Feminist Reads

Books dedicated to feminist history and ideals.
Updated September 30, 2022
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The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan
Paper Book
Landmark, groundbreaking, classic--these adjectives barely do justice to the pioneering vision and lasting impact of The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of "the problem that has no name": the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women's...
Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger
Rebecca Traister
Paper Book
***NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*** ***BEST BOOKS OF 2018 SELECTION BY*** * WASHINGTON POST * People * NPR * ESQUIRE * ELLE * WIRED * REFINERY 29 * "In a year when issues of gender and sexuality dominated...
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
Mikki Kendall
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "The fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, health disparities, poor schools, homophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence are feminist fights. Kendall offers a feminism rooted in the livelihood of everyday women." --Ibram X. Kendi,...
Men Explain Things to Me and Other Essays
Rebecca Solnit
Ebook
The National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author delivers a collection of essays that serve as the perfect "antidote to mansplaining" (The Stranger).   In her comic, scathing essay "Men Explain Things to Me," Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in...
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir
Paper Book
Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, and brilliantly introduced by Judith Thurman, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpiece weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology, and a host of other disciplines to analyze the Western notion of “woman” and to...
Sex Object: A Memoir
Jessica Valenti
Paper Book
New York Times Bestseller NPR Best Book of 2016 "Sharp and prescient... The appeal of Valenti's memoir lies in her ability to trace objectification through her own life, and to trace what was for a long time her own obliviousness to it...Sex Object is an antidote to...
We Should All Be Feminists
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The highly acclaimed, provocative essay on feminism and sexual politics--from the award-winning author of Americanah "A call to action, for all people in the world, to undo the gender hierarchy." --Medium<...
Women, Race, and Class
Angela Y. Davis
Paper Book
From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women's liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women. "Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard."-The New York...
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
"It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness." --Mary Wollstonecraft
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Audre Lorde
Paper Book
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. "[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive,...
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
bell hooks
Audiobook
A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman's...
The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions
Paula Gunn Allen
Paper Book
This pioneering work, first published in 1986, documents the continuing vitality of American Indian traditions and the crucial role of women in those traditions.
Bad Feminist: Essays
Roxane Gay
Paper Book
"Roxane Gay is so great at weaving the intimate and personal with what is most bewildering and upsetting at this moment in culture. She is always looking, always thinking, always passionate, always careful, always right there."  -- Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be...
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf
Paper Book
A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for...
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex
Judith Butler
Paper Book
Major book by one of the world's leading theorists, published to great acclaim One of the first theory books on the body, which has since become a huge topic Complements Gender Trouble which is already in the Classics series
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment
Patricia Hill Collins
Paper Book
In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist...

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