It seems every month the Red Flag Bookshelf goes viral on Twitter. You are inevitably a white, cisgender, heterosexual woman invited back to your white male counterpart’s apartment in [insert gentrified American neighborhood here] and by god — he reads! Like a lot of books! And so do you. But upon closer inspection, you see that his floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are homogenous and suspect. Norman Mailer. David Foster Wallace. Ayn Rand’s fascist ass. And the bastard who shot his wife to death during a game of William Tell in Mexico City. Pull up your panties and split, girl. You’re in danger.
I find it endearing that like Elizabeth Bennett in Pride & Prejudice we’re still deciding our fuck buddies based on their tastes in high literature in this age of TikTok and instant gratification. I love books. I prefer to engage with books more than Instagram, although I don’t keep that promise to myself daily. I can’t help but admit that a potential partner adverse to long engagements with novels feels like going on a date with a man who has purposefully cut out his tongue so he doesn’t have to speak to me. But, by no means is a lack of books a dealbreaker. Some people love movies. Some folks only watch police procedurals on CBS. I’ve dated guys who kindly let me re-read Beloved in peace while they played Madden or watched an action flick on Hulu. It’s corny to me to have everything in common with your partner. Even beliefs. Gasp!
Oh my god! But feminism, Jameka!
I think having a copy of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho on your coffee table doesn’t mean you hate women. It makes you look outdated as hell. But I digress. I also don’t agree that if you only read women you are a feminist. And if over half of your bookshelf is “prestige lit” (i.e. the so-called Canon of white men you read in college) that doesn’t mean you’re as profound as your tagline on Tinder suggests. Don’t be such a snob. And, for example, if you say you’re a lover of fantasy and science fiction literature but you haven’t read Samuel R. Delany or Nnedi Okorafor, you’ve accidentally admitted you only love some sci-fi/fantasy books. Your credibility is shot, buddy.
A bookshelf is a kind of posturing, a way to display what you value as a conscious being. But to view someone’s shelf is not the same as having a conversation with them, is not the same as actually learning who we are in relation to one another’s experiences. This is obvious, and yet we still rage in the comments of the Red Flag Bookshelf, disgusted that any person would still read Jonathan Franzen in 2022. We still make asses of ourselves saying oh but DFW’s stalking wasn’t that bad it made him a GENIUS! And we mean it. We’re a deeply, nonsensically judgmental species.
I think about the fractures and modes in fourth-wave feminism. I want to argue that an incessant, almost “virtue-signaling” style of popular feminism we have today (white women-led, un-offensive, socialist-lite, lots of posturing) has bled into the viral discussions about what books are considered red flags. Feminism should be a way of living, a way of presenting one’s self in an indifferent world, but feminism is also still theory and philosophy — subject to flaws and evolving attitudes.
Feminism still has so many social issues that need solving, and its the work of brilliant, but also less than benevolent minds, adding to the many gray and graying discourses around what feminism should look like in the U.S. There are women today who scoff at the anti-porn feminists of the 1980s, like that of Andrew Dworkin. And there are people today who dismiss the “trad-Cath” or “femcel” sentiment amongst young online communities. I think so much of our online posturing when it comes to our beliefs, not just feminism, is defined more by what we readily dismiss than what we actually believe.
I’m disinterested in defending David Foster Wallace. It’s boring. And plenty of white guys have devoted digital energy to that already. And maybe, by accident, I’m writing more about my disinterest in hypocritical cultural tastes than what is right and wrong to engage with as consumers. By accident, I’m writing my half-assed theories on the value of education and engagement with writing that is antithetical to who one believes they are. But, my ultimate goal is to put into words what I believe as a feminist. Starting with the fact that this disengagement with difficult, ugly, problematic artists and writers has created feminism that caters to the comforts of white, cis women who have grown to be the face of the #MeToo movement, despite the movement being spearheaded by Black and indigenous American women.
White cisgender feminists have too readily, in response to the Red Flag Bookshelf, replaced a white male canon with a mostly white female canon. Literature that often does not engage with more complicated, morally ambiguous, or morally ambitious fictional or real characterizations and narratives. Often their selection does a lot to absolve white women’s complicity in other social ills historically in the U.S. The cop-out is that there are no bad white female characters in sight, and if they are bad it is because of a man has wronged them. Won't bother with the intersectional complex of race and class and ability.
They’ll throw us (I mean queer book lovers or readers of color) a bone by sprinkling a little bell hooks here in there on their “dream” feminist list. There’s so little Black lesbian literature on these lists its almost as if these people don’t think Black lesbians exist. But they would most likely add Becoming by former First Lady, Michelle Obama, to this list over Assata Shakur’s autobiography. One being a highly-educated, willing participant in the abusive, shitshow that is American moderate politics, and the other being a leftist revolutionary in exile in Cuba. One of these black women is more palatable to white readers than the other. Whose feminism is better – the capitalist's feminism, or the of the criminal's? This pop feminism reading list feels ripped from Reese Witherspoon’s book club. It’s the feminism most palatable for celebrities with images to uphold. So maybe it passes the Bechdel Test, representing women in literature outside of their relationship to men — but does the literature do more than just take roll call? Whose stories are still missing even though their are women present? Whose worldviews are prized to the detriment of another?
Their heroes are still very white, still very classist. Virginia Woolf, while brilliant are observations of intellectual and artistic freedom, as well as the role of women in society, she wrote solely for an audience who looks like her. Woolf’s private writings on race and class were complex but just as disingenuous and alarming as her male counterparts. How is having a copy of Woolf’s diaries on your bookshelf NOT a red flag? Oh! But Woolf is sooo influential. Which is also to say that she is a literate, high-born white woman. And because of this, does that make her by default good feminism? Once again, this poorly envisioned sense of feminism dismisses uncomfortable politics as long as the faces of its writers are still white and capitalist.
Recommended reading: Memes & Tweets About Men’s Bookshelves Are Going Viral
I hope there is a reckoning in this Red Flag Bookshelf discourse, in which we offer to admit that this current trend of feminism is not for everyone. I find this to be the antithesis of what we’re trying to do here. Pop feminism and the feminist-posturing online fails to promote a theory of feminism that frees all genders and all classes and all races, not just literate white women, from the abuses of patriarchal capitalism.
How come in response to the Red Flag Bookshelf we aren’t listing books written by prisoners, alt-literature of Marxist women’s movements, experimental queer fiction? I think in our books we want “good feminism” — in which there is triumph, all women are to be believed, men are all bad, and ethnic and poor and trans and genderqueer people don’t exist in this story by the way.
I think good feminism, which more readily strives for freedom beyond the binary of traditional gender, is anti-capitalist and anti-racist as well. But I also believe “good” feminism is also bad – is also human. It feels cliche to whip out the amazing writer, Roxane Gay, but she clears the air and is concise and sharp:
“I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying—trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
Feminism that indulges and values what makes us uncomfortable, which challenges our ability to debate, and decidedly wipes away the mask of a black-and-white world, is also feminism that finds (even when it is ugly, abusive, illogical) value in the hard work of educating one’s self with texts that are less than savory, some of which you might find on that Red Flag Bookshelf. Do not traumatize yourself, but from my experience, I never learned a thing about myself, social justice, and human nature, from reading only what is innocent or takes my side.
Ultimately, my plea is against our divisional, territorial behavior in online discourse. I don’t mean to promote any idea that you must engage with people who mistreat you or hurl disrespect. I’m not talking about the comments section. I’m talking about literature. I’m talking about the classic bad agents (here’s looking at you Bret Easton Ellis!) and the lesser-known indies and the so-called Canon and the new Canon being forged by editors and publishers of color, etc., etc. I’m not talking about mindlessly agreeing to whatever is on your partner’s bookshelf, but I ask you to disagree better and with more ambition – toss out the old arguments and the traditional views of feminism and consider a more radical vision of literacy and empowerment. Read dangerously.
My efforts here are to recommend a few of my favorite feminist books, but also some books that are not marketed as feminist, or are understood to be anti-woman, or are difficult texts to wrestle with in content, be it depiction of unsavory politics or behavior. This list is obviously incomplete. For myself, being exposed to worldviews other than mine has always been an intellectual and existential exercise in understanding what feminism should and shouldn’t do in our world. Also, reading literature that is in agreement with my basic beliefs, but comes from authors who have committed crimes, been accused of abuses, or do not have the same socioeconomic background as me is also beneficial. Some of these texts are more timeless and contemporary; a few make statements that are contradictory or wildly outdated. It’s messy, but I continue to learn. And learning is a joy.
Leave your favorite book in the comments and let me know if it challenged or solidified a deeply held belief. I’m also an open and voracious reader, so feel free to recommend!
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian is one of my favorite novels. And really the one book that inspired me to think deeper about how I engage with books that antithetical to my morals. I was hurt to learn that one of my favorite professors, a feminist, found Blood Meridian to be senselessly violent and misogynistic. It is. But, in my opinion, I think she might have missed the point of McCarthy’s vision of the brutal Manifest Destiny of the American West. Where there is no women — nothing life-giving, nurturing, nothing stubborn and self-sufficient like the best of women can be — only violence hyper masculinity, and anti-progress pandemonium can exist. The most gorgeous depiction of humanity and hope in Blood Meridian is brief, but utterly necessary and is the only depiction of speaking women — and it involves a group of frontierswomen rescuing a severely abused, disabled person. That scene makes me cry and it is worth the many pages of violence to get to its explosive, emotional impact.
The Right To Sex, Amia Srinivasan
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
Beloved, Toni Morrison
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems, Wanda Coleman
The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon
Having and Being Had, Eula Biss
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Native Son, Richard Wright
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa
Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace
Oh, here he is…I do not like David Foster Wallace. I do not like him as a fiction writer. But, my god, his nonfiction essays humanize him — and illuminate the absurdity of the human experience — in a way that I find people wrestling with the author’s abusive behavior still can read and share their necessary discourse concerning Wallace’s legacy. I find those conversations more valuable than the pretentiousness of Infinite Jest readers. But to read Wallace is also not a charge to neglect the statements and vital memoirs of Mary Karr, the target of his abuse. Please. Read Mary Karr. This is also to say that we should not be reading in a bubble. Read and engage with the people who are writing or living in response to your favorite writer’s texts.
The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson
The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
Open City, Teju Cole
History of Violence, Edouard Louis
Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado
Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson
The Vegetarian, Han Kang
Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine
Citizen is brilliant. Critics and casual readers have been singing its praises since it’s release in 2014. In my experience, I recommend Citizen to well-meaning liberal-types, who happen to be white, and they struggle to engage with it. Because Rankine’s lyric essays are authoritative and tired and unflinching. Her gaze is directed point-blank at the harbingers of racist, classist microaggressions: well-meaning white liberal types. Citizen makes white people uncomfortable. It implicates them in the universal dismissal of the Black female experience. I can think of nothing more feminist than to endure that discomfort and learn.