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Upali

@maddonnas_lists

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A journal of art through life.
Mostly book reviews, film recs, art posts, and literary facts. Sometimes cats and dogs.
DM for collab.
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I call this booklist Feminism 101. The list mainly consists of books that came out during the waves of feminism in the US and the UK. From the construction of femininity to the politics of feminism, these pioneering books trace how women’s bodies, voices, identities, and experiences have been defined, disciplined, resisted, and reclaimed across ages. Together, they question the difference between being female and becoming a woman; expose the structures of patriarchy, class, caste, race, sexuality, and colonial power; and recover women as readers, writers, thinkers, and subjects of history. This selection moves from foundational feminist philosophy to radical, socialist, postcolonial, Black, queer, and intersectional perspectives. These texts do not offer one universal idea of “woman”—they reveal femininity as culturally produced, feminism as historically evolving, and gender as a field of power, struggle, and possibility. I made the list from my textbooks and mentioned only the gist. It might not be the "exact, accurate blurb" of the books, but it can be considered a very short summary. So if any mistakes happen, I beg your kindest pardon. #feminist #feminism #bookrec #academic #nonfictionbooks by @maddonnas_lists
22
4 days ago
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David Szalay’s Flesh is a celebration of male loneliness, but it fails to portray the alienation of his soul. It follows István, a Hungarian man, through his life from adolescence to old age in a desultory manner. After a formative affair with an older neighbour, accidentally killing the husband, juvenile detention, falling in love with his cousin, military service in Iraq, and menial work, he saves a man; then, with the help of said man, he too becomes a private-security driver in London, marries a widow, and subsequently declines financially and socially. Now, here are my two cents regarding this 50–50 book: • The narration is flat and the dialogue sparse, which did little to help me understand what he was going through. The story is unique and easy to read, but one-dimensional. • As a teenager, István was groomed and sexually harassed, which he couldn't grasp, and he fell in love with his abuser. We never learn his perspective because the dialogue is absurdly sparse, limited to “okay”, “yeah”, and “it is okay”. He sought therapy only after returning from Iraq and not for this. Many incidents offer no account of his mental state, even as he became violent and lonely and underwent social, economic, and mental changes later on. • The novel is organised into chapters that correspond to major episodes in István’s life, with years often passing between them and key events occurring offstage. There is no connection to how it reached that point. The narration stays tightly bound to István’s consciousness but remains externally focused, often like “dissociated” self-narration. • How he married Helen and hastily jumped from being a driver to becoming a rich second husband is one of the highlights and comes with some details. I enjoyed the rags-to-riches arc that later comes full circle when he returns to his mother. I wish to call this a Bildungsroman, but it lacks the sincerity. The style can be described as austere, “styleless”. I think Szalay employed a radically pared-back, almost Beckettian prose, stripping description and commentary to a minimum, but it did not reach its peak. #flesh #davidszalay #bookerprize #bookrecs #fyp Have you read this book? by @maddonnas_lists
31
11 days ago
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“Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora?” is a record of trauma. It is a non-fiction account by Essar Batool, Ifrah Butt, Munaza Rashid, Natasha Rather, and Samreena Mushtaq that revisits the mass rape and torture of civilians in the Kashmiri villages of Kunan and Poshpora on 23–24 February 1991. In 1991, a group of soldiers and officers of the Indian Army entered the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora in Kashmir, allegedly searching for militants believed to be hiding there. They pulled the men out of their homes, tortured them, and raped the women. According to people in the villages, around thirty-one women were raped, though the actual number may have been higher. Twenty-one years later, in 2012, the rape and murder of a young medical student in Delhi shook the nation. The protest movement was so profound that it reached Kashmir, where a group of young women were inspired to reopen the Kunan-Poshpora case, revisit their history, and examine what had happened to the survivors of the 1991 mass rape. The book is a powerful feminist and postcolonial counter-narrative to official silence. It exposes how militarisation, patriarchal structures, and state impunity transform women’s bodies into sites of political violence. It makes us question how rape is used as a tool against marginalised women. Remarkably, the survivors are not represented merely as helpless victims; their testimonies, persistence, and demand for justice become forms of resistance. The book includes accounts of male victims of sexual harassment. It examines and questions the social stigma attached to rape survivors, as well as the psychological and communal consequences of unresolved violence. Its fragmented structure, moving between historical background, personal testimony, official inquiries, and the later legal struggle, reflects the fractured nature of memory and justice in Kashmir. It asks whether justice is possible when the state accused of violence also controls investigation and accountability. The authors challenge the erasure of inconvenient histories by preserving oral narratives that institutions attempted to dismiss. Here, remembering becomes an ethical and political act. What doe by @maddonnas_lists
16
15 days ago
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Women in Translation. Authors that you don't see much of here. Regional women authors who wrote for women and marginalised people. Many were read in the original; many of them were translated into other languages- vernacular, regional, and international. From Kashmir to Kannada, India’s regional women writers summon silenced histories into song. In tongues as varied as their homelands—Bangla, Malayalam, Punjabi, Kannada, Odia, Tamil, and countless others—they inscribe labour, caste, and belonging with unblinking candour. Their pages are not merely texts but terrains: mapped in resistance, watered in memory, harvested in truth. This post is to remember a few of such women who reshape the very geography of our literary imagination. The books mentioned here might be their most famous, most translated or most nuanced. Let me know if you know them or have read them before! Note: I'll post more such poets, writers, and authors. Kindly note that all the information that I have gathered is not from AI or Wikipedia. I have tried to find the information from different websites on Google. So if there are any mistakes regarding any writer's personal life, that is unfortunate and unintentional. #womenintransition #regionallanguages #womenauthors #indianwomen #indianlanguages by @maddonnas_lists
33
23 days ago
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A woman writing about another woman’s feelings with such eloquence feels remarkably progressive for its time and somehow wonderfully foreign. Published in 1973 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Elizabeth Mavor’s A Green Equinox is a rich exploration of female sexuality and love in its many forms: passionate, sensual, spiritual and, above all, intellectual. The story revolves around our heroine, Hero Kinoull, an antiquarian bookseller living in the small English town of Beaudesert. Hero is having an affair with Hugh Shafto, a married curator specialising in Rococo art. United by their shared passion for antiques, Hero and Hugh have different reasons for dismising the present. While Hugh is snobbish and intellectual, Hero is more detached. Now, Hero’s world changes when she meets Hugh’s wife, Belle, an earnest and serious woman who supports various causes, from pressing social issues to the preservation of a longstanding tree. Despite Hugh’s discomfort, Hero becomes increasingly drawn to her, and their friendship soon develops into infatuation. Belle, however, remains initially unaware of Hero’s feelings and of Hugh’s ongoing affair with her. In a funny fate, Hero meets and falls in love with Hugh’s mother, Kate Shafto, an impulsive and energetic woman with several interests and talents. Hugh feels suffocated by his mother’s boundless energy, but Hero is drawn to her vitality. I loved the way Mavor differentiates between the forms of love Hero experiences with each of her lovers. Her relationship with Hugh feels superficial, driven by sex and convenience rather than deep. Belle awakens Hero’s passionate side, allowing her imagination and some of her fantasies to take shape. And, Kate is the most lasting form of love. Their relationship is grounded in mutual affection and harmony. The novel is remarkably advanced in terms of gender and female sexuality. Mavor criticise snobbish intellectuals, she portrays her women as complex, flawed women with distinct inner lives. Filled with references to poetry and classical literature, A Green Equinox is an odd witty complex novel. Loved it. #bookerprize #agreenequinox #elizabethmavor #virago #femalesexuality by @maddonnas_lists
25
a month ago
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The Vegetarian is Yeong-hye, who refuses to eat meat. The three-part structure- “The Vegetarian,” “Mongolian Mark,” and “Flaming Trees” denies Yeong-hye direct narrative authority for most of the novel. Her life is narrated through her husband, brother-in-law, and sister. So, here are my two pennies: • It is about resistance, patriarchal violence, trauma, food ethics, silence, and the unstable boundary between human and nonhuman life. Yeong-hye’s refusal to eat meat is not a dietary choice; it is a radical, though self-destructive, form of resistance. Her body is repeatedly treated as property, first by her husband and family, and later by medical and social institutions. •Her decision challenges patriarchal expectations that women remain obedient, sexually available, domestically useful, and socially “normal.” Others believed resistance produces psychological, physical, and spiritual suffering because it confronts a “carnophallogocentric” social order. •Here, Food is never neutral. Meat signifies social conformity, authority, familial discipline, and the normalisation of killing. By rejecting meat, Yeong-hye refuses participation in a culture that treats consumption as ordinary and domination as natural. •Trauma appears in Yeong-hye’s disturbing dreams, fragmented consciousness, and gradual estrangement from language. Her refusal emerges from an inner world haunted by images of blood, slaughter, and violence. Violence is transmitted across generations; her suffering is connected not only to domestic abuse but to larger histories of militarism, war, and collective trauma in South Korea, where her body becomes an archive. • Ecofeminist criticism links the domination of women with the exploitation of nature. Yeong-hye’s transformation through ecofeminism, ritual, and performance suggests that her desire to become plant-like represents a longing for ecological and bodily healing. Her vegetal fantasy challenges the hierarchy that places humans above animals and plants; her desire to live without consuming flesh is both spiritual and ecological. (Cont. in comments) #hankang #thevegetarian #koreannovel #womenintranslation #fyp by @maddonnas_lists
46
2 months ago
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Yesterday, on August 15th, 2026, India celebrated 80 years of independence. 80 years is not that far in the past. When we look back in our history, there is glory, there is courage, and there is death. India paid the price of her independence with blood, and the aftermath was a horrific nightmare. The partition was not only the end of colonial rule, but also a very orchestrated political move. Partition literature captures India’s heartbreak by turning history into human loss. It shows displacement, violence, fractured homes, and memories that never healed. I have curated a list, more like a book list, that was sometimes suggested by my professors or peers. And in the process, I realised that these books do more than record events. It voices grief, protest, and the struggle to repair broken identities after 1947. So if you have read any of these or want to explore more, this list can be your guide! #partition #partitionliterature #nonfiction #indianindependenceday #indianliterature by @maddonnas_lists
12
2 months ago
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E. M. Forster’s Maurice is an exceptional queer novel because it imagined homosexual love not as tragedy, pathology, or moral failure, but as a possible ground of happiness. Forster wrote the manuscript around 1913–14, and hid it till 1971. The posthumous publication of Maurice changed queer literature by releasing into the post-Stonewall era a novel written nearly sixty years earlier, when male homosexuality in England was criminalised. Unlike the dominant tradition in which queer desire ended in suicide, punishment, madness, or renunciation, Maurice allows two men to imagine a life together beyond respectable society. Maurice’s painful movement from bewilderment and shame towards self-recognition is well captured here. In God's country, desire becomes a psychological dilemma: Maurice fears that his feelings make him simultaneously a sinner, a criminal, and a diseased subject. His attempt to be “cured” reveals how social prejudice enters the mind and turns identity into self-surveillance. Maurice has had multiple love interests in Cambridge and beyond: Clive, and Alec. What is striking is the contrast between Maurice and Clive, which dramatises two responses to repression. Clive retreats into respectable heterosexual conformity, while Maurice, aided by his love for Alec, chooses emotional truth over class privilege and social acceptance. I think the novel’s tragedy lies not in homosexuality, but in its repression. Its daring conclusion, two men escaping into a shared life, transforms the conventional marriage plot into a queer pastoral freedom. Maurice remains remarkable. It reveals an unspoken English discontent, hidden hysteria, and the romantic desire for beauty following the Oscar Wilde trial. It insists that integrity, desire, and happiness can survive even when the law calls love a crime. Forster gave us a happy ending, which is rare. Later, in 1987, James Ivory directed the film based on the novel. The film captured the novel's detailed period accuracy and outstanding breakout performances by James Wilby, Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves. If you are looking for something to yearn for, go for it! #queerliterature #Maurice #emforster #bookrec #fyp by @maddonnas_lists
17
2 months ago
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Annie Ernaux has the power to transform private experience into a record of collective life. Each of her memoirs reflects a different chapter. In “A woman’s story,” Annie describes her mother’s life. From birth, childhood, stopping school at twelve to work, her teens, marriage, ambition to run a grocery store, wartime, fighting with poverty, Annie’s birth, to her final years with Alzheimer’s. She captured the tormented relationship between a mother and a daughter, the universal truth. “A Man’s Place” is structured in fragments and vignettes, making it easy to digest. Ernaux’s portrayal of her father’s life, his decisions, behaviour, standards, and struggles, examines class and its corrosive effects, showing how it limits and restrains potential. “The Years” is about a girl looking back as the writer, recalling what was ĥhappening in the world around her at the time. From muddled childhood memories, fragments of time with pieces missing, she watches the writer develop, following her dreams, only to watch them slip away. Her desire to write follows her through the years, even if she seems unable to work out how to put to paper what she wants to express. The Years is also a detailed portrait of French post-war society, as the country rebuilds after the trauma of conflict and occupation. Ernaux portrays her life in layers. The first layer is intimate: childhood, desire, family conflict and bodily experience. The second is social: her working-class origins, education and movement into the middle class. The third is historical: her memories reflect changing attitudes towards women, abortion, consumer culture and French society. She repeatedly revisits the past, showing that memory is not fixed but reconstructed from the perspective of the present. I admired her detached prose that explores everything without sentimentality. Her flat style eliminates decoration, creating honesty, and language cuts through shame, silence, and illusions. Her significance is in elevating ordinary women’s and working-class experiences in literature, influencing autofiction and feminist writing.  #womenintranslation #annieernaux #feminist #frenchliterature #fyp by @maddonnas_lists
30
2 months ago
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Translation has always been a bridge between stories and expression. Women in translation carry stories across borders, languages, and histories. When these voices are banned or censored, their words become acts of resistance. From feminist revolutions to queer self-expression, these books challenged patriarchy, authoritarianism, religious control, and social silence. Their translations made local struggles visible to the world, creating conversations that power tried to suppress. Together, they remind us that literature can cross every imposed boundary and that a silenced woman’s voice can become a global force for change. Here, in the Women in Translation trend, I have curated a list of authors and banned books which I feel are very essential for our generation and for future generations. If you have read any of these, let me know in the comments. #womenintranslation #feministliterature #feminist #bookrecommendations #fyp by @maddonnas_lists
33
2 months ago
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Weird Girls, this is the first thing that came to my mind while reading this collection. Yoko Ogawa has a distinct quality in portraying women whom the whole world would call weird. She beautifully captures what should not be told. The Diving Pool follows three women at key life stages. • “The Diving Pool” is about a lonely teenager, Aya, who becomes obsessed with her foster brother, a young man who lives with them in their foster home. Jun appears to be a picture‑perfect boy whose graceful dives into the water stir her desire and jealousy. • “Pregnancy Diary” centres on a woman watching her sister’s pregnancy and keeping a record. She describes the soon‑to‑be mother’s unsettling fascination with food and smell, exposing tensions around motherhood, embodiment, and control; in the process she recalls their childhood and cooks her jam, which soon reveals a dark desire. • “Dormitory” follows a woman who helps her cousin rent a room in a boarding house where she once lived. The dormitory is strange, the manager unstable, and the narrator soon learns that a maths student who used to be a resident has vanished. I think these three novellas can be read as a critique of femininity rather than a simple portrayal of female deviance. The stages: adolescence, pregnancy and marriage show how institutions convert intimacy into surveillance, alienation and violence. These stories expose the cultural scripts that discipline women into being desirable, maternal and compliant. Aya’s voyeurism towards Jun and sadistic behaviour towards children in “The Diving Pool” represent her suppressed desires; in “Pregnancy Diary,” the sister’s cold monitoring of pregnancy and subtle possession of an ulterior motive reveal another form of control. In “Dormitory”, the narrator’s uneasy domestic labour and attachment to the manager show how femininity is produced through regulation of the body, appetite and duty. I loved whatever they felt and did. I loved this book. Rather than offering liberated heroines, Ogawa gives women whose estrangement becomes legible only when the social ideal of “good womanhood” collapses. #yokoogawa #bookstagrammer #japanesenovel #vintagebooks #weirdgirls by @maddonnas_lists
18
2 months ago
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Baldwin. A master craftsman in his personal and political space, is an indomitable force. How he fits love, justice, and identity in a bracket is still a mystery. This book is a profound example of social criticism, personal experiences, and a moral argument in a direct, lyrical style. The language is beautiful, almost philosophical. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin consists of two linked literary pieces about race, religion, and American identity. “My Dungeon Shook: on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation” is a personal letter from Baldwin to his nephew, urging him not to accept the racist labels and limits imposed on him and his race by white America. Baldwin preaches that Black survival depends on self-respect, love, and refusing to internalise hatred. “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,” the longer essay, is a blend of memoir and social critique as Baldwin reflects on his childhood in Harlem, his time in the church, and his encounters with the Nation of Islam. Here he criticises both Christian hypocrisy and racial separatism, and finally raises an honest moral reckoning: is genuine equality in America truly possible? In both pieces, Baldwin argues that America cannot escape its racial crisis unless it honestly confronts its history and responsibilities. Now, if you replace the specific country and the race with any other country and some other race, you will be faced with many identical injustices. Funny how it is relevant at a time of worldwide political unrest and crises of caste, class, race, and identity. In 1963, the publication of The Fire Next Time marked a major turning point in U.S. civil rights history, when racial segregation, mass protest, and federal resistance to change were intensely visible. Baldwin’s book entered a public moment shaped by the Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington, and growing national debate over racial justice. Since then, it has remained a major text in African American literature and civil rights writing. If you are looking for a short political-memoir-nonfiction read, then this one is perfect for you. #jamesbaldwin #thefirenexttime #africanamerican #blackhistory #bookrecs by @maddonnas_lists
23
2 months ago
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