favorite feminist fiction/nonfiction books
Discover empowering feminist fiction and nonfiction books that inspire change. Explore our curated list of must-read titles championing women's voices, equality, and gender justice.
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Reviving Ophelia
by Mary Bray Pipher
Why are more American adolescent girls prey to depression, eating disorders, addictions, and suicide attempts than ever before? According to Dr. Mary Pipher, a clinical psychologist who has treated girls for more than twenty years, we live in a look-obsessed, media-saturated, "girl-poisoning" culture. Despite the advances of feminism, escalating levels of sexism and violence--from undervalued intelligence to sexual harassment in elementary school--cause girls to stifle their creative spirit and natural impulses, which, ultimately, destroys their self-esteem. Yet girls often blame themselves or their families for this "problem with no name" instead of looking at the world around them. Here, for the first time, are girls' unmuted voices from the front lines of adolescence, personal and painfully honest. By laying bare their harsh day-to-day reality, Reviving Ophelia issues a call to arms and offers parents compassion, strength, and strategies with which to revive these Ophelias' lost sense of self.
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Loose Woman
by Sandra Cisneros
A candid, sexy and wonderfully mood-strewn collection of poetry that celebrates the female aspects of love, from the reflective to the overtly erotic. • From the bestselling author of The House on Mango Street and winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. “Not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” —The New York Times Book Review “All poets would do well to follow the example of Sandra Cisneros, who takes no prisoners and has not made a single compromise in her language.” — Barbara Kingsolver, Los Angeles Times
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Girls Guide to Taking Over the World
by Tristan Taormino
A GIRL'S GUIDE TO TAKING OVER THE WORLD Writings from the Girl Zine Revolution
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Girl Power
by Hillary Carlip
Presents autobiographical writings by teenage girls from various ethnic and social groups throughout the country, including both urban and rural girls and members of subcultures from rappers to beauty contestants
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Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions
by Gloria Steinem
This phenomenally successful book, which has sold nearly a half a million copies since its original publication in 1983, is Gloria Steinem's most diverse and timeless collection of essays.
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Abortion Without Apology
by Ninia Baehr
"Abortion Without Apology is based on audiotaped, videotaped, and filmed interviews produced for the 'Abortion Rap' workshops and for the film documentary 'With a Vengeance', and on letters solicited for this pamphlet. If not otherwise indicated, all quotes are drawn from the following sources: Byllye Avery, 'In Defense of Roe' conference, videotaped April 8, 1989; Lucinda Cisler, interview videotaped February 16, 1988; Lana Clarke Phelan, interview videotaped November 6, 1987; Constance Cook, interview audiotaped February 3, 1987; Carol Downer, interview videotaped November 4, 1987; Rowena Gurner, interview audiotaped November 5, 1987, and letters dated December 13, 1989, and December 15, 1989; Brenda Joyner, interview filmed April 8, 1989; "Jane", interveiew filmed November 13, 1988; Patricia Maginnis, interview videotaped November 5, 1987, and letter dated December 28, 1989; Sojourner McCauley, interview filmed June 29, 1989; Irene Peslikis, interview audiotaped December 17, 1987, and interview videotaped July 14, 1988; Lorraine Rothman, interview videotaped November 4, 1987."--From Acknowledgements
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Spiritual Midwifery
by Ina May Gaskin
The classic book on home birth. Stories of the experiences of parents and midwives during the birth process plus a technical manual for midwives, nurses, and doctors. Includes information on prenatal care and nutrition, labor, delivery techniques, care of the new baby, and breast-feeding.
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The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison
From Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison comes the story of a young black girl who longs to be like the blond, blue-eyed children that America loves-a novel "so charged with pain and wonder that it becomes poetry" (The New York Times).
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Backlash
by Susan Faludi
A New York Times bestseller for more than four months, Backlash is Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Susan Faludi's eye-opening, meticulously documented account of the growing and effective anti-feminist backlash in America during the last 10 years. "A bracing look at the counter-assault in our society on women's progress over the last decade".--The New York Times Book Review.
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Possessing the Secret of Joy
by Alice Walker
Severely traumatized after suffering genital mutilation in her native Africa, Tashi Johnson spends most of her adult life in North America seeking help through psychoanalysis, desperate to regain the ability to feel. Author of TĚ€he Color Purple.
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8 Ball Chicks
by Gini Sikes
Dismissed by the police as mere adjuncts to or gofers for male gangs, girl gang members are in fact often as emotionally closed off and dangerous as their male counterparts. Carrying razor blades in their mouths and guns in their jackets for defense, they initiate drive-by shootings, carry out car jackings, stomp outsiders who stumble onto or dare to enter the neighborhood, viciously retaliate against other gangs and ferociously guard their home turf. But Sikes also captures the differences that distinguish girl gangs-abortion, teen pregnancy and teen motherhood, endless beatings and the humiliation of being forced to have sex with a lineup of male gangbangers during initiation, haphazardly raising kids in a household of drugs and guns with a part-time boyfriend off gangbanging himself. Veteran journalist Gini Sikes spends a year in the ghettos following the lives of several key gang members in South Central Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Milwaukee. In 8 Ball Chicks, we discover the fear and desperate desire for respect and status that drive girls into gangs in the first place--and the dreams and ambitions that occasionally help them to escape the catch-22 of their existence.
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Foxfire
by Joyce Carol Oates
New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates’s strongest and most unsparing novel yet—an always engrossing, often shocking evocation of female rage, gallantry, and grit. The time is the 1950s. The place is a blue-collar town in upstate New York, where five high school girls join a gang dedicated to pride, power, and vengeance on a world that seems made to denigrate and destroy them. Here is the secret history of a sisterhood of blood, a haven from a world of male oppressors, marked by a liberating fury that burns too hot to last. Above all, it is the story of Legs Sadovsky, with her lean, on-the-edge, icy beauty, whose nerve, muscle, hate, and hurt make her the spark of Foxfire: its guiding spirit, its burning core. At once brutal and lyrical, this is a careening joyride of a novel—charged with outlaw energy and lit by intense emotion. Amid scenes of violence and vengeance lies this novel’s greatest power: the exquisite, astonishing rendering of the bonds that link the Foxfire girls together. Foxfire reaffirms Joyce Carol Oates’s place at the very summit of American writing.
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Mother Journeys
by Maureen T. Reddy
Mother Journeys: Feminists Write About Mothering is a compelling collection of essays, stories, poems, and artwork responding to this request, investigating with clarity, humor, courage, and sometimes pain, the dual issues of feminism and motherhood.
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Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century
by Boston Women's Health Book Collective
Addresses a variety of women's health issues including body image, illness, pregnancy, childbirth, AIDS, growing older, nutrition, sexuality, and other related topics.