HerStory

It’s spooky season, friends, and what better books to read as the veil thins than those that have to do with zombies and ghosts? Our October HerStory recipient, Justina Ireland, does both of those genres very, very well, and we are so excited to dive into her books (and activism) this month!

Justina Ireland is a Black woman who writes YA and isn’t interested in backing down from a fight. Throughout her career, Ireland has been an active critic of the overwhelming whiteness in the YA publishing field, and the reticence of folks in that particular segment of the book world to engage in conversation about the lack of diversity in the field. She uses her Twitter account to call out disparities in the YA publishing world, to start conversations about representation, and to talk about books that uphold white supremacist ideals. Her twitter activism even inspired an author to revise her work to lessen its central white saviorism core (the jury is still out on whether that author was successful, and Ireland herself is more interested in the industry as a whole leaning into reform than individual works being reformed). She started a database of “sensitivity readers” that writers, particularly white writers, can hire to read their works from non-white perspectives, thus helping the industry become more inclusive. Ireland is also the founder of Writing in the Margins, an organization that provides mentorship to writers from historically marginalized groups, and she’s the former co-editor in chief of FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, for which she won a World Fantasy Award.

She is one of the architects of a multimedia Star Wars project called The High Republic. If you know anything about fandoms like Star Wars, you know that there is a lot of white male gatekeeping going on, so Ireland and her cohorts have borne the brunt of a LOT of that baloney. And, she’s responded well; in one tweet, responding to a query about whether it’s smart or safe to include politics in your writing/work, she said “If you don’t like my politics and moral compass, you aren’t going to like my books, so let’s just go ahead and save everyone some time.” In other words, don’t buy my books if you don’t like what I have to say, because it’s going to be more of the same, and you won’t like it.

Our Dread Nation colorway, a delightfully zombie-riffic green splattered with red, is inspired by her best-known books, Dread Nation and Deathless Divide. Imagine the dead rising as zombies during the Civil War, and Black children are trained to be zombie hunters, charged with protecting privileged white people. It’s a new flavor of white supremacy, all wrapped up in a zombie series. And it’s so good! We hope you enjoy Ireland’s writing AND this colorway during spooky season!

Books by Justina Ireland:

• Dread Nation
• Deathless Divide
• Ophie’s Ghosts
• Promise of Shadows
• Star Wars: High Republic

Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:

• Mira Grant
• Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Alma Katsu
• Nalo Hopkinson
• Kaylynn Bayron

Since it’s back to school time, we decided to showcase one of our fave children’s authors (who just so happens to have been a Pacific Northwesterner), Beverly Cleary!

Born in a small town in Oregon, Cleary’s family moved to Portland when she was 6. Her legacy here in Portland can be seen in the Grant Park neighborhood of Portland where she spent her formative years: the statues inspired by her most famous characters in Grant Park itself, and the naming of the neighborhood’s public elementary school after her. 

We’ve talked a lot about how important representation is in literature throughout this book-based chapter of HerStory, and much of our talk of representation has centered on identity, and how important it is for folks of different identities (cultural, racial, sexual, and gender) to see themselves in the media they ingest. Beverly Cleary has been credited as one of the first authors of children’s literature to figure emotional realism in the narratives of her characters, often children in middle-class families, giving children everywhere books that more accurately represented themselves. She found her way into writing about real children because of her own struggles with reading and with wanting to read when much of what she was given to read was uninspiring. It wasn’t until she read a book about ordinary children and their adventures and struggles that she found her love of reading (and therefore writing). She knew that were she to write, her writing would have to include things for the children: humor and relatability. This belief was underscored by a query from a child when she was a children’s librarian; a young boy asked Cleary: “Where are the books about children like us?” And so she wrote them, books about more ordinary children doing more ordinary things, helping to pave the way for books about other children, with different experiences and backgrounds and cultures.

As we thought about what colorway to create to pay the most and best homage to Beverly Cleary, we had a lightning bolt of inspiration: our New Galoshes colorway is red, blue, and yellow. The red represents rain boots are the red, the blue denim pants, and the yellow a bright raincoat, perfect for our Northwest rainstorms. 

Books by Beverly Cleary:

• Henry Higgins
• Ellen Tibbets
• Ramona Quimby, Age 8
• The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:

• Judy Blume
• Astrid Lindgren
• Renee Watson
• Tae Keller

Summer is for reading romance, and we can’t think of romance and NOT think of Alyssa Cole! She’s definitely one of those Jacqueline-of-all-trades romance writers; she has written historical romance, speculative romance, royal romance, and even non-romance thrillers and graphic novels. Cole has always read romance, and in fact, when she was young, she’d Wite-Out descriptions of ivory or pale skin, changing them to brown, so she could see herself in the stories. (As a very interesting aside, particularly as we delve into writers of color and the ways in which they constantly have to prove their stories worthy of publication, is a data point from a Pew Research study which found that the most likely person to read a book, in any format or genre, is a Black, college-educated woman. And Black authors are constantly told there’s not a market for their stories. In fact, 95% of books published between 1950 & 2018 were written by white people.)

One of Cole’s core beliefs is that writing romance, particularly the way she writes romance, is inherently political. Writing a book that centers a Black woman, and writing that Black woman as a fully formed human in a world that’s always trying to say otherwise, is inherently political. Don’t get us wrong, her books are loads of fun to read, but by their very nature, they contain deeply moving statements on race, sexism, otherness, resilience, and agency. And, although her books don’t shy away from addressing the very real issues and concerns of a Black woman in the era in which the book is written, each of her stories is suffused with a beautiful optimism. Because these are, after all, romance books, and the very definition of romance means that they must end with an HEA (Happily Ever After). 

There is so much we could say about Alyssa Cole, because she is pretty awesome, but we only have so much space. We’ll summarize here. She was deeply involved in a reckoning that happened in the Romance Writer’s of America organization in 2019 that brought to light the deep structural racism inherent in the organization, and has been instrumental in diversifying that group. In 2020, she was an organizer of a massive fund-raising effort to turn Georgia blue with Stacey Abrams (who is also a romance writer!). She is outspoken, she is talented, and she is political as heck. If you’d like to read a bit more about her, in her own words, check out this article she wrote for Oprah’s magazine: oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a34995007/romance-novels-politics-alyssa-cole

Our August colorway, in honor of Alyssa Cole, is Reluctant Royal, named after our favorite series by her.

Books by Alyssa Cole:

• An Extraordinary Union (and the rest of the Loyal League books)
• Signal Boost (and the rest of the Off the Grid books)
• Princess in Theory (and the rest of the Reluctant Royals books)
• When No One is Watching

Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:

• Courtney Milan
• Amy Lea
• Kennedy Ryan
• Beverly Jenkins
• Vivian Stephens
• Nana Malone

We’ve been waiting for this one! Talia Hibbert, our July HerStory recipient, is so good, y’all! Her books are definitely steamy, so if you don’t enjoy spice, they might not be for you. But if you do, and if you love witty banter and lots of representation, oh wow, are these books for you (and, she just published her first YA book, so if you are not a spice lover, check out Highly Suspicious and Fairly Cute, which is just the sweetest and cutest book ever!)

Talia Hibbert herself identifies across multiple spectrums of marginalization: she’s a Black woman, queer, disabled, and on the autism spectrum, so her books and characters are filled with representation and inclusion. As she said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly when Get a Life, Chloe Brown was coming out (fyi, the main character in this book is Black, fat, and has fibromyalgia, and thus chronic pain):

“Who you choose to star in your romance novels and the happy ending that you give them and the love that you show them being worthy of can be very political. Especially because I write about Black women. Black women are often dehumanized and shown as unworthy of love, unworthy of care and delicacy – we’re presented as the ones who care for everyone else, so I do think it’s very political and an act of resistance to center black women and femininity in romance novels.”

The tagline on Hibbert’s website is “Sexy, Diverse, Romance,” and we can attest to the fact that this is the case. In each of her Brown Sisters books, themes such as neurodiversity, chronic pain, sexuality, mental health, and body positivity are all part and parcel of who the main characters are. Hibbert works hard to create worlds in which deeply real characters, fully formed and realized, get their Happily Ever Afters with fully formed and realized partners that love and respect them, not in spite of these things, but because, added up, they create an amazing person. 

Our colorway honoring Talia Hibbert is called Take a Hint, which is the name of book 2 in the Brown Sisters series (Lorajean’s favorite for sure!). We hope you’ll take a hint from us and deep-dive into Hibbert’s wonderful writing. 

Books by Talia Hibbert:

• The Brown Sisters books (Get a Life, Chloe Brown; Take a Hint, Dani Brown; Act Your Age, Eve Brown)
• The Ravenswood books
• The Princess Trap
• Highly Suspicious and Fairly Cute

Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:

• Kennedy Ryan
• Rebekah Witherspoon
• Tia Williams
• Denise Williams
• Farrah Rochon
• Alexa Martin

We hope you enjoy this HerStory Book Club as much as we have enjoyed putting it together. We envision an open-ended Book Club, with folks reading or listening to whichever book they’d like from each author’s If you’d like a spoiler of all of the authors we’ll be showcasing this year, check out our website: https://knittedwit.com/herstory-2023-authors/

Most of us have heard of the Bechdel Test, which is a measure of the representation of women in film and other works of art/media. The test evaluates whether or not a work of fiction portrays women in a way that is sexist or characterized by gender stereotyping. To pass the Bechdel test, there are three rules: the work must feature at least two women; these women must talk to each other; and their conversation must concern something other than a man. Many pieces of modern media fail this test miserably. This way of measuring a work’s patriarchal inclinations was created by famed lesbian cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who is our HerStory recipient for June.

Alison Bechdel began penning the comics that would become her most famous and long-running series, Dykes to Watch Out For, in her early 20s, while living in NYC, trying to find her place in the world. She was encouraged by friends to send a piece to a feminist magazine, WomaNews, which gave her a regular spread in the magazine. This was in the early 1980s, and her comics gave people an unprecedented look into the life of the urban modern lesbian woman. Bechdel has said, about her comics, that “the secret subversive goal of my work is to show that women, not just lesbians, are regular human beings“. In many ways, we are still hard at work trying to make that case, 40 years later (gulp). 

The Bechdel Test itself is a great way to test our own tolerances to sexist norms. So many of us rarely think too deeply about whether the media we consume supports a more equitable worldview, and, although more films, TV shows, and books are being produced and supported that attempt to break out of these sexist norms our society has become mired in, there are still too few works that pass this test. The Bechdel test has also inspired other takes on it; using the criteria but substituting people of color for women gives us an even smaller pool of fiction to choose from. This article from a blog that doesn’t appear to be updated anymore lays out the case (and case studies) for a race-based Bechdel test: http://theangryblackwoman.com/2009/09/01/the-bechdel-test-and-race-in-popular-fiction/. Looking critically at the media we consume, and thinking about the representations and motivations of the makers can only have a positive impact on our own worldviews. The more we can see the world from the perspective of folks that are different from us, the broader our world will become, and, honestly, the better it will be. 

Our colorway, Passing the Test, was inspired by a rainbow created from an image from Dykes to Watch Out For, because a rainbow would certainly pass our test.

Books by Alison Bechdel:

• Dykes to Watch Out For
• Fun House
• Are You My Mother?
• The Secret to Superhuman Strength

Want more like this? Here are some other authors we suggest you read/listen to:

• Rachel Pollack
• Kelly Sue Deconnick (she proposed the “Sexy Lamp Rule:” if a lamp can take the place of a female character in a story & it still works, a rewrite is in order)
• Kabi Nagata

Jane Austen‘s influence on literature cannot be overstated. As Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote in 1870: “Miss Austen understood the smallness of life to perfection. She was a great artist, equal in her small sphere to Shakespeare…” Her 6 novels, none of which gained huge popularity during her lifetime, have inspired countless books and movies, and the themes central to her works continue to inspire and intrigue. She influenced how novels would come to be written, modernizing them by streamlining plot lines, adding realistic dialogue, and cutting down on the overly descriptive language that was a hallmark of fiction at the time.

More than almost any other writer, Jane Austen’s works have stood the test of time. It’s been over 200 years since she wrote those 6 books, and every year, books, movies, and TV series are written and released that are inspired by them. So much about her writing was groundbreaking for her time; the focus on the female main character was unprecedented, as was the theme of marriage for love, not station. She critiqued social roles and explored the role of  and limitations placed on women in society. Plus, her books are just plain funny, in an often biting and even acerbic way. Women are centered, in a way that still seems groundbreaking; every scene revolves around women and their needs, feelings, and stressors. 

“I am going to take a heroine whom nobody but myself will much like,” she said when setting out to write Emma, and that seems to be a thread that carries through many of her books; the female lead character is uninterested in bowing to the conventions and expectations of the time. Women considered to be “unlikeable” by the patriarchal society at large are given the space to realize their full potential, and are liberated in that way. 

As you can tell, we love Jane Austen here at Knitted Wit, and we especially love two very special pieces of art inspired by her works. The Raje family series by Sonali Dev has a very special place in our hearts, and in fact, we featured her last year for HerStory. And, the 2005 film, Pride and Prejudice, is Lorajean’s comfort watch. Our HerStory colorway this month, Very Fond of Walking, is part of a larger homage to this film. Check out our Pride & Palettes color collection and our LYS Day colorway, Painted Peacocks, to see the rest of our very fun deep-dive. 

Books by Jane Austen:

• Pride & Prejudice
• Sense & Sensibility
• Emma
• Persuasion 
• Mansfield Park
• Northanger Abbey

Want more books inspired by Jane Austen? Here is a smattering:

• Sonali Dev’s Raje Family series
• Pride by Ibi Zoboi
• Pride & Protest by Nikki Payne
• Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin