Women in Myths
In such ancient stories as The Odyssey, women, who are often archetypes and who typically exist in the margins, are enlivened when their stories are told by contemporary writers, freeing them from their limited roles
Margaret Atwood
Women Writing Food
The characters of Lara Williams’ and Margaret Atwood’s novels learn, eventually, to treat their love of food as a gift.
The Handmaid’s Tale and the Silencing of a Woman’s Voice
While many have praised the book’s feminist themes, none have noticed that the Hulu adaptation highlights Atwood’s special warning intended for women writers, historians, artists, and documentarians. In a patriarchal society turned radical and violent, a woman’s voice will be stifled by taking away the written word.
Reading Winter
In poems by Margaret Atwood, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Robert Frost, we get a sense of the claustrophobia of winter without being overpowered by it.
“A Wilderness of Being”: Maternity in the Apocalypse
Future Home of the Living God has been hailed as the heir to Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, mostly because it talks about women forced to carry out pregnancies and dystopian political repression. Those two ideas together, however, are nothing new.
Alias Grace and the Revision of Female Experience
In writer and producer Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood’s meticulous narrative becomes a brutal, hushed study in the effects of subjugation. How does a woman protect her personal truth from those so determined to rewrite it?
Finding Community in the Apocalypse
Apocalypse narratives so often focus on isolation—a person up against a wasteland or navigating groups of raiding cannibals—but what happens to the communities in these situations and what do the stories made from them show about the ebb and flow of disasters that weigh on any community.
S-TOWN and the “Daunting Exercise” of True Crime
Less than forty-eight hours after Serial and This American Life released their new true crime podcast, I got a text message from a friend about it. “S-Town podcast. Listen immediately. All seven episodes.”
Throwback Thursday: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale is a look at the importance of the rules which we live by, at the frightening possibilities of a world in which fanatics decide our fate. And that warning remains timeless.