Ann Friedman is a journalist, essayist, media entrepreneur and co-host of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend. She is also a pie-chart artist. Ann regularly writes about gender, politics and social issues for New York magazine, The Los Angeles Times and The Guardian — but her popular weekly email newsletter is the best way to enjoy her writing.
Ann was introduced by Penny Martin.
Which three books would you recommend?
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol Andy Warhol
I read this book as a teenager and it opened me up to so many things. The tone—melding storytelling with witty opinions and bigger essayistic points—feels modern even today. It predated a whole wave of conversational opinion writing that would come to dominate the internet in another 30 years. It's funny that Warhol is not really known as a writer because this is one of the first nonfiction books I remember reading and thinking, "THIS is how I want to write." I recommend it to people who are looking to find their own voice as a writer, and to become more perceptive students of the world around them.
Backlash Susan Faludin
It feels strange to cite this book now, given that it feels absolutely ancient. I read it in college and it did a few important things for me. First, it gave me an example of how I could be a reporter and a feminist at the same time, and showed me that my skills and worldview could work in harmony, not opposition. (At the time I was enrolled in a journalism school that preached the gospel of objectivity, so "feminist journalist" did not always seem like a possibility.) And second, it gave me a framework for understanding all the years I'd spent prefacing my beliefs with the phrase, "I'm not a feminist, but..." We're all a product of the culture we swim in, which can make it hard to see the ways we've been shaped by it. This book gave me a language for many things about my own experience in the world. But things have shifted so dramatically in the world of culture and politics since then. I'm not sure it would do all of these things for a person reading it today. I supposed I'd recommend it to people who want to understand the context that shaped many white women's feminism in the 1980s and 90s-- as a historical document rather than a radicalizing force.
Wow, No Thank YouSamantha Irby
I laughed harder at this essay collection than any book in recent memory. Sam Irby is such a keen observer of the many tiny indignities that make life absurd, and her ability to laugh at herself gives her readers permission to do the same. I've gifted it to so many friends because it's a guaranteed serotonin boost.
Whose reading list are you most curious about?
All of the writers I am reading! Samantha Irby, Sam Cohen, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Ashley Ford.