Open Thread: Reading Women
What have you recently read? What do you recommend?
Due to Memorial Day, Other Feminisms took this Monday off. I’ll resume our usual schedule next week. This week is an open thread of recommendations.
What’s something you’ve recently read by a woman that you’d like to recommend to others?
What’s something you’re looking forward to reading soon (be it a book or an open tab that you’ll definitely get to)?
A friend recently shared this op-ed from Sara Luterman on the toxic myths that circulate about autistic children and their families.
Why does the narrative that autism destroys marriages persist? Last year, at the Autism at Work conference, an otherwise wonderful gathering of business leaders from across America, autism mom and pseudo-celebrity Holly Peete Robinson gave a presentation trotting out the claim that 80 percent of marriages with an autistic child end in divorce. It felt like being stabbed. At a conference ostensibly for lifting up autistic people and our hidden value, I was confronted with the accusation that my mere existence hurts my parents. That the mere existence of people like me destroys marriages and turns love into ash. After her presentation, I confronted her at the front of the room with the data. Her response? The 80 percent number “felt real.”
I’ve tried to get more careful about independently verifying the claims I’ve seen others make, even ones I’ve seen from people or publications I trust, since a bad fact can linger for a long time.
As for forthcoming readings, I’m very excited to read Helene Wecker’s The Hidden Palace when it comes out next week. It’s a sequel to The Golem and the Jinni, which I loved. The Golem of the title loses her master shortly after her creation, and her nature leaves her pulled in different directions—she senses people’s needs and wishes and she wants to be of service. It’s a story about patience and presence. I’m curious what the sequel will hold.
I want to recommend Natalie Carnes’ Motherhood to every mother I know! It’s a beautifully written mediation on motherhood following the themes of Augustine’s Confessions.
I second the Uprooted by Gracy Olmstead recommendation... also read recently — Stephanie Paulsell’s Honoring the Body and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a new edition with an introduction and reading questions by Karen Swallow Prior.
I love reading lists! Recent reads and recommendations: Gracy Olmstead’s Uprooted, Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots, Patricia Polacco’s picture books with my kids, Laura Mooneyham White’s Jane Austen’s Anglicanism. It's been grand to reread Austen with White, does a superb job of acquainting the reader into Austen’s world.
Upcoming: I am looking forward to reading Charlotte Mason’s series on education this summer. I’ve loved gleaning from Mason’s work through secondary sources, but I’m excited to read her own words in depth. I also have Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop on deck, and I’m planning to finish Mary Carruthers’ wonderful The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture.