Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed.
Since March is Women’s History Month and March 8th is International Women’s Day, I thought it would be interesting to highlight some books by women writers that have been influential in other parts of the world (this is relative, of course).
To think of how some of what these authors were writing about were controversial at the time can be both heartening and sad. For one, we’ve definitely made progress in terms of there being more women and other marginalized identities publishing (mandatory disclaimer: there should be more, of course). On the other hand, I think that a couple of these books didn’t take place that long ago, which means that these issues were happening recently. Either way, it’s cool to look back on how people were writing back then, and the books I’ve chosen below can get delightfully trippy and experimental.
On to the club!
Nibbles and Sips
You’ve had empanadas, but have you ever had apple empanadas? With a dulce de leche dipping sauce?? Yeah, you need this. Layla Pujol shows us how it’s done. I don’t think I need to tell you how dangerous these are.
Now for the books!
Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex by Oksana Zabuzhko, translated by Halyna Hryn
This is considered to be thee most successful Ukrainian novel of the ’90s. Zabuzhko is a poet, foremost, and tells the story of another poet in a winding stream of conscious style. The narrator visits Harvard as a professor of Slavic studies and is forever changed. Suddenly, being back in Ukraine feels stifling and she beings to question her culture’s conventions. A parallel is drawn between her own subjugation at the hands of her lover and her country’s through history. There was a lot of controversy when this book came out, but that helped keep it on the bestseller’s list for more than ten years.
Book Club Bonus: Zabuzhko contends with her attraction to a domineering lover. Discuss what drew her to this subjugation.
Side note: I just wanted to say that the author did not have to call me out so early in the book on the subject of house plants: “Now both plants have the appearance of having been watered with sulfuric acid for the last three weeks.” Ma’am.
Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo, translate by Daniel Balderston
Argentinian Ocampo has had everyone from Jorge Luis Borges to Helen Oyeyemi singing her praises on her skill with short stories and novellas. Her stories tend to include the unsettling and grotesque, like a house of sugar that leads to possession, talking horse statues, and children locking away their mothers. She studied painting and other various forms of surrealist art, which no doubt had influence on her very original stories.
Book Club Bonus: Borges was friends with Ocampo’s husband and a great admirer of her work. He once made observations on her “strange taste for a certain kind of an innocent and oblique cruelty. I attribute this to the interest, the astonished interest, that evil inspires in a noble soul.” She grew up in a privileged household, and was, as a result, a “lady.” Discuss this need of Borges to define her often dark stories. Do you think he’s on to something, or is this an unwillingness on his part to fully identify someone like Ocampo with her stories?
Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin, translated by Bonnie Huie
Miaojin was Taiwan’s first openly lesbian writer, being active in the late ’80s/early ’90s. She was studying clinical psychology and feminism with French philosopher Hélène Cixous when she met a tragic end at 26. The award-winning Notes of a Crocodile was released at the height of Taiwanese media’s unhealthy obsession with lesbians. It’s about a group of queer students at a prestigious college after Taiwan came out of martial-law. The narrator Lazi (which is a slang term for “lesbian”) details the goings-on of her crew who do everything but studying with a mix of vignettes and observations on life. She’s attracted to an older women who is ambivalent towards her, but is still reveling in her new freedom and romantic ideals.
Book Club Bonus: Discuss the analogies contained within Miaojin’s crocodile fable where, once it got back from work, the crocodile “removed the sweat-soaked human suit clinging to its body.”
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
Suggestion Section
11 Ukrainian Books Available in English Translation
Groundskeeping by Lee Cole is March’s book for Today
March’s GMA Book Club pick is The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh
Jimmy Fallon, Jennifer Lopez to write kids’ book
Roxane Gay’s book club pick for March is How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Interesting history on literary salons
The 2022 PEN American Literary Award winners have been announced
I hope this newsletter found you well, and as always, thanks for hanging out! If you have any comments or just want to connect, send an email to erica@riotnewmedia.com or holla at me on Twitter @erica_eze_ . You can also catch me talking more mess in the new In Reading Color newsletter as well as chattin’ with my new cohost Tirzah Price on the Hey YA podcast.
Until next time,
-E