The third sea­son of The Hand­maid’s Tale came to an end on Au­gust 14th and I am still in shock - maybe you are too. The tele­vi­sion se­ries was adapt­ed from Mar­garet At­wood’s nov­el al­so named “The Hand­maid’s Tale.” When it was first pub­lished in 1985, the nov­el was dystopi­an - I say “was” be­cause a lot of what was dis­cussed in the book is be­com­ing a re­al­i­ty to­day. The book paints a world where women had lit­tle to no rights and the tele­vi­sion se­ries al­so does a great job of bring­ing the plot to life.

I con­sid­er my­self a fem­i­nist, so watch­ing and read­ing “The Hand­maid’s Tale” was a bit in­fu­ri­at­ing for me. I al­so con­sid­er it nec­es­sary to read books that ex­plore how women are mar­gin­alised or may be­come mar­gin­alised. If you are crav­ing your next fix in place of The Hand­maid’s Tale, then these three nov­els should sat­is­fy your crav­ings un­til Hu­lu re­leas­es the fi­nal sea­son of the show in 2020.

Vox by Christi­na Dalch­er

Vox is a dystopi­an nov­el set in a fu­ture Amer­i­ca and ex­plores what would hap­pen if fun­da­men­tal­ist and right-wing rad­i­cals over­saw the run­ning of the coun­try. We meet Dr Jean Mc­Clel­lan who, along with oth­er mil­lions of Amer­i­can women, did not make it out of Amer­i­ca in time, or just did not think that things would get “so bad”. These women are not al­lowed to have jobs, ac­cess to their fi­nances, trav­el with­out their hus­bands, leave the coun­try, read or even speak too much.

Every fe­male over the age of six is giv­en a bracelet that tracks the num­ber of words they speak per day. They are not al­lowed to go over 100 words dai­ly and if they do, they are pun­ished by elec­tric shocked done through the same bracelet. Dr Mc­Clel­lan, with the help of oth­er women, hatch­es a plan to over­throw the gov­ern­ment. We hope the plan suc­ceeds.

I read this book in one sit­ting, main­ly be­cause the premise is so in­ter­est­ing. For the en­tire time I kept won­der­ing if I would be able to speak 100 words a day - an­swer: no. What I love about the book is that it re­al­ly shows a world where women are mar­gin­alised but even with these re­stric­tions and rules in place, they still have the courage to fight and re­claim their pow­er.

If you loved The Hand­maid’s Tale this book will get your heart rac­ing and your blood boil­ing.

The Farm by Joanne Ramos

Set on the sprawl­ing, well-man­i­cured grounds of the Hud­son Val­ley, The Farm is sold as a re­treat for women who will be giv­en dai­ly mas­sages, cus­tomised fit­ness plans, chef-pre­pared or­gan­ic meals, and the best part - these women get paid big mon­ey just to be there. Sounds like the per­fect get­away, right? Wrong! For nine months these women be­long to The Farm, their every move is tracked and mon­i­tored as they have signed a con­tract that says they will pro­duce the per­fect ba­by for The Farm’s wait­ing list of su­per wealthy clients.

The Farm is told from the per­spec­tive of four women, one of whom is Jane, a young strug­gling Fil­ipino sin­gle mom who, with this new gig, will be able to give her daugh­ter the fu­ture she nev­er had. There is Eve­lyn who is the most sought af­ter Wet Nurse for women on the Up­per East Side so much so, she’s got a wait­ing list and end up be­com­ing a “scout” for the Farm. Mae is the brains be­hind The Farm - she is ded­i­cat­ed, smart, dri­ven and in­tends to take The Farm to the next lev­el, no mat­ter what. Last there is Rea­gan - a wild ide­al­ist. Rea­gan is seen as a pre­mi­um host be­cause she is white with uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion. Rea­gan de­cid­ed to be­come a host to “help” women who can’t car­ry their own chil­dren.

I found The Farm sur­pris­ing­ly good and a bit time­ly be­cause a lot more women are be­ing sur­ro­gates or choos­ing sur­ro­ga­cy. Joanne Ramos did a sol­id job with this de­but nov­el; she man­aged to shed light on racism, moth­er­hood, sur­ro­ga­cy, im­mi­gra­tion, wealth and priv­i­lege.

All the Rage: Moth­ers, Fa­thers, and the Myth of Equal Part­ner­ship by Dar­cy Lock­man

“….women who work out­side of the home shoul­der 65 per­cent of child care re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and their male part­ners 35 per cent. Those per­cent­ages have held steady since the year 2000. In the last twen­ty years, that fig­ure has not budged...”

It is the year 2019 and women are still shoul­der­ing 65% child­care re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. No, this is not fic­tion. All the Rage is Dar­cy Lock­man’s re­search in­to the di­vi­sion of labour with­in homes and how work­ing, mar­ried women are still do­ing the bulk of house­work and child­care. While read­ing this re­search I was en­raged a lot of the time on be­half of the women who had to do the heavy lift­ing at work then come home and do even more in or­der to en­sure the house­hold and chil­dren are tak­en care of.

It seems, it doesn’t mat­ter how well a part­ner she choos­es, women are usu­al­ly left with the full-time job of work­ing out­side the home and tak­ing care of the home and the chil­dren. In a 2018 re­port, the Unit­ed Na­tions es­ti­mat­ed that women av­er­age 2.6 times the amount of house­work and child­care that men do... If you are go­ing to have chil­dren, take those fig­ures in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

Dar­cy Lock­man brought to light some new in­for­ma­tion, but for the most part she con­firmed what we see in so­ci­ety on a dai­ly ba­sis. I re­al­ly wish those fig­ures weren’t so; how­ev­er, if you are plan­ning for moth­er­hood in the fu­ture, please be sure to give this book a read.

Cindy All­man is a Caribbean Girl Read­ing the World. A Ja­maican liv­ing in Trinidad & To­ba­go, she is a top Goodreads re­view­er and hopes to in­spire you with her pas­sion for books. Fol­low her at www.bookofcinz.com or @bookofcinz on Twit­ter and In­sta­gram