How to Be a Woman

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Esse livro da Caitlin Moran, que em português se chama “Como ser uma mulher”, é uma fantástica e engraçada obra sobre o feminismo, que visa não o público especializado, mas as pessoas comuns. A autora descreve episódios de sua vida e, cheia de humor, trata de temas pertinentes ao feminismo. Se você, por algum motivo, ainda não leu nenhuma obra feminista, terá nesse livro a introdução perfeita!
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How to be a woman, by Caitlin Moran, is a feminist book aimed to a wider audience. The author uses some episodes of her life to treat feminist issues in a humorous and funny way. If you, for any reason, have not read a feminist book yet, this is a really good introduction!

Oranges are not the only fruit

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Nesse romance de formação a personagem principal, que tem o mesmo nome da autora, foi criada por uma mãe adotiva fanaticamente cristã e, ao descobrir sua homossexualidade na adolescência, vivencia um confronto entre sua preferência sexual e as crenças de sua mãe. Ao ler esse livro acompanhamos o crescimento de uma moça queer, bem como sua adaptação ao mundo e a construção de seu senso de self. Nos deparamos, assim, com temáticas pertinentes ao feminismo. Pode não ser uma leitura extremamente fácil, mas ler Laranjas Não São O Único Fruto é uma experiência rica. Existe uma tradução para o português de Portugal, porém não consegui encontrar uma tradução brasileira. No entanto, a Livraria Saraiva vende o livro importado e existe sempre a possibilidade de aquisição de e-books, para os interessados.

The Cleft

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The premise of this book is really interesting: in Rome, on pre-Christian times, it was discovered that women came to existence before men. The first humans were female and they gave birth to other females only. Males came to existence afterwards, when babies with different apparatus simply started to be born.
The first tribe of women lived close to the sea and had a laid back existence, until the first men were born and made the world as it was known slowly change. The book follows this change and shows us how women started sacrificing what they called “monsters”, by abandoning the babies. Some of them, however, survived and managed to create a settlement. We also see the development of the relationship between both tribes. All this is told to us by the narrator, a Roman citizen, who is a historian and decided to tell the world about this discovery.
Personally, I am not so sure of what to think about this book. At first, I thought the idea was provoking and different, because it showed the beginning of humanity through a feminist view. But as the narrative continued I realised the author seems to think that the differences between men and women are natural aspects of both genders, and I do not agree with this idea.
I agree with the theories that say gender differences are, mainly, a social construction, therefore, this book trying to say the contrary kind of put me off. Doris Lessing depicts the first men (who were called Squirts) as adventurous, explorers and hunters, while women (called Clefts) were homey, nagged a lot and cared about their offspring. The differences between genders come from ancient times, according to this book. In my opinion, this just makes Lessing’s view of gender roles seem even more archaic and imprisoning.

Priestess of the White

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I haven’t even finished this book yet, but am already pleased with the representation of women in it. Throughout the story we can see powerful sorceresses, female rulers, chiefs of cults and all sorts. The main character, for instance, is one of the five gods-chosen leaders of a religion and of a nation. Three of those leaders, by the way, are women. One of them has quite a liberal sexual life and, although not everybody approves of it, she goes on having sex with whoever she wants, which is cool. There might be some small details that one could say are sexist (one of the characters, for instance, needs to subtly convince a lad to invite her to a party, instead of inviting him herself), but they seem to be part of some cultures showed in the book, instead of a recurrent theme, and the characters that face such sexism find ways to fight or defy it. The fact that this book’s story is set in a medieval fantasy universe and the author chooses not to treat women as inferior to “add verisimilitude” to it speaks loads for itself. I’ve just read about half of it, so something else may come up and change my mind. I’ll let you guys know if such thing happens. But, so far, this book seems to portray a variety of interesting female characters. Maybe more POV characters could be female, but, as I said, I’m not done with it yet, so that may still happen.



Me before you

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Here’s another chick lit book that could do better to represent women. This one tells the story of a girl who starts working as a carer for a disabled young man. Since a motorbike accident, he can’t move from the chest down and has decided to kill himself. She tries to dissuade him of that idea and, in the process, he changes her life. She becomes a more cultured person who starts aiming to fly higher in life, just because of this young man. Before they met, she had a mediocre life and was happy to go on living it like that until the last day. But after the lad showed her what life could be and told her that something awful that happened in her life was not her fault, she changed. She learned how to be a better person, because of him. Did she change him? Nope. He didn’t have to be changed. He just needed to be there to show that women need men to tell them they’re worth it. Romantic, right? Sounds like the story of a modern damsel in distress. She said “Oh, gallant knight, save me from my life, please”. And he did.