The House on Mango Street is a short novel about a year in the life of a Mexican American adolescent named Esperanza. She and her family (parents, two older brothers and a younger sister named Nenny) have moved into a house of their own in Chicago for the first time. In a series of vignettes, Cisneros paints a deeply moving picture, or series of pictures, of life on Mango Street and of Esperanza’s hopes and fears. Cisneros’ background as a poet comes through in her […]
Writing Science Fiction #LikeAGirl
During the past few days, a couple of interesting stories crossed my screen and they are so perfectly related to my current review that they simply must be referenced. First came the #LikeAGirl campaign from Always, encouraging us to turn that pejorative expression into a compliment. Then came this story from NPR about women writers in science fiction: Women are Destroying Science Fiction and That’s OK — They Created It. As I have just finished Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic The Dispossessed, I must say […]
#ReadWomen1964
For the 2014 Cannonball Read, 50 of my 52 reviews will be of books written by women. I am doing this as part of the #ReadWomen2014 campaign and as a way to mark my upcoming 50th birthday. Among the books to be reviewed, I have decided to include a book written by a woman in the year I was born (1964), as well as for each subsequent 10 year anniversary of my birth. First up: 1964. I came upon this novel while searching for something […]
Girls, Girls, Girls!
This graphic novel, published this year, is a short story about two girls (early teens) whose families meet every summer in Ontario at Awago Beach. Rose is an only child whose parents seem fairly ordinary. Windy is an adopted only child who goes to the beach with her mother and grandmother. It is a “coming of age” story that has been getting favorable reviews within comic book circles and even from the New York Times. For a short story (you could easily read it in […]
Trigger Warning: Life can be tragic
Last month, the New York Times, and subsequently other major news outlets, covered the controversy over trigger warnings in academia, i.e., a growing movement on US college campuses to have professors provide warnings in advance of potentially disturbing topics covered in their syllabi (rape, racism, suicide, etc.). When I saw some of the books listed as requiring trigger warnings (Huck Finn, The Great Gatsby, Things Fall Apart), I was deeply disturbed and I generally agree with those who have spoken out against warnings. And does […]
#YesAllWomen –The Novel
I happened to be reading The Handmaid’s Tale when the story about the UCSB shooting spree hit the news. By now, most likely you’ve read that the shooter hated women because he couldn’t get a date and that he left behind a “manifesto” and many videos in which he presented his misogynistic ideas. In response, and as an empowerment for women, the hashtag #YesAllWomen has gone viral, with women and men speaking up and speaking out against the culture that creates men like the shooter. […]
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