My Dark Vanessa reading list

an inevitably incomplete, continuously curated list. not all of these should be viewed as recommendations per se; this collection of texts is simply a reflection of my influences and interests over the years I spent writing My Dark Vanessa

academic texts

Linda Martín Alcoff, Rape and Resistance (2018)
Cathy Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995); Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (1996)
Catherine Driscoll, Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory (2002)
Shoshana Felman, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature Psychoanalysis and History (1991)
Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff, New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity (2011)
Alyssa Harad, “Reviving Lolita; or, Because Junior High Is Still Hell” (2003)
Suzette Henke, Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women’s Life-Writing (1998)
Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (1997)
Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, “Too Close for Comfort: American Beauty and the Incest Motif” (2004)
Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change (2008)
Kali Tal, Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma (1995)
Laurie Vickroy, Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction (2002)

*see also Sigmund Freud’s development and subsequent abandonment of his seduction theory, Jacques Lacan’s writings/lectures on The Real, and Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer if you feel like delving into some dense stuff (have fun! lol)

fiction

Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
Amy Bloom, Love Invents Us
Julie Buntin, Marlena
Alexander Chee, Edinburgh
Sandra Cisneros, “Never Marry a Mexican”
Cathy Coote, Innocents
Robert Cormier, Tenderness
Alison Espach, The Adults
Mary Gaitskill, Veronica
Phoebe Gloeckner, Diary of a Teenage Girl
Kathryn Harrison, Thicker Than Water
A.M. Homes, The End of Alice
Janet Fitch, White Oleander
Michael Lowenthal, Avoidance
Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall On Your Knees
Emily Maguire, Taming the Beast
Heather McGowan, Schooling
Maryse Meijer, “Home”
Joni Murphy, Double Teenage
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada or Ardor, Laughter In the Dark, “Spring in Fialta”
Bonnie Nadzam, Lamb
Blake Nelson, Girl
Anne Rice, Belinda
Kristen Roupenian, “Cat Person”
Anita Shreve, Fortune’s Rocks
Mona Simpson, “Lawns”
Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle
Christa Wolf, Cassandra
Kate Zambreno, Green Girl
Sofka Zinovieff, Putney

memoir

Anonymous, The Incest Diary
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
Jenny Boully, The Body
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee
Colette, My Apprenticeships
Marguerite Duras, The Lover
Margaux Fragoso, Tiger Tiger
Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss
Lacy M. Johnson, The Other Side
Joyce Maynard, At Home in the World
Anais Nin, Incest
Wendy C. Ortiz, Excavation
Lauren Slater, Lying
Susanna Sonnenberg, Her Last Death
Elissa Washuta, My Body Is a Book of Rules

poetry

Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
Louise Gluck, Averno
Sylvia Plath, Ariel
Mary Szybist, Incardine

drama

David Harrower, Blackbird
Sarah Kane, Crave
Paula Vogel, How I Learned to Drive

essay

Natalia Antonova, “His Sin, Her Soul: On Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita"
Bindu Bansinath, “How ‘Lolita’ Freed Me from My Own Humbert”
Seo-Young Chu, “A Refuge for Jae-In Doe: Fugues in the Key of English Major”
Michael W. Cox, “Visitor”
Karen Durrie, “Read and Destroy”
Mishka Hoosen, “When Dolores Haze Gets a Tumblr: Online ‘Nymphet’ Culture and the Reclaiming of Lolita”
Morgan Jerkins, “Reading Bored White Girls”
Jenny Kutner, “The Other Side of the Story”
Monica Lewinksy, “Emerging from ‘The House of Gaslight’ in the Age of #MeToo”
T Kira Madden, “The Feels of Love”
Bonnie Nadzam, “Experts in the Field”
One Week, One Band, “Britney Spears”
Dilara O’Neill, “Grief Network”
Rivers Solomon, “Black Girl Going Mad”
Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex?”
Jia Tolentino, “The Rising Pressure of the #MeToo Backlash”
Caitlin White, “The Radical Strength and Calm Rage of Fiona Apple”

film

36 Fillette (Breillat, 1988)
Agnes of God (Jewison, 1995)
American Beauty (Mendes, 1999)
Art for Teachers of Children (Montgomery, 1995)
The Ballad of Jack and Rose (Miller, 2005)
Badlands (Malick, 1973)
Beautiful Girls (Demme, 1996)
Blue Car (Moncrieff, 2002)
Breathe In (Doremus, 2014)
Carried Away (Barreto, 1996)
The Crush (Shapiro, 1993)
Damage (Malle, 1992)
Election (Payne, 1999)
Fire Walk With Me (Lynch, 1992)
Ghost World (Zwigoff, 2001)
The Girl in the Book (Cohn, 2015)
Guinevere (Wells, 1999)
The Hunting Ground (Dick, 2015)
Last Tango In Paris (Bertolucci, 1976)
Léon (Besson, 1994)
Lolita (Lyne, 1997)
The Lover (Annaud, 1992)
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Durkin, 2011)
Pretty Baby (Malle, 1978)
Spotlight (McCarthy, 2015)
Stealing Beauty (Bertolucci, 1996)
Stoker (Park, 2011)
The Tale (Fox, 2018)
Thirteen (Hardwicke, 2003)
Una (Andrews, 2016)
The Virgin Suicides (Coppola, 1999)
Young and Beautiful (Ozon, 2013)