Friday, November 7, 2008
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A Busy Person's Place for Literary Goodness!
My Shelfari Bookshelf
Favorite Adult Reads You May Have Missed
- Look Me In The Eye: My Life With Aspergers, by John Elder Robinson
- The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, by A.J, Jacobs
- Imani All Mine, by Connie Rose Porter
- A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah
- Someone Knows My Name, by Lawrence Hill
- Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay
- The Teahouse Fire, by Ellis Avery
- The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, by Gail Tsukiyama
- Tomato Girl, by Jayne Pupek
Favorite Children's Books
- A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeline L'Engle
- Here Be Monsters! (The Ratbridge Chronicles), by Alan Snow
- The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart
- The Ramona Series
- The Little House Series, by Laura Ingalls
- The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
- From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg
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2008
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November
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- WOW.
- The Mercy Rule: A Novel, by Perri Klass
- Selection for December
- Conception, by Kalisha Buckhanon
- The Heretic's Daughter, Question #5
- The Heretic's Daughter, Question #4
- The Heretic's Daughter, Question #3
- The Heretic's Daughter, Question #2
- November Club Questions on The Heretic's Daughter,...
- Goldengrove, by Francine Prose
- Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do Over Novel, by Heathe...
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About Me
- Astarte
- I read constantly, and am always open to suggestions as to what I should read next!
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3 comments:
I'm having the worst time trying to answer this question!! I just keep coming back to it.
I don't think I would describe the book as a feminist novel. I think Martha standing by the truth and having her children do what was necessary to protect themselves celebrates the strength of women.
At the same time there were women confessing and making accusations against other women to save themselves.
I think instead of being a feminist novel it was more about human nature and the differences between the strong and the weak or leaders and followers.
Does any of the rambling make any sense...lol?!
I am not sure how to answer this. I don't really know what a feminist novel is. This novel has so many different women in it. Strong ones, weak ones. Sad ones. It is a story about women in the face of difficult times and circumstances and the choices they make. It is about survival.
I came up with this question after seeing a side comment about the novel where someone referred to it as a feminist one. The idea made me think, and since I wasn't sure, I figured I'd post it here.
I think I agree that it has some feminist components, such as Martha's strength in the face of so much male deterrence. Her willingness to buck the paternalistic trial system by refusing to confess was amazing, but more I think it was the Book that made me think of her as a feminist. While they were Thomas' stories, it was her writing, sometimes without his even knowing, that preserved both his amazing story and the history so that it wouldn't be lost. When the time came, she passed it on to not her sons, but to Martha, which signified her to me as almost a de facto head of the clan. The women were the keeper of the stories, the guardians of secrets that the men in the family could not be trusted to tolerate. Also, whereas Thomas' history made him a somewhat broken man, it seemed to me that the more trials Martha learned of or experienced herself, the more of a force she became.
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