reproductive rights

Lindy West’s Shrill is cataloged in the humor section of the library and three of its five subject headings use the word “humor.” So it’s no surprise that while reading chapter 1 I scared my own dog. He looked at me sideways while West describes the role models who looked like her young self: Lady Kluck, Baloo dressed as a sexy fortune teller, and Miss Piggy to name a few.

She then spends a chapter or two talking about her early awareness that she is too big, and pondering what to “do when you’re too big, in a world where bigness is cast not only as aesthetically objectionable, but also as a

Set in Grace County, North Carolina in 1960, Necessary Lies parallels the lives of Jane Forrester and Ivy Hart. At first glance, fifteen-year-old tobacco-farm worker Ivy appears to live in a completely different world than Jane, a newlywed married to a doctor, but both struggle for control over their lives. Ivy is the glue that holds her family together since her father died. And when her mother was institutionalized Ivy, her grandmother, her sister Mary Ella, and her nephew must rely on one another, as well as the tobacco farmer on whose land they live and work.

As a piece of historical