Posted on by H.L. Shepler

Book Review: We Should All Be Feminists

The cover of We Should All Be Feminists is shown.

We Should All Be Feminists
Written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Published in 2014 by Random House

Listen, this is not an actual review. The word “review” makes it sound like I’m going to deliver a measured analysis of the text’s strengths and weaknesses. This book, which started its life as a Ted Talk, is an argument in favor of universal feminism. It’s written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Don’t expect me to do anything but fangirl.

I loved it. I devoured it. And its small size makes it ideal for carrying around like a talisman.

Posted on by H.L. Shepler

Book Review: Not Just Jane

The cover of the book "Not Just Jane" is shown.

Not Just Jane: Rediscovering Seven Amazing Women Writers Who Transformed British Literature
Written by Shelley DeWees
Published in 2016 by Harper Perennial

Summary

There is this ridiculous idea out there that Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë are the only English women novelists worth reading. Intelligent, sophisticated people actually believe this. And it drives me bonkers.

There is in fact a fuckton of brilliant writing from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that almost no one reads or studies. Mostly because women wrote it. Women who, you know, forged the literary landscape as we know it. 

In Not Just Jane, Shelley DeWees does her part to solve this problem by lionizing seven of England’s underappreciated women writers.

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