Feted by her contemporaries, both her books pioneered the exploration of race identity and identification in America and are astonishing in their prescience. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her.” The daughter of a white Danish mother and a black West Indian father, Chicago-born Larsen’s two novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), cemented her position as part of the Harlem Renaissance. “She was caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. The Split by Sharon Bolton (£12.99, Orion) is out 105. Charlotte Brontë remains the undisputed queen of the romantic thriller.”
Brontë was a woman born too soon, constrained by her upbringing and whose only outlet for her passion and fierce intelligence was her pen. Throughout the Cinderella-creepiness of Jane Eyre (1847), the subversive isolation of Villette (1853) or the feminist polemic that is Shirley (1849), the frustrated howling of the author rings in our ears. “Don’t be fooled by the parsonages and the prim bonnets this bitch’s novels throb with sex. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) by author Sharon Bolton
Meet the woman who helped create fiction: Behn is considered England’s first-ever professional female writer thanks to her plays (featuring the then-mistress of the king, Nell Gwynne) and the novel Oroonoko (1688) – an astonishing book that is unflinching in its portrayal of slavery, violence and honour.
With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved-in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.Greatest female authors ever: the pioneers 107.
In Hunger, she explores her past-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.” I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. “I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.