Content Warning: This post discusses death by suicide and sexual assault, specifically sexual assault against an enslaved woman.

I recently finished reading A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America's Ghosts by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes to try and get in the Halloween spirit. Ghosts have long been a fascination of mine, ever since I was a child, despite the fact that I am and always have been terrified of them. Yet in all of my years of ghost lore, this book, moreso a collection of stories regarding ghosts than a collection of ghost stories (and I maintain that there is a difference), has caused me to see the role that ghosts play in a whole new light. I had never thought about the fact that most ghosts, including the few in my own family, are women, or, as the authors bring up, ghost tours are thereby a continuation of exploiting these women beyond their deaths. Both authors are ghost tour hosts, by the way.

I should mention that I absolutely believe in ghosts. To me, ghost tours aren't so much a fun late-night activity with your friends as they are somewhat a history tour where we learn the stories of our past. Despite my interest in ghosts, I have a healthy respect and fear of them, so there are some places I refuse to step near, let alone visit. The main one, as someone from LA, is the Stay on Main Hotel, previously known as the Hotel Cecil. The other main one though is any plantation, which is why one story that the authors shared stayed with me the most.

Plantation tours, especially ghost tours, feel especially exploitative. These are horrific places where innumerous tragedies occurred, and yet there are people who claim them as part of their heritage and throw weddings and parties there (on a side note, I recommend reading When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen for a novel about returning home for a plantation wedding and the erasure of history that said venues do). So the chapter about Molly and Mathilda of the Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah, Georgia really stuck with me. The house's history is often colored with language about "affairs" between Francis Sorrel, the man who owned the house, and Molly, an enslaved woman at the house. People say that he was "caught being intimate" with Molly, as if intimacy is the same as sexual assault. Both Molly and Mathilda, Sorrel's wife, were reported to die by suicide within weeks of each other, with Mathilda apparently doing so after catching her husband with Molly. Molly is considered a direct cause of Mathilda Sorrel's suicide, how horrifying is that?

Of course, both women supposedly haunt the Sorrel-Weed House today. There are a number of reasons why I hate this, one being the minimizing and sanitizing of what Molly endured from Sorrel, and another being that I hope with everything in me that enslaved people are free from plantations at the very least in whatever afterlife exists. Apparently though, Molly, Mathilda, and the Sorrel-Weed House bring a lot of money to Savannah's ghost tourism industry, so much so that I had actually forgotten the name of the Sorrel-Weed House, yet found it easily. All I did was Google "Savannah ghosts" and the first link was a list of "Most Haunted Places in Savannah, Georgia", where I easily found the Sorrel-Weed House and a sanitizied version of Molly and Mathilda's story where they stated "being intimate" instead of being raped and briefly mentioned that she was enslaved. Don't worry though, the author made sure to emphasize that the Sorrel-Weed House is haunted, that people are allowed inside the house to search for ghosts, and that they loved seeing what the house looked like "back in the day". On a side note, I only want to see plantations look like the Noroway Plantation - burnt to the ground.

I wish I could end this post with advice on how to ethically consume ghost stories, the way that many of us are finding ways to ethically consume true crime. I suppose they're one and the same though. There's a quote from author Michelle McNamara that has stuck with me ever since I read her book I'll Be Gone in the Dark.

"I love reading true crime, but I’ve always been aware of the fact that, as a reader, I am actively choosing to be a consumer of someone else’s tragedy. So like any responsible consumer, I try to be careful in the choices I make. I read only the best: writers who are dogged, insightful, and humane."

I think the same applies when it comes to ghost stories, because rarely do we ever hear stories about happy ghosts who lived long and happy lives. Even in A Haunted History of Invisible Women, we start with the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and immediately go into a story of a woman who died by suicide at the Hotel Coronado. Regardless of if you believe in ghosts, these women (for the most part) existed at some point. Even Toni Morrison's Beloved is based on the real story of Margaret Garner, who killed her two-year-old daughter Mary and attempted to kill her other children to spare them from slavery when caught by the slave patrol.

All ghost stories start somewhere, so my hope is that after this, we all take the time to recognize and think critically about the language we use when discussing them, as well as how we may profit off of them (and yes, I am fully aware of the irony that this post is behind a paywall). As always though, the goal of Feminist Book Club is to launch conversations, so please comment below what thoughts that this post brings you. And please take a moment to think about Molly, Mathilda, Margaret, and baby Mary.

Tuesday might be our favorite day of the week! Here are some titles releasing today that we think you should add to your TBR (to be read) shelf.

Let us know in the comments which book release you are most excited for or which release you are grabbing today that's not mentioned!

Two gods strike a bargain that leads them on a journey with devastating consequences in this lush historical fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Ann Liang.

China in the age of brilliance, where gods freely wander the three realms. Amongst them is the cruel and beautiful Death God, who has never failed to collect a soul on time. Until now. For when he seeks out Rujia, the noble god of healing―and the only god he is fated to kill with his own hands―she makes him an offer he can’t refuse: she will help lift the excruciating, century-old curse placed upon him if he gives her a one-month reprieve.

Rujia knows she isn’t as noble as everyone believes. Her deal with Death is merely an excuse to buy herself time while she figures out an escape plan. But when her plan causes the Celestial Palace’s collapse and the beloved crown prince’s disappearance, she and Death are both held responsible. The only way to avoid the wrath of all the other gods is to travel across the realms and safely retrieve the crown prince themselves.

Yet the journey proves far more treacherous than expected. As the unlikely alliance between them blooms into more, and Death’s resolve to kill Rujia weakens by the day, neither can outrun their intertwined fate without devastating consequences: A mysterious plague. An empire-destroying flood. A thousand deaths―and rising―to restore the balance Rujia's disrupted. And if Rujia continues to live despite the will of the Heavens, this is only the beginning...

 From the author of the beloved The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, an imaginative celebration of T Rex from hatching to adulthood

Tyrannosaurus rex is a prehistoric celebrity. Exceeding 40 feet in length and weighing over 9 tons, the largest individuals of this dinosaurian species were intimidating predators capable of crushing bone and consuming more than a hundred pounds of flesh in a bite. But the last of the tyrant dinosaurs had a life beyond ripping and tearing. More than 66 million years ago, T. rex courted each other, nested, watched over their offspring, slept, drank, and explored ancient floodplains inhabited by a fantastic cast of impressive dinosaurs like the huge long-neck Alamosaurus and burly, three-horned Torosaurus. For the first time, the life story of this impressive, sensitive predator is told as if you were there to watch it unfold.

In her latest prehistoric nature walk, bestselling and award-winning author Riley Black follows the life of plucky T. rex Snaggletooth from the time she hatches through her tumultuous adulthood. The prehistoric forest Snag emerges into is full of danger, and yet, as Riley weaves the latest fossil discoveries into the story, the carnivorous dinosaur survives to play, court, fight, sleep, nest, and more as she grows up in Cretaceous North America. She tussles with rival tyrannosaurs, hunts for delectable prey, and finds soft moments of connection in the forest. Even the most die-hard dinosaur fan will come away with a new perspective and appreciation for the Tyrant Lizard Queen.

When Rabbit was ten years old, she was abducted by aliens. Then, it happened again when she was twenty. Now thirty, she’s ready for their next visit. What she isn’t prepared for is her boyfriend callously ending their long-term relationship and ejecting her from their shared home.

As her birthday approaches, the aliens still haven’t arrived. Rabbit descends into a spiral of growing paranoia and bizarre bodily transformations, until soon it seems that even her reflection has a mind of its own. With her only refuge being the chaos of strangers who might not have her best interests at heart, Rabbit worries that her ex’s abandonment not only severed her from his life, but also from her own. Struggling to orient herself within a world growing more topsy-turvy by the day, Rabbit must regain control before her aliens at last return.

Marge Piercy’s final memoir is a testament to her legacy.

After revered poet, writer, and feminist icon Marge Piercy dies in a medical emergency in October 2022, only to be resuscitated, she wakes to create her legacy piece. The Hour of My Death: A Journal of the Year After I Died is a personal narrative in the Japanese Zuihitsu literary form that encompasses diary-style entries, recipes, gardening advice and her luminous poetry, all detailing a joyful year of living in her resurrected old age. 

A beloved American progressive activist, feminist, and writer, her seminal work includes Woman On The Edge Of Time; He, She And It, which won the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award; and Gone To Soldiers, the New York Times bestseller and sweeping historical novel set during World War II. She has authored fifteen other novels and short story collections, and penned twenty volumes of poetry with poems regularly reprinted in anthologies, on artwork, as song lyrics, and more. Piercy also was a pioneer in the use of gender-neutral pronouns in the 1970s and is a staple in Women’s Studies programs. Marge is now 90 and has completed her final memoir, The Hour of My Death, with her reflections on a life extended and the grace and wisdom that comes with that.

Unsettling and charged, Shelter Is Necessary for Existence is equal parts psychological thriller and social satire that explores the disquieting qualities of a privileged family’s mundane cultural assumptions.

Sue, her husband, Luke, and their children, Caroline and Wheatley, present as a picture-perfect family living the American dream of ascendancy and affluence in their Brooklyn neighborhood. They purchase a brownstone at auction on a coveted tree-lined street with the intention of renovating it and moving in. At once avoidant and consumed by the renovation, Sue is torn between her aspirations to have what those around her seem to possess—from her therapist, Diana, to her alluring, insufferable neighbor Chantal—and her urge to escape the grip of their influences. Sue’s obsession and paranoia grow while the neighborhood becomes a hotbed of pulsating antagonisms.

It is only after moving in that Sue becomes aware of the mysterious deaths of the brownstone’s former residents, a mother and daughter whose voices echo in the silence. The house begins manifesting disturbing signs, such as wounds that bleed, just as Caroline and Wheatley exhibit their own troubling symptoms. Sue’s nightmares proliferate and a vacuous stupor overcomes the family as they struggle to settle into the rhythms of life in what should be their dream home. When information arises that threatens to devastate her family, Sue must finally confront the explosive charge of personal and social reality once laid bare.

With exacting psychological detail and a trenchant atmosphere, Shelter Is Necessary for Existence is a darkly comic and piercing social critique that examines the troubling territory of awareness, the lengths some go to avoid it, and what must be confronted for change to occur.

Polls have closed and the votes have been counted. For November we will be reading:

Adventures of a Decaffeinated Coffee Gremlin by Trash Panda

Written by an Independent Author, this book is promising to be full of hilarity mixed with vulnerability as a coffee addicted creature is forced to quit the hot bean juice cold turkey. Formatted as a diary spanning 30 days, we get to follow along through the caffeine withdrawled madness.

I'm quite excited to read this one, as I'm fond of light-hearted humor, and I'm so excited to discuss it with you in Discord!

Happy Reading.