by Madeleine Nesbitt

Here at SPARK, we love good books. In fact, often we find ourselves torn after reading books, because really great writing sometimes comes from misogynists. Our blogger Sariel expressed her feelings about this, saying, “I love Kerouac and Hemingway etc.but I do NOT love the way they treated and wrote about women.” Just recently, I read in Les Miserables that “nearly forty… in a woman is the equivalent of fifty,” and in an interview with NPR last November, Keira Knightley pointed out what she saw as “latent misogyny” in Anna Karenina.

Fortunately, not all great writers are misogynists (what a world it would be if they were!), and that’s what the Feminist Reads Challenge is all about. The 2013 Feminist Reads Challenge is a reading event started by a book blog called The Hiding Spot, and the goal of the challenge is to read several books depicting well-developed and powerful  female characters and/or fostering feminist values. The SPARKteam will be reading and reviewing one book each month. Finding cool feminist material, new and old, is a) really fun, b) eye-opening (this book exists? ugh, too awesome!), and c) guess what? You can do it too.

If you want to participate in the Feminist Reads Challenge along with SPARK, you can learn more about how to participate here. We would love to hear about the books you discover through the challenge!

Looking for a book? Try these sites:
100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader
Ariel Levy: A Feminist Reading List
A Year of Feminist Classics
The Feminist Hub