn’t just politics – it’s personal too. For information about my privacy practices, please visit my website. However, when I went into this training I realized that there was a fault in the training itself. Great post!! In the West, women can vote, own property, have a bank account, drive – why bother with feminism, right? Feminist author and publisher Urvashi Butalia is no stranger to Indian readers. Moreover, her stories depict a role inversion – men are prostitutes and kept-men, women control finances and are the dominant ones in sexual relationships. The name needs no introduction. Maya Angelou might also be a record holder when it comes to degrees, since over 50 different honorary degrees were awarded to her throughout her tenure as a writer. If not, why do you feel the way you do? 27 Black American Women Writers You Should Know, Biography of Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize Winning Writer, 10 Important Contemporary and Late-20th-Century Authors, Biography of Eudora Welty, American Short-Story Writer, Biography of Margaret Atwood, Canadian Poet and Writer, A List of Every Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, Biography of Edith Wharton, American Novelist, Biography of Louise Erdrich, Native American Author, Biography of Willa Cather, American Author, 10 Classic Poems on Gardens and Gardening, Biography of George Eliot, English Novelist, Biography of Adrienne Rich, Feminist and Political Poet, M.A., English Literature, California State University - Sacramento, B.A., English, California State University - Sacramento. Great ideas. For most of history, the majority of unpaid labour fell on women’s shoulders. Born Mary Ann Evans, Eliot wrote about social outsiders within political systems in small towns. As I mentioned at the start of this post, feminism is such a huge and wide-ranging subject that this list only makes up a fraction of the great feminist books out there. Feminist Writers Don't Care That Everyone Hates Their Female Characters, But They Should. I’m glad you liked it and I really appreciate you stopping by . For instance, I used to revel in the fact that I ‘wasn’t like other girls’ – and now I love being compared to incredible women. In her 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? In the center of it, there’s Katniss Everdeen, one of the best feminist heroes in recent memory. Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Inching Forwards: You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of my emails. And while every audience loves a rough character turned good (think Tony Stark starting out as a playboy and eventually becoming a man who sacrifices himself for the greater good), many onscreen female characters aren’t ever challenged to become good, instead being applauded for living by their own personal moral compass, failing to take responsibility for their actions, and living entirely for themselves — all in the name of feminism.