Women make up half the world (at least), which means (at least) half the books you read should be by women. This year for International Women’s Day (March 8), take a pledge to read local books by women. To start you off, here are 10 new or forthcoming books that fit the bill, including fiction, non-fiction, memoir, history, and poetry.
Black Star by Maureen Medved (Anvil Press)
Black Star is a dark comedy, both bitingly funny and transgressive, an unflinching and unsentimental exploration of the female experience, academia, and the idea of power that burns in the mind as white as acid. It is a searing critique of sexual exploitation, manipulation, and the subtle machinations of power that play through the lens of academia. Black Star is at once poetic, tragic, disturbing, and funny. Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at UBC, Maureen Medved writes for the page, screen, and stage, and is an essayist for Herizons.
One Hundred Years of Struggle: The History of Women and the Vote in Canada
by Joan Sangster (UBC Press)
The inaugural book in UBC Press’ new series Women’s Suffrage and the Struggle for Democracy, One Hundred Years of Struggle is also an apt pick for International Women’s Day. The achievement of the vote in 1918 is often celebrated as a triumphant moment in the onward, upward advancement of Canadian women. Acclaimed historian Joan Sangster looks beyond the shiny rhetoric of anniversary celebrations and Heritage Minutes to show that the struggle for equality included gains and losses, inclusions and exclusions, depending on a woman’s race, class, and location in the nation.
Checking In by Adeena Karasick (Talonbooks)
Checking In comprises a long poem and a series of other post-conceptual pieces – concrete poems, homolinguistic translations, Yiddish aphorisms – that offer exuberant commentary on the timelessness of digital information and our ravenous appetite for data and connection. Adeena Karasick, PhD, is a New York–based Canadian poet, performer, cultural theorist, media artist, and the author of eight books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected, urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language.”
Honouring High Places: The Mountain Life of Junko Tabei
by Junko Tabei and Helen Y. Rolfe, translated by Yumiko Hiraki and Rieko Holtved (RMB | Rocky Mountain Books)
A collection of personal stories and reflections based on the memoirs of Junko Tabei, the first woman to climb Mount Everest and the Seven Summits. Honouring High Places is a compelling collection of highlights from Junko Tabei’s stirring life that she considered important, inspiring, and interesting to mountaineering culture. Until now, her works have been available only in Japanese.
Elemental by Kate Braid (Caitlin Press)
Usually, we take for granted or simply ignore the earth we walk on, the sky above, the water we drink and bathe in or that falls as rain. But more than 15 years as a construction carpenter, Kate Braid began to pay more attention to the materials she worked with and depended upon. Out of these, she has crafted an intimate picture of what it is like to be wholly engaged with the elemental materials of earth, sky, water, fire, and wood that we depend upon every day.
A Frenchwoman’s Guide to Sex after Sixty
by Marie De Hennezel (Greystone Books)
With wit and a soupçon of irreverence, Marie de Hennezel, esteemed psychologist and therapist and the author of 10 books, shows that there is no age limit for erotic joy. Through interviews with countless older French women and men, de Hennezel uncovers a plethora of tips for enjoying a rich and satisfying sex life after 60. She suggests that perhaps the most important point is to have a positive self-image—to love yourself—and instead of worrying about wrinkles and other outward signs of ageing.
Summer of the Horse
by Donna Kane (Harbour Publishing)
A passionate and honest sojourn into the mind of a woman diving into a new adventure in the wilderness of BC’s Northern Rockies. Donna Kane left her 25-year marriage for life with a conservationist and wilderness guide, but a few days before a three-month horse-pack expedition, a gelding is seriously injured. Kane agrees to stay behind to tend the horse’s wound and in the quiet moments spent with the horse each day, she reflects on her transition into the new relationship, the wilderness of the unknown, and her struggles with personal autonomy and independence.
The Unceasing Storm: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution
by Katherine Luo, foreword by Madeleine Thien (Douglas & McIntyre)
A rare and poignant memoir of life in mainland China during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. When Katherine Luo moved from Hong Kong to mainland China in 1955 to study drama and opera, she hoped her ideals and patriotism might help to build her country. The Unceasing Storm describes Luo’s personal struggles—among other things, she was expelled from university, forbidden to marry her first love, and accused of being a spy—but it is also the memoir of a generation, representative of similar incidents occurring all over China. Luo’s story is one step towards creating a truthful record of contemporary China.
Available March 31, 2018
Little Fish
by Casey Plett (Arsenal Pulp Press)
Lambda Literary Award winner Casey Plett‘s latest novel, in which a trans woman learns her grandfather may have been trans himself is alternately warm-hearted and dark-spirited, desperate, and mirthful. Little Fish explores the winter of discontent in the life of one transgender woman as her past and future become irrevocably entwined.
Available April 1, 2018
Against the Current is the first book on Agnes Deans Cameron, BC’s first female school principal, itinerant traveller, and journalist. Cameron was an extraordinary woman who was ahead by a century. Born in Victoria in 1863, she worked tirelessly to achieve work equality and voting rights for women and was one of Canada’s most well-known writers of her time. Cathy Converse, author of the award-nominated Following the Curve of Time, has written and co-authored six books and numerous cover stories for magazines and journals.
Available May 15, 2018