The F Word

There is a moment in Pure Flame when the writer Michelle Orange stops to reflect on a trendy twenty-first-century T‑shirt slogan, one you’ve probably seen floating around on Instagram: “The Future Is Female.” “The phrase contains all the old questions: of identity and essentialism; what it means to be female, and what it should mean; and perhaps most critically the question of transmission.” What will we carry into the future, Orange wonders, and what will we leave behind? “What stories does a female future tell about the past?” Given that feminism — like any intellectual or political movement — has had its share of intergenerational tensions, the question seems germane in a book of social history, cultural criticism, and, especially, stories of mothers and daughters. What are the values of a feminist (though perhaps not female) future? What should we learn from the women who have gone before us, including our moms?

Orange, who was a producer with TVOntario...