Women’s Month Reading List
TITLE: THE BOOK OF SHE: YOUR HEROINE’S JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF FEMINISM POWER
Author: Sara Avant Stover
Format: Audio
www.amazon.com: “Women’s bodies and minds are different from men’s, and the best way toward a healthy, satisfying life is to embrace that difference. Provocative and thorough, The Book of SHE explores the mystery and alchemy of what it means to be a woman. Sara Avant Stover will guide you toward reclaiming the power and beauty of your own amazing body in this groundbreaking book.”
TITLE: BUY ME THE SKY
AUTHOR: XINRAN
FORMAT: AUDIO & BRAILLE
www.thebookbag.co.uk: “… Freedom of choice, is not something that the Chinese have had the opportunity to become very much acquainted with. This book looks at how being an only child, being a product of the policy, even as it was gradually relaxed in some parts of the country over time, impacted on the children themselves – and what that might mean for China’s immediate future. The latter part of the equation – what it might mean for China as a whole – is alluded to in parts but the focus is on what Xinran does best: the telling of individual stories, very personal experiences, which we can be assured are replicated thousands of times. Xinran doesn’t judge in these pages, although from her telling of the tales, it’s clear that she can be very judgmental with the young people entrusted to her care. She has the benefit of having been in the West since 1997, and by her own admission she has learned a lot – and equally continues to struggle with much. This conflict – or balance – within her own personality is probably what makes her uniquely positioned to tell these stories and to do so with such generosity and warmth, and to be able to steer well clear of sentimentality and yet still move us emotionally… Xinran’s role in mentoring these young minds has been to help them understand why their parents have behaved the way they have, whilst at the same time no continuing that route and by a combination of encouragement and ‘tough love’ to get them to learn their own way in the world…”
TITLE: CIRCLING THE SUN
AUTHOR: PAULA MCLAIN
FORMAT: AUDIO
www.bostonglobe.com: “Enchanting . . . McLain will keep you from eating, sleeping, or checking your e-mail—though you might put these pages down just long enough to order airplane tickets to Nairobi. . . . What’s certain is that the reluctantly earthbound armchair reader will cherish this gift for the hidden adventurer in all of us. Like Africa as it’s so gorgeously depicted here, this novel will never let you go.”
TITLE: OASe
AUTHOR: STEFANI SERFONTEIN
FORMAT: COMING SOON IN BOTH FORMATS
www.amazon.com: “Een van die wonderlikste Afrikaanse boeke wat ek al in ‘n lang tyd gelees het. Ek het op die punt van my stoel gesit in sekere gedeeltes en asem opgehou. Ek wens net dat meer mense van hierdie roman geweet het. ‘n Puik debuut roman van ‘n uitstenkende skrywer. Beslis die lees werd.”
TITLE: MUSLIM GIRL: A COMING OF AGE
AUTHOR: AMANI AL-KHATAHTBEH
FORMAT: COMING SOON IN AUDIO & BRAILLE
www.nytimes.com: “… Amani Al-Khatahtbeh’s memoir “Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age” is a chronicle of how these “other” children of 9/11 have been affected by America’s inveterate gluing together of “Muslim” and “terrorist.” It is an account that should both enlighten and shame Americans who read it.Al-Khatahtbeh, who is also the founder of the media site “Muslim Girl,” was in fourth grade at the Bowne-Munro Elementary School in East Brunswick, N.J., that sunny September day. It was yearbook photo day, and she had dressed for it in “a stiff pair of jeans and a blue shirt.” The photographs never happened; instead there was early dismissal and the struggle to understand what her mother meant when she said the twin towers were “not there anymore” and that “two planes crashed into them.” At home, in front of the television, her father’s ominous words would make more sense: “This is a horrible thing that happened. . . . And they’re going to blame us. And it’s going to get much worse.”Fifteen years later, a good portion of America still wants that eviction, but Al-Khatahtbeh’s chronicle is more than just an enumeration of America’s sins against Muslims. It is instead an exposition of how two realities, a besieged and defensive Muslim American community and an endlessly suspicious America that constantly demands proof of the community’s patriotism, come together to create the constrictions that she and many million young Muslim Americans must push against…”