This month is Women’s History Month, with International Women’s Day being celebrated on Tuesday, 8 March, and we were planning on featuring one prominent feminist fiction writer however there were too many to choose from! Instead, we’ve chosen to feature some lesser-known names; here are a few of our favourite feminist fiction titles and authors:
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
The novel paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own. It tells the story of three women: the thirty-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter, Midoriko. Makiko has traveled to Tokyo in search of an affordable breast enhancement procedure. She is accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with growing up. Her silence proves a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and frustrations. On another hot summer’s day ten years later, Natsu, on a journey back to her native city, struggles with her own indeterminate identity as she confronts anxieties about growing old alone and childless.
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia
A sweeping, masterful debut about a daughter's fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born. In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbour detained by ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt. From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centres, from Cuba to Mexico, Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals-personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others-that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women. A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America's most tangled, honest, human roots.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary's mission to Winter, an unknown alien world whose inhabitants can choose--and change--their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters. Exploring questions of psychology, society, and human emotion in an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of science fiction.
Kim Jiyoung, born 1982 by Nam-ju Cho
Ms Kim Jiyoung is a sibling made to share a room with her sister while their little brother gets a room of his own. Ms Kim Jiyoung is a schoolgirl who has to line up behind the boys in the lunch queue. Ms Kim Jiyoung is a daughter whose father blames her for being harassed late at night. Ms Kim Jiyoung is a good student who doesn't get put forward for internships. Ms Kim Jiyoung excels at her job but gets overlooked for promotion. Ms Kim Jiyoung is a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity. Ms Kim Jiyoung has started acting strangely. Ms Kim Jiyoung is depressed. Ms Kim Jiyoung is mad. Ms Kim Jiyoung is her own woman. Ms Kim Jiyoung is everywoman. Ms Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is the South Korean sensation which has got the whole world talking. The life story of one young woman born halfway across the globe at the end of the twentieth century raises questions about endemic misogyny and institutional oppression which are relevant to us all.
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty evil. As Maren and Ursa are pushed together and are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence.
Other better-known feminist fiction writers you may enjoy:
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