Ever since I watched Chris Lilley’s most recent TV series Ja’mie: Private School Girl, I’ve been trying to think of a way to express exactly why I found the show so distasteful. As it happens, the answer came to me yesterday when I picked up a copy of Libba Bray’s novel ‘Beauty Queens,’ which I … More Satirising Teenage Girls: ‘Ja’mie: Private School Girl’ and ‘Beauty Queens’
Last year I was asked to write a review of a forthcoming collection of the works of Suniti Namjoshi for the Australian Women’s Book Review, which was published online earlier this year. I’ve had a busy first week at uni, so I thought it would make a good filler post until I write up some … More Review: The Fabulous Feminist (Suniti Namjoshi)
This post in the third in a series of posts on my favourite feminist characters and female role models in books and TV. Check out my other posts on Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender and Martha from Doctor Who! One of my favourite fantasy authors is Tamora Pierce, who basically could be given the … More Feminists in Fiction: Keladry of Mindelan (Tamora Pierce)
There’s always a lot of discussion around of major TV characters (such as Sherlock and Sheldon Cooper, for example) being asexual. So I thought I’d put together a list of four other, perhaps lesser known characters – from books, movies, TV, web comics – who are either named as asexual (in one case), strongly implied … More Finding Asexual Characters
For part one of the interview, click here. Do you think that there is such thing as women’s writing (as separate to “normal” writing/men’s writing)? My character Sophie ponders this in My Candlelight Novel, and I don’t think she comes to a firm conclusion. Virginia Woolf said that you shouldn’t write as a woman or … More Interview with a Feminist Author: Joanne Hornimann (Part Two)
(Please excuse my terrible unoriginal post title.) I’m extremely lucky to know Joanne Hornimann – possibly the author whose novels lie closest to my heart and my experience. I’d read some of her novels before, but my main love for her writing came around while I was spending my gap year in Germany and was … More Interview with a Feminist Author: Joanne Hornimann
Today was the opening day of the Brisbane Bookfest, where three of the convention centre’s halls are filled with tables and those tables filled with second-hand books, most of which you can buy for $2.50 each. (There’s an expensive section too, but I prefer the cheaper sections with the slightly more worn books. I am … More Books I Have Bought
A few weeks ago I was bingeing on YA novels, probably because I was in the middle of exams and wanted to read something that wasn’t a peer-reviewed journal article. I felt like being futuristic, so I found a couple of futuristic ones at the library. Most of them were forgettable, but there were two … More Sexism: easier to see if it’s the other way around?
One of my university courses this semester is called Literary Classics: Texts and Tradition. It’s really quite interesting the way that this course is structured: it begins with Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Johnathan Swift and Jane Austen and then merges into Jean Rhys, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie. There’s a lackluster lecture on literary criticism and … More Why my English lecturer doesn’t get Toni Morrison
A life unexamined 