Hello and welcome to our very first Feminist Sunday!
Feminist Sundays is a weekly meme started by Elena of
Books and Reviews. It is supposed to be a space where we can discuss all sorts of things that might fall under the larger umbrella of feminism: from important female figures in history to the portrayal of women in fiction, and everything in between. We're very excited to join and we hope to participate every week (and perhaps have some of you join us as well). For now we thought we'd kick off this series by discussing - and hopefully getting some recommendations for -
books with openly feminist characters.
What counts as an openly feminist character?
We are not great readers of contemporary literary fiction. (And yes,
that is a thing we are trying to fix.) We do know our media, though, and
we are somewhat familiar with contemporary romance novels, too. Openly
feminist characters are rarer in them than you might think, considering
that feminism did change the world and in some cases made the plot of
said books or movies possible. And much too often, when a feminist
character does appear, she turns out to be a stereotype - the
man-hating workaholic that needs to be tamed/defeated/abandoned by the
hero or some variation thereof. (We say "she turns out to be"
because there doesn't seem to be a parallel trope for male allies/feminist men.) So what are the features we are looking for in an openly feminist character?
