Mom's Tree House

Sometimes you come across a book that makes you question everything about yourself and your life. This is the case with “Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism  Changed my Life” by Stephanie Staal.  What is a feminist? Do femenists work or stay at home with their children? Do they have husbands or prefer not to marry? Can women be free to enjoy sex while doing housework, shopping for groceries,caring for children and still call themselves feminists? These are the questions Stephanie Staal once again asks as she goes back to school retaking Feminists Texts 101 as  now  a married and a mother, while juggling the demands of domesticity and a career.

Staal does an exceptional job showing how feminism has evolved through time and relating it to the lives of men, women, and children. Much like Staal, I question my position as a woman in society always taken for granted.  I come from traditional family, my mother stayed home cooked and cleaned while my father worked. My husband also comes from a traditional home in where his mother also stayed home, cleaned and his father worked. Like Staal, I also demanded change in this generation in where the husband (my husband) is expected to help with the cooking and cleaning, while I also worked. There were many days in where I refused to cook, clean, hop for groceries, or anything expected of the “woman” and then he caught on.  

I am a self-proclaimed feminist, a title I learned to wear upon taking Women Studies courses in college as well. I try very hard to break that mold of carrying out tasks tied to my sex but, as I try to break that mold, society always finds a way to impose them on me. Feminism is just not political or cultural, it is a daily fight of equality in where I find too many times loosing.  

While taking Fem Text, Staal related her memoirs to her books in where she first read as single undergraduate student and then again as a mother and a wife. Did her perspective change? Absolutely, Feminism has a different meaning once you are married and have children. The books Staal cites as reference such as “Vindication of the Rights” of Womenby Mary Wollstonecraft to Erica’s Jong, “Fear of Flying“, books I have long forgotten but now craving to read once again, Staal shows the perspective of Feminism through time.   

I love this book, and through the power of re-reading as Staal also points out, I will one day be re-reading this book as to get a newer perspective.   Staal gives a fresh perspective on Feminism to the woman of today, women struggling to keep afloat managing home and work. I think this is a book that every woman (and man) should read, especially if they are entering mommyhood, marriage or simply as a reference to relate to feminist literature.

About the Author

Stephanie Staal spent several years in the film and publishing industries as a literary scout before turning to writing as a career. After working as a  features reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, she wrote The Love They Lost: Living with the Legacy of Our Parents’ Divorce(Delacorte, 2000), a journalistic memoir about the long-term effects of parental divorce on her generation, and, more recently, Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life(PublicAffairs, 2011). Her articles and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Marie Claire, among other publications. A graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and Brooklyn Law School, she lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York. To continue reading, go here.

Disclosure: I won a copy of this book through Goodreads.  Myopinions in this review are 100% my own and may differ from others. No other compensation was received.

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