Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life [Paperback]

When Stephanie Staal first readThe Feminine Mystiquein college, she found it a mildly interesting relic from another era. But more than a decade later, as a married stay-at-home mom in the suburbs, Staal rediscovered Betty Friedan's classic work -- and was surprised how much she identified with the laments and misgivings of 1950s housewives. She set out on a quest: to reenroll at Barnard and re-read the great books she had first encountered as an undergrad.

From the banishment of Eve to Judith Butler'sGender Trouble, Staal explores the significance of each of these classic tales by and of women, highlighting the relevance these ideas still have today. This process leads Staal to find the self she thought she had lost -- curious and ambitious, zany and critical -- and inspires new understandings of her relationships with her husband, her mother, and her daughter.Stephanie Staalis a former features reporter for theNewark Star-Ledger, and has written forCosmopolitan, Glamour, Self, and theWashington Post. She is the author ofThe Love They Lost, a journalistic memoir about the long-term effects of parental divorce. A graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

J. Courtney Sullivan
“If you could enroll in your favorite Women’s Studies class again ten years after graduation, armed with everything you know about the complexities and compromises of adult life, what would you make of the feminist ideals you once held dear? That’s exactly what Staal endeavors to find out in this brave and compelling book, which is one part memoir, one part astute literary analysis. As she struggles to make sense of love, life, marriage, and motherhood on her own terms, the author traces the history of women’s words over centuries—from Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf to Erica Jong and Katie Roiphe. I cherished elã,