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Pandora's BooksMay 23, 2006 Sort of a continuation of the previous, "Pandora's Box" -- and no, I can't invoke Pandora without thinking of Pandora, the archaeologist of the future in Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home. Next question?
Back in my bookselling days, 1981-1985, frequently a woman (less frequently a man) would walk into the store and ask for a good introduction to feminism. I'd hem and I'd haw and I'd try to resist the temptation to load the customer up with enough books for a graduate seminar. In those days it was hard to come up with one or two or three books that could convey some of the messy vitality of contemporary feminism. In these days there are more, many of them aimed at women's studies courses. I'm suspicious of these books, even though I haven't read any of them. In college courses I'd read a couple of textbooks and an anthology of excerpts from primary sources and think I knew something about the subject. Looking back a few years later I'd realize that I barely had a clue. Still, written words were enormously important to me as a fledgling women's liberationist -- so important that I've pretty much devoted my life to writing, editing, reviewing, and promoting words. I could get up and wax passionately eloquent about the books and essays and poems that changed my life, then totally undermine my eloquence by emphasizing that your mileage will certainly vary -- that the words that move you depend significantly on the questions you're asking and the answers you need. Take Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. Probably most feminists would put it on a list of feminist classics, or at least major U.S. feminist works of the second half of the 20th century. The Feminine Mystique was among the first books I read when I was discovering feminism, circa 1970. The others included Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch, Ingrid Bengis's Combat in the Erogenous Zone, and Kate Millett's Sexual Politics. I learned from all of them, but Friedan's book was the only one I reread several times over the next couple of decades -- not because it was the best, the most important, the most classic book but because it helped explain my mother. I had a visceral connection with it. So did many other women who either struggled with the "problem with no name" or had mothers who did. But The Feminine Mystique didn't necessarily speak to women with different experiences, women of different classes or cultures, and it probably doesn't speak as strongly to the granddaughters and great-granddaughters of women who faced "the problem." So I can't really tell you what works are "so important to the field that anyone who claims to be feminist should give them a try." I'll list a few of the ones that have been crucial to me -- but they'll probably tell you more about me than they do about feminism.
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