Essential Books for Women

[serious crayons]

The topic of cooking made me think of this book...

A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances
by Laura Schenone

That sounds like a good one, too. I like it when women's traditional occupations are honored rather than trivialized or scorned. I understand the impulse to disdain household drudgery (and from the looks of my household I probably disdain drudgery a bit too much  ). On the other hand, we should appreciate what women traditionally have contributed to human society (albeit largely unpaid).

[Front-Ranger]

A quote from the book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess:

Shlain contrasts the feminine right-brained oral teachings of Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus with the masculine creeds that evolved when their spoken words were committed to writing. The first book written in an alphabet was the Old Testament and its most important passage was the Ten Commandments. The first two reject of any goddess influence and ban any form of representative art.

I was rereading the book last nite about the story of Joseph (he of the technicolor dreamcoat). Joseph was ambushed by his brothers and left for dead, but he was sold into slavery in Egypt. His talents were recognized by the ruling class in Egypt so instead of being a slave he became one of the most trusted and powerful assistants to the Pharoah. When a famine came to the land, he welcomed his brothers and other Hebrews into Egypt and they became powerful and influential, but were not trusted and began to be persecuted. Eventually they were led out of Egypt by Moses and went back to the Promised Land. However, in later periods of history, similar things happened to the Jews again.

What was the talent that Jews were simultaneously admired and reviled for? Literacy. . . the alphabet.

[delalluvia]

A quote from the book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess:
 

I was rereading the book last nite about the story of Joseph (he of the technicolor dreamcoat). Joseph was ambushed by his brothers and left for dead, but he was sold into slavery in Egypt. His talents were recognized by the ruling class in Egypt so instead of being a slave he became one of the most trusted and powerful assistants to the Pharoah. When a famine came to the land, he welcomed his brothers and other Hebrews into Egypt and they became powerful and influential, but were not trusted and began to be persecuted. Eventually they were led out of Egypt by Moses and went back to the Promised Land. However, in later periods of history, similar things happened to the Jews again.

What was the talent that Jews were simultaneously admired and reviled for? Literacy. . . the alphabet.

Interesting, but the Egyptians were already literate.  Had invented paper - from papyrus.  Being an Egyptian scribe was a standard and desired and in demand job.  Egypt was a superpower, breadbasket of the ancient world, complete with monarchy and bureaucracy and were in command of most of the middle east during early biblical times - why do you think blbilcal Jews were said to migrate there and back?  I guess I'm not going to agree with some of the theories in the Goddess versus the Alphabet.

[Front-Ranger]

Good points, della, and I shouldn't have begun in the middle of Chapter 8! Also, instead of literacy...the alphabet, I should have said, alphabet literacy. Going back to Chapter 6, "Cuneiform/Marduk," it is recounted how two centers of civilization developed about 3000 BC in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The rest of this chapter discusses the development of cuneiform in Mesopotamia, leading to the code of Hammerabi, and its implications.

Chapter 7, Hieroglyphs/Isis, talks about the development of Egyptian pictographic writing and how it dovetailed with Egyptian culture. If you study the pantheon of Egyptian gods and goddesses, their rulers, and their patterns of daily life, you will see that the Egyptians had what could be considered a matriarchial culture, honoring the goddess Isis and her son Horus above all, though the god Atum or Amon gradually grew in importance over the centuries.

Between 1700 and 1550 BC the balance of power changed and infiltrators called Hyskos gradually came to rule over the Egyptians. After these interlopers were driven out, the New Kingdom of the pharoahs began with sweeping changes. This was the period when the great monuments were built and the pharoahs, such as Ramses II, dictated great military conquests. The system of writing was also revolutionized, representing phonetic sounds rather than aesthetic pictures. The god Amon was elevated to the highest status and took on human form rather than being animalistic.

Stay tuned for more about the mysterious Hyskos people.

[Sophia]

   Bell Hooks, is my suggestion. It is an african-american women who writes about thinking about how it is to be a women, and what is love. In her books she gives you new perspectives about life, marriage, love and being a women.   My favorite book by her is All about love.

[delalluvia]

   Bell Hooks, is my suggestion. It is an african-american women who writes about thinking about how it is to be a women, and what is love. In her books she gives you new perspectives about life, marriage, love and being a women.   My favorite book by her is All about love.

Interestingly enough, a poster on another board I went to (he was male) wondered if there were any movies or books written about women that were not about men or love relationships with men or family or children.  He said you could find many books/movies about men that are about men (war/action/political) where such issues - if they were present at all - were a side item but not the overall focus of the book.  I have to say I agree.  I am a woman, but not really interested in marriage or family or children, so I am always thrilled to find a book/movie about a strong woman who is engaged in other situations.

[serious crayons]

Interestingly enough, a poster on another thread I went to (he was male) wondered if there were any movies or books written about women that were not about men or love relationships with men or family or children.  He said you could find many books/movies about men that are about men (war/action/political) where such issues - if they were present at all - were a side item but not the overall focus of the book.  I have to say I agree.  I am a woman, but not really interested in marriage or family or children, so I am always thrilled to find a story/movie about a strong woman who is in other situations.

Interesting point, Del. Of course there is plenty of nonfiction by women authors that deal with subjects outside the domestic sphere. And there is lots of juvenile fiction featuring girl protagonists who are involved in other things (Nancy Drew, for example!). But not as much adult women's fiction, and women writers (as a group) have been criticized for this.

Here's a famous essay about this issue that Francine Prose wrote for Harper's 10 years ago. It's a pdf, and fairly big to download, so I'd advise opening it only if you're interested. She's defending women writers against criticism by Norman Mailer.

http://f02.middlebury.edu/AL260A/Readings/_notes/Scent%20of%20a%20Woman%27s%20Ink.pdf

I'm going to try to think of some exceptions to this women's fiction rule, and will post them as they come to me.

[delalluvia]

Interesting point, Del. Of course there is plenty of nonfiction by women authors that deal with subjects outside the domestic sphere. And there is lots of juvenile fiction featuring girl protagonists who are involved in other things (Nancy Drew, for example!). But not as much adult women's fiction, and women writers (as a group) have been criticized for this.

Here's a famous essay about this issue that Francine Prose wrote for Harper's 10 years ago. It's a pdf, and fairly big to download, so I'd advise opening it only if you're interested. She's defending women writers against criticism by Norman Mailer.

http://f02.middlebury.edu/AL260A/Readings/_notes/Scent%20of%20a%20Woman%27s%20Ink.pdf

I'm going to try to think of some exceptions to this women's fiction rule, and will post them as they come to me.

The only two that instantly spring to mind and even they are not free of relationships with men or family are Sue Grafton's series of Kinsey Milhone mystery novels and the novel (written by a man) Smilla's Sense of Snow.  In these books, the female characters do deal with family and relationships with men, but they are a side item and not the real focus of the storyline.  The only movies that fit similarly are action movies "Lara Croft" and "Alien" (the first one).

[serious crayons]

I read Smilla a long time ago and liked it. But if it was written by a man (I'd forgotten who the author was) and just has a woman protagonist, I don't think we can count it in this question.

But Sue Grafton is a good example. And aren't there other female mystery authors?

[Lynne]

   Bell Hooks, is my suggestion. It is an african-american women who writes about thinking about how it is to be a women, and what is love. In her books she gives you new perspectives about life, marriage, love and being a women.   My favorite book by her is All about love.

Hi there, sopylicious.  Welcome to BetterMost and thanks for posting!  I don't know anything about Bell Hooks, but I went over to Amazon and here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say about All About Love:

Taking on yet another popular topic in her role as cultural critic, hooks blends the personal and the psychological with the philosophical in her latest book--a thoughtful but frequently familiar examination of love American style. A distinguished professor of English at City College in New York City, she explains her sense of urgency about confronting a subject that countless writers have analyzed: "I feel our nation's turning away from love as intensely as I felt love's abandonment in my girlhood. Turning away, we risk moving in a wilderness of spirit so intense we may never find our way home again." With an engaging narrative style, hooks presents a series of possible ways to reverse what she sees as the emotional and cultural fallout caused by flawed visions of love largely defined by men who have been socialized to distrust its value and power. She proposes a transformative love based on affection, respect, recognition, commitment, trust and care, rather than the customary forms stemming from gender stereotypes, domination, control, ego and aggression. However, many of her insights about self-love, forgiveness, compassion and openness have been explored in greater depth by the legion of writers hooks quotes liberally throughout the book, such as John Bradshaw, Lucia Hodgson, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton and M. Scott Peck, among others. Still, every page offers useful nuggets of wisdom to aid the reader in overcoming the fears of total intimacy and of loss. Although the chapter on angels comes across as filler, hooks's view of amour is ultimately a pleasing, upbeat alternative to the slew of books that proclaim the demise of love in our cynical time.