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Book 'em Brontes!

BITCH Call for Zines

Check out this article BITCH posted about their library, now including zines. I'm looking forward to their series of posts about the relationship between feminism and libraries. (Especially with our library in the making)

BITCH Library: Call for Zines

Look! A travelling library in France in the 1920's!!!

The Feminal Artery

Natasha just sent me a face book invite to a show she is in that opens this weekend called The Feminal Artery. So everyone get your act together and head down to the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Center This Saturday (May 8) in the afternoon to check it out.

The event features live music and performances along with visual art that showcases “a culturally diverse body of female talent” and raises funds to donate to charity. I am sure it will be most excellent and I am bummed out that I have to work all of Saturday because this would be well worth the hour long drive into the city to be able to attend.


“The purpose of the event is to give a voice to many different women, so that these women may share their talent in a way that promotes community and acceptance through the appreciation and acknowledgment of diverse forms of expression. We believe that much of Calgary's culturally specific talent is isolated to individual niches, and rarely do these isolated forms of expression have an opportunity to come together and be celebrated as part of the larger community. By showcasing talent from various ends of the cultural spectrum we hope to shed some light on talent that is often overlooked, and bring to attention the idea that we are all fundamentally human and can connect on this level.” –Pulled from the Feminal Artery website

Dana’s Summer Book List

For my Summer Book List I will be focusing my recommendation on fiction. The books that I have selected for this list will either deal with feminist issues of have feminist undertones and themes. I am going to try and make my summer book list a series of posts that feature reviews and links that will go up over the next four months rather than as a one off list list.

My first recommendation is The Weetzie Bad Books by Francesca Lia Block. The first Weetzie Bat Book (Weetzie Bat) was published in 1989 and the sixth and latest addition to the series, Necklace of Kisses came out in 2005. These days the first five books are sold in a single volume that goes by the name of Dangerous Angels and it can usually be found at Chapters.

I discovered The Weetzie Bat Books a decade ago through an online interview that gurl.com did with Francesca Lia Block. I did a bit of Googling and came up with this, although I have no idea if it is the same interview that caught my attention a babillion years ago. The next time I was in Calgary with my mom after reading the interview I made her stop at Chapters and I picked up a copy of Dangerous Angles. I finished the books by the next day and I can honestly say that they are still some of my favorites.

Recently I was listening to Bitch Media’s newest podcast initiative, Read My Bitch when my beloved Weetzie Bat was mentioned. This podcast featured Kjerstin Johnson reading Monica T. Nolan article “Harriet and Claudia, where have you gone? Notes on the gender divide in children’s literature” that was printed in issue 15 (winter 2002) of Bitch Magazine. The article discusses the lack of good YA fiction that features female protagonist and cites The Weetzie Bat Books as being one exception to this rule.

The series is a sort of magical contemporary fairytale with beautiful imagery and a poetic writing style. While the books are feature this slinkster cool aesthetic they also tackle some heavy issues. If you haven’t read them yet I would highly recommend this series.

<3’s

P.S. I just got my hands on a copy of Necklace of Kisses and will post a review on it soon.

FBC Summer Reading: Ain't I a Woman - Black Women and Feminism

Bell Hook's Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

"This landmark work challenges every accepted notion about the nature of black women's lives. All progressive struggles are significant only when taking place within a feminist movement, which states that race class & sex are immutable facts of exist."

I've been meaning to read Bell Hooks for a while now, and as we haven't really discussed the exclusion of black women in second-wave feminism, it would definitely bring up some interesting ideas to reflect on. Other possible books by Bell Hooks we could read this summer are, "Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics," "Feminist Theory from Margin to Center,"Communion: The Female Search for Love."