Women's History Month

March is Women's History Month! Celebrate the history and literary contributions of women with these library titles.

This list was compiled by South Pasadena Public Library staff and members of the South Pasadena Public Library Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee.

Updated February 13, 2025
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We should all be feminists
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
Ebook
**Pre-order DREAM COUNT, the searing, exquisite new novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie now!** A personal and powerful essay from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. 'I would like to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a...
In search of our mothers' gardens : womanist prose
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walker speaks out as ablack woman, writer, mother, and feminist in thirty-six pieces rangingfrom the personal to the political. Among the contents are essays aboutother writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and theantinuclear...
The complete Persepolis
Satrapi, Marjane
Paper Book
Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi's best-selling, internationally acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up as a girl in Iran during the revolution has for twenty years been a classroom staple, a feminist manifesto, and one of the most popular and widely known graphic novels of all time. <...
Out of the shadows : six visionary Victorian women in search of a public voice
Midorikawa, Emily
Paper Book
Out of the Shadows tells the stories of the enterprising Victorian women whose supposedly clairvoyant gifts granted them fame, fortune, and most importantly, influence as they crossed rigid boundaries of gender and class as easily as they passed between the realms of the living and the dead. Drawing...
The feminine mystique
Friedan, Betty.
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...
The soul of a woman : on impatient love, long life, and good witches
Allende, Isabel
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes "a bold exploration of womanhood, feminism, parenting, aging, love and more" (Associated Press). "The Soul of a Woman is Isabel Allende's most liberating book yet."--Elle
The moment of lift : how empowering women changes the world
Gates, Melinda
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "In her book, Melinda tells the stories of the inspiring people she's met through her work all over the world, digs into the data, and powerfully illustrates issues that need our attention--from child marriage to gender inequity in the workplace...
Bad feminist : essays
Gay, Roxane
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...
The book of Jezebel : an illustrated encyclopedia of lady things
Harding, Kate
Paper Book
From Jezebel.com, the popular website for women, comes a must-read encyclopedic guide to pop culture, feminism, fashion, sex, and much more. Within months of Jezebel's May 2007 appearance on the new media scene, fans of the blog began referring to themselves as "Jezzies" in...
Men explain things to me
Solnit, Rebecca
Paper Book
In her comic, scathing essay "Men Explain Things to Me," Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don't, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars...
Good and mad : the revolutionary power of women's anger
Traister, Rebecca
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...
Well-behaved women seldom make history
Ulrich, Laurel.
Paper Book
nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;From admired historian--and coiner of one of feminism's most popular slogans--Laurel Thatcher Ulrich comes an exploration of what it means for women to make history. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;In 1976, in an obscure scholarly article, Ulrich wrote, "Well behaved women seldom make...
Know my name : a memoir
Miller, Chanel
Paper Book
Universally acclaimed, rapturously reviewed, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and an instant New York Times bestseller, Chanel Miller's breathtaking memoir "gives readers the privilege of knowing her not just as Emily Doe, but as Chanel Miller the writer,...
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
Skloot, Rebecca
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The story of modern medicine and bioethics--and, indeed, race relations--is refracted beautifully, and movingly."--Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE * ONE OF THE "MOST...
The secret history of Wonder Woman
Lepore, Jill
Paper Book
A riveting work of historical detection revealing that the origin of one of the world's most iconic superheroes hides within it a fascinating family story--and a crucial history of twentieth-century feminism Wonder Woman, created in 1941, is the most popular female superhero of all time...
The nine : the true story of a band of women who survived the worst of Nazi Germany
Strauss, Gwen
Paper Book
"[A] narrative of unfathomable courage... Ms. Strauss does her readers--and her subjects--a worthy service by returning to this appalling history of the courage of women caught up in a time of rapacity and war." --Wall Street Journal "Utterly gripping." --...
Aftershocks : dispatches from the frontlines of identity
Owusu, Nadia
Paper Book
'One of the most moving books of the new year' STYLIST'Gorgeous and unsettling' NEW YORK TIMES'Brilliant and devastating...tender and lacerating' PANDORA SYKES'One of the literary world's most promising new voices' REDI have lived in...
My life on the road
Steinem, Gloria
Paper Book
My Life on the Roadis the moving, funny, and profound story of Gloria''s growth and also the growth of a revolutionary movement for equality-and the story of how surprising encounters on the road shaped both. Gloria Steinem-writer, activist, organizer, and inspiring leader...
Wild : from lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Strayed, Cheryl
Paper Book
NATIONAL BEST SELLER * Oprah's Book Club 2.0 selection. * A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again.   At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought...
How the Garcia girls lost their accents
Alvarez, Julia.
Paper Book
"A joy to read."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer
13 ways of looking at a fat girl
Awad, Mona
Paper Book
'A beautiful, necessary book' ROXANE GAY. 'Echoes of Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman' IRISH TIMES. Lizzie doesn't like the way she looks. Though she dates guys online, she's afraid to send pictures: no-one wants a fat girl. So Lizzie starts to lose weight. With punishing...
Little gods : a novel
Jin, Meng
Paper Book
LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/OPEN BOOK AWARD "Compellingly complex...Expands the future of the immigrant novel even as it holds us in uneasy thrall to the past." - Gish Jen, New York Times Book Review Combining the emotional resonance of Home Fire with the ambition and...
Outlawed
North, Anna
Paper Book
All the lives we never lived
Roy, Anuradha
Paper Book
"A writer of great subtlety and intelligence . . . a beautifully written and compelling story of how families fall apart and what remains of the aftermath" Kamila Shamsie, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018 "The book everyone is talking about for the summer"...
Salvage the bones : a novel
Ward, Jesmyn.
Paper Book
Winner of the National Book AwardThe National Book Award winning novel from the author of Let Us Descend and Men We Reaped--a gritty but tender story of family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico,...
My favorite thing is monsters. Book one
Ferris, Emil
Paper Book
Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late '60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazines iconography. Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbour,...
I know what I am : the life and times of Artemisia Gentileschi
Siciliano, Gina
Paper Book
In 17th century Rome, where women are expected to be chaste and yet are viewed as prey by powerful men, the extraordinary painter Artemisia Gentileschi fends off constant sexual advances as she works to become one of the greatest painters of her generation. Frustrated by the hypocritical social...
The radium girls : the dark story of America's shining women
Moore, Kate (Writer and editor)
Paper Book
A New York Times BestsellerA LibraryReads Next PickAn Indie Next PickWritten with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" element of radium in early 20th-century American factories. Their courage and tenacity led to...
Circe : a novel
Miller, Madeline
Paper Book
This #1 New York Times bestseller is a "bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story" that brilliantly reimagines the life of Circe, formidable sorceress of The Odyssey (Alexandra Alter, TheNew York Times). In the house of Helios,...

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