Casual Short Story Book Club

Recommended Stories:
(this month we're again going with 7 as these stories are very short! As usual, read as much or as little as you'd like)

• The Android Whose Name Was Boy
• This Precious Opportunity
• The Woman Dies
• The Purest Woman in the Kingdom
• The Masculine Touch
• Flora
• Youth and Sadness

A recently-released collection of feminist Japanese short stories that is full of ideas and style and has been a great read for me so far. Make sure to read the one-line commentaries at the end (there's one for every story), and I would also suggest paging through the many quirky 1-pagers in this collection that are a lot of fun! -Ben

For First-Timers: We recommend reading at least one story in the collection, but feel free to read as little or as much as you'd like! Discussion is open, informal, and covers the whole collection, but we try to focus on the recommended stories listed above.

About the collection:
The Woman Dies is Aoko Matsuda’s sharp, surreal collection of fifty-two stories that dismantle the patriarchal systems of modern Japan. Blending biting humor with absurdist logic, the stories give voice to the inanimate, parody literary clichés, and expose the pervasive sexism of pop culture. From martial-arts-fighting princesses to literal dissections of hatred, Matsuda offers a vibrant "theme park" of feminist critique that is as playful as it is uncompromising.