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I\u2019m an incurable book recommender, but also the kind of book recommender who, as a second-semester junior, starts thinking she should have been a sociology major with a concentration in book culture, so have your book review\u2014and some feminist musings, too.<\/p>\n
Over Winter Break\u2014otherwise known as the last time any of us had time to read proper fiction\u2014I read E. Lockhart\u2019s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n In two sentences: Frankie is a sophomore at an exclusive East Coast boarding school. When she finds out her new boyfriend is part of a boys-only secret society, she decides it\u2019s time to shake things up\u2014and unbeknownst to the club members, becomes the mastermind behind the pranks that question the traditional values of their school.<\/p>\n Once you get through the first few chapters of mediocre exposition, this book is\u00a0worth it<\/i>. It\u2019s fast-paced, feminist, and pretty much phenomenal.<\/p>\n One of my favorite moments in the book is after Frankie gives a feminist dressing-down to her ex: \u201cSo I was a monster, she thought. At least I wasn\u2019t someone\u2019s little sister, someone\u2019s girlfriend, some sophomore, some girl\u2014someone whose opinions don\u2019t matter.\u201d\u00a0Frankie\u2019s action and subsequent line of thinking resonated deeply with me\u2014and would have resonated deeply with my high school self.<\/p>\n But while I might have fully identified with Frankie\u2019s character had I read this book four years ago, Frankie\u2019s Berkeley-attending older sister caught my twenty-year-old eye. Frankie\u2019s sister is who you would stereotypically expect to attend a liberal California school\u2014in other words, the type of \u201cchange the system\u201d feminism I\u2019ve encountered here at Scripps (in rhetoric if not in reality). The contrast between her feminism and Frankie\u2019s is what makes this book, for me, so much more than quick pleasure read.<\/p>\n What does prank-pulling Frankie\u2019s feminism look like? Unlike her older sister, Frankie doesn\u2019t exactly want to bring down the Old Boys\u2019 club that thrives at her preppy school: she just wants to join in. She wants that sense of camaraderie, loyalty\u2014she wants the network that will open the door to Harvard and everything beyond. She\u2019s not ashamed of being ambitious, even as she discovers that her particular brand of hunger is isolating.<\/p>\n In many ways, I still feel a lot like Frankie\u2014even though I have the more mature perspective of an older individual, and even though, inculcated by a more radical and holistic feminism, I feel guilty about wanting to achieve success by way of the same old, institution- and privilege-reinforcing success.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know exactly where that leaves us. It would be too easy, too hypocritical of me to say, \u2018go forth and succeed differently<\/a>.\u2019 But we at least need to acknowledge to ourselves which path we\u2019re choosing.<\/p>\n