Looking For A Feminist Book Club? Join The #Backlash

It’s easy to get depressed about the amount of time we all spend on the Internet lolling about, searching for things and people we do not need, liking and secretly hating things—you KNOW THE DRILL. But, for as much as the Internet taketh away (your time, life), it giveth back too. After all, constant connectivity is no small feat, and a lot of amazing, creative and wonderful things spring up every day from our ability to communicate across time and space. Today’s example: GLOBAL FEMINIST BOOK CLUBS.

That’s right, eggheads. This July, 40 female writers (including Jill Abramson, Lena Dunham, Roxane Gay and Rebecca Traister) have teamed up with MSNBC and Matter to recreate an old-school book club—except this club will be happening online, instead of in someone’s mother’s finished basement. These (mostly) female participants have selected Susan Faludi’s 1991 third-wave-feminist-arch-text as their pick-of-the-month: Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. 

Though it’s more than two decades old, Faludi’s work remains relevant—American women’s right l are still under attack in the media, and between halting debates on reproductive rights and lingering wage disparities, our nation’s progress towards gender equality remains dubious.

Forceful feminist tomes are not for everyone, but the lady-camaraderie aspect of the #BacklashBookClub is a hard selling point. In addition to Dunham, Abramson, and Gay, participants include culture critic Emily Nussbaum and Jezebel-founder Anna Holmes. Medium will sponsor essays and discussions from these writers, as they grapple with how this old-school text applies to the feminist agenda today. And via Twitter, all other readers are encouraged to keep apace.

So consider this your call to arms! Writer Irin Carmon established the club parameters: “from now until the end of summer, we’ll have readers come back to the book, or come to it for the first time, and then talk about it on the Internet, one chapter at a time. We hope you’ll come read and talk, too!”

(Featured image via)