Reading women

If you’ve read my article on representation of women authors and protagonists on the exam set texts lists in the UK at 16, you’ll know the picture isn’t that great, and students are likely to be mainly encountering a man’s eye view of the world in all contexts of literature. If not, read it, it’s open access!

I’ve been thinking a lot about the pros and cons of reading lists recently, but I loved a reading list as a teenager, and I was very pleased to find out that my tweeting of the Balliol college reading list for aspiring Oxford English students sent it semi-viral in 2016. (Have a look – it’s a surprising list.) So as an accompaniment to my article on set texts, I thought I’d make a list of six suggested reads by women for teens who want to balance up their school curriculum texts (or anyone else!).

1. Beloved by Toni Morrison. This Gothic modern classic is the story of an African-American woman who escapes slavery only to be taken back. Rather than allow her 2 year old daughter to return to slavery, she kills her, and this is the story of her haunting by Beloved, who may or may not be that daughter. A powerful novel which won many prizes.

2. The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor. A modern SFF novel (or ‘magical futurism’) which links the US and Africa, this is about the rise of a superhuman woman and also about our world and what we are doing to it and its peoples.

3. Anita and Me by Meera Syal. Now this technically is a GCSE set text but it doesn’t appear as widely as it used to and given that everyone has to study a 19th century novel, I suspect the vast majority will be doing a 20th/21st century play rather than another lengthy prose text. Anita and Me is a fabulous Bildungsroman set in Wolverhampton, an area of Britain that gets little attention in literature. Anita is the kind of friend everyone wants and fears.

4. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. This was one of my favourite reads of 2017. It’s a dual timeline story, of a diary written by a teen in Japan, and the woman reading that diary in the US after it is washed up on a nearby beach. It’s not for the faint of heart – and I would be careful recommending it to teens given it has sex and swearing in it in abundance, but perhaps the uncomfortable context of Japanese fetishism of schoolgirls has lessons for all of us. It’s beautifully written and another powerful read.

5. The Shadow of the Sun by A.S. Byatt. I debated what Byatt novel to include, and Posession came a close second – a novel I read and fell in love with at 17. The Shadow of the Sun came about a year later, and it is definitely a challenging read – perhaps of particular interest to those aiming at a high status university. It’s the story of what happens when a high flying young woman comes to pieces. I hope the ending would be different nowadays – but it’s a useful reminder that the choices young women have now were not always available to them.

6. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Another Gothic mystery, this one centres on the dialogue between two women, one a famous novelist who is dying and the much younger woman to whom she has finally chosen to reveal the key to the mystery which has been at the heart of her life and work. It’s BRILLIANT. And much better than the television adaptation from a few years ago.

What would you recommend?