By Anjali Nayak
In the eyes of many male authors, a female character is often a promiscuous, hypersexualized caricature. Even worse, a mother or female love interest might be a default, stock character with not much value to the story. Centuries of female writers and thinkers have continued to break the rules created by men, creating a rich, thought provoking sub genre of literature that continues to evolve in the present day. Authors such as Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Toni Morrison bravely brought a women’s point of view to the public eye, continuing to inspire millions of readers ever since. The subgenre forever evolves into modern literature today, and the two books mentioned are an excellent starting point.
TW: Rape
An immersive memoir relating to the events after being raped while at a Stanford frat party, Chanel Miller was simply known as “Emily Doe” or even worse, “Brock Turner’s victim.” In “Know My Name” Miller seeks to set the record straight. The reader lives with Miller minute by minute, thinking and feeling with her. At points, particularly the stinging eloquence of her victim statement in court, it is hard to read and breathe it at the same time. Stanford emerges as a painful example of institutional cowardice: the failure to meaningfully follow up after it becomes clear Miller was not a student. She writes, “I finally understood I was visible not as a person, but a legal threat, a grave liability.” Reading the book feels as if Chanel is simply an old friend I am catching up with. She isn’t just a victim. Chanel Miller is a loved person, a full person, a real person. Miller also covers the media’s grotesque focus on Turner’s all – star swimming career (they “counted my drinks and counted the seconds Brock could swim two hundred yards”). Most frustratingly, the moments she herself had felt in the wrong. “You went to a frat and got assaulted? What did you expect? … I understand you are not supposed to walk into a lion’s den because you could be mauled. But lions are wild animals. And boys are people, they have minds, live in a society with laws. Groping others was not a natural reflex, biologically built in. It was a cognitive action they were perfectly capable of controlling.” No longer just a few sentences on the news, the powerful story changes the way one thinks about sexual assault. The frustrating details, the traumatic aftermath, all woven into a beautiful story of the sanctity of holding your own.
Although less than seventy pages, “Everyone Should Be a Feminist” packs quite the punch. Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie provides a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Through referencing her own experiences, and her deep understanding of the masked realities of sexual politics, Adichie provides an exploration as to what it means to be a woman. Chimamanda describes the first time she had ever been called a feminist. It was not a compliment. While growing up in Nigeria, the public eye viewed feminists as “women who were not happy because they had not found husbands yet.” Feminism was deemed un – African, and the very concept was a consequence of corrupt Western ideals. The novel is filled with small anecdotes of the deep rooted sexism experienced by Chimamanda herself. Proclaiming that we must raise both sons and daughters differently, the author also goes into concepts of masculinity. “Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability.” Adichie preaches for a better future, where a woman is treated the same as a man. A future where everyone is a feminist.
I believe that everyone should indulge in some form of feminist literature at some point of their life. These brave stories of hardship and inequality echo all over the world. Ask questions, empathize with victims, understand what is right from wrong. I beg you to read these stories not as someone trying to prove a point, but as a woman myself.