What Other Feminisms Readers Read
Your recommendations for 2022
This week, we’re discussing what we plan to read (or wish someone would write). Next week, baby permitting, I’ll share highlights from your discussion of the gift economy and being stewards, not owners.
I shared my reading list for 2022, which has been shaped by writing Other Feminisms and the conversations we’ve had over the past year or so. And I asked you about what you planned to read this year or what books you wished existed to add to your list.
Claire asked for recommendations:
The topic I wish I could find (or write) a book on would be what I think of as “mother media”—where does it come from, who writes it, who funds it, who consumes it, how has it shifted? I’m thinking of everything here from generalist sites like Romper and Scary Mommy to niche-r sites like Working Mother and Screen Free Parenting to mother and mother-adjacent essays in publications like NYT Magazine to mom-related social media.
I don’t have a book to offer, but Mothers Under the Influence is a substack run by Kathryn Jezer-Morton, who is working on a dissertation in this area. It’s also a running theme in Meg Conley’s Home Culture newsletter.
Magdalen asked for books on marriage:
As in, marriage preparation, how to be a good spouse, etc. I'm definitely open to books on this topic from any religion (though maybe not a book about, say, the importance of praying with your spouse)
I did put together a bibliography of the books my now-husband and I read together prior to our engagement, if that’s any help. Of those, the two I’d recommend to the broadest audience would be A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken and the collection compiled by Leon and Amy Kass: Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar.
A Severe Mercy is a memoir of Vanauken’s courtship and his life with his wife. They were the kind of people who took all their philosophy seriously, which meant they had a tendency to ping between different kinds of extremism. That might not sound like you need a hanky close to hand, but you do, trust me.
Wing to Wing is a collection of readings on courtship and marriage, some of which are definitely wrong, which makes it a wonderful book to read with a partner, so you can kibitz over Austen, the Bible, Miss Manners, etc.
And you all had a lot of good reads to recommend! Here’s what I compiled from the comments (with links to people’s longer pitches for the books):
Blessed by Kate Bowler (recommended by Midge, “a history of America's Prosperity Gospel”)
Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter at Midcentury by Honor Moore (a memoir that was Catherine’s favorite read of 2021)
Women & the Common Life: Love, Marriage, and Feminism by Christopher Lasch (Katy said the essay collection was about “the need for a feminism that opts out of—or at least substantively and powerfully critiques—the capitalist, consumerist, classist economic consensus of educated and privileged America”)
Martha shared several recommendations, and a number of people jumped in to corroborate Braiding Sweetgrass in particular. The book, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, melds her botany expertise and her Potawatomi heritage in a meditation on stewardship and ecology.
Hayley is planning to read both Erika Bachiochi's The Rights of Women and Leah A. Jacobson's Wholistic Feminism.
And one final 2022 reading list. My husband has written up his, and he’s already one book in (more than I can say for my own list).
Also--you asked, "What topic do you wish you could find a book or essay on?"
It caused a memory to "bubble up" for me! On your "Drinking the Ocean with a Straw" wrap-up post last spring, Nora questioned a disproportionate amount of focus assigned to the small sacrifices of motherhood. She typified it with the description: "It's not that those sacrifices aren't meaningful or important. But you can spend 90% of your moral efforts and abilities on achieving just 2% more patient mothering, and you'll have lots of Christian mommy bloggers cheering you on."
She went on saying, "What larger scale good might you be called to with all that moral effort? What might that mean for your family? It's interesting to me how much both conservatives and progressives fall into emphasizing our culpability in only the smallest and largest scale moral issues: big societal problems (climate change, the collapse of the family) and tiny individual choices (not driving, not using daycare) and completely ignore the middle 60% of issues. If you've got the right opinions on the large scale stuff, and the right lifestyle on the small scale stuff, you're good to go. I'm, obviously, dubious that this is how it looks to God. It's interesting too how gendered this can get in terms of keeping people esp women very preoccupied with small scale offences, and allowing people esp men to avoid thinking about midrange to large ones eg the ethics of the company they work for."
Martha jumped in and said, "I would love to read a whole longform essay on everything you've outlined here. Actually: many essays. Enough to meaningfully change our societal discourse."
Multiple days* later, I thought, "We should have a tradition at OtherFeminisms where someone goes 'Aye!' or 'I nominate Nora to write the first essay in that series!' and people second it." Well, maybe not pushy... but fun, and encouraging.
Anyway, all that to say--I want to see those essays!! I think it would be exciting if people from here would "poke at" that problem.
* That's how long a thought like this can simmer in my mind. Can't always just "crank out a comment" instantly! And by then I forgot and kept forgetting!
Severe Mercy! It's such a good book!