Anne E. Fernald is a professor of English at Fordham University. She is a scholar of British and global modernism with a specialty in twentieth-century women artists and is one of the world’s best-known experts on Virginia Woolf. She lives in New York City with her family.
Her new book is Her Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art.
At Lit Hub Fernald tagged eleven books that "expand our ideas of what a woman’s life can be and narratives can do." One title on the list:
Katie Kitamura, IntimaciesRead about the other books on Fernald's list.
Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth comes to the admission of the many traumas she suffered as a nurse in World War One only gradually. She recounts herbravery and her determination and only after the war can she admit how grief stricken, tired, and disheartened she has become. Similarly, Kitamura’s unnamed protagonist only gradually shares the traumas she suffers as a translator at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Her job is to translate, not to think, edit, or opine. Thus, every workday she sits and speaks the words of a notorious and evil ex-president, a man who has committed horrific war crimes. Having those atrocities, and his denials, spoken into her headphones, has a powerful effect. These are women who put themselves in danger, live in denial, and only belatedly reckon with the cost of their choices. The elegance and restraint of Brittain and Kitamura’s narratives intensify the unfolding impact.
Intimacies is among Cleo Qian's nine titles about women’s loneliness.
--Marshal Zeringue
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