Another Feminist Talking Books

You've already been welcomed and introduced to this blog twice, but I am so excited to finally launch this project that I just need to write an intro post as well. Like Jessica and Natalie already mentioned, this blog has been in the works for a looong time. It all started with me and Racquel ranting on Twitter last summer. I've been writing book reviews on my blog Paperback Treasures for over four years now, but ever since I started identifying with feminism, the focus of my reviews had started to shift. I would write my regular reviews, but there would almost always be a paragraph that was just a feminist rant about a small part of the book, or sometimes, the feminist rant would take over the whole review. I was talking about this on Twitter one day last summer, and I still remember how I tweeted, "I should just start a feminist book blog, and my posts would write themselves," without thinking much of it. Then Racquel responded, and we first considered that we could actually do that. We found Jessica, Beth, and Natalie as co-bloggers, and... Feminists Talk Books was born!

Turns out, the posts haven't entirely written themselves, considering it took us more than half a year to actually post for the first time. But I'm so excited to finally get this blog going! I'm really glad to have an outlet like this now, since it didn't feel right to let my book blog be overtaken by feminist rants, but I also wouldn't want to just ignore the problematic elements of the books I'm reading and do want to talk about them somewhere. So we're starting our feminist book reviews next week!

Even though most of this is already on the About Us page, I guess I should probably introduce myself, now that I'm already halfway through the blog post.... I'm Hannah, and I'm a 20-year-old college student. I'm originally from Germany, but I go to school in the US... except that right now I'm studying abroad in Spain. (Sorry for being complicated. But not really.) I'm an English Literature and Spanish double major with a concentration in Queer Studies, so I combine booknerdigans and feminist issues in my academic life, too. I'm hoping to work in publishing once I graduate.

As for what you can expect from me on this blog - I'm going to say now that I will be reviewing mainly contemporary Young Adult books, since that's what I mainly read and what I'm used to reviewing on my other blog. But that's bound to change; I'm trying to branch out a little bit in my reading this year. Just like the other girls, I'm going to focus on representations of female characters but also consider intersectional issues such as race and sexuality. (side note - how is Blogger still marking intersectional as a word that does not exist?? get your shit together, mainstream dictionaries!) It is also entirely possible that I will at some point just rant about sexist bs in general and go completely off-track from the focus on books, so... you have been warned.

And one more note - since I've already studied feminism quite a bit and generally live in the bubble that is The Feminist Internet, I might at some point make references or just mention how wrong something is without explaining the reasoning behind it. I'm going to do my best to not do that, but... no guarantees. So if you're someone who is curious about feminism but not all that educated about it, and you don't understand one of my references (or those of any of the other girls - I'm pretty sure this goes for all of us), please don't hesitate to ask! I would love to have people read this blog who don't necessarily identify as feminists (yet!), so please leave a comment or contact us through email, Twitter, etc. if you have a question or disagree with something we say - discussion is what this blog is supposed to be all about!

So let's start talking about books and feminism - see all of you next week, when we start dismantling the patriarchy one feminist book review at a time!