by Lux Cuellar Redefining Realness by Janet Mock was released February 2nd 2014, two weeks before I began asserting my gender as a young woman. Essentially, the book came out right before I did. I was aching for shared experience, and Janet offered up her voice to be heard. This was the first narrative I…
This post is part of #ReadWomen2014. by Alisha Pavelites People often gauge the validity of a female character’s experience in a story by how “strong” she is. We hear “more strong female leads!” all the time. To be honest, saying “we need strong female leads” takes away from the real issue: we just need more…
by Madeleine Nesbitt Despite the fact that the first known novel was penned by a woman, the devaluation of female-produced literature has presided over the literary arts since they came to exist. Women continue to go by initials in hopes of being taken for a man (example a: J.K. Rowling), and the 2013 VIDA Count points out that women…
This post is part of #ReadWomen2014. by Cori Fulcher I don’t really feel like Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi was written at all. I think it was told to the author a long time ago, or something she watched play out secretly. The book seems painfully real, but also from a strange, metallic alternate dimension.…
This post is part of #ReadWomen2014. by Anya Josephs Tamora Pierce has written a number of series of books for young adults. Most of them are set in one universe, a sort of magical alternate history in a place called Tortall. Her first series, The Song of the Lioness, focuses on a girl named Alanna,…
This post is part of #ReadWomen2014 by Shavon L. McKinstry I feel the need to disclose this now before we all get too far into this review: I am deeply in love with Toni Morrison and her writing. If you’ve never had the privilege of reading anything graced by the pen of Morrison, she writes…
by Madeleine Nesbitt “I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.”– Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit It has been a year of books here at SPARK. In January 2013, we embarked on The Hiding Spot’s Feminist Reads Challenge– a quest to…