This reading list was first published on March 8, 2021 Women's Day, and contains some books published by 99 readers, exploring women's rights, women's education, women's survival, and the creative thinking of female writers, hoping that their voices, thoughts, and attitudes can inspire and empower more female friends.
# 01
#Paris Review: Interview with Women Writers
Interviews with Women Writers is a special edition of the Editorial Board of the Paris Review since 2017 and has been published two times to date. The Paris Review Interviews with Women Writers has been adapted to include interviews with sixteen women writers: Margaret Eusenault, Isaac Dyneson, Hilary Mantel, Elena Ferrante, Simone de Beauvoir, JaneT winterson, Elizabeth Bishop, Marilyn Robinson, Jane Morris, Dorothy Parker, Joan Dedien, Grace Perret, Natalie Salot, Eudorah Verti, Ambiti, Lori Moore.
As the first interview special with a female writer in the history of the Publication of the Paris Review, the sixteen interviews in this book can also be regarded as "essays in dialogue", which is both a very high-level discussion of writing techniques and covers the subtle but refractory details of a female writer's life: When did she establish her ambition to write? What was her literary enlightenment? What are the specific obstacles she encounters at different stages of writing? How does she deal with external denial and self-doubt? Who is her peer or incompatible opponent? How is her relationship with feminist thought? ......
# 02
#"The Algiers Woman in the Room"
Born in French colonial Algeria and receiving higher education at a prestigious French university, Althea Gibal fought for Algeria's independence and worked tirelessly for women's rights. She writes in French and prays in Arabic, with Althea Gibal as her pen name, which means "comforting" and "uncompromising" in Arabic, which is perhaps what literature means to the Algerian woman writer.
"The Algiers Woman in the Room" was originally a famous painting by Delacroix in 1832, when Algeria had just been conquered by France, and a century and a half later, algeria had gained independence for twenty years, and what was the daily life of Algerian women who played an important role in the War of Independence? What more can they do to expand their freedom? Althea Gibal tells us about women's survival experiences and dilemmas, defiance and obedience, the harshness of the law on women, and the turbulent status of women, which makes this book a classic. This collection of short stories was first published in 1980 and has been rescheduled with new titles.
# 03
#Women's Rights
The book's first essay, "We Should All Be Feminists," was adapted by Nigerian writer Chima Manda Ngoz Adich based on her 2012 TED Talk. Starting from his own female experience, Adici refuted people's various misunderstandings and prejudices about "feminists" one by one, and sharply pointed out the various unfair situations that women suffer due to gender factors in the workplace, family, and public places. Adici cleverly borrows a series of stories she has witnessed in Nigeria and the United States, calling on men and women who are either silent or evasive to face the hypocrisy and injustice of society's treatment of gender issues, "correct" gender issues, and strive to create a society and culture in which women can enjoy equal humanity.
# 04
#"Dear Angelville"
A few years ago, Chima Manda Ngozi Aditch received a letter from a former friend asking how the most influential Nigerian writer in American literature had raised his daughter as a feminist. "Dear Angela" is a reply from Aditch to a friend. These fifteen priceless, wise pieces of advice are actually about how to raise your daughter to be a strong, independent woman.
The advice is direct, forceful, and candid, from giving her daughter the freedom (if she desires it) to choose a model airplane instead of a rag doll as a toy; to being open to discussing dressing, makeup, or sexuality with her daughter so that she doesn't see marriage as an "achievement," and by encouraging readers to break down stereotypes of gender and abandon the narrow-cut view that women's lives should be centered on the kitchen, housework, and husband's needs. At the same time, the writer also refutes the unfair assumptions behind seemingly progressive, fair expressions, such as that women are "allowed" to succeed, which is essentially a backward consciousness that women should not have power.
"Dear Angela" poignantly touches the heart of gender politics in the 21st century. It will open up a new and desperately needed discussion about how women should define and shape their authentic selves in the present.
# 05
#"The Man Who Loves To Preach"
The book is a collection of essays designed to break the role of women's passive silence, and the origin of the book is a "mansplain" experienced by female writers: at a party, a man talks to the writer himself about her newly published book on photography, even if he knows nothing about the contents of the book.
Solnitt is a powerful illustration of how men have long dominated the position of preacher and judge, and corresponding to this, women's voices and opinions have been considered insignificant, even untrustworthy, and this misalignment and distortion has led to women's passive silence for thousands of years. From the shocking rape culture, to structural domestic violence, to the disagreement between Sontag and Woolf over "agnosticity," the writer examines how institutional sexual violence against women continues to be reinforced through misogynistic language, objectification of women's bodies, and glorification of gender-based violence.
Solnit sketches the common fate of female tragedy, women like the mythically cursed Cassandra, whose prophecies and testimonies are not believed because of the challenge to male power. The book calls on society to break the Cassandra-esque curse, to free women from being objects in an eternal subordination, and to achieve double liberation at the level of social institutions and imaginative space.
# 06
#Neapolitan Quadrilogy
From 2011 to 2014, Elena Ferrante published four plot-related novels, "My Genius Girlfriend", "The Story of a New Name", "Left, Left", and "Missing Child", which are called the "Neapolitan Tetralogy" in an annual frequency. In an epic style, they depict the friendship of two girls born in the impoverished community of Naples that lasted for half a century.
The Neapolitan Tetralogy also set off a "Ferrante fever" around the world, and millions of readers were impressed by the book's extremely true, sharp, and unvarnished description of female friendship. Although the author never discloses his gender, the media and critics judge her as female from its "autobiographical" overtones. In 2015, Elena Ferrante was named "Woman of the Year" by the Financial Times. In 2016, Time magazine named Elena Ferrante one of the "100 Most Influential Artists."
# 07
#Fragments
Fragments (2016) is a collection of letters, interviews and essays by Italian author Elena Ferrante over 20 years. In the book, the writer reveals his own exploration of writing style and themes, and reviews the self-doubt and breakthroughs he has experienced, and these dialogues intelligently interpret women and family, myths and cultures, cities and memories, and the complex relationships between writers and readers. The Fragment is both a guide into Ferrante's literary world and an intellectual, distinct and firm literary manifesto.
The book is chronologically divided into three series: the first part, "Fragments 1991-2003", is an exchange of letters between the writer and the publisher, focusing on the secret connection between the mother's body and writing in "Annoying Love", as well as her meticulous discussion with the director about the film adaptation of the novel, as well as some creative fragments that the writer has never published; the second part, "Puzzle 2003-2007", contains the correspondence between the writer and the director on the film adaptation of "The Abandoned Day". And the different directions she explores in her first three novels; the third part, "Letters 2011-2016," includes some of the written interviews that writers have given since the publication of the Neapolitan Tetralogy, giving readers a glimpse into the writer's interpretation of the novel and his sharp views on the history and tasks of women's writing.
The title of the book, "frantumaglia," comes from the dialectal vocabulary commonly used by the author's mother, referring to the pain experienced by individuals who encounter contradictions and chaos, but the writer develops it into his own literary idea and tries to unleash the liberating power behind this word over the years of creation: the writer wants to use this vortex-like power to face the risk of losing control and reach a real experience that makes himself and the reader unfamiliar.
# 08
#Michael
"Michael" is the masterpiece of the Austrian writer Jelenek, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. In this work, the author revolves around two young female apprentices, Ingrid and Gelda, and through their working environment and family life, depicts a group of people alienated in contemporary material society, denying the commonplace social interpersonal relationships, contemptuous of the high class of power and money, and intending to awaken ordinary people controlled by mass media such as television. The form of the work is novel and bold, which can give people an unprecedented reading experience. Jellinek has won many awards, including the Heinrich Burle Prize, the Styrian State Literary Prize, the Georg Bichner Prize, and in 2004 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first Austrian writer to receive this prize. Jellinek's work is full of feminist and social critical overtones, and his writing style is flexible and changeable. She is also the original author of the Cannes Award film The Piano Teacher.
# 09
#Death and the Maiden
"I'm happy to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but I'm also desperate to become a public figure known to the public." In 2004, Elfrid Jellinek said when he learned that he had won the highest honor in the literary world. Indeed, Jellinek's writing and language have always been "anti-popular" and "anti-vulgar" protest tendencies. She uses language as a tool for herself to dig inward and deeply, seeking to touch the truth about the ultimate question in a more abstract and transcendent world. At the same time, Jelinek is also a novelist with profound philosophical, literary and artistic accomplishments, good at transforming his knowledge reserves into creative materials, using magician-like techniques to process, re-blend and re-create, using cross-text, cross-genre, cross-field intertextuality, triggering resonance in the reader's brain, and leading the reader to the direction pointed out by the writer.
Death and the Maiden is an example of this "dangerous" text, which is somewhere between a novella and a drama collection. Borrowing Schubert's famous song as the title, it uses Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rosamond, Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Silvia Plath, Ingeborg Bachmann, Princess Diana as the protagonists, and uses the ideas and literature of Heidegger, Roland Barthes, Brother Grimm, Helmina von Schezi, Marlen Haushofer and others, opening up a three-dimensional speculative world behind the difficult text, and bringing shocking artistic resonance with the abstract reading experience.