Inspiring Women's Narratives to Read Postelection
The election of Donald Trump was disappointing. I think many of us have suffered yet another round of collective trauma, and because of this, it’s time we as black women take a step back and focus on getting ourselves right.
In the wake of his election, I wanted to provide you with a list of books to inspire you to take action and make the world better for yourself. Because yes, it’s time for us to pull back and focus on us.
The following is a collection of women authors and narratives from international authors. The reason I provided this specific set of books, is because as black women, it’s important not to lose hope in trying times. Some of us have children: daughters and sons, who need to be taught how to stand up for what’s right and fight for change in a way that does not drain us.
I know I normally provide romance and fantasy books, but this list was important to me. Let me know if you’ve ever read any of these.
I should note, Ama At Aidoo is one of my favorite authors. Her work is thought provoking and can stir emotions you didn’t know you had.
Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo
Our Sister Killjoy is about a young African woman named Sissie who goes to Europe to "better" herself (with European education) as described by her African counterparts. The novel revolves around themes of black diaspora and colonialism, in particular colonization of the mind. Sissie observes the other Africans who have emigrated (also for education and the desire for a better life in Europe) and sees them as "sell-outs" who have forgotten their culture and their motherland. Aidoo touches on the effects of post-colonialism and how the traditions and thoughts of the colonizer are instilled into the minds of the colonized. Sissie in the novel represents the need to have a connection to one's past.
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
Set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. At its heart is orphaned maid Hirut, who finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, of betrayals and overwhelming rage. What follows is a heartrending and unputdownable exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .
Written On Water by Eileen Chang
First published in 1944, and just as beloved as her fiction in the Chinese-speaking world, Written on Water collects Chang’s reflections on art, literature, war, urban culture, and her life as a writer and woman in wartime Shanghai and Hong Kong. With her vibrant yet meditative style and her sly, sophisticated humor, Chang writes of friends, colleagues, and teachers turned soldiers or wartime volunteers, and of her own experiences as a part-time nurse. She also turns her thoughts to Chinese cinema, the aims of the writer, Peking Opera, Shanghainese food, culture, and fashion, all the while upending prevalent attitudes toward women and painting the self-portrait of a daring and cosmopolitan woman bent on questioning pieties and enjoying the pleasures of modernity, even as the world convulses in war and a revolution looms. The book includes illustrations by the author.
The Cemetary of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez
"That's why in certain tribes they say when an old person dies, a library is gone."
Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo's abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories. Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.
Lake Like A Mirror by Ho Sok Fong
In precise and disquieting prose, Ho Sok Fong draws her readers into a richly atmospheric world of naked sleepwalkers in a rehabilitation center for wayward Muslims, mysterious wooden boxes, gossip in unlicensed hairdressers, hotels with amnesiac guests, and poetry classes with accidentally charged politics―a world that is peopled with the ghosts of unsaid words, unmanaged desires and uncertain statuses, surreal and utterly true.
Dark Tourist by Hasanthika Sirisena
Dark tourism—visiting sites of war, violence, and other traumas experienced by others—takes different forms in Hasanthika Sirisena’s stunning excavation of the unexpected places (and ways) in which personal identity and the riptides of history meet. The 1961 plane crash that left a nuclear warhead buried near her North Carolina hometown, juxtaposed with reflections on her father’s stroke. A visit to Jaffna in Sri Lanka—the country of her birth, yet where she is unmistakably a foreigner—to view sites from the recent civil war, already layered over with the narratives of the victors. A fraught memory of her time as a young art student in Chicago that is uneasily foundational to her bisexual, queer identity today. The ways that life-changing impairments following a severe eye injury have shaped her thinking about disability and self-worth.
Sound Museum by Poupeh Missaghi
In Iran, a curator has gathered foreign journalists for a VIP tour of her latest creation. As the guests sit to listen to her initial remarks, she shares the struggles she's faced in bringing together this exhibition—especially the gender inequity she's battled for her entire career.
But the Sound Museum is no ordinary institution. It is a museum of torture, wrought from the audio recordings pulled from interrogation rooms and prison cells. And the curator—her unbroken monologue drifting through fieldwork examples, case studies, archives, philosophy, and dreams—is only too happy to share her part in this globe-spanning industry.
This is list of books is all I have to share. I will continue to add more books I fell can help women center themselves during this time. If you have any suggestions let me know in the comments.
