Choosing to Have a Child

Opting In: Having a Child Without Losing Yourself by Amy Richards

Kavita Ramdas: Radical women, embracing tradition | Video on TED.com

Kavita Ramdas: Radical women, embracing tradition Video on TED.com

2010 Reading List Announced!

After a really excellent list of nominees - the choices for the 2010 Planned Parenthood Book Club are: (insert drum roll here)

 

• January - Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale 
• February - Precious, aka Push by Sapphire
• March - Kathryn Joyce's Quiverfull
• April:  Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
• May:  Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
• June:  The Mercury 13 by  Martha Ackman
• July: It's a Jungle Out There, by Amanda Marcotte
• August:  Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
• September:  the Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan
• October: Mean Girls Grown Up by Cheryl Dellasega
• November:  Shanghai Girls, Lisa See - who made it to the club two years in a row!!

There are interesting links, either the author her/himself or NY Times, or just something to make you more interested in the book! for each of these books. With feedback, there will be a page for each book after we meet.

 

The book club meets the 4th Thursday of the month, and the location will be sent to you via email when you let us know that you want to participate.

 

We are always looking for book ideas and comments and this blog will continue to list interesting reading material not only in our monthly selections, but also other books that come up in our discussion. See the side bar and earlier posts for last year's books and suggestions.

October - Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi

Faludi's premise is that the women's movement in the '60s and '70s, which was heralded by the media as a grand success and therefore should have become a chapter closed - was no such thing. To further complicate matters, Faludi proposes that the media with the help of politicians, conservatives and intellectuals using anecdotes and ignoring the general population, created a backlash against women moving forward financially, politically and culturally in America -- halting the progress that was gained and in most cases leaving the movement merely a figment of imagination or at most - only a thread of real progress achieved.

This winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for General Nonfiction in 1991 Faludi's work received high marks from Alice Walker and several respected publications, though also was strongly criticized by science-fiction author Michael Crichton for not using a scientific basis for her conclusions.

In an excerpt published on her website, Faludi offers several reality checking questions to measure the level of equality that women had actually attained at the time she was writing the book (first published in 1991). Her style was to compare women's lot to men of matching education levels. For example, she contends that the majority of women then held marginally paid and traditionally female jobs (secretary, support workers and sales clerks) versus the opportunities available to men with the same educational levels who accessed higher skilled work, and better pay. Two thirds of all "poor adults" were women, and were twice as likely as men to live in "poor housing" and to have no retirement benefits. The courts were overwhelmingly male dominated, and she contends that American women faced "the worst genderbased pay gap in the developed world."

Faludi went on to say that not only did the media, experts and pols herald the success of the womens' movement while at the same time declaring it no longer necessary, they undermined the sanity of the whole effort, pointing to women's (somewhat rare) professional successes as the cause of an alleged spike in the number of miserable, lonely and lost women. Describing working women as family-breakers or crazed hormone driven characters like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and the cause in escalating crime against women.  One government report explained the increased number of rapes as due to more women being on campus and making themselves vulnerable to being raped.

Faludi posited with research and insightful commentary that in fact women were not all that successful in their strides for equality, and now they were suffering even more in the workplace because of the media, etc.'s complete misrepresentation of the situation.

Her 2006 publication contains a new preface but is a snapshot of the facts from the late 1980s to the early 1990s.
But...just in case you want to update your facts on the position of women in politics, here are a few current measures...(Maybe someone else can compile a snapshot of salaries and job distributions for the discussion or the progress of women's control over their own health options.)

Currently women are Speaker of the House, Secretary of State (interestingly that seems to be a quite popular place for women to be granted access) and in the Obama administration there are 7 women (including Secy of State) serving in cabinet positions. There are 17 women (out of 100) serving in the US Senate - arguably the most powerful electors in our system, and 78 out of 541 (14%)  in the House. There are 2 out of 9 (22%) on the Supreme Court, and  6 women governors (12%). To be fair, recently we had 8 women governors, but three women recently left their office as governor, (2 to become Cabinet Members of the Obama admin -- so actually already counted here, and the third to pursue her political career) but only one of them (Napolitano) was replaced with another woman (Jan Brewer).

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

The September book of the month is In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez.

Alvarez uses fiction to recount the powerful story of the Mirabel sisters, resistance fighters from the Dominican Republic who were beaten to death because they were fighting the womanizing and dehumanizing dictator Trujillo. The first voice of the novel is the remaining sister, as she describes the characters of her three murdered sisters, and the bravery they showed as they joined the Dominican resistance movement around the 1950s and early 60s. But that's not the only story here. This is also an emotional story of girls coming of age, and finding love, finding a voice for their anger and the outrage at rape and subjugation of women, struggling with faith in the face of such evil, and looking for a better life.

The novel reveals the life of this middle class family in the Dominican Republic from about the late 1930s to the 1960s and then jumps to the 1990s as the remaining living sister gives her account and perspective.

Writer Julia Alvarez is a highly acclaimed writer whose poetry and novels explore the lives of Latina women in their own voice. She, who fled with her family to the US, had a similar life to the Mirabel sisters, and her life experiences are strongly reflected throughout her writing.

In an interview with her at Penguin Reading Guides Alvarez acknowledges how close to reality this story really is, and how she could have been one of the Butterflies, as her father was also a member of the resistance movement. She says, "We were the ones that got away, my father, my mother, my sisters and myself."

The United Nations declared Nov. 25th "International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women" as an acknowledgement of the brutality that the Inolvidables Mariposas or "unforgettable butterflies" suffered at the hands of the Trujillo dictatorship, but also in recognition of the ongoing battle women face against violence and suppression.

"True Stories" Gives Women a Voice

Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood and Abortion is a collection of stories edited and contributed to by Karen E. Bender and Nina DeGramont, both known for their fictional writing, mainly collections of short-stories. Both have also written novels - Bender: Like Normal People and DeGramont: Gossip of the Starlings.

The reviews are clear that Bender and DeGramont were looking for the voices of women who made their own choice regarding motherhood, and the lives that followed that choice. These stories, like those gathered in The Girls Who Went Away, might overwhelm the reader with their poignancy, lack of a tidy resolution, or the tragedy or euphoria that follows - but this is exactly the point that is so often lost in the bumper sticker war on abortion rights - choice doesn't mean necessarily choosing an abortion, or choosing a birth - it's about having options available so that choosing contraception, choosing abstinence, choosing health, and choosing to say "No" are choices that are heard by everyone and considered by each person as she or he chooses.

This book, Choice:True Stories goes to great lengths to provide a story about the spectrum of reproductive-health decision-making experiences that women and young girls face as they mature physically, emotionally and sexually and like the previous non-fiction books on this list, the voice of each woman is a powerful reminder of the individual. A stark emphasis about why there should be only a movement for easy, safe and affordable access to all reproductive rights, and not a war over who deserves what rights -- because ultimately choices will be made.

The Red Tent

This is the JULY 09 book of the month. That book club meeting will be held at 7 pm at Joseph Beth Booksellers on Thursday July 30th.

Anita Diamant's describes her book The Red Tent simply as the historical fiction recounting based on the biblical story of Dinah, who was not given a voice in the bible, but whose story was told by the males in her family -- from their perspective and prejudiced by their political goals with complete disregard for her choice, plans and beliefs.

The Wikipedia entry for The Red Tent synposizes the book and points out that this fictional Dinah was a strong woman who left her family after they murdered her husband and drove her out because they were threatened by who she was. Her voice and her force stayed with all the women of her community empowering them further, despite her absence.

Ms. Magazine wrote a wildly supportive review of the book in a 2001 article, where it pointed out that The Red Tent was a "sleeper" whose publishing success was built solely upon "hand-selling" by independent booksellers who not only read what they sell, but they tell their family members and their customers when a really great story has come along.

Ms. Magazine interviewed author Diamant who said, "The everydayness of giving care, of feeding and clothing families and each other is the center of The Red Tent," she says. "It values that part of women's experience. In the ancient world, we feel the continuity, the femaleness of trying to be pregnant or of avoiding pregnancy, of considering a life in the body, that kind of universal thing. While a couple of love stories do exist, they're played out against the backdrop of the women's culture, the wholeness of it, the valuing of female relationships—sister, friend, mother, daughter—in a way that was separate from the men."

As someone who read this book back in 2001, I can tell you it is an unforgettable adventure story of a character whose courage and ferocity will stay with you for a long time to come.

Update: Every month, I post our book of the month on Facebook. Sometimes, I get one reply, but usually it's not much...This month when I mentioned The Red Tent here was the response:

I started the conversation with: July's book of the month - The Red Tent, Anita Diamant - you can check out the whole list at www.foragingforsanity.blogspot.com

Mary Jo likes this.
Mary Jo said...i LOVE that book...
Hillary W said...that was a wonderful book
Mary Jo said...her writing style is beautiful, artful in her description
Martha C said...One of my favorite books!
Diane S said...Wonderful book and a great reminder of the power of women.
Sue H. said... I enjoyed the Red Tent as well
Anne S. said...The Red Tent is worth finding. Try the library.
Martha recommended: There is a "young adult" novel - The Song of the Magdalene by Donna Jo Napoli that is similar to The Red Tent in that it "Tells the story of Miriam, a young girl being raised by her widowed father in ancient Israel, who grows up to be Mary Magdalene". It too tells a story that we "think we know" from the Bible but when told from a different perspective offers new insights.


Ahhh - all the wise and wonderful women of the world agree : )