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Halal sex : the intimate lives of Muslim women in North America / by Benembarek, Sheima,author.; Eltahawy, Mona,1967-writer of foreword.;
"This unprecedented and compassionate glimpse into the sex lives of seven Muslim women across North America brings a hushed conversation out into the open. Sheima Benembarek's parents never gave her the "the talk." When she left Morocco to go to university in Montreal, she was completely unprepared to navigate an open and active sex life outside of marriage, considered haram within the Muslim world. Now, many years later, she's all too aware of how common this is among immigrants and the children of immigrants living on a more sexually liberated continent. She set out to eliminate the taboo, interviewing Muslims from of a variety of locations, ethnicities, Islamic sects, and socioeconomic backgrounds about a host of topics, from masturbation and hymens to sex work and BDSM. Halal Sex is the culmination of these conversations, distilled into seven rich and compelling stories. Among the subjects are Hind, a niqabi in a polygynous marriage; Azar, a non-binary trans Sufi; Taslim, a virgin in her forties struggling to erect healthy boundaries with her family; and Eman, a lesbian stand-up comic in an interfaith marriage. With great care and thoughtfulness, Benembarek reveals a tapestry of diverse Islam and of individuals forging a path forward, each in their own way: overcoming shame, filling in educational gaps, balancing familial pressures, pushing back against sexism and patriarchy, and--ultimately--prioritizing their own happiness and pleasure."--
Subjects: Muslim women; Muslim women; Muslim women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The other mother : a novel / by Harper, Rachel M.,1972-author.;
"Raised by a single mother in Miami, Florida, Jenry Castillo, newly arrived at Brown University on a music scholarship, finds himself searching for information about his late father Jasper Patterson, an internationally recognized principal ballet dancer who died tragically when Jenry was two. Jenry thinks his estranged grandfather, Winston Patterson, a professor of African American history at Brown and a titan in his field, might have the answers he seeks. Already more than a little intimidating, Winston explodes Jenry's world with one question: Why is the young man so interested in his son Jasper? It was Winston's daughter, Juliet, who was his mother's lover. Juliet is the parent he should be looking for--his other mother. Seamlessly moving between the past and the present to piece together the complicated web that has both bound this family together and kept them apart, The Other Mother is a profoundly moving and masterful exploration of the power of love and family; of the intersections of race, class, providence, and sexuality; the role of patriarchy in defining who belongs to whom; and of the relevance of biology in determining familial bonds and what it means to be related. Unfurling in the most surprising and satisfying of ways, revelation follows revelation as each member of Jenry's family peels back layers of a story that is at once deeply familiar-of first love, betrayal, and the selfishness of youth, of the beautiful, complicated love between parents and children-and also compelling in its centering of queer lives and people of color"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Birthfathers; Lesbian mothers; Motherhood; Music students; African Americans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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How to think like a woman : four women philosophers who taught me how to love the life of the mind / by Penaluna, Regan,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-296)."An exhilarating account of the lives and works of influential seventeenth-and eighteenth-century feminist philosophers Mary Astell, Damaris Masham, Catharine Cockburn, and Mary Wollstonecraft, and a searing look at the author's experience of patriarchy and sexism in academia. Growing up in small-town Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions. In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academician, the first step, she believed, to living a life of the mind. What Penaluna didn't realize was that the Western philosophical canon taught in American universities, as well as the culture surrounding it, would grind her down through its misogyny, its harassment, and its devaluation of women and their intellect. Where were the women philosophers? One day, in an obscure monograph, Penaluna came across Damaris Cudworth Masham's name. A contemporary of John Locke, Masham wrote about knowledge, God, and the condition of women. Masham's work led Penaluna to other remarkable women philosophers of the era: Mary Astell, who moved to London at twenty-one and made a living writing philosophy; Catharine Cockburn, a philosopher, novelist, and playwright; and the better-known Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote extensively in defense of women's minds. Together, these women rekindled Penaluna's love of philosophy and awakened her feminist consciousness. In How to Think Like a Woman, Penaluna blends memoir, biography, and criticism to tell these women's stories, weaving throughout an alternative history of philosophy as well as her own search for love and truth. Funny, honest, and wickedly intelligent, this is a moving meditation on what philosophy could look like if women were treated equally"--
Subjects: Sexism in higher education.; Women philosophers.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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In pursuit of disobedient women : a memoir of love, rebellion, and family, far away / by Searcey, Dionne,author.;
"In 2015, Dionne Searcey was covering the economy for The New York Times, living in Brooklyn with her husband and three young children. Saddled with the demands of a dual-career household and motherhood in an urban setting, her life was in a rut. She decided to pursue a job as the paper's West Africa bureau chief, landing with her family in Dakar, Senegal, where she found their lives turned upside down. They struggled to figure out how they fit into this new region, and their new family dynamic where she became the main breadwinner flying off to work as her husband stayed behind to manage the home front. In Pursuit of Disobedient Women follows Searcey's sometimes harrowing, sometimes rollicking experiences as she works to get Americans to pay attention to the region during the rise of Trump. She is gone from her family for sometimes weeks at a time, often risking her safety while covering stories like Boko Haram-conscripted teen girl suicide bombers or young women in small villages shaking up social norms by getting out of bad marriages. Ultimately, Searcey returns home to reconcile with skinned knees and school plays that happen without her and a begrudging husband thrown into the role of primary parent. Life, for Searcey, as with most of us, is a balancing act. She weaves a tapestry of women living at the crossroads of old-fashioned patriarchy and an increasingly globalized and connected world. The result is a deeply personal and highly compelling look into a modern-day marriage and a world most of us have barely considered"--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Searcey, Dionne.; New York times.; Journalists; Work and family; Reporters and reporting; Reporters and reporting; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Hysterical : a memoir / by Bassist, Elissa,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Equal parts medical mystery, cultural criticism, and rallying cry, writer Elissa Bassist shares her journey to reclaim her authentic voice in a culture that doesn't listen to women. Between 2016 and 2018, Elissa Bassist saw over twenty medical professionals for a variety of mysterious ailments. Bassist had what millions of American women had: pain that didn't make sense to doctors, a body that didn't make sense to science, a psyche that didn't make sense to mankind. But then an acupuncturist suggested some of her physical pain could be caged fury finding expression, and that treating her voice would treat the problem. It did. Growing up, Bassist's family, boyfriends, school, work, and television had the same expectation for a woman's voice: less is more. She was called dramatic and insane for speaking her mind; she was accused of overreacting and playing victim for having unexplained physical pain; she was ignored or rebuked like women throughout history for using her voice "inappropriately" by expressing sadness or suffering or anger or joy. Because of this, she said "yes" when she meant "no"; she didn't tweet #MeToo; and she never spoke without fear of being "too emotional." So, she felt rage, but like a good woman, repressed it. In Hysterical, Bassist explains how girls and women internalize and perpetuate directives about their voice, making it hard to emote or "just speak up" and "burn down the patriarchy." But her silence hurt more than anything she could ever say. Hysterical is a memoir of a voice lost and found, and a primer on new ways to think about a woman's voice, where it's being squashed and where it needs amplification. Bassist breaks her own silences and calls on others to do the same-to unmute their voice, listen to it above all others, and use it again without regret"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Bassist, Elissa; Sexism in medicine; Women authors, American; Women; Women; Women's health services;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Everything is not enough : a novel / by Akinmade-Akerström, Lola,author.;
"Can a career woman truly have it all? Powerful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi has finally found the man she needs, but Tobias Wikström thinks she's the most selfish woman he has ever met for asking him to give up his life in Sweden and move to the US for her own comfort. Will Kemi be forced to stay, chipping away at her hard-earned career, if she wants to keep him? As things begin to sour and Kemi faces challenges in her relationship with Tobias, someone else moves back into the picture. Can having it all be a gilded cage? Looking into divorce in Sweden isn't what former model-turned-flight-attendant Brittany-Rae von Lundin anticipated. Only jointly owned assets are split evenly between couples. Brittany gave up her career and went with nothing into Jonny's kingdom. Having had a child with him, Brittany fears their daughter, Maya, will be cut off from the resources she's become accustomed to. Trying to get away from a man obsessed with a ghost isn't going to be easy. And the deeper she digs into his past, the darker the secrets she unravels. Can you run from your past to have it all? After fleeing her home with the help of a client to seek a new life in Sweden, Yasmiin carves out her own small corner of the world, finding love in the arms of Yagiz Çelik. But when someone from her past forces Yasmiin to become a caretaker before she's ready, she now must confront and move beyond her teenage history, all while pursuing her dreams of becoming a makeup artist. Follow the loosely intertwined and messy lives of Kemi, Brittany, and Yasmiin as they interrogate themes of place, prejudice, and patriarchy in Europe. Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström proves, yet again, that she is the next great voice of nuanced contemporary women's fiction."--Jacket flap.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Social problem fiction.; Novels.; Female friendship; Interpersonal relations; Prejudices; Racism against Black people; Women, Black; Women, Black;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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No more nice girls : gender, power, and why it's time to stop playing by the rules / by McKeon, Lauren,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In the age of girl bosses, Beyoncé, and Black Widow, we like to tell our little girls they can be anything they want when they grow up, except they'll have to work twice as hard, be told to "play nice," and face countless double standards that curb their personal, political, and economic power. Today, long after the rise of girl power in the 90s, the failed promise of a female president, and the ubiquity of feminist-branded everything, women are still a surprisingly, depressingly long way from gender and racial equality. It's worth asking: Why do we keep trying to win a game we were never meant to play in the first place? Award-winning journalist and author Lauren McKeon examines the varied ways in which our institutions are designed to keep women and other marginalized genders at a disadvantage and shows us why we need more than parity, visible diversity, and lone female CEOs to change this power game. She uncovers new models of power-- ones the patriarchy doesn't get to define-- by talking to lawyers insisting on gender-neutral change rooms in courthouses, programmers creating apps to track the breakdown of men and women being quoted in the news media, educators illustrating tampon packaging with pictures of black bodies, mixed martial artists teaching young girls self-empowerment, entrepreneurs prioritizing trauma-informed office cultures, and many other women doing power differently. As the toxic, divisive, and hyper-masculine style of leadership gains ground, threatening democracy here and abroad, McKeon underscores why it's time to stop playing by the rules of a rigged game. No More Nice Girls charts a hopeful and potent path forward for how to disrupt the standard (very male) vision of power, ditch convention, and build a more equitable world for everyone."--
Subjects: Equality.; Feminism.; Power (Social sciences); Sex discrimination against women.; Social control.; Women; Women's rights.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The power of women : a doctor's journey of hope and healing / by Mukwege, Denis,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From Nobel laureate, world-renowned doctor, and noted human rights activist Dr. Denis Mukwege comes an inspiring clarion call-to-action to confront the scourge of sexual violence and better learn from women's resilience, strength, and power. At the heart of Dr. Mukwege's message will be the voices of the many women he has worked with over the years. Dr. Mukwege will use individual cases to reassure all survivors that, even if their psychological wounds may never fully heal, they can recover and thrive with the right care and support. Dr. Mukwege's dramatic personal story is interwoven throughout as he explores the bigger issues that have become a focus of his advocacy. He will seek to explain why sexual violence is so often overlooked during war, and how governments need to recognize and compensate victims. He will also stress the importance of breaking down the taboos surrounding assault, and the necessity of building a system that supports women who come forward. His words advocate for saying 'no' to indifference and he asks readers to reckon with the West's involvement in perpetuating sexual violence in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to confront the abuse taking place in their own communities. Sexual violence does not occur in a vacuum. The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has raged for over 20 years and has claimed an estimated 5 million lives, is inseparable from Western patriarchy and economic colonization. And this cycle of violence and spoils is not limited to Congo. Dr. Mukwege's work has led him to South Korea, Latin America, the Middle East, and elsewhere in Africa, where he has found striking similarities in women's testimonies. The truth is, through the intricate ties of the global economy, we are all implicated in violence against women - whether it occurs amidst the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo or on college campuses in the West. And Dr. Mukwege's writing will address men as well, encouraging and guiding them to become allies in the fight against sexual abuse, in war and in peace. Building more inclusive, gender-balanced societies will require developing what he calls "positive masculinity" - a systemic change in male behavior and attitudes towards women. Dr. Mukwege hopes to inspire other men to speak out and join the struggle, rather than leaving women to fight the battle alone. He will also make the case, drawing from his experience and a wealth of research on the topic, that when women are involved as economic and political decision makers, all of society benefits. The Power of Women will illuminate the enduring strength of women in the face of violence and trauma, and give hope for the potential of individuals to turn the tide"--
Subjects: Mukwege, Denis.; Physicians; Rape victims; Resilience (Personality trait); Sexual abuse victims; Women and war; Women; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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