Global Feminist Ethics, edited by Rebecca Whisnant and Peggy DesAutels, is one of the most recent works to grapple with the complexity of establishing [moral] feminist constructions to explain and solve key problems facing women globally and in their particular cultures.  There are some very interesting contributions in this volume that fully examine issues ranging from the feminization of poverty to peacekeeping and a feminist ethic of care.

This past summer, I read The Help, Kathryn Stockett’s sensationally popular first novel and soon to be movie.  Like most other readers of The Help, I could not put it down.   It tells the story of white women and their black maids in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962.  It deals with many of the issues we analyze in Women’s Studies.  But, among many scholars and feminists, this book has generated controversy.  Should a white woman gain fame through telling the world about black women’s oppression?   Can a best seller convey the complex messages of class, race and gender, as they intersect within time and place?  I won’t give away my opinion here, but I would recommend reading it yourself and if enough of us did, we could have a very interesting discussion.

Two books I have been reading for “pleasure” actually overlap with class work. Since I started teaching Women and Religion I have been reading more books on the subject and am currently switching back and forth between two fascinating books. The first is Leila Ahmed’s “Women and Gender in Islam”. The focus of the book is on the discourse on women and gender in Islamic history. Ahmed carefully contextualizes the competing discourses and is conscious of the competing discourses in a variety of different time periods.  As an interesting contrast I have also been reading Miri Rubin’s “Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary”. Rubin is a medieval historian. In this book she explores the different meanings of Mary through the centuries, tracing the ideas and practices that have surrounded the Virgin Mary from the earliest times to about the 1600s.  It’s a fascinating look at how this woman has become a worldwide feminine icon that represents a variety of ideals to so many people. 

 For lighter reading, my fascination with “Mary’s” has been tickled by Kathleen McGowan’s historical novel “The Expected One”.  In her novel McGowan makes use of the Gnostic texts to create a fictional account of the life of Mary Magdalene and her relationship to Jesus.  It is of course complicated by the journey of a modern woman trying to uncover the meaning of some ancient family secret.

I recently read "Intersecting Inequalities: Women and Social Policy in Peru, 1990-2000" by Jelke Boesten (2010). Since I am working on a book that examines the impact of the Peruvian internal armed conflict on women, I am interested in books that touch on similar topics. Boesten's book gives a great overview of how race, class and gender intersect in social policy towards women in Peru during the time of the internal armed conflict.

On my own time, I read novels by Native American women. The last book I read was "The Woman Who Watches Over the World" by Linda Hogan (2001).  I also loved "Gardens in the Dunes" by Leslie Marmon Silko (1999). Silko is about to come out with "The Turquoise Ledge," which I can't wait to read.

Chicana/o Cultural Studies is a theoretical reader that brings together different perspectives related to an emergent area . The essays represent a broad range of perspectives on culture focusing on media, performance, visual studies, and literature as they capture the shifting terraine of Chicana/o cultural studies.

Menendez's first novel, LOVING CHE, probes deeply into what some have perceived as Cuba's continued infatuation with Che Guevara. The novel provides alternating narratives of intrigue and romance as the protagonist attempts to reconstruct her family history. The writing is innovative and fresh in that it offers a perspective that transcends the somewhat reactionary posture which has been prevalent in other works and represented by the media at large. Simply stated, one leaves this novel wanting more.

In Ordinary Violence, by Mary White Stewart, the author convincingly and eloquently links the "taken for granted realities that shape the lives of men and women in every society" and shows us how these cultural structures assure that there is no place in the world where it is "safer or better to be a woman."

I loved A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell, author of another of my favorite books, The Sparrow. In the story of Charlotte Blum, a Belgian teenager who hopes to escape the Nazis by trudging over the Alps to Italy, Russell gives us a haunting novel about real communities in Northern Italy and the ordinary heroes who sheltered thousands of Jews during WWII.

In 2005, two Black British women writers, Helen Oyeyemi and Zadie Smith, published brilliant examples of novels that "write back" to the classics of English fiction. Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl uses situations drawn from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847) to address the plight of a creative, but troubled, young girl who feels equally unwelcome in Lagos and in London and who conjures up a malevolent Nigerian "double" as her companion. Smith's On Beauty reframes E. M. Forster's Howards End(1910) as the story--sometimes serious and sometimes satirical--of a bi-racial academic family moving between Massachusetts and London, while dealing with cultural, racial, and gender politics in a post 9/11 world. Both are extraordinary works that demonstrate the continued power of the novel as a genre for women authors and readers.

Ann Ardis, New Women, New Novels: Feminism and Early Modernism
One of the first and best studies of British feminist fiction of the late 19th Century, by a scholar on the University of Delaware faculty.

Lensey Namioka, Who's Hu?
An unjustly neglected comic novel about the coming-of-age of a Chinese-born teenager growing up in suburban America of the 1950s, facing racism and sexism on her way toward becoming a mathematician.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the birth control pill. In recognition of
this milestone I've chosen two books which document the history of the pill and
its consequences for women.  THE DOCTORS' CASE AGAINST THE PILL by Barbara
Seaman was originally published in 1969 and reissued in a 25th anniversary
edition in 1995.  In her book Seaman alerted women to the dangers of high dose
pills which were being prescribed to women at the time. Seaman's research is
credited with giving birth to the women's health movement by encouraging
women to take matters related to health into their own hands.  AMERICA AND
THE PILL by Elaine Tyler May was published in 2010.  May provides a concise,
accessible history of the pill that reminds us of the impact of the pill on
women's lives.

My selection for leisure reading is BROOKLYN by Colm Toibin. This novel tells
the story of Eilis Lacey, a young Irish woman who comes to Brooklyn in the years
following World War II.  The book is beautifully written and tells a compelling story about coming into adulthood and the choices that transition requires.