Feminist Library - Part VI

Hello! Today I’d like to share with you some books I’ve read over the past few months. Specifically, this list consists entirely of works of fiction that address very interesting themes from a gender perspective, offering profound critiques of what it means to be a woman in a world where gender inequality is still the norm.

Montevideo in the 1940s, and Montevideo in 2021 in the midst of the pandemic. Naples and its chaos, New York with the vibrancy of the ’70s. Buenos Aires in the ’90s and all its contradictions. In all these books, there’s a very strong connection to the city—its streets, its characters, its dangers, its smells—and also to that aura of freedom and the relentless search for one’s true self.

The Rebel

Cristina Peri Rossi

This is an autobiographical novel that explores her childhood and youth, delving into the social prohibitions and customs that come with being a woman. In a deeply endearing and passionate way, it navigates the constant conflict between duty and desire, set against the backdrop of a slow-paced Montevideo, rife with prejudice and deep-rooted violence.

All Our Curses Came True

Tamara Tenenbaum

In this novel, Tamara Tenenbaum recalls, with just the right dose of irony and dark humor, the years of her transition from childhood to adolescence within a Jewish family. Marked by a terrorist attack in which her father dies, Tamara grows up surrounded by strong women—her mother, her grandmother, her sisters—and inevitably begins to question the certainties of Orthodox Judaism (and society in general), in search of a less suffocating future.

Shift Toward Red

Mariana Olivera

This novel is the second title in the Guyunusa Feminist Collection, which I previously discussed in relation to Ana Laura de Giorgi’s *Stories of an Unrequited Love: Feminism and the Left in the ’80s*.

It is a very contemporary novel, written in the midst of the pandemic, and it serves as an engaging and dynamic synthesis of the doubts, questions, and experiences of a middle-class woman from Montevideo in the midst of 2021–2022. It gives voice to a very particular moment in our country, where there is a strong backlash against certain rights we’ve already secured, and where we’re faced with having to defend those rights in the various spheres of our lives—relationships, motherhood, the healthcare system, the workplace, and so on.

As her epilogue states, it is: “Fierce, radical, desperate, anarchic, questioning, and sexy,” and with that style—in which she acknowledges the privileges from which she speaks—she dives into the conversations and topics that many of us experience on a daily basis today: sexuality, motherhood, the workplace amid the boom in remote work, and balancing it with caregiving responsibilities.

Looking at Ourselves Head-On

Vivian Gornic

Also written in an autobiographical vein, in *Looking at Yourself Head-On*, the author presents a series of short stories in which she explores various topics such as her relationship with the city, her feminist activism, and class inequalities. These are fresh, authentic stories that bring to mind different experiences that, in some way, challenge New York society and its inequalities, while also highlighting the dynamic power of friendship.

The Two Friends Saga

Elena Ferrante

This saga tells the story of two friends, Lina and Lenú, who navigate the second half of the 20th century amid the economic, social, and technological changes of those years. The series is permeated by strong social criticism, questioning economic and class privileges, the mafia, and, of course, machismo, abuse, and injustice. It transports us to the chaos of Naples, where violence and abuse are the norm, and amid a constant tension between the friends, we navigate the different paths they take, their decisions, their fears, and how these inevitably intertwine with societal changes.

It’s truly a saga that draws you in and, at many moments, moves you deeply. In *Lila and Lenú* (especially in *Lenú*), it gives voice to a generation that grew up in a context of normalized violence and abuse, and that struggles against all odds to change and achieve a different kind of life, different relationships, and different dreams.

The four books that make up the saga are:

• My Brilliant Friend

• A Bad Name

• The Debts of the Body

• The Lost Girl

I hope you enjoy them! See you next time!