Books
What if Cinderella Wasn't Straight and White?
In Cinder, the familiar glass slipper story is set in a dystopian future Beijing 126 years after World War IV has ended. Cinder’s author, Marissa Meyer, is white. Meanwhile, Chinese-American author Malinda Lo award-winning 2010 retelling of Cinderella, Ash, takes place in a... Read more »
Reading the Classics: Hester Prynne is a Puritan Super Babe.
Puritans, assigned reading, high school: it’s a recipe for literary disaster. But The Scarlet Letter is stronger than that, hardier (like Hawthorne’s grim Puritan forbearers), and a hell of a lot more interesting. I recently read the classic and am here to tell you... Read more »
New Book "Pussy Riot! A Punk Prayer for Freedom" is a Tragic Read
Pussy Riot! A Punk Prayer For Freedom is a collection of courtroom statements, letters, journal entries, songs, poems and tributes from artists and musicians collected from and during the guerrilla performance group’s internationally infamous trial last year. The book... Read more »
Young Adult Books Too Often Present a World Without People of Color
The last (and only) time I ever read George Orwell’s 1984 was my senior year in high school. I haven’t thought much about it since. Then my daughter brought home Lauren Oliver’s Delirium from her middle school library and enthusiastically recommended that I read... Read more »
Hey Girl! Check Out this New Comic Book About Street Harassment
Fed up with catcalls, street harassment awareness group Hollaback Philly has raised $7,000 to write, draw, and print a comic book about how all those... Read more »
Do Girls of Color Survive Dystopia?
“I’m looking for a book for my 12-year-old daughter. She likes dystopic fiction,” I said not too long ago to the clerk in a children’s bookstore. As her eyes began to scan the wall of Teen Fiction, I added, “With people of color as the protagonists.”
“I feel you,” sympathized the... Read more »
How I Learned About Feminism From American Girl's Felicity
The American Girl company leaves many feeling torn between its promotion of pricey consumerism and the dolls’ celebration of history and... Read more »
Generation Roe is the Abortion Politics Book We've Been Waiting For
Finally: A smart book about abortion that doesn’t hew to a party line.
Sarah Erdreich’s Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement, is an incisive and comprehensive overview of the current... Read more »
Can Atheists and Religious Folks Fight Inequality as Allies?
How does a queer atheist go from kicking in church signs to working side by side with Christians, Muslims, and other religious people? Ask Chris Stedman, a humanist chaplain at Harvard and interfaith activist known for calling out ... Read more »
Hey TV Networks! Hire Some Older Women Writers!
TV has an age problem: Older female writers can’t get work, no matter how great they are.
“After 40 nobody will talk to you,” former Mary Tyler Moore Show writer Susan Silver told me. “I did 14 movies of the week, 16 pilots, then nothing. It’s a bad problem.”... Read more »
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