Member-only story
I’m going to make this little intro quick, because I think this post pretty much speaks for itself, but basically I read a lot, and lately, I am reading A LOT about women. I depend so much on the reading lists that other people make — I sift through about 10 a month, looking for recommendations, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to do one of my own, since I’m already doing the reading anyway. If you’re looking for a few suggestions every month for what to read with a feminist tilt, I hope this might be useful. If not, carry on. Also, if you do or have read one of the books on the list, please be sure to let me know what you think!
Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz
The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton
by Gail Crowther
2021
There are a lot of biographies about both Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, two midcentury American poets whose lives overlapped in several interesting ways, but a lot of these biographies are… not great. Plath’s legacy was blighted for decades due to the fact that her basically ex-husband wasn’t legally her ex-husband at the time of her death, and so controlled access to her estate and the narrative of her life right up until his death in 1998. Sexton’s legacy has been shaded by both misogyny and the taboo of mental health struggles, as has, for that matter, Plath’s. There…
