Discover Your Next Media Obsession through the lens of Gender Identity
To cap off Women’s History Month, we asked our community: What is one piece of media that has helped you explore your gender? Find out how mentors and mentees answered—and discover your next media obsession!
GIRLHOOD
by Melissa febos
“Girlhood by Melissa Febos shook me. It shook me because it is honest, reflecting on the ugliness of patriarchal culture with care and lyricism. I am a person exploring queerness while presenting as a girl. The memoir has nuanced changes to how I am treated as I get older, and it reveals how I may become the person I want to be. Further, Febos offers insights on how together we may reshape our culture in pursuit of happiness.”
Mya also recommends: Secret Feminist Agenda (podcast) & Transgender Dysphoria Blues (album)
Mya De La Rosa
Writing Works Mentee
How to Be A Girl podcast
BY Marlo Mack
“How to Be a Girl, the podcast, is fantastic! Also as a quick read, check out this advice column by Jamilah Lemieux, who makes the case that wearing pink and embracing culturally feminine traits is not a sign of weakness or failure, especially in a society where androgyny is “cool” as long as it skews traditionally masculine. I have also written about this weird trap in my fashion criticism.”
Faran Krentcil
Writing 360 Mentor
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
DEVELOPED BY ND STEVENSON
“She-ra (on Netflix not the OG) came out when I was 19, and in later seasons there was a character who everyone immediately recognized as nonbinary, and accepting of their identity. There was also no backlash (because of gender) to the two main female characters falling in love. I thought that this world was far off in the future, but I loved watching it. It was refreshing to not have to worry about that backlash for the characters and it makes me eager to strive to see a world like that.”
Kailah also recommends: Stephen Universe
Kailah Trice
Writing Works Mentee
Written on the Body
by Jeanette Winterson
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry, Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman.
“At once a love story and a philosophical meditation.” —New York Times Book Review.
Sandy Mui
Writing Works Mentor
ORLANDO
by VIRGINIA WOOLF
“Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a thinly disguised love letter to Vita Sackville-West, features a titular character whose gender changes within the narrative. Woolf queers literary portrayals of love, sexuality, genteel society and the gender binary with radical compassion and humor.”
TD Mitchell
Writing 360 Mentor
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“If not for me—brown skin, spike-studded leather gloves, combat boots and sculptural woolen coat—this place could be 1963, still.”
– MENTOR & MENTEE ALUM KAT JAGAI
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Vahni Kurra (she/hers) hails from disparate parts of the American Midwest with roots in Southern India. She recently earned a…
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