Since I finished the My Brilliant Friend series, I have not been ready to immerse myself in another fiction world, so I’ve been sticking to nonfiction:
The Opposite of Loneliness, Marina Keegan
The Opposite of Loneliness is a collection of short stories and fiction pieces written by a young author who died in a car accident only a few days after graduating from Yale University. After her death her parents, friends, and professors collected her writing and had it published in this collection. While some pieces at times sound naïve, together they present a vision of a woman who would have had a great impact on the world around her, and was already beginning that process at the time of her death. A talented, caring, warm, vivacious woman who would have made (and did make) everyone who knew her proud.
Notes from a Feminist Killjoy, Erin Wunker
This collection of thoughts centers around the idea of being a ‘feminist killjoy’, a term created by Sara Ahmed and who I have yet to read. A feminist killjoy is a person who works towards killing the joys of the patriarchy one by one. What are the joys of the patriarchy? It hardly takes creativity to imagine them: sexism, the gender pay gap, rape culture, vilifying women… the list goes on and on. Wunker specifically talks about rape culture and the sexual abuses that men commit against women, the importance of female friendships and how the patriarchy has taught women to hate women for the benefit of keeping men in power, and motherhood as a state of otherness. I enjoyed reading this short book and am also looking forward to reading Ahmed’s work, which includes books, her blog, and her podcast.