BY EMILY RABKIN

Don’t you hate wandering around a bookstore or library with that glazed look in your eye? You know there are all those books by amazing ladies you have meant to read, but you seem always to pass them by. Well here’s your primer: print it out, tattoo it to your ankle, do whatever you have to do to read these important women writers.

Emily Dickinson – The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
There really is no correct place to start with Emily Dickinson’s work. Her poems have mysterious form and haunting atmosphere.

Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Dalloway tells the story of a woman’s life through one day’s thoughts and interactions with the world. It’s a beautiful portrait and an incredibility influential piece of writing.

Djuna Barnes – Nightwood
T.S. Elliot said, “[Nightwood] is so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry appreciate it.” Nightwood reads like a beautiful book-length poem about being lost in love in Paris.

Lydia Davis – Almost No Memory
Lydia Davis’ collection of short stories and prose poems is an impressive work on the subject of relationships: between people, between writer and reader, between a person and time.

Alice Walker – The Color Purple
Inspiring and moving, The Color Purple is about uncensored emotion and growth.

Jamaica Kincaid – At the Bottom of the River
At the Bottom of the River is a collection of ten semi-autobiographical short stories about growing up as a girl in Antigua.

Gertrude Stein – Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms
Without using standard syntax or punctuation, Tender Button is Gertrude Stein’s collection of literary still lifes on three subjects: objects, food, and rooms.

Suzan-Lori Parks – Topdog/Underdog
While the text of this play may not be as starkly astounding as a stage version, Topdog/Underdog tells the heartbreaking tale of two brothers struggling to stay alive in a harsh world with only their wits and three-card Monte.