Another year has passed, and 2023 is a new starting point for many, with long-lost expectations and aspirations. Over the past few years, after many twists and turns, we have all learned to face life better – as women, no matter what the situation, we have not given up awareness, learning and growth, and many stories can see resilient women comforting and helping each other. The road to women's growth has never been easy, but fortunately we still have people on the same path, who record their experiences, thoughts and voices, so that we can live more soberly.
When the holiday season comes, we have compiled eight books on the growth of women, hoping that while spending the warm New Year, you will be more aware and think more, and open a more free year with reading.
"Starting at the Limit" is a hit at the end of this year and has already appeared on many recommended lists. Because it is the work of Chizuko Ueno, there is no doubt that this is a feminist masterpiece, but after reading it, you will find that it is better than you thought - and you can even sigh that this book can save women.
"Beginning at the Limit" gathers twelve correspondences between Ueno-sensei and Ryomi Suzuki. Ueno-sensei doesn't need too much introduction, her "Misogyny" and "Feminism from Scratch" have deeply influenced Chinese readers, and even many people's feminist enlightenment. Ryomi Suzuki is another legendary woman, a popular Japanese writer and former sex worker, whose past experience is deviant and uninhibited. Ueno and Suzuki are 35 years apart, have very different life experiences, but they are connected by letters, and they write 12 topics about women from their own life experiences, about mother-daughter relationship, love and sex, marriage, freedom... Their conversation was full of contradictions and conflicts, but also full of understanding and relief.
Two excellent women are like holding a sharp knife, fighting each other, making people feel almost trembling.
In this book, Ueno-sensei also rarely talks about her once fragile past, allowing us to see the trajectory of her growth, feminists are not born, she also came along the way. This is a great encouragement for young women, who are still learning and growing, and becoming ourselves in the process of exploration.
After "Starting at the Limit", Ueno-sensei will also release a new book this year "Happy Class", a program of action for women, which you can look forward to.
The three words "invisible" in the title of the book already sharply point out the fact that women are neglected, and the content is even more poignant. In Invisible Women, author Perez speaks loudly and boldly about a truth: "Our world is sampled by men, designed by men, designed for men." ”
In fact, before Perez told the truth, many women had already perceived a questionable dilemma: Why are there long queues in women's bathrooms? Why are women always more afraid of cold in the office? Why women have a higher chance of dying in a car accident... Why? Faced with these doubts, women are told that they are flawed, weaker and less adaptable. But in the book, Perez tells us that everything in this world is designed with male data in mind, and women's data is unimportant or even missing. There are fewer female pianists because pianos are designed for male hand lengths. Through a large number of data, the book proves in many aspects such as daily life, workplace, and medical treatment that women's difficult situation is due to the fact that women's needs were not considered in the design from the beginning, which is some kind of convention or deliberate.
The Invisible Women is a hard, shocking book in which almost every woman sees her situation more deeply and realizes where the inconvenience, exhaustion, and danger she experiences in life come from. When women no longer weaken themselves, they are "seen" through action.
This is a very lighthearted and interesting little book, only a thin one, which is the record of Japanese manga artist Keiko Nishiki participating in the popular NHK TV program "The Last Handout", which is very suitable for casual reading.
Unlike the desire for "good women", Keiko Nishino conveys her own feminist concept through humor: girls should learn to avoid crises, escape in time, and give up in time than to strive for the best. In the book, she teaches everyone that you don't have to be tough in the face of difficulties, you must open up in time when you encounter bad feelings, and you can pull some harmless little lies if you have nothing to do... But she also told the girls not to give their lives to others, no matter how to work and earn money, she knows how to learn foolishly, but she also firmly controls her own destiny.
This is related to Keiko Nishino's own experience, who grew up in a poor environment full of violence and deception, witnessed the decline and destruction of women's values, and decided to live her life. She started earning money early and achieved financial independence by doing jobs that others didn't want to do. She deeply understands that women must become independent selves in order to escape the quagmire of life at any time.
You can see in the book a weedy tenacious Nishikiko who has grown into the freest appearance, and you will believe that women can pursue a more comfortable, self-centered life, as she says in her book, "We can live ambiguously." ”
As a novel describing the living conditions of women in the United States in the thirties of the last century, "Waking Women", published in 1977, has been a highly regarded masterpiece for many years, and it is still deeply resonated with countless women. Similar stories are still happening, with women reincarnated in the same pain. It can be said that the author Marilyn French presents a history of women's repression in the way of a novel, and its influence is so great that it is even known as the "novel version of "The Second Sex".
The book connects the stories of more than a dozen women through the protagonist "Mila", who encounter women's survival difficulties to varying degrees, marriage and childbirth, housework, domestic violence, being neglected, violated, and humiliated, the author portrays a group of women who are so familiar with the real to almost cruel brushwork, it is our mothers, sisters, girlfriends, ourselves. The words we can't speak, our pent-up desires, our worn passions, are all reproduced in the novel, making people read and cover up tears. Stories are fictional, but reality is often more shocking.
In the past fifty years, "Awakened Women" has been continuously republished, and has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, regardless of country or race, and many women have gained the power of awakening. Wake up first and then move on to the next step.
This novel was published in 1931 by Woolf's soulmate and legendary writer Vita. Vita is known because she was the prototype of Woolf's Orlando. In fact, Vita is also an extremely good writer, twice won the Hawthornton Literary Award, "Exhausted Passion" is her masterpiece, also known as the novel version of "A Room of One's Own".
Unlike many youth stories, Mrs. Slane, the protagonist of "Passion Exhausted", is 88 years old, but she decides to pursue a new life - moving to a foreign country to rent a house, away from her children. Many thought she was confused, but she knew she had never been so sober. In this "room of her own," Mrs. Slane reminisces about her past, a former Governor's wife, with wealth and beauty, enviable, but never herself. In the last days of her life, the past faded away like a dream, and Mrs. Slane met new friends, enjoyed quiet freedom, and burned the last brilliant passion. In reading, you still feel the strength in aging, the human body will be old, but the spirit can be eternally elegant and healthy, and it is never too late to realize self-worth.
"The Tide Chart" is a novel that attracted much attention last year and won the first prize of the fifth Blancpain Literary Award. This is a bizarre story about a female giant frog's amazing journey through southern China. This is a giant frog, there has never been such a big frog in the world, she has experienced being trapped, kept in captivity, endless wandering, she is literate, even dressed, can speak foreign languages, she knows people sadly, touching and sad. She is the wonderful idea of the author Lin Yi. She is a female frog, and when asked why she is a female frog, author Lin said that there is no deep meaning in this, but humans like to detect and classify.
This work has a strong Cantonese style, rooted in Lingnan terroir, but a combination of Chinese and Western, showing a strange magical color, it is not a regular novel, there is no clear and complete plot line, so it is not so easy to read, but after reading it you will fall into a big dream-like splendor, marvel at such a transcendent work like a mirage.
As a female author, Lin does not care about gender, like the gender of frogs, she has no intention of being classified, she said: "I am writing about my experience, I, this physical entity, everything that can feel, and I happen to be a woman." "In Tide Chart, you can feel her unbridled imagination, beyond all known frames, presenting a surging and unique magnificence, she is a woman, she is male, here, there, it doesn't matter, this is a supreme freedom.
Knowing that the author Yang Benfen is in his 80s, the meaning of this book becomes even deeper. How courageous an octogenarian still works tirelessly. Yang Benfen worked hard all her life, dedicated everything to her family, and only began to write in the year of Hua Jia, before "My Ben Fang", she had published two works, recording the trauma and suffering experienced by different women in an era, people admired her tenacious vitality, but also marveled at her deep and moving pen power, she should have been a female writer, what hindered her? In her book, there are answers.
"My Fragrance" tells the sixty-year marriage story of the heroine "Huicai", after which she tasted loneliness, pain, neglect and snub, and she was no longer her, but became an accessory of another person. She had the will to hesitate, struggle, and even self-destruct, but the shackles of the times tightly bound her, and she gave her love and patience day after day. The cover of the book reads: "Marriage requires luck, it may not point to happiness, but to heartbreak..." Yang Benfen wrote about the unbearable nature of marriage, dissecting the pain of not loving, and she encouraged young women not to compromise and unhappy marriages cannot be shackled, let alone please indifferent lovers - even if no one appreciates, they must do their best to bloom fragrantly.
"Like Snow Like a Mountain" is a collection of novels about women, the author Zhang Tianyi uses a gentle pen like a scalpel to cut through the layers of life, find a winding vein that belongs to women, and write ordinary stories with a thousand turns of delicateness. Anyone who reads it is amazed by the stunning but apt metaphor in the story, which is a subtle observation and understanding of the situation of women, a woman's gentle care for other women.
There are seven novels, and the heroine of all stories is called "lili", a common female name in China. The name is so ingenious and precise that it outlines faces that hide behind a sea of people, and all women hide the same piece of the puzzle. Zhang Tianyi wrote about the current women's survival dilemma by describing the life of seven different ages and different identities, sexual harassment, menstrual shame, postpartum depression, son preference... These lingering burdens are pulled into longer details in her pen, and every second is full of undercurrents of emotions, fear, worry, sadness, exhaustion, trepidation. The women walking on thin ice walked through her story one by one, but they looked back with the same name.
I hope that these books can accompany you to spend a comfortable holiday, so that you can gain some new strength in the gap between happiness.
As women, we can create, and we can also stretch out the stories they create, be awake and aware, and open a more free world in the slight sound of flipping through books.
Editor: Sibe
Written by: Luo Huai
Design: Lele