Why am I passionate about this?
I’ve been writing about women and girls who rock the boat for two decades. I’ve written about it from my own point of view, in award-winning essays, and from imagined points of view, in almost-award-winning women’s contemporary novels. Now, I’ve tackled it in the YA genre. I want to keep on exploring what it means to buck the system and live to tell the tale. We’re still making up for men writing women’s voices, for women’s voices going unheard. I’m trying to do my part to ask, what if we heard about history from the women’s point of view?
Yi's book list on women and girls who rocked the boat
Why did Yi love this book?
Terrible things happen to the women in this book, but they all, every single one of them, rock the boat to try and make their own lives. In this retelling of The Great Gatsby that centers the POVs of three women critical to the story (Jordan Baker, Daisy Buchanan, and Myrtle Wilson’s suffragist sister), we get the story that was always hiding between the lines.
I found myself proud of and mourning the lives of each of these women. I felt furious on their behalf and hopeful that the generations that came after them would reap the benefits of their mistakes and their work.
Perhaps most surprising to me, I found myself wanting to know these women more than I ever, ever wanted to get to know Gatsby’s world.
1 author picked Beautiful Little Fools as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
“Jillian Cantor beautifully re-crafts an American classic in Beautiful Little Fools, placing the women of The Great Gatsby center stage: more than merely beautiful, not so little as the men in their lives assume, and certainly far from foolish. Both fresh and familiar, this page-turner is one to savor!” —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code
“Jillian Cantor’s shifting kaleidoscope of female perspectives makes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale of Jazz Age longing and lust feel utterly modern. A breathtaking accomplishment.”—Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue
USA Today bestselling…