women writers meme

Liz Ditz tags me with a meme from another bookish badgerwoman.

I note that my Badger Sister should immediately read all of Carson McCullers... really... you won't regret it!

doing this list made me think "gosh... I *haven't* ever read anything else by Mary Wollstonecraft... and should".

I will update the list tomorrow with more writers from other languages and times... it is making an effort but is sadly English-centric. And I am just the woman to step up and fix that.

*Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women
*Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
* Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
* Atwood, Margaret–Cat's Eye
* Austen, Jane–Emma
* Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
* Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
* Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
* Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
* Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
* Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
* Cather, Willa–My Antonia
* Chopin, Kate–The Awakening
* Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
* Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South
? Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory
* Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
? Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
* DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
* Eliot, George–Middlemarch
* Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
Erdrich, Louise–Tracks
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
* Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper
* Gordimer, Nadine–July's People
* Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
* Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
* hooks, bell–Bone Black
* Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
* Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
* Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
* Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
* Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing
* L'Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
* Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
* Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
? Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
* Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals
* Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series (any of them)
* McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts
Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
* Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
* Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
? Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
* Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women
* Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller's Wife
* Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
* O'Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
* Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time
? Picoult, Jodi–My Sister's Keeper
* Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
* Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
* Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
? Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
? Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping
? Rocha, Sharon–For Lac
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
* Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth
Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
* Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
? Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle
Steel, Danielle–The House
* Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah–You're Wearing That
? Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife's Tale
Urquhart, Jane–Away
* Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
* Welty, Eudora–One Writer's Beginnings
* Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
* Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
* Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One's Own

Instructions: Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you have wanted/might like to read. ??Place question marks by any titles/authors you've never heard of?? Put an asterisk if you've read something else by the same author.

Comments

[elswhere]

Ah, the Badgers have discovered each other!

And: Wow, you HAVE read a lot. Not surprised, though.

There was a fast and furious comment discussion going on about this list yesterday at phantomscribbler.blogspot.com. I didn't have the focus to contribute significantly (since I was supposed to be working in the first place) but everyone else said what I would've, anyway.

[JM]

There's a movement afoot to modify the list to include _really_ dead women writers (Aphra Benn, etc), so yes please step up and modify it to include authors in languages other than English! I know the commentors attached to Phantom Scribbler's post would love to hear what you have to say, and learn about more folks they need to read. Pop on over there and let them know elswhere (and myself) thoroughly vouch for your infinite wisdom in this area!

[elswhere]

Thanks for making the link, JM; nice to run into another phantom/badgerbag crossover reader!

[Iris]

Why has no one said Alison Lurie .. is she out of fashion? Also Margery Allingham and Margaret Drabble (A.S. Byatt's sister.. once far more famous).

[patty]

OMG! I read A Midwife's Tale a few years ago - it was awesome. A midwife's journal from almost all of her married life, I believe, up till close to her death.

Some of the best parts...it was right before the revolution, so you could empathize with hapless, apolitical working folks stuck in the middle of the rebels and the Loyalists. How complex! How shades of gray and multifaceted! I thought. Why do we even bother teaching kids in grade school, Patriots = good, Tories = bad?

Other great parts? The amount of unwed mothers havin' babies in the late 1700's! Plus the unique way that they had to "verify" the father, absent DNA testing.

Also, the analysis of the home economics. The best years were when the family had 3 or 4 teenage girls at home. Dad was a surveyor, Mom a midwife, and they took in laundry that the girls all did while mom was off delivering babies.

Read it! Read it!

[Elkit]

Me too! Me too! And I went one step farther, counted all my questions marks (27), and added 27 more authors.

[Iris]

There are masses of brilliant women crime writers, of course, including .. Agatha Christie.

[guile]

the lovely bones.. i love that book :)..