{"id":73695,"date":"2017-06-29T15:04:46","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T04:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=73695"},"modified":"2017-09-13T12:29:50","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T01:29:50","slug":"feminists-five-formative-reads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2017\/06\/29\/feminists-five-formative-reads\/","title":{"rendered":"A Feminist\u2019s Five Formative Reads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"No<\/a><\/p>\n

Brodie Lancaster is a writer, editor and occasional DJ based in Melbourne. Her writing has appeared in Rookie, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Jezebel, Vulture, Hello Mr, The Walkley Magazine, Junkee, Noisey<\/em> and The Pitchfork Review.<\/em> She has spoken at TEDxYouth, Melbourne Writers Festival, Emerging Writers’ Festival, National Young Writers’ Festival, Drunk TED Talks and the EMP Pop Conference.<\/p>\n

Her debut novel is No Way! Okay, Fine, <\/em><\/a>a book which she says is “<\/em>the story of my life through the lenses of pop culture and feminism. I like to think of each chapter as a standalone story, and when you read them all together they form a wider narrative about what it means to be a young girl\/young woman\/eventual adult woman today.” This book was shortlisted for The Richell Prize for Emerging Writers in 2015.<\/p>\n

Below she lists her top five feminist reads.<\/p>\n

\n

Brodie Lancaster’s Five Feminist Reads
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\"Shrill<\/a>Shrill <\/strong>
\nby Lindy West<\/strong><\/p>\n

I read the first chapter of Lindy West\u2019s memoir while I was writing my own, and knew instantly I had to put it away because it felt too close to the bone. By the time I\u2019d finished writing mine, I returned to Shrill and vacillated between tears (reading about what it\u2019s like to be fat on an aeroplane \u2013 an experience that\u2019s so familiar to me) and outrage (going behind-the-scenes of her infamous appearance on TV arguing against lazy rape jokes and being labelled a pro-censorship killjoy because of it), laughing all the while.<\/p>\n

As a kid I had the same feeling of familiarity reading Carolyn Mackler\u2019s The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things<\/em><\/a>, and would again with Roxane Gay\u2019s Hunger.<\/em><\/a> Learn more. <\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Modern<\/a>Modern Lovers<\/strong>
\nby Emma Straub<\/strong><\/p>\n

Emma Straub\u2019s books are so consistently excellent and remind me how much I enjoy fiction.<\/p>\n

Modern Lovers<\/em> spends a summer with grown-up friends who met \u2013 and formed a punk band \u2013 in their college days, and their teenage children who are on their way to college themselves. It tells a million stories \u2013 about adulthood and friendship and love and gentrifying Brooklyn \u2013 all at once, all completely resolved. Learn more. <\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Saving<\/a>Saving Francesca<\/strong>
\nby Melina Marchetta<\/strong><\/p>\n

Melina Marchetta\u2019s work was like an imaginary friend throughout my early teen years, beginning with Looking for Alibrandi<\/em> <\/a>(I watched the film first, so had Spiderbait and Killing Heidi and Hamish Cowan songs in my head when I finally read the book). But Saving Francesca<\/em> was the book I turned to most often. Reading the story about a teenage girl lost \u2013 at home, where her vibrant mother has fallen into a depression, and at school, as one of the few girls surrounded by boys \u2013 felt like a mirror and a portal all at once.<\/p>\n

Bookending this period in my life were books by Ann Brashares; when I was younger I obsessively consumed the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants<\/a> series and felt grateful that the author\u2019s adult novel, Last Summer of You<\/em> and Me<\/em><\/a> arrived just as I aged into it. Learn more. <\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/a>First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic<\/strong>
\nby Jessica Hopper<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m so grateful for this archive of Jessica Hopper\u2019s music criticism, which was released to massive acclaim after years of her being told that the only writers who could sell collections of criticism were men like Rob Sheffield and Chuck Klosterman.<\/p>\n

Her writing about sexism in pop-punk, Hole, the media\u2019s obsession with how \u201creal\u201d or \u201cfake\u201d Lana Del Ray is, and R. Kelly are essential reading.<\/p>\n

It sits proudly on my bookshelf next to Anwen Crawford\u2019s 331\/3: Live Through This<\/em> <\/a>and The Essential Ellen Willis<\/em><\/a>. Learn more. <\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/a>The Hate Race<\/strong>
\nby Maxine Beneba Clarke<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maxine Beneba Clarke\u2019s Twitter profile says, \u201cI try to write beautifully about ugly things\u201d, and there\u2019s not a lot uglier than the history of race relations in Australia. Her memoir, The Hate Race,<\/em> is an astounding book I wish I could prescribe to every white Australian who, like me, has perpetuated or benefitted from racism and white supremacy \u2013 whether unknowingly\/accidentally\/consciously or not.<\/p>\n

When I was around 11 or 12, I felt all of a sudden too grown up for the YA books I\u2019d spent years reading by then, and I plucked Danzy Senna\u2019s Caucasia<\/em> from my mum\u2019s bookshelf. A story of the two daughters of a white mother and black father in the 1970s, it followed Birdie, the couple\u2019s light-skinned younger daughter, after the parents\u2019 (and, by extension, girls\u2019) separation, and examined the notion of passing \u2013 of either wanting or needing to pass \u2013 as a person of colour in a white world. Without wanting to sound like one of those people who hectically virtue-signals by announcing loudly that they\u2019ll only read work by women writers or writers of colour or both, I actively seek out and rely on the work of writers like this to broaden my own awareness and understanding of what the world looks like to people outside my experience. Learn more. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brodie Lancaster is a writer, editor and occasional DJ based in Melbourne. Her writing has appeared in Rookie, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Jezebel, Vulture, Hello Mr, The Walkley Magazine, Junkee, Noisey and The Pitchfork Review. She has spoken at TEDxYouth, Melbourne Writers Festival, Emerging Writers’ Festival, National Young Writers’ Festival, Drunk TED Talks and the EMP Pop Conference. Her debut novel is No Way! Okay, Fine, a book which she says is “the story of my life through the lenses of pop culture and feminism. I like to think of each chapter as a standalone story, and when you read them all together they form a wider narrative about what it means to be a young girl\/young woman\/eventual adult woman today.” This book was shortlisted for The Richell Prize for Emerging Writers in 2015. Below she lists her top five feminist reads. Brodie Lancaster’s Five Feminist Reads Shrill by Lindy West I read the first chapter of Lindy West\u2019s memoir while I was writing my own, and knew instantly I had to put it away because it felt too close to the bone. By the time I\u2019d finished writing mine, I returned to Shrill and vacillated between tears (reading about what…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":73720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[4,92,6677,6703,77],"tags":[7656,7651,1969,7655,6837,7650,7653,3608,3633,3639,7652,7657,7172,4722,7654,7334],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/brodie-SOCIAL.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73695"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73722,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73695\/revisions\/73722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}