To celebrate International Women’s Day this year, we have compiled a list of six of our favourite non-fiction books written by female authors to delve into.
A Curious History of Sex – Dr Kate Lister (2020)
In 1559, to the eye-rolling of women everywhere, two male anatomists ‘discovered’ the clitoris. They were immediately contested; an Italian physician named Gabriele Falloppio, known to friends as Fallopius, claimed that he, in fact, had been the first to discover the clitoris. Unfortunately, he had not published his findings in time; his name was immortalised in the fallopian tubes instead. Dr Kate Lister, in her characteristic combination of sarcasm and extensive historical research, calls the whole ordeal “possibly the most champion act of mansplaining in the whole of human history.”
Packed with fascinating facts, bizarre images, and an impressive collection of slang terms for genitalia, A Curious History of Sex is a romp through the weirdest parts of history. It covers everything from why medieval prostitutes smelled of lavender to the strange story of the men who grafted monkey testicles onto their bodies. You may have heard of aphrodisiacs (foods thought to increase desire), but Lister tells the strange tale of anaphrodisiacs (foods thought to decrease sexual urges). This book will forever change the way you see cornflakes.
Sex-positive, hopeful, and utterly funny, Lister brings to life a much-ignored part of human history. A Curious History of Sex is a book that everyone needs to read.
A Curious History of Sex is published by Unbound.
Uncanny Valley – Anna Wiener (2020)
“It never occurred to me that I might someday become one of the people working behind the internet,” Anna Wiener writes at the beginning of her memoir, Uncanny Valley. “I had never considered that there were people behind the internet at all.”
As a bookish twenty-something New Yorker with no growth prospects in her dying publishing job, Wiener takes a risk and lands a job at a tech startup. Soon, she finds herself transported across the US into the shining, hedonistic world of Silicon Valley. She swaps her formal blazers for an endless supply of company-branded t-shirts, lunch meetings for exchanging buzzwords over Michelin-starred desserts and is promoted to increasingly nonsensical job titles. She has no real tech industry experience but it doesn’t seem to matter – neither does anyone else.
With wry observations and a self-deprecating touch, Wiener pulls back the curtain on the biggest tech companies, exposing both the horrifying consequences of their unregulated power over our data and their toxic company cultures. Sexism and racism are rife in an industry dominated by white men; the gentrification and inequality of San Francisco is alarming. Wiener guiltily grapples with her own role in this decadent bubble – yes, she feels her work is unethical, but for the first time in her life she can afford an apartment of her own. She has her own health insurance!
Wiener’s memoir is equal parts hilarious and horrifying in its portrayal of the people who run Silicon Valley. These are the men that control our data, our internet, our elections… and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Uncanny Valley is published by 4th Estate.
Feminism, Interrupted – Lola Olufemi (2020)
In recent years, feminism has become cool. Like anything else that is trendy, this means that it is marketable – everyone is wearing t-shirts that say ‘the future is female.’ People use #girlboss to celebrate successful (generally white) women who make it into company boardrooms and feminist Instagram influencers have broken feminism down into easily digestible chunks that have entered the mainstream. However, this type of easy feminism has been criticised by many for its lack of intersectionality and ambition.
Lola Olufemi’s book, Feminism, Interrupted is an antidote to the #girlboss feminism that has become the norm in recent years. Olufemi argues that this neoliberal feminism is flawed because it “fails to question the connection between capitalism, race and gendered oppression … a feminism that seeks power instead of questioning it does not care about justice.”
Feminism, Interrupted is a guide to an ambitious kind of feminism. The kind that embraces the intersections of gender, race and religion, the unique experiences of trans women and sex workers, and follows the arguments of abolition feminists like Angela Davis who fight for a world without prisons. With its fluent argument and accessible manner, it’s essential reading for the modern feminist who is ready to sink their teeth into the bigger picture.
Feminism, Interrupted is published by Pluto Press.
Wordslut – Amanda Montell (2019)
Why is ‘sir’ a perfectly neutral word while its female version, ‘madam’, carries negative connotations of a conceited woman or one who manages a brothel? ‘Master’ is neutral but ‘mistress’ is someone with whom a married man cheats on his wife. (‘Is there a wildly entertaining television show called MistressChef? No, there is not’, Amanda Montell writes.) ‘Buddy’ and ‘sissy’, which derive from brother and sister, follow the same pattern.
The fact that initially neutral words associated with women have become negative over time is a linguistic process called pejoration. It was first studied by linguist Muriel Schulz in the 1970s. The same has happened with dozens of other words: ‘hussy’ was an endearing term for a housewife; ‘tart’ was like calling someone ‘sweetie pie; ‘bitch’ was a female dog and even ‘slut’ simply meant untidy. Gendered insults like this are a problem, Montell argues in Wordslut, because they reinforce harmful ideas about gender. However, the meanings of words are not fixed. Words can change and be reclaimed, we just need to think more critically about them.
Wordslut, subtitled ‘a feminist guide to taking back the English language,’ is a brilliant journey through sociolinguistics. In her conversational and humorous writing, Montell explores many different gendered aspects of the English language, from cursing and catcalling to how women talk when men aren’t around. Language is a way in which we affirm and explore ideas about gender, she argues, but it’s also a way of resisting and reclaiming. Bold and always entertaining, Wordslut makes it impossible to ignore the connection between gender and language.
Wordslut is published by Harper Wave.
It’s Not About the Burqa – edited by Mariam Khan (2019)
Mariam Khan couldn’t stand the way Muslim women’s voices were being drowned out. “When was the last time you heard a Muslim woman speak for herself without a filter? Or outside the white gaze? On her own terms?” she asks in the introduction to It’s Not About the Burqa, a collection of essays by 17 Muslim women.
The essays cover a range of topics from sex to religion to family but they are invariably profound. Salma Haidrani writes about being an outspoken Muslim journalist – the dangers and the online harassment, but also the pride she takes in her courage to speak out regardless. Raifa Rafiq reflects on her experience of being a Black Muslim woman, someone “who can call home many places but equally not sit comfortably anywhere.” Nafisa Bakkar analyses the shallowness of the way Muslim women are often represented in adverts and the media.
In the brilliantly titled ‘Too Loud, Swears Too Much and Goes Too Far,’ Mona Eltahawy explores the double-bind of Muslim women who want to resist misogyny within their own communities but don’t want their critiques of Muslim men to be pounced upon by racists. “Our bodies – what parts of them are covered or uncovered, for example – are proxy battlefields in their endless arguments,” she writes.
In each essay, It’s Not About the Burqa challenges the way Muslim women have been treated as though they cannot speak for themselves. Nuanced and defiant, it’s an important treatise from the women whose voices are often ignored or misunderstood by mainstream feminists.
It’s Not About the Burqa is published by Picador.
Coming Undone – Terri White (2020)
Terri White boarded her plane from Heathrow to New York with a pink Primark suitcase and a copy of American Psycho. She had spent her life escaping: as a child her family hid in a women’s refuge from one of her mother’s abusive boyfriends, then she fled small-town Derbyshire for the opportunities of London, and eventually made her way to New York City. Her memoir, Coming Undone, begins with a different type of escape: White is checking out of a stay in a psych ward.
Now Editor-in-Chief at Empire Magazine, White was a successful journalist for a long time before she started writing about her personal life. From the outside, she seemed to have everything: stellar job editing Time Out New York, a glamorous life, eternally perfect eyeliner. Like the journalist Esther Greenwood in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, White couldn’t understand why New York wasn’t everything she’d wanted. The skyline was magical and the possibilities endless but White spent her evenings chasing blackouts from cocktails in shadowy bars.
Fast-paced and brutally candid, Coming Undone ricochets between White’s childhood of abuse and poverty, her life of high-functioning self-destructive alcoholism in New York, and the agonising process of recovery. Despite all her struggles, White’s memoir is full of hope. It’s a testament to female strength and determination.
Coming Undone is published by Canongate.
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