100 books like Forgotten Women

This anthology of African women writers has been my personal lodestar in writing about Regina Twala, a forgotten African writer.

Busby (a pioneering editor and publisher of Ghanaian heritage) was one of the first to recognize that the canon of African writers was much bigger than famous men like Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka.

Her work taught me about a longstanding rich female literary tradition on the African continent – some of her earliest examples of women writers date to Ancient Egypt!

Busby recognizes that we can’t always look to the written page for evidence of this, given that many women writers were denied opportunities to publish their work.

So she broadens the focus of her anthology by paying attention to both “words and writing,” thinking about female writers of novels, poetry, plays, non-fiction, and journalism.

A must read. 

I find the notion of the “unknown” writer quite problematic.

Most of the time, at least somebody has, in fact, heard of the writer. So by whom is this writer unknown, and for what reasons has their reputation been erased?

The South African writer Miriam Tlali – the first South African woman writer to publish a book in English - is a case in point.

Tlali’s novel Muriel at Metropolitan (about an office worker in apartheid Johannesburg) was banned when it was published in 1975 for its critical portrayal of white South Africans.

Tlali was subsequently ignored by her literary (almost entirely male) peers, dismissed as offering “reportage” rather than “art”. Yet since 2017, Tlali’s work has been celebrated.

The question of whether a writer is “known” or “unknown” is complex with many layers to consider, including the prejudices of racism and sexism. 

This study of West African writers who used pseudonyms has prompted me to think about the importance of anonymity for female writers throughout the ages.

Newell looks at Ghanaian authors of the early twentieth century who used a range of pseudonyms, often for quite playful and experimental reasons.

Some of these writers were, of course, women, and they found that a pseudonym gave them increased respectability. But the pseudonym could be a double-edged sword.

A pen name was a useful cloak of anonymity allowing a woman to write.

But it also means that the true identities of these female writers are hard to discern. In other words, women writers’ frequent use of the pseudonym has rendered them both visible and invisible. 

I love the way in which this fascinating group biography of the female partners of renowned male writers brings these usually ignored figures into the limelight.

Ciuraru argues that behind the careers of many acclaimed literary figures stand the important contributions of their wives. These women offered intellectual as well as practical support. 

Many of these literary wives shelved their own creative aspirations to tend to the careers of their husbands.

But after their husbands’ deaths, some of these women found they finally had space for their own literary lives to start blossoming. 

Very few histories of Rome manage to be both trenchant and laugh-out-loud funny. Emma Southon’s is one. I was laughing and wincing at the same time. I was especially impressed because many of the figures Southon discusses (Tanaquil, Lucretia, Tarpeia) are shrouded in Rome’s self-serving patriotic myths.

Southon tells their stories in a colorful, empathetic narrative that dares to imagine what the women’s point of view might have been like. She also makes clear how much Rome, that quintessentially patriarchal ancient empire, imagined itself as founded on the bodies of women.  

An exciting, richly layered adventure story of the "long learning of love" set against the backdrop of the rule of the British Raj and the first rumblings of the 1857 Indian Mutiny. I lent the book to a friend and thought I'd lost it forever until I discovered it in her spare bedroom! Our narrator, Laura, has to watch as her cousin marries Charles, the man Laura loves, and is then forced to accompany the young couple on their honeymoon. Not something to be recommended! Their destination is the Kingdom of Oudh and the vast Zemindari estate of Charles's unknown brother, Oliver Erskine. I don't recommend Zemindar because it has won a host of prestigious prizes but because it is a great read. 

India is an enigma to many people – a developing country beset with a number of problems yet a resounding democracy; a nuclear and space power yet grappling with poverty, malnutrition, and illiteracy; a source of great talent for global corporations and a nation of innovators yet experiencing violence and acrimony based on caste and religion. India After Gandhi is a comprehensive guide to understand these apparent contradictions and make sense of modern India. It is history told in an accessible, evidence-based fashion, and free from biases.

Those who know the field of religious violence may find my choice of Ashis Nandy’s book of essays to be a peculiar one since it deals with a variety of issues besides religious violence. But one of his essays, “The Discrete Charms of Indian Terrorists,” is worth the price of the book. In it, Nandy describes the remarkably civil behavior of young Sikh activists who hijacked an Indian plane in the 1980s. He then goes on to disagree with Gandhi that terrorism necessarily absolutizes a conflict, and he rejects the common perspective, especially in the West, that terrorism is always evil. Though Nandy’s analysis does not fit all, or perhaps most, instances of religion-related terrorism it makes us reconsider our assumptions about the use of violence in certain situations.

I’m a sucker for all things Royal! Give me a prince and/or princess looking for love in today’s world, and I’m sold. This one has a princess and a prince!

Imagine you’re a princess bidden to enter a marriage of convenience with a neighbouring land’s prince. Then, on your wedding day, you get into an accident, your new husband dies, and when you wake from a coma, you find you’ve now been legally married off to the new Crown Prince, aka your late husband’s younger brother. And he’s hot as sin itself!

This one is more on the steamy side, but don’t let it deter you. Amidst all the heat is a treasure trove of feels and warring emotions and a seismic journey of falling for the "wrong" person who now happens to be exactly the right one!

Lisa Barrett is one of the most respected researchers in psychology today in part because she is unafraid to debunk the comforting misconceptions we have about our minds, and especially about our emotions. Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain dispels myths about emotion, and about our reptilian brain, among others. One of the most important lessons in the book is that your brain is not for thinking—it is primarily for myriad other processes of maintaining internal organs, blood oxygenation, energy consumption level, balance, and for performing a host of other tasks. But for Barrett, it’s not just about debunking. She has a compelling vision of how the brain actually does work. Not only does she have deep expertise in human behavior, brain anatomy, evolution, and neurochemistry, her vision of how our minds work is also described in energetic prose.