ByGD
This spring it felt like every bookish social media account I follow was raving about The Kiss Quotient, the debut novel by Helen Hoang. The premise was charming – a gender-flipped Pretty Woman starring a mixed-race man and an autistic woman. The backstory (you know how I can’t resist a good backstory) involved the author locating herself on the spectrum through research for the novel. It was only a matter of time until I read it. Read More
ByGD
When I was in the second grade, my teacher read Old Yeller to the class. When she got to the end, she started crying and had to go get Mrs. Wilson to finish for her. From then on I felt smugly superior to my teacher. Don’t get me wrong. Ain’t nothing sadder than a dead dog, but get a hold of yourself woman. That was my attitude then. Read More
ByGD
I was introduced to Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest by the fabulous Felicia Day and her Vaginal Fantasy Bookclub. But I don’t know how I missed it on my own, since it’s right up my alley. Set in a mythological Ireland when Druids still held the upper hand against expanding Christendom and Fair Folk still meddled in the lives of mortals, Daughter of the Forest is a retelling of the “Six Swans” fairy tale. Read More
ByGD
While helping my daughter navigate the graphic novel section at the International District Library, the cover of The Bathing Women on a nearby shelf caught my eye. I couldn’t resist a story about the intersecting lives of a group of women shaped by the Cultural Revolution. I read it almost in one sitting, gulping down the last chapter hours after my bedtime. Going to bed instead of reading the last chapter would have been a better choice.
ByGD
Leonora Carrington
This is part two of the story of my recent foray into Surrealist fiction. Read Part One here.
Suddenly I remembered – Leonora Carrington was Remedios Varo’s best friend! (Okay, I confess. I googled her.)
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I became a member of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. I never made it to DC to visit the museum, but the member materials acquainted me with Varo, a Spanish surrealist who lived in Mexico. Her life was every bit as shockingly bohemian as that of her contemporary Frida Kahlo, but her art more closely resembled Hieronymus Bosch. According to my special-ordered copy of Janet Kaplan’s biography of Varo, she and Carrington
established an association between women’s traditional roles and magical acts of transformation…stimulated by the Surrealist belief in ‘occultation of the Marvelous’ and by wide reading in witchcraft, alchemy, sorcery, Tarot, and magic.
They collaborated on plays, constructed elaborate hats, and victimized their famous art world friends with performance art/pranks that sometimes made their way into each other’s painting and writing.