Amy L. Friedman, who teaches English and writing at Temple, recommends fiction by five essential writers.
A student reading outside Charles Library.
Photo by Ryan S. Brandenberg
To celebrate Women s History Month, we asked Amy L. Friedman, associate professor of English and First Year Writing at Temple, to recommend novels and short stories that look at the world from a woman s point of view.
As a scholar of satire, I gravitate toward funny, sardonic, sharp literary works by funny, sardonic, sharp women writers.
Often their work is packed with valuable insights we could still use, but is paradoxically largely under-read. I include them whenever I have the chance to teach a women s lit course.
Sharpen your Women s History Month reading list with these enduring satires.
- The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Published in 1933, Gertrude Stein s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is her most linear work of prose narrative, and paints a sharply focused, colorful mural of the painters and writers Gertrude and Alice socialized with in Paris between the wars. - The Life and Death of Harriet Frean
May Sinclair s 1922 novella, The Life and Death of Harriett Frean, is a surprisingly direct critique of the limitations placed on women s lives, told in moving, imagistic, short scenes. - The Secret Adversary
That same year, Agatha Christie the creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple published The Secret Adversary, a fast-paced tale of international intrigue featuring a dashing male-and-female investigator couple, Tommy and Tuppence, who each provide the daring needed to unmask the criminal, and who were to feature in four more of Christie s books. Christie s work as a whole reflects then-current social concerns, and often sets an admirably brave heroine at the center. - Poker!
Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, wrote a few quirky comic short plays, such as Poker!, written in 1931, in which she depicts scenes she encountered on her research excursions in the American South. - Big Blonde, The Mantle of Whistler and Dialogue at Three in the Morning
The Roaring Twenties, flapper-era short stories of Dorothy Parker are always worth a visit, for their biting reveals of the unfair social conditions dealt to women. The Collected short stories include such Parker classics as Big Blonde, about a woman who is used and discarded by a series of men, The Mantle of Whistler, in which a young man and woman banter about love and romance, and Dialogue at Three in the Morning, in which a woman pours out her woes to a friend who barely gets a chance to speak.
Amy L. Friedman
