Tag: women and poverty

Writing at its Best: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

Writing at its Best: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

Posted by | Feb 9, 2021 |

This book was recommended to me by Amazon. That’s right. It popped up on my kindle as, “you may be interested in,” while purchasing a different book. I found the title compelling so I clicked, then I found the description of the book interesting, so I purchased. I was not disappointed. It has been a long time since I read a collection of short stories I could not put down and wanted to read all over again once I’d finished. Philyaw’s writing is downright addictive.  Philyaw’s voice is powerful and assertive, strong and confident, and also, a bit mischievous,...

Read More
what the patriarchy has to gain from us feeling unloved and unlovable—Communion: the female search for love by bell hooks (2002)

what the patriarchy has to gain from us feeling unloved and unlovable—Communion: the female search for love by bell hooks (2002)

Posted by | Jan 12, 2021 |

This book kinda sorta unexpectedly rocked my world. It has such an innocent title. Gah! I had never before read bell hooks. Her name hung around the edges of my consciousness as someone I need to read. I will certainly be reading a lot more of her now. Her writing is so unassuming and seemingly simple, it comes up on you from behind and grabs you by your secrets. I was left many nights with a lump in my throat trying to digest the emotion her words had evoked in me the previous day.  Reading Communion, I felt heard...

Read More
Being Poor While Female in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853)

Being Poor While Female in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853)

Posted by | Dec 29, 2020 |

Nearly eighty years after the publication of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Villette, Virginia Woolf laments the poverty of women in her classic book, A Room Of One’s Own. In that classic piece is the famous conclusion that “a woman needs money and room of her own if she is to write fiction”(4). But how to attain it in a culture and time in that culture where women were notoriously poor?  Woolf speaks of how she came to having money of her own, five hundred pounds a year, left to her by her aunt “Mary Beton” who “died by a fall...

Read More

JOIN NOW FOR “NASTY” UPDATES, One post per week in your inbox about a #nastywoman who is inspiring us to write about them.