Feminist Book Reviews Samples For Students

Book Review: Sexual Politics by Kate Millett

Introduction
The published dissertation for Millett’s PhD in Literature from Columbia University was a book called the Sexual Politics by Kate Millett. In 1970, Millet finished her dissertation however she started it way back in 1969 but successfully defended the dissertation and published it almost ten years later. The book was known to be a master piece and also looked at as being very much successful and notoriousduring the time it was written. Research shows that Sexual Politics and economics was a piece that assisted influence and inspiring the move of feminism. Millett’s controversial thesis in Sexual Politics and ...

The book is a firsthand account and detail of the events that took place in the life of author herself. It stretches back to the days when she was faced with the issue of containment in Toronto Interval house. She along with her mother had to live there. The story gives an account of the events that unfolded in the mid 1970s, exactly in 1974. The overall dismal outlook of the social institutions and the lack of awareness and attention being given to the women’s problems that are faced by them, along with the various other associated disturbances have ...

The Middle East experienced various issues concerning feminism, poverty and colonial rule especially in the period of the European invasion and control. During the colonial invasion, Syria remained under French rule while Egypt fell under British rule. The history of the two colonies experienced different events through both the colonial and the post-colonial periods. Harem Years by Huda Shaarawi and Fragments of Memory by Hanna Mina explore various issues that characterized the Syrians and Egyptians during this period. One of the stories occurs in Egypt while the other occurs in Syria. Harem Years describe the lives of the people ...

Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality was written by Gail Dines in 2010. As a sociologist, Dine’s perspective on pornography is that it has hampered the growth of sexuality and distorted the views of both young men and women, not only on sexuality as a whole, but on their own sexuality. Dines describes pornography as a “parallel universe” where there is no longer human complexity, life pleasures or deep connections, instead humans become “orifices and body parts” . Gonzo porn is the focus of her book. This is porn that is hard core with sex that punishes the ...

Introduction

Youths living in North America and other areas of the world that are considered relatively liberated grow up with considerably more gender equality now more than in the past. This is seen through many aspects in the society like opportunities for education, status of the women in the society and the socialization of gender roles. These youths take up courses in institutions of higher learning that were predominantly thought to be a preserve of the men. This is because the society has evolved to perceive women as an equal gender, and one deservedly worthy of equal opportunities as the male ...

Marjane Satrapi’s book Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, published by Pantheon Books of New York, NY in 2003, tells the author and artist’s own story of her childhood in Iran during the 1970s and 1980s during revolutionary times in her home country. Told in graphic novel or comic book form, Satrapi’s book illustrates what it was like to be a young girl growing up in Iran as regimes and social standards underwent monumental change. Presented from a young girl’s point of view, she navigates not only the typical hazards of growing up, but also encounters the violence ...

When The Second Sex had been published in 1949, the author of the book Simone de Beauvoir was thirty-seven years old. The Second Sex took the literary market by storm and in just one week, 22,000 copies of the book were sold. Many readers were shocked by the way de Beauvoir frankly discusses the female body and female sexuality. The book was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Vatican (Gray). Why did the society of the time scandalize the content of the book? Why did the de Beauvoir’s book end up breaking all taboos? ...

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In Translated Woman: the person being studied is a woman named Esperanza, a street-peddler who lives in Mexico. Unlike most ethnographic studies, the author does not focus as much on an entire population as she does on one person. However, the relationship between the sample and the population (the whole of Mexico) is made clear in several respects. It is implied that much of Esperanza's story, both as a woman and as a poor person in Mexico, is indicative of the whole of the Mexican experience. In the final chapter of the book, Behar herself is studied as an ethnographic figure, ...

Introduction

Marlene LeGates is the author of a book called “Making Waves: A History of Feminism in Western Society.” The book was written in the year 1996 and was published by the Copp Clark Press. LeGates has written two other books as well. In 1970, she wrote “The Knights and the State in Sixteenth-Century Germany.” In the year 2012, she wrote the book, “In Their Time: A History of Feminism in Western Society.” LeGates has spent her life pursuing her teaching career. However, a majority of her career was spent teaching history and women’s studies at Capilano College, which ...

Nancy F. Cott. The Bonds of Womenhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England 1780 1835.

The purpose of the book, The Bonds of Womenhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England 1780 1835, written by Nancy F. Cott was to demonstrate that women from a century ago were breaking out of their traditional sphere of working in the home and shaping new roles for themselves in the community. During the process they also learned how to strengthen “the bonds of womanhood” with other women (Cott, 204). Cott (160) calls this new feeling sisterhood.
New England middle class women were very smart about ...

Betty Friedan wrote ‘The Feminine Mystique’ in 1963. This is a non-fiction novel. The book focuses on feminism in the United States of America. Friedan conducted a survey of her former classmates during their 15th anniversary reunion and found that most of them hated their lives as housewives (Agonito, Rosemary 76). This made Friedan conduct interviews with other women who were housewives in the suburban areas, so ran introduction about the spread of unhappiness amongst women in the 1950s and 1960s. Friedan explains that despite living in material comfort, the housewives from America were unhappy. The situation in some states ...

The doctrine of double effect concerns moral conflict, and it is based on a suggestion that every action generates two outcomes usually good and bad (Shafer-Landau, nd.pg 170). However, the question as to whether the actions are ethical or not depends on their results. Therefore, bad actions can still be perceived morally acceptable if their results are good. This doctrine is related utilitarianism, which promote the argument that an action is acceptable if it is of the greater social wellbeing. The doctrine of double effect could be a source of guidance in a case where murder results from self-defense. If a robber is ...

Book Review: Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom

Place: Berkeley, California
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: February, 2013
Edition: 1
Price: $33.35
ISBN: 978-0-520-95448-9
Introduction
Is it possible for the modern twenty-something woman to have it all; sexual freedom coupled with good relationships and good career? This is the question that author Leslie Ball explores in her book in “Hard to get: Twenty-something women and the paradox of sexual freedom”. In this book, Bell conducts an intimate and powerful examination of the lives of twenty-something women; one of America’s most liberated generation of women. Bell explores the ...

Introduction

Science fiction in the modern world plays a crucial role in providing imaginative contents of the things that human beings should expect at some point in time. This genre explores the likely effects and consequences of the innovations that are scientifically based. This genre is used by people to address current trends in the world and warn them of the possible effects that may be brought by the trends in the late life. The setting of such content is based in futuristic events and addresses issues such as the development of science and technology and the most likely scenarios that ...

The religious impulse is one of the most deeply seated within all of us. Because it involves the totality of our response to the events of our lives, it begins with our emotional responses to events when we are too young to have the ability to process those events on a more rational level. Often, it is the effects of these events that shape the way that we deal with others our whole lives. When one is in an ethnic group that is the object of discrimination, religion can become an important part of one’s life, as the suffering ...

In Ellen Baker's book On Strike and On Film: Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War America, the author discusses attributes of racial and gender inequality that existed within the 1950s, as well as leftist attempts to combat these developments. During the 1951 miner's strike of Hanover, New Mexico, union leaders collaborated between blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers to create a film called Salt of the Earth, a controversial yet highly effective film that provided a filmic representation of leftist desire and calls for equality, for both women and minorities. Baker provides a detailed account of the circumstances leading up to the creation ...

The author, Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III, was an American writer that worked mainly as a playwright in the American theater. He also published novels, poetry, short stories, screenplays, essays, and a great volume of memoirs. He received most of the top theatrical awards for his works on the stage, with A Streetcar Named Desire receiving the great Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. Up to date, he is considered among the best known classical writers in the American fields of theatre.
Most of the themes dominant his works (loneliness, desire, sickness, death, alcoholism, depression, etc) are mined from his ...