I studied economics and found it incredibly boring, exclusive, and confusing at the same time. Eventually, I discovered feminist economics and realized that economics is loaded with crazy mathematical jargon aiming to hide exploitation processes such as unpaid work in the household, precarious production especially in former colonies of the “Global South”, as well as environmental destruction. I found that utopian and sci-fi novels are not only fun to read but may also carry antidotes to reshape traditional economic thinking. Check out my TEDx talk where I can tell you more about all this.
I wrote
Feminism, Economics and Utopia: Time Travelling through Paradigms
Joanna Russ is one of the most bold, creative, sharp, and ruthless writers of feminist utopia.
I love to re-read her when I feel like I am losing my edge.
The Female Manis a revolutionary landmark in utopian storytelling from 1975. It is set in different probable realities ranging from an ironically utopian ideal of a “woman-only” world, to a dystopian 20th century USA stuck in economic depression, to a dystopian war zone populated by killer cyborgs.
Still, none of these settings are behaving as is suggested by these crude short descriptions. Russ’ writing is complex, witty, and hilariously funny.
Entertaining ideas for restructuring social and economic aspects of today’s society are brought to us by a time-traveler, who is also offering surprising fashion tips.
A landmark book in the fields of science fiction and feminism.
Four women living in parallel worlds, each with a different gender landscape. When they begin to travel to each other's worlds each woman's preconceptions on gender and what it means to be a woman are challenged.
Acclaimed as one of the essential works of science fiction and an influence on William Gibson, THE FEMALE MAN takes a look at gender roles in society and remains a work of great power.
This is an amazing book to really get sucked into.
Written in 1976, it is a fantasy to go hide in from today’s dystopia of post-COVID and early climate change. You can join 1960s Consuela Ramos in her escape from a forced hospitalization in a mental institution to a utopian world that she visits with Luciente, a time-traveler.
That future is full of amazing people who do not celebrate hierarchies of race and gender but live in anarchist poly-amorous villages where hard labor is performed by machines and babies are produced in breeders with biological components of three parents.
The book is rich in blueprints for liberated education, conflict resolution, socio-economic innovation, and relationships. The beautiful world is threatened by a wicked parallel future world that Consuela must help to prevent.
'One of those rare novels that leave us different people at the end than we were at the beginning.' GLORIA STEINEM
'She is a serious writer who deserves the sort of considered attention which, too often, she does not get...' MARGARET ATWOOD _______________________________________
Often compared to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Naomi Alderman's The Power - Woman on the Edge of Time has been hailed as a classic of speculative science fiction. Disturbing and forward thinking, Marge Piercy's remarkable novel will speak to a new generation of readers.
Connie Ramos has been unjustly incarcerated in a mental institution with…
Two years ago, devastated by the sudden death of his older brother, Hank Atwater went on a drinking rampage that ended in his being arrested. Since then, he has been working to rebuild his reputation in his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, with little luck. But everything changes after a…
This 1993 fantasy novel is set in a future San Francisco, modelled on the Paris Commune, that has become a pagan queer feminist ecotopia that is under siege and threatened to be overrun by an army of war-faring fundamentalists.
It features great adventures of loveable characters and some brilliant ideas for creating alternative societies.
Techniques described in the book are highly subversive; it offers alternatives to valuing money and setting prices, practices to transform soldiers into military deserters, and generally seeks to unhinge democratic practices that will harm nature, plants, animals, children, women, and the old and weak.
I find this is a good read to cheer up and reclaim your trust in friendships.
An epic tale of freedom and slavery, love and war, and the potential futures of humankind tells of a twenty-first century California clan caught between two clashing worlds, one based on tolerance, the other on repression.
Declaration of the Four Sacred Things
The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.
Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that…
The Dispossessedis an anarchist utopian science fiction novel, a masterpiece, and part of the seven Hainish Cycle books.
The Dispossessedcompares the life on two twin planets, one capitalist and patriarchic, one anarcho-syndicalist.
If you know little about the theoretical background of anarchy, here’s an easy way to pick it up! Le Guin labelled the book an “Ambiguous Utopia” – one of her strengths lies in making you think and to contemplate the deeper implications of her stories.
If you are out for more intellectual fun, visit the ambisexual people (who have no biologically fixed sex), in her The Left Hand of Darkness another epitome of feminist sci-fi.
One of the very best must-read novels of all time - with a new introduction by Roddy Doyle
'A well told tale signifying a good deal; one to be read again and again' THE TIMES
'The book I wish I had written ... It's so far away from my own imagination, I'd love to sit at my desk one day and discover that I could think and write like Ursula Le Guin' Roddy Doyle
'Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power' OBSERVER
The Principle of Simultaneity is a scientific breakthrough which will revolutionize interstellar civilization by making possible instantaneous…
Octavia Butler’s writing is highly addictive, start reading her works, and you might not stop till you are finished (which will take you a while!).
My favorite trilogy is Lillith’s Brood, written from 1987-1989. It is an intersectionally charged sci-fi setting discussing assimilation, racism, slavery, and nothing less than humanity’s survival.
There are astonishing sex scenes and identity constructions to blow your mind. There may not be a true feminist utopia to be found here, but there are hard choices to be made - and you may need to discuss them with your friends!
The acclaimed trilogy that comprises Lilith's Brood is Hugo and Nebula award-winner Octavia E. Butler at her best.
Presented for the first time in one volume with an introduction by Joan Slonczewski, Ph.D., Lilith's Brood is a profoundly evocative, sensual -- and disturbing -- epic of human transformation.
Lilith Iyapo is in the Andes, mourning the death of her family, when war destroys Earth. Centuries later, she is resurrected -- by miraculously powerful unearthly beings, the Oankali. Driven by an irresistible need to heal others, the Oankali are rescuing our dying planet by merging genetically with mankind. But Lilith and…
The book brings together fantasy worlds and heroes of mainstream economics (like the free market and Robinson Crusoe) with economic visions of feminist utopian literature. Production, work, and care are key issues of feminist economic thinking. The economic models suggested in feminist utopian worlds are directed at personal growth, efficiency, ecological sustainability, communitarian governance, the abolishment of private property, non-heteronormative relationships, and creative gender conceptions that are fluid, changeable, and far from binary.
The book brings you bits of my favorite feminist utopian novels, insights from feminist utopian studies, and feminist economics. And it lastly seeks to cross the rifts in paradigms caused by enlightenment propaganda.
Bright but unassuming Marilyn Jones has some grown-up decisions to make, especially after Mama goes to prison for drugs and larceny. With no one to take care of them, Marilyn and her younger, mentally challenged brother, Carol, get tossed into the foster care…
