—

Morgan Jerkins is the author of the New York Times bestselling essay collection, This Will Be My Undoing. She graduated from Princeton University with an AB in Comparative Literature, specializing in nineteenth-century Russian literature and postwar modern Japanese literature, and she has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, ELLE, Lenny Letter, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, and BuzzFeed, among many others. Her next two projects, Why We Get Out and Caul Baby are forthcoming from Harper Books. Jerkins is based in New York City.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Morgan Jerkins appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

—

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh is the founder of MuslimGirl.com, an online magazine and community for Muslim women. Her memoir, Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age, was published by Simon & Schuster in October 2016 and was listed as a New York Times Editor’s Pick. Al-Khatahtbeh’s work has appeared in New York Magazine, Time, and Teen Vogue, among others. You can follow her on Twitter at @xoamani. Al-Khatahtbeh is based in New York.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Amani Al-Khatahtbeh appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

—

Suki Kim is an investigative journalist, novelist, and the only writer ever to live undercover in North Korea. In 2011, Kim Jong Il’s final year, Kim spent six months posing as a Christian missionary and an English teacher in Pyongyang, documenting the psychology of the future leaders of North Korea, which resulted in her New York Times bestselling work of literary nonfiction,Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite. Kim has also written for the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Harper’s, and The New Republic, where she is a contributing editor. Her first novel, The Interpreter, was a finalist for a PEN Hemingway Prize. Born and raised in Seoul, Kim lives in New York.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Suki Kim appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

—

Virgie Tovar is a writer, speaker, and activist. She holds a Master’s degree in Human Sexuality, focusing on the intersections of body size, race, and gender, and is one of the nation’s leading lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She is the editor of Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love, and Fashion (Seal Press, November 2012) and the author of Destination DD: Adventures of a Breast Fetishist with 40DDs (Sexy Advisors Press, 2007) and the online book project Awake, Sleeping Heart. She also keeps a blog. Tovar is a former plus size style writer for Buzzfeed, and her work has been featured by the New York Times, Al Jazeera, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan Magazine Online, Bust Magazine, MTV, and NPR, among others. Tovar founded the four-week online course, Babecamp, designed to help people end their relationship with diet culture. Tovar also began the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight. She offers workshops and lectures nationwide. Tovar lives in San Francisco.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Virgie Tovar appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

—

—

I used to take pride in the fact that I’m not a big crier.

That I consider suppressing emotions a sign of strength is a problem, one that I am––don’t worry––currently working to resolve with my therapist. This problem of stifling emotions is actually a lot bigger than my own psyche; it’s a problem a lot of women have, and a direct product of the oppressive patriarchy. Women are taught from a young age that they are, supposedly, more emotional than men, and, therefore, to be emotional (or “hysterical,” to use that notorious word) is a woman’s quality. Young women, looking around, quickly assess that the world is (still) dominated by men, and to get ahead, clearly being a woman and acting like a woman isn’t going to get them anywhere any time soon, so having any traditionally female qualities––like being emotional––is a bad thing. Someone once called me an Ice Queen, and I took it as a compliment. I used to brag that while my ex-boyfriend cried as we watched the end of The Notebook, I stayed dry-eyed. Push those feelings down. This is how you will excel.

Supposedly.

In reality, this technique isn’t working at all. If it did work, we would have lots of women presidents by now, right? Instead, acknowledging that you have any feelings at all causes women to feel crazy, volatile, and full of hate for themselves. Not to mention that this patriarchal construction is damaging to men too––remember, guys, it’s all right to cry. Having a full range of emotions is part of the human experience.

That’s why I was happy that I cried tonight while watching She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

The film is a documentary, directed by Mary Dore, about the beginning of the modern women’s liberation movement from 1966 to 1971. The documentary does an incredible job of showing the many elements of the movement, the different organizations, the range of issues, and clashing of ideologies, but how, if we are going to make a change in the world, we need to be in this together. There is no one universal female experience, and so, to be a true feminist, you need to fight not only sexism, but also racism, classism, homophobia, and transphobia. My friend Ali Barthwell said it well on Facebook: “[She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry] does a great job of showing intersectionality and diversity within the women’s lib movement and a great history of the ordinary women who rose to the task of fighting for our freedom. It’s powerful and fun and accessible and shocking. If you’re a man who considers himself a feminist, you have to see this movie to know what women went through and are still going through.”

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry gave me chills and lit a fire in my chest. I realized, watching the film, just how much about the women’s liberation movement I did not know, and how much I still have to learn. All the books that I took for granted––eh, I don’t have to read The Feminist Mystique, we’re past that wave of feminism, right?––and all the women’s studies classes at Wellesley I never took because I thought, being at Wellesley is enough of a women’s studies class in itself, right? No. To be a feminist, an activist, is to learn and work, and to never stop. Because, as they say in the film, lose vigilance for one minute, and they’ll pull the carpet out from under you. Seeing all the things that the women of the late 1960s fought for, and how horribly we have regressed as a nation––the fact that, very quickly, abortion could again become illegal, over forty years after Roe vs. Wade––has energized me.

Ellen Willis’s daughter, Nona Willis-Aronowitz, says towards the end of the film, “Though my mother was an early pro-sex feminist, I didn’t really know what feminism meant to me, to our generation.” I’ve known I was a feminist for a long time, but it took me until fairly recently to realize what that really meant, and for all that the women before me had fought, and all the things for which we have to keep fighting. I feel a warm energy under my collarbone.

I walked out of the Coolidge Corner Theatre and into the Brookline Booksmith to buy a copy of The Feminine Mystique. So often in my life I have hidden behind sarcasm and humor. They work as a protective barrier from letting out real feelings, because, for such a long time, I knew that to be genuine is not to be cool. To be sincere, to be painfully earnest and heartfelt, is dorky, pathetic, lame. To be emotionally open, to wear your heart on your sleeve, is dangerous. You don’t want to get too invested in anything, because that will make you vulnerable. But She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry inspired me to be a better feminist, a better activist, and a better human being. I am writing this sincerely, with my heart open and ready. Feminists of the world unite. Let’s take on the universe.

So this is what my review comes down to––five words:

GO SEE IT RIGHT NOW.

I am listening to Bikini Kill on full volume while writing this.

The post Tonight I Saw She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry and It Made Me Cry appeared first on E.B. Bartels.