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Dear JOhn,
We’re back with our Equality Now
Recommends Newsletter, bringing you a round up of recommendations from
our staff and supporters of books, movies, TV shows, and podcasts,
that act as a megaphone for women's rights.
We also recently launched a live
version of our recommendations newsletter, the At
Home With Series, where we have cozy
conversations with some of our favorite authors, filmmakers and
creators. Our next event in this series is this
Thursday 28 May with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Ariel
Wengroff, the creators of the short animated film, Sitara, which explores the realities of child
marriage.
Books
Girl,
Woman, Other by Bernardine
Evaristo
Girl,
Woman, Other follows the
lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women,
black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends
and lovers, across the country and through the years. Teeming with
life and crackling with energy — a love song to modern Britain and
black womanhood. This was a joint winner of the 2019 Man Booker
Prize.
#IntersectionalFeminism
#LGBTQ
Kim
Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo
A fierce international bestseller that
launched Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration
in the face of rigid misogyny. In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s
entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist—a narrative infused with
disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born
in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung
quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother.
Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her—from
the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls,
to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom
and post their photos online. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s
fault that men harass her late at night; in her husband’s eyes, it is
Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their
child—to put them first.
#WomensRights
#Korea
Undoing
Gender by Judith
Butler
Undoing
Gender constitutes Judith
Butler's recent reflections on gender and sexuality, focusing on new
kinship, psychoanalysis and the incest taboo, transgender, intersex,
diagnostic categories, social violence, and the tasks of social
transformation. In terms that draw from feminist and queer theory,
Butler considers the norms that govern--and fail to govern--gender and
sexuality as they relate to the constraints on recognizable
personhood. She writes about the "New Gender Politics" that has
emerged in recent years, a combination of movements concerned with
transgender, transsexuality, intersex, and their complex relations to
feminist and queer theory.
#GenderTheory
Films
On
the Record Documentary
On The Record presents the powerful and haunting story of
music executive Drew Dixon as she grapples with her decision to become
one of the first women of color, in the wake of #MeToo, to come forward and publicly name hip-hop mogul Russell
Simmons of sexual assault. The documentary chronicles not only Dixon’s
story but that of several other accusers – Sil Lai Abrams and Sheri
Sher. The film premiered at the Sundance Film
Festival and will be available on HBOMax starting Wednesday, May
27th!
#MeToo
#EndSexualViolence
Devi
This short film is a tale of nine women
navigating through an unusual sisterhood thrust upon them by
circumstances. A diverse group of Indian women discuss violence they
have been through, and if/how to help one more person who is knocking
on the door of the house they share.
#India #EndSexualViolence
Lionheart
Lionheart tells the
story of Adaeze Obiagu, who wants to substitute for her father, Chief
Ernest Obiagu, when he can no longer run his company due to health
issues. Her father, however, asks his brother Godswill to take his
place, and Godswill and Adaeze have to work hard together to save the
company from debt and to not lose it to the businessman Igwe Pascal.
Lionheart was the first netflix original film produced in
Nigeria.
#Nigeria #FemalePower
TV Shows
Las
Chicas Del Cable (Cable Girls)
It's the 1920s and Spain has
just gotten its first national telephone company, located in Madrid.
For four young women who get jobs there, it's more than just work. It
represents progress that is being made at the time as women are
gaining more equality with men. This drama series follows the ladies,
known as "cable girls," who feel attached in different ways -- to
their families, their partners and their memories.
#Spain
Mrs.
America
"Mrs. America" tells the
story of the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and
the unexpected backlash led by a conservative woman named Phyllis
Schlafly, aka "the sweetheart of the silent majority." Through the
eyes of the women of the era -- both Schlafly and second-wave
feminists Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug
and Jill Ruckelshaus -- the series explores how one of the toughest
battlegrounds in the culture wars of the '70s helped give rise to the
Moral Majority and forever shifted the political
landscape.
#USA #ERANow
Podcasts & Music
“Mesh
Hastanna / I Won’t Wait” by Felukah and Rama Duwaji
This rap song by Egyptian rap artist Felukah
is set to animated illustrations by Syrian illustrator Rama Duwaji.
Developed in collaboration with the artists and Equality Now’s
partner, Musawah, who are spearheading a global Campaign for Justice
in Muslim Family Laws, bringing together advocates for family law
reform from across three regions—Middle East and North Africa,
Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia—to build support at
the national, regional and global levels for the urgency of reform
towards equality and justice for women living in Muslim
contexts.
#LegalEquality
#FreeOurFamilyLaws
A
Criminal Underworld of Child Abuse Pt 1 & 2
A month long New York Times investigation
has uncovered a digital underworld of child sexual abuse imagery that
is hiding in plain sight. In part one of a two-part series, we look at
the almost unfathomable scale of the problem — and just how little is
being done to stop it.
#EndOnlineSexualExploitation
Do you have any suggestions for us to share next month? Please send
them to us, we’d love to hear from you!
In
solidarity,
Bryna
Subherwal
Advocacy Campaign Manager
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