Since I’ve begun working on my sample memoir chapters, I’ve made a concerted effort to start getting  through a body of literature that could help inspire the type of writing I hope to do. (Regular readers of this blog may already know that I am obsessed with fiction by old British dudes, namely Patrick McGrath and Ian McEwan. But as much as Gothic contemporary tickles my literary pickle, the story of Sex and the Ivy did not take place in a decaying Victorian mansion, so I’m going to have to put the kabosh on further leisure reads as long as I’m trying to complete a book chapter.) I’m lucky because my self-employed (though largely unpaid) work entails a lot of reading, albeit with a narrow focus and not always for pleasure. To that end, I’m refamiliarizing myself with some of my feminist literary heroines and getting to know new ones.

I want to write a memoir that isn’t just about myself and my personal journey. My blog and its aftermath are interesting enough that media outlets view them as worthy of mention, but really, my life as an individual woman in America is pretty inconsequential given the grand scheme of things. In other words, I have no aspirations to pen the next Eat, Pray, Love and I don’t want to write without any regard as to whether my experiences or opinions have any resonance with women who aren’t like me. As I told an agent yesterday:

Though [the book] will be largely focused on my blog and the impact it had on my college experiences, I’d like for the book to incorporate social critiques of class and gender. I don’t know how familiar you are with my background but I come from a lower middle class immigrant family and Harvard was in many ways quite a culture shock at times. Have you read Fear of Flying by Erica Jong? That’s the kind of book I’d like to write — one that isn’t just about what happens to the heroine but about what this story means for women as a whole.

Some of the following are books I’ve read many times over from cover-to-cover, and others are ones that I’ve just gotten a hold of. None are chick lit, some aren’t even memoir, but plenty are part of feminist canon. Here are my recs:

The Women’s Room, Marilyn French
Braided Lives, Marge Piercy
Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, Alix Kates Shulman
Oryx and Crate, Margaret Atwood
Fear of Flying, Erica Jong
We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live: Collected Nonfiction, Joan Didion*
Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence

* I know that Didion is rather dismissive of second-wave feminism and also kind of an elitist, but I’m giving the rest of her non-fiction a chance given how much I liked Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Forgive me for once valuing style over substance.

If you have recommendations for well-written books that critically interrogate Western assumptions about gender, class, and sexuality, please add them in the comments.