School of Health & Wellbeing

To mark International Women's Day, which falls in March, our Wellbeing of Older Worker's group (WOW) asked IHW staff and students to share with colleagues the female authors and books written by women that they would recommend to others...

Here is what you came up with! 

Emily Chappell "Where there's a will: hope, grief and endurance in a cycle race across a continent"

Emily Chappell comes across as an amazing person – unbelievably robust and self-sufficient but also self-aware and insightful. "Adventure books" like this are often written by people who seem immune to suffering. Not Emily Chappell. Her account may not make you want to ride the Transcontinental, but it will make you want to meet her.

Peter Craig
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences

Mary Oliver

There is a Mary Oliver poem to help us with every situation we might find ourselves in, every problem faced, and every emotion we might be struggling with. Hard to recommend a single book as they’re all amazing! But, if I had to choose, "Dog Songs" is magical – tissues at the ready though if you have ever loved and lost a pupper...!

Jane Goodfellow
IHW Admin

Yaa Gyasi "Homegoing"

Sarah Amele 
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit

Caroline Criado Perez "Invisible Women: exposing data bias in a world designed by men"

This is a factual book that gives many examples of instances where policy or manufacturers or drug companies do not collect data on the impacts of their products on women, therefore disadvantaging women. It is a book I regularly recommend to men and women. Invisible Women should be mandatory reading for all.

Ruth Dundas
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit

Chamamanda Ngozi Adichie "Americanah"

I really enjoyed this book. It is a great story but also gives an insight into what it was like to be a young black woman moving from Nigeria to America. The same author wrote Half of a yellow sun, telling the story of the Biafran uprising, something I had heard of but didn't know much about.

Janet Bouttell
Health Economics and Health Technology Assessment

Alex Gray

Alex Gray is a Scottish female author who writes crime stories with a particular detective and his family/friends woven into the story (including a Glasgow University Professor!). The crime scenes and stories are set around Glasgow which all helps to add interest to the story.

Louise Inglis
Robertson Centre for Biostatistics

Curtis Sittenfeld

I love Curtis Sittenfeld and recommend her books American Wife and Rodham. Fiction partly based on fact, they follow the lives of two First Ladies and the enormous impact of being married (or the alternative reality of not being married) to POTUS. Mostly they are great reads! But I think many women (or indeed people) can relate to the themes. In many couples there is a decision to put one person's career first. Some careers are more consuming than others. This being an extreme example. Whether Hilary would have been better off without Bill is a question we will never answer, but it is interesting to imagine it with Sittenfeld.

Claire Hastie
Public Health

Adele Parks

Very thought provoking. Really questions your morals and moral conscience and keeps you on the edge of your seat at the same time

Alieda McKinney
Health Economics and Health Technology Assessment

Alfa Holden "I needed a Viking"

Thought provoking poetry.

Danni Macpherson
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences

Jean Rhys "Wide Sargasso Sea"

Wide Sargasso Sea is a postcolonial and feminist prequel to (or re-writing of) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. It describes the life of Mr Rochester's wife Antoinette Cosway from her childhood to arranged marriage to Mr Rochester. It's a short but powerful book.

Enni Miller
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences

Roxane Gay "Bad Feminist"

These essays combine humour, politics, critical analysis and popular culture. When they don't make you laugh, they'll make you cry. 

Enni Miller
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences

Anne Tyler "Clock Dance"

I picked up this book recently by chance and just really enjoyed the gentle observations of the world from this older woman's point of view. Almost nothing happens in the book in terms of big events but lots of small, loving gestures. It gives a focus to the little things in life that matter like just being there and listening to people. I suppose it kind of reminded me of my own mother who was always present for us.

Mary-Kate Hannah
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences

Fay Weldon

A feminist writer whose stories are usually quite funny while making pointed statements. I read a lot of Weldon in my 20s and 30s. I have not revisited for some time, but may now.

Margaret Naismith
Mental Health and Wellbeing

---

First published: 1 May 2018