2019 — The Year I Discovered Women Authors
By: Zubin Madon
Tags: Feminism, Women, Books, Female Authors, Book Recommendations

2019 — The Year I Discovered Women Authors

And I’m embarrassed it took me so long.

Author’s photo

My father spent most of his (not so disposable) tutoring income on books. A sinful extravagance according to my mother, who reminded him with every new purchase, that the money would’ve been better spent on fixing the peeling wall paint. The rickety teakwood cupboards that are ubiquitous heirlooms in every Parsi house, were stacked with diverse genres — from classics of Camus and Nabokov to the esoteric woo of Taoism.

I was reading Russell’s letters and Emerson’s essays even before I finished high school (which is why my article on ‘Dating and Social Life’ didn’t get past the first sentence). But there is something peculiar about this voluminous collection; something I didn’t notice until my consciousness was raised recently — it has almost no women authors. Few months ago, in keeping with my 2019 resolution to read only works by women, I tried to dig some out. I found a Bronte, an anthology of Emily Dickinson and a novel by Mayah Balse. Three books in a library of close to five hundred titles.

One of the three books by women, in five hundred titles. Author’s photo.

I was well into my 20’s when I read Ayaan Hirsi, Wollstonecraft and Marina Nemat, but I wasn’t seeking out women authors even then. It was only in 2018 when this rad-fem made me aware of the lack of female works in my Kindle library.

The ‘classic-liberal-rationalist-pro-reason-pro-evidence-intellectual-dark-web-circle-jerker’ dudebro lobby on Twitter will tell you that we must seek out authors for the content and quality of their ideas, not their sex. After reading more women authors in one year than everyone in my lineage has ever read, I can tell you that’s horse-shit.

The ideas espoused by Emmeline Pankhurst, the brilliant storytelling and language prowess of Maya Angelou, the engaging narrative style of Isabel Wilkers, and Jennifer Doudna’s lucid explanation of complex scientific concepts, equal and possibly surpass any male writers out there. This is not to say that the writings of men are a benchmark that women must strive to compete with, but to stress that I would have never discovered these works if I wasn’t made aware of the egregious bias in my reading habit. My father read more books than most people would in three lifetimes. Yet he died having read very little penned by anyone from the other half of humanity, having deprived himself of knowing any perspectives and life experiences of the other sex that has been systemically undermined in almost every civilisation that passed through our annals.

So here’s a list of works by women I’ve read this year (in no particular order):

We Should All Be Feminists & Dear Ijeawale

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

These books are very basic. I’d call them ‘Feminism For Dummies’. They give lucid answers to the asinine questions that asshats and MRAs often ask feminists, such as “why call it feminism and not ‘human rights’ or humanism?” An excellent introduction to feminism for the uninitiated.

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape

Susan Brownmiller

This is a very hard book to read. Meticulously researched, it is an exhaustive historical narrative on rape. It has first-person accounts of women from the American Revolution in the 1700’s to Vietnam and The Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, and numerous riots and pogroms in between.

Brownmiller’s unapologetic radical feminism and some of her inconvenient truths — such as in Ch7: A Question of Race, along with her arguments against pornography and prostitution will make many Leftists and libfems squirm.

Time magazine aptly calls it ‘a book that changed the way we talk about rape, and brought the ideas of the feminist anti-rape movement into the mainstream’.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

Isabel Wilkerson

Wilkerson takes the reader on a tour of the ‘house of horror’ that was the Jim Crow south, in the pre-civil rights era. She beautifully narrates the African-American exodus from 1915 to 1970’s, following the separate journeys of three people — Ida Mae Gladney (Mississippi), George Starling (Florida) and Robert Pershing Foster (Louisiana). The book is full of historical anecdotes about life in the South that will make your stomach churn.

Wilkerson describes how the fetters of the caste system shackle both — the privileged and the oppressed group, even if it may not be equal or comparable in the intensity of its persecution.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou

In this memoir, Angelou takes us through her early childhood at her grandmother’s, in the segregated town of Stamps, Arkansas. This book is a literary masterpiece; a timeless classic full of witty anecdotes and poignant instances from the life of a black girl-child in pre-civil rights America. The fact that it was banned by the Alabama State Textbook Committee in 1983 for ‘’inciting bitterness and hatred toward white people’’ (lol), is the best tribute the book can get.

Suffragette

Emmeline Pankhurst

Pankhurst’s autobiography is a must-read for anyone interested in the suffragette movement. Pankhurst’s gritty description of British women’s audacious rebellion against the pigheaded male-dominated establishment of the time; the police brutality they faced at every rally and the force-feeding of women on hunger-strike in prison through a tube shoved down the throats, which caused internal injuries and death of more than one woman, will make your blood boil.

Reading Pankhurst’s address to the judge and jury at one of her trials, I felt exactly as I did when I read Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of Rights of Woman — that the revolutionary ideas espoused by these women were far ahead of their times, and far more evolved than the mulish men who were at the helm of things back then.

Here’s another quote that I loved, wherein Pankhurst blasts the hypocrisy of the incumbent Asquith government (Liberal party) of 1910, for their double standards on the way they treated the suffragettes as compared to any other male political offenders in England’s history. This is the sort of quote that should go on a plaque and be nailed to the walls of every parliament in the free world.

War Is Not Over When It’s Over: Women Speak Out from the Ruins of War

Ann Jones

This is another tough read. It is a vivid and graphic account of VAWG in conflict zones. The very detailed descriptions of rape and mutilation carried out by men in uniform across the world, and the compelling testimonies of the women who endure continued brutalities in postwar societies will make your skin crawl.

A Crack in Creation: The New Power to Control Evolution

Jennifer Doudna

Famed biochemist Jennifer Doudna explains the revolutionary technology of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool in an uncomplicated way for laypersons to understand. This is the kinda stuff that could change the course of human history.

Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom

Katherine Eban

Arguably the best piece of investigative journalism of this decade, Eban’s book exposes the culture of corruption, deceit and cold-blooded criminality of generic pharma companies, with a focus on Ranbaxy and other generic manufacturers based in India. You will never pop a generic pill manufactured in India without some degree of trepidation after reading this. It is a gripping book that reads like a crime thriller.

Apart from these, I’d recommend Mary Beard’s Woman and Power, Steinem’s As If Women Matter and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko (fiction).

The ones on my list that I haven’t read and intend to finish before the year ends are: Charlotte Perkins’ The Yellow Wallpaper and Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics.

If there are other interesting books by women that you have read this year, please list them in the comments.