Women Writers Meme

Courtesy of Prof. Badger, a women writers meme. 

Instructions: Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you have wanted/might like to read. ??Place question marks by any titles/authors you've never heard of?? Put an asterisk if you've read something else by the same author.

* Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
* Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
* Atwood, Margaret–Cat's Eye
* Austen, Jane–Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
* Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
*Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
*Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
*Byatt, A.S.–Possession
* Cather, Willa–My Antonia
Chopin, Kate–The Awakening
* Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
* Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South
Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory
Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
*Eliot, George–Middlemarch
*Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
Erdrich, Louise–Tracks
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
* Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper
Gordimer, Nadine–July's People
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
hooks, bell–Bone Black
Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
*Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
*Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing
* L'Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
* Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
* Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series (any of them)
McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts
? Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
? Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
*Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
? Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
* Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women
* Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller's Wife
* Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
* O'Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister's Keeper
Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
* Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
* Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
? Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping
? Rocha, Sharon–For Lac
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
* Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth
* Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
? Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle
Steel, Danielle–The House
Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah–You're Wearing That
Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife's Tale
* Urquhart, Jane–Away
* Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer's Beginnings
* Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
* Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
* Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
* Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One's Own

Comments

[Josh]

I'd like to recommend Brown Girl, Brownstones, not just for its rich depiction of mid-century West Indian life in NYC but because it's one of those rarities, a major 1950's U.S. novel that affirms female agency. It's like the anti-Shirley Jackson in that way, I guess.

[Steve]

Err. Why on earth is Hillary Rodham Clinton on that list? Especially when neither Mary McCarthy nor Lillian Hellman made the cut. Sharon Rocha is Laci Peterson's... mother, I think? Her inclusion on this list is boggling.

Rachel Ray is a cookbook author who has a show on the Food Network, L.P. Kamala Markandaya is an Anglo-Indian writer who I think wrote in the '50s and '60s; I've read A Handful of Rice, but it didn't make much of an impression.

And they're waaaay outside your period and areas of professional interest, but Patricia Highsmith's thrillers, particularly The Talented Mr. Ripley, are excellent, fun reading (even ignoring the rather tangled view of male gender roles that Highsmith presents). I haven't read any of Highsmith's her lesbian novel, The Price of Salt (her thrillers are pretty much exclusively focussed on men), but I know at least one person who thinks highly of it.

[bob]

Elizabeth Strout's Amy and Isabelle, about a mother and daughter in Maine, is a very good book. Her new novel Abide with Me, just released to excellent reviews, concerns a Protestant minister, also in Maine, whose hero is Bonhoeffer but who himself is feeling lost after the death of his wife. I was impressed by how Strout handles a man not in control of his situation. Strout herself, married to a New York Jew, is not religious but an interested observer.

[guile]

the lovely bones.. i love that book :)..