Chapter 31: Women Unbound Challenge

As I told earlier, I thought I would join two reading challenges now, and then, maybe some time later, add some, maybe smaller, challenges to that. I already posted about joining the GLBT Challenge hosted by Amanda from The Zen Leaf, and here comes the post about the Women Unbound Challenge, but I think I'm already slipping from the decision to join only two challenges. The World Religion Challenge sounds simply too tempting, plus I have already decided to participate in the Woolf in Winter read-along. Well, how could I not! This blog was named after a non-fiction book by V. W., my heroine! :)

But back to the Women Unbound Challenge. This is a challenge co-hosted by Aarti, Care, and Eva. The aim is to read books, both fiction and non-fiction, related to the broad idea of women's studies. There are three levels of participation, and I will be aiming for the Suffragette level and read 8 books, out of which at least 3 should be non-fiction, because had I been born 100 years earlier I would have been a suffragette, too! :)

I read history at university and specialized in late 19th-early 20th century women's history. I wrote my master's thesis about the international connections of Maikki Friberg, one of the most important Finnish women's rights activist during that time period. So, I guess, I kind of have to join the Women Unbound Challenge! :) I also read a lot of fiction that would fit this challenge anyway. I'm actually thinking of trying to read more non-fiction for this challenge. I'll read mostly fiction for the GLBT challenge, so it will be a nice balance. Below are two lists. Both, of course, include the books I might read for the challenge, but also books I have read earlier, but thought some of you might find interesting. The books I have read are marked with a *. If any of you would like to know more about any of those books, just leave a comment or send me an e- mail at abookblogofonesown [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk.

Fiction for the Women Unbound Challenge:

*Alsanea, Rajaa: Girls of Riyadh
*Atwood, Margaret: The Edible Woman
*Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid's Tale (This is a must read, if you have not yet read this!)
Atwood, Margaret: Penelopiad
Barron, Stephanie: The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf
Chevalier, Tracy: Remarkable Creatures
Gaskell, Elizabeth: Four Short Stories
Hall, Sarah: The Carhullan Army
James, Henry: The Bostonians
*Kathy, Page: The Story of My Face
Khadra, Yasmina: The Swallows of Kabul
al-Sa'davi, Nawal: The Fall of the Imam
Sellers, Susan: Vanessa and Virginia
Shakib, Siba: Samira and Samir
Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
Vartio, Marja-Liisa: The Parson's Widow
*Woolf, Virginia: Mrs. Dalloway (for the umpteenth time, but I love this book! :))
*Woolf, Virginia: Orlando (overlapping with the GLBT challenge)

Well, I'll keep the fiction list short. The non-fiction list below is a tiny bit longer:

Allen, Ann Taylor: Women in the Twentieth-Century Europe
*Anderson, Bonnie S.: Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830-1860
*Anderson, Harriet: Utopian Feminism: Women's Movements in Fin-de-siècle Vienna
Aung San, Suu Kyi: Letters from Burma
Brooks, Geraldine: Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
Buckley, Veronica: Christina: Queen of Sweden
*Building Sisterhood: A Feminist History of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, compiled by Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Bynum, Caroline Walker: Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women
Campbell, Elizabeth Delinger: Before Victoria: Extraordinary Women of the British Romantic Era
Cavallaro, Dani: French Feminist Theory: An Introduction
Dinnage, Rosemary: Alone! Alona!: Lives of Some Outsider Women
DuBois, Ellen: Feminism & Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America 1848-1869
Firestone, Shulamith: The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution
Forster, Margaret: Significant Sisters: The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1839-1939
Gardner, Catherine Villanueva: Rediscovering Women Philosophers
*Gilbert, Elizabeth: Eat, Pray, Love
Irigaray, Luce: Luce Irigaray: Key Writings
Kristeva, Julia: Hannah Arendt
*Kuhns, Elizabeth: The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns
Lee,Hermione: Virginia Woolf
Mann, William J.: Kate: The Womaan Who Was Katherine Hepburn
*McFadden, Margaret H.: Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism
McRobbie, Angela: The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change
Moi, Toril: Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman
Moore, Lucy Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France
Nagel, Susan: Marie-Thérèse: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter
Nightingale, Florence: Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile 1849-1850
Oldfield, Sybil: Spinsters of the Parish: The Life and Times of F. M. Mayorand and Mary Sheepshanks
Perreault, Jeanne: Writing Shelves: Contemporary Feminist Autography
Pink, Sarah: Women and Bullfighting: Gender, Sex and the Consumption of Tradition
Politics of Gender: A Century of Women's Suffrage in Finland, ed. by Anna Moring
Raitt, Suzanne: Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
Rich, Adrienne: Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
Robinson, Jane: Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education
*Rupp, Leila J.: Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement
Skaine, Rosemarie: The Women of Afghanistan under the Taliban
Spender, Dale: Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them: From Alphra Behn to Adrienne Rich
*Suffrage & Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives, ed. by Caroline Daly & Melanie Nolan
*Tillyard, Stella: Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1778-1832
Tolan, Fiona: Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction
Tomalin, Claire: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft
Vicinus, Martha: Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928
Wosk, Julie: Women and the Machine: Representations from the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age
Åhmansson, Gabriella: A Life and Its Mirrors. Volume I: A Feminist Reading of L. M. Montgomery's Fiction
*800 Years of Women's Letters, ed. by Olga Kenyon