My Mother's Body

My Mother's Body

Marge Piercy

Poetry / Literature & Fiction / Feminism

My Mother's Body, Marge Piercy's tenth book of poetry, takes its title from one of her strongest and most moving poems, the climax of a powerful sequence of Poems to her mother. Rooted in an honest, harrowing, but ally ecstatic confrontation of the mother / daughter relationship in all its complexity and intimacy, it is at the same time an affirmation of continuity and identification. "The Chuppah" comprises poems actually used in her wedding ceremony with Ira Wood. This section sings with powerfully female love poetry. There is also a sustained and direct use of her Jewish identity and faith in these poems, as there is in a number of other poems throughout the volume. Readers of Piercy's previous collections will not be surprised to encounter her mixture of the personal and the political, her love of animals and the Cape landscape. There are poems about doing housework, about accidents, about dreaming, about bag ladies, about luggage, about children's fears of nuclear holocaust; about tomcats, insects in the rafters, the influence of a name, appleblossoms and blackberries, pollution, and some of the ways women objectify one another. In "Does the light fail us, or do we fail the light?" Piercy writes with lacerating honesty about our relationships with the elderly and about hers with her father. Some of the most moving poems are domestic, as in the final sequence, "Six underrated pleasures," which finds in daily women's tasks both pleasure and mystery, affirmation of serf and connection with the mother. In all, My Mother's Body is one of Piercy's most powerful and balanced collections.
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White Wings Run Red

White Wings Run Red

Jacob Thompson

Fiction / Feminism

A simple collection of poems that I've gathered over the last few years.Lily and the Lion tells the story of a young woman who is thrust into an adventure when her secret rendezvous is interrupted by a witch and a lion.
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Three Women

Three Women

Marge Piercy

Poetry / Literature & Fiction / Feminism

Suzanne Blume has known success and disappointment in equal measure. A respected lawyer who survived two marriages and put two children through college, she now faces the disquieting prospect of her wayward older daughter moving back home. But more troubling still is the news that her mother, a woman of legendary independence who has never truly accepted her daughter nor approved of her choices, has been felled by age and illness. And, for the first time in her life, she needs Suzanne's help. Intertwining the lives of three generations of contemporary women, master storyteller Marge Piercy plunges into the deepest, most elemental basics of life -- love, aging, illness, and death -- and emerges with a brave, compassionate exploration of the volatile ground between mothers and daughters.
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Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New York

Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New York

Marge Piercy

Poetry / Literature & Fiction / Feminism

Post–Civil War New York City is the battleground of the American dream. In this era of free love, emerging rights of women, and brutal sexual repression, Freydeh, a spirited young Jewish immigrant, toils at different jobs to earn passage to America for her family. Learning that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city, she begins a determined search that carries her from tenement to brothel to prison—as her story interweaves with those of some of the epoch's most notorious figures: Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony; sexual freedom activist Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; and Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose censorship laws are still on the books. In the tradition of her bestselling World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy once again re-creates a turbulent period in American history and explores changing attitudes in a land of sacrifice, suffering, promise, and reward.
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Supper Club

Supper Club

Lara Williams

Fiction / Contemporary / Feminism

A sharply intelligent and intimate debut novel about a secret society of hungry young women who meet after dark and feast to reclaim their appetites—and their physical spaces—that posits the question: if you feed a starving woman, what will she grow into?Roberta spends her life trying not to take up space. At almost thirty, she is adrift and alienated from life. Stuck in a mindless job and reluctant to pursue her passion for food, she suppresses her appetite and recedes to the corners of rooms. But when she meets Stevie, a spirited and effervescent artist, their intense friendship sparks a change in Roberta, a shift in her desire for more. Together, they invent the Supper Club, a transgressive and joyous collective of women who gather to celebrate, rather than admonish, their hungers. They gather after dark and feast until they are sick; they break into private buildings and leave carnage in their wake; they embrace their changing bodies; they stop...
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The Women's Room

The Women's Room

Marilyn French

Fiction / Feminism / Classics

An alternate cover edition can be found here. The bestselling feminist novel that awakened both women and men, The Women's Room follows the transformation of Mira Ward and her circle as the women's movement begins to have an impact on their lives. A biting social commentary on an emotional world gone silently haywire, The Women's Room is a modern classic that offers piercing insight into the social norms accepted so blindly and revered so completely. Marilyn French questions those accepted norms and poignantly portrays the hopeful believers looking for new truths.
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Dance the Eagle to Sleep

Dance the Eagle to Sleep

Marge Piercy

Poetry / Literature & Fiction / Feminism

They call themselves the Indians. Shawn, a magnetic rock star; Corey, part Indian, whose heritage gave the movement its name; Billy, a brilliant young scientist; and Joanna, a pretty runaway "army brat" who survives on pot and sex. Through the experiences of four young revolutionaries, this macabre and moving adventure brings an all-too-possible future into shattering focus.
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Carolina Lee

Carolina Lee

Lilian Bell

Feminism / Self Help

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
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City of Darkness, City of Light

City of Darkness, City of Light

Marge Piercy

Poetry / Literature & Fiction / Feminism

"FAST-PACED . . . PIERCY BREATHES LIFE INTO THE ACTUAL HISTORICAL FIGURES WHO SHAPED THE REVOLUTION." --San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle In her most splendid, thought-provoking novel yet, Marge Piercy brings to vibrant life three women who play prominent roles in the tumultuous, bloody French Revolution--as well as their more famous male counterparts. Defiantly independent Claire Lacombe tests her theory: if men can make things happen, perhaps women can too. . . . Manon Philipon finds she has a talent for politics--albeit as the ghostwriter of her husband's speeches. . . . And Pauline Léon knows one thing for certain: the women must apply the pressure or their male colleagues will let them starve. While illuminating the lives of Robespierre, Danton, and Condorcet, Piercy also opens to us the minds and hearts of women who change their world, live their ideals--and are prepared to die for them. "MASTERFUL . . . PIERCY BRINGS THE BLOOD AND GUTS, THE IDEAS AND PASSIONS, OF THE REVOLUTION TO LIFE." --The Women's Review of Books "PIERCY'S STORYTELLING POWERS CAPTURE THE TURBULENCE AND EXCITEMENT OF [THIS] LIBERATING ERA." --The Boston Herald From the Trade Paperback edition.
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The High Cost of Living: A Novel

The High Cost of Living: A Novel

Marge Piercy

Poetry / Literature & Fiction / Feminism

Passions flare in a most unlikely love triangle between three remarkable characters facing arduous life challenges in this engrossing novel by bestselling author Marge Piercy Heartbroken after her girlfriend leaves her for another woman, Leslie, a history grad student, follows her thesis advisor from Grand Rapids to Detroit for a fresh start. There she befriends seventeen-year-old Honor, who sparks a familiar passion within her. Feeling that she can’t act on her desire, she sleeps with Honor’s older friend, Bernard, a gay former street hustler who resents his past and, to make matters more complicated, also lusts for Honor. As the three grapple with issues of sexuality and identity, author Marge Piercy manages to be both intimately attuned to her characters’ emotions and aware of their role in a larger social and economic context. Leslie, Honor, and Bernard struggle financially in a city that doesn’t offer many opportunities, and they discover that expressing their sexuality and finding love may be privileges they cannot afford. “A novel as ambiguous and fascinating as life itself.” —The New York Times “Piercy goes over her subjects with a fine-tooth comb and provides food for thought about some of our directions, feelings and values.” —Publishers Weekly
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Asking for It

Asking for It

Louise O'Neill

Young Adult / Contemporary / Feminism

Does it matter if you can't remember? A novel about betrayal and consent, truth and denial, in the age of the smartphone. It's the beginning of the summer in a small town in Ireland. Emma O'Donovan is eighteen years old, beautiful, happy, confident. One night, there's a party. Everyone is there. All eyes are on Emma. The next morning, she wakes on the front porch of her house. She can't remember what happened, she doesn't know how she got there. She doesn't know why she's in pain. But everyone else does. Photographs taken at the party show, in explicit detail, what happened to Emma that night. But sometimes people don't want to believe what is right in front of them, especially when the truth concerns the town's heroes . . .
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Out of the Air

Inez Haynes Gillmore

Feminism / Fiction / Fantasy

At loose ends after WWI, aviator David Lindsay decides to write a biography of his favorite obscure author, Lutetia Murray. In the tiny village of Quinanog, he rents the abandoned Murray house and sets to work reconstructing her life, only to discover that the house is haunted by the spirits of Lutetia and three of her frequent houseguests, all of whom are desperately trying to communicate an urgent message that will change the course of Lindsay\'s life. A lyrical gem of a book.
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