Book Lists

In this world of unfinished feminism, men have long been able to "have it all" because of free female labor, while the bar of achievement for women has gotten higher - never before have we had to work so much at every level (whether it's to be an accomplished white-collar employee or just make ends meet), and never before have the requirements for being a "good mother" been so extreme. If our laws and policies made women's happiness and fulfillment a goal in and of itself, she explains, so many contentious issues would be resolved with one fell swoop-from women's health to equal pay. Filipovic illustrates this argument by asking women across America what it is they need, Filipovic provides an outline for a feminist movement we all need: one that provides a blueprint for how policy, laws and society can deliver on the promise of the pursuit of happiness for all.

A new kind of career playbook for a new era of feminism, offering women a new set of rules for professional success: one that plays to their strengths and builds on the power they already have. Weren't women supposed to have "arrived"? Perhaps with the nation's first female President, equal pay on the horizon, true diversity in the workplace to come thereafter? Or, at least the end of "fat-shaming" and "locker room talk"? Well, we aren't quite there yet. But does that mean that progress for women in business has come to a screeching halt? It's true that the old rules didn't get us as far as we hoped. But we can go the distance, and we can close the gaps that still exist. We just need a new way. In fact, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future, says former Wall Street powerhouse-turned-entrepreneur Sallie Krawcheck. That's because the business world is changing fast -driven largely by technology - and it's changing in ways that give us more power and opportunities than ever.

The author explores her own conflicting feelings as a mother as she protects her offspring and probes the roots and tendrils of the girlie-girl movement and concludes that parents who think through their values early on and set reasonable limits, encourage dialogue and skepticism, and are canny about the consumer culture can combat the 24/7 "media machine" aimed at girls and hold off the focus on beauty, materialism, and the color pink somewhat.

Entertainment executive Nina Tassler has brought together a powerful, diverse group of women-- from Madeleine Albright To Ruth Bader Ginsburg, from Dr. Susan Love to Whoopi Goldberg and more-- to reflect on the best advice and counsel they have given their daughters either by example, throughout their lives, or in character-building, teachable moments between parent and child.

Hilarious, bold, and unapologetic, Girl Up exposes the truth about the pressures surrounding body image, the false representations in media, the complexities of sex and relationships, the trials of social media, and all the other lies society has told us.

An award-winning foreign correspondent who contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series reveals the secret Afghan custom of disguising girls as boys to improve their prospects, discussing its political and social significance as well as the experiences of its practitioners.

Are today's young adults gender rebels or returning to tradition? In Where the Millennials Will Take Us, Barbara J. Risman reveals the diverse strategies youth use to negotiate the ongoing gender revolution. Using her theory of gender as a social structure, Risman analyzes life history interviews with a diverse set of Millennials to probe how they understand gender and how they might change it. Some are true believers that men and women are essentially different and should be so. Others are innovators, defying stereotypes and rejecting sexist ideologies and organizational practices.

In a culture that's driven by social media, women are using this online space to come together, share their stories and encourage a new generation to recognize the problems that women face. This book is a call to arms in a new wave of feminism, and it proves sexism is endemic - socially, politically and economically - but women won't stand for it.

Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of “woman,” and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness.

Tells how American women got from there to here, in politics, fashion, economics, sex, families and work in the past five decades.

The female trainwreck is a familiar figure to us all: she's Britney Spears shaving her head, Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse dying in front of millions. But the trainwreck is as old (and as powerful) as feminism itself, and Doyle's book is a fierce, intelligent, deeply-researched investigation of a centuries-old phenomenon. Who is the trainwreck? What are her crimes? And, in an age when social media makes public figures of us all, what does it mean for the rest of us?

Within a generation, more households will be supported by women than by men. In The Richer Sex, Liza Mundy takes us to the exciting frontier of this new economic order: she shows us why this flip is inevitable, what painful adjustments will have to be made along the way, and how both men and women will feel surprisingly liberated in the end.

You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of “unruliness” to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.

In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from her much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today--written as a letter to a friend.

Inspires women to use practical, psychological, and spiritual tools to create a more fulfilling way of life and to attain happiness and freedom from the have-it-all superwoman culture.

Two essays connect the past with the present, tracing the history of misogyny to its ancient roots and examining the pitfalls of gender.

InYou Play the Girl, Chocano blends formative personal stories with insightful and emotionally powerful analysis. Moving from Bugs Bunny to Playboy Bunnies, from Flashdance to Frozen, from the progressive '70s through the backlash '80s, the glib '90s, and the pornified aughts--and at stops in between--she explains how growing up in the shadow of "the girl" taught her to think about herself and the world and what it means to raise a daughter in the face of these contorted reflections. In the tradition of Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, and Susan Sontag, Chocano brilliantly shows that our identities are more fluid than wethink, and certainly more complex than anything we see on any kind of screen.

For the Crunk Feminist Collective, their academic day jobs were lacking in conversations they actually wanted--relevant, real conversations about how race and gender politics intersect with pop culture and current events. To address this void, they started a blog. Now with an annual readership of nearly one million, their posts foster dialogue about activist methods, intersectionality, and sisterhood. And the writers' personal identities--as black women; as sisters, daughters, and lovers; and as television watchers, sports fans, and music lovers--are never far from the discussion at hand. These essays explore "Sex and Power in the Black Church," discuss how "Clair Huxtable is Dead," list "Five Ways Talib Kweli Can Become a Better Ally to Women in Hip Hop," and dwell on "Dating with a Doctorate (She Got a Big Ego?)." Self-described as "critical homegirls," the authors tackle life stuck between loving hip hop and ratchet culture while hating patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism.

Perceptively identifying a paradox at the very heart of feminism, editor Robin Romm has marshaled a stunning constellation of thinkers to examine their relationships with ambition with candor, intimacy and wit.

An award-winning Northwestern University psychology professor reveals how the cultural obsession with women's appearance is an epidemic that harms women's ability to get ahead and to live happy, meaningful lives.

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 confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives.

"A scrapbook-style teen guide to understanding what it really means to be a feminist packed with contributions from a diverse range of voices, including celebrities and public figures, and featuring more than forty-four pieces, including an eight-page insert of full-color illustrations.

In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, there was shock, outragem and for some reason, satisfaction. When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for HIlary Clinton, how can women unite as a political class in Trump's America? The mysogyny, racism, and xenophobia that were features of the campaign have long been a part of American life, but many people are just now waking up to them. Can the "nasty" among us find ways to better support and fight for one another? Here are inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented feminist writers on how we get here and what we need to do to move forward.

Providing a new and illuminating look at 27 women who've changed the world, Dead Feminists ties these historical women and the challenges they faced into the most important issues of today. Based on the cult-following limited edition Dead Feminists letterpress poster series by illustrator Chandler O'Leary and letterpress artist Jessica Spring, the book combines new art and lettering, archival photographs and ephemera, and revisits the original poster to tell each woman's story.

In Don’t Call Me Princess, Peggy Orenstein’s most resonant and important essays are available for the first time in collected form, updated with both an original introduction and personal reflections on each piece. Her takes on reproductive justice, the infertility industry, tensions between working and stay-at-home moms, pink ribbon fear-mongering and the complications of girl culture are not merely timeless—they have, like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, become more urgent in our contemporary political climate. Don’t Call Me Princess offers a crucial evaluation of where we stand today as women—in our work lives, sex lives, as mothers, as partners—illuminating both how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.

In this groundbreaking and compulsively readable book, Spar explores how American women's lives have—and have not—changed over the past fifty years. Armed with reams of new research, she details how women struggled for power and instead got stuck in an endless quest for perfection. The challenges confronting women are more complex than ever, and they are challenges that come inherently and inevitably from being female. Spar is acutely aware that it's time to change course.

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 works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note-- because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, "He's trying to kill me!"

A celebration of the one-year anniversary of the Women's March presents exclusive interviews with Women's March organizers, never-before-seen photographs, and essays by feminist activists.

On January 21, 2017, five million people in 82 countries and on all seven continents stood up with one voice. The Women's March began with one cause, women's rights, but quickly became a movement around the many issues that were hotly debated during the 2016 U.S. presidential race--immigration, health care, environmental protections, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, freedom of religion, and workers' rights, among others. In the mere 66 days between the election and inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States, 673 sister marches sprang up across the country and the world. ABRAMS Image presents Why I March to honor the movement, give back to it, and promote future activism in the same vein.

In this new, expanded edition of the acclaimed collection, writers and activists such as Rebecca Walker, Nomy Lamm, and Inga Muscio are joined by Lisa Miya-Jervis, publisher of Bitch; Alison Crews, editor of Girl-Mom; and Daisy Hernandez of Ms. Together, they cover a wide range of topics, from blending careers and feminist politics to the intersection of traditional culture and third-wave sensibilities.

From the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a memoir about learning to lead and make change, based on a lifetime of fighting for women's rights and social justice.

A powerful, persuasive, thought-provoking vision for how to finish the long struggle for equality between men and women, work and family.

The first book about feminism for young women in their teens and twenties to actually be written by one of their peers.

For the first time, acclaimed writer and feminist devotes a book to the complex personae of women writers, especially those whose work goes against the grain.

A vivid snapshot of America's journey from Victorian-era propriety to 20th-century modernity. Step into the perfumed parlors of the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in American history--and the catalyst for a culture war that rocked the nation. Operating in Chicago at the dawn of the 20th century, the Club welcomed moguls and actors, senators and athletes, foreign dignitaries and literary icons into a stately double mansion, and the Everleigh sisters treated their girls far better than most madams. But not everyone appreciated their attempts to elevate the industry.

In a provocative, groundbreaking work, National Magazine Award­-finalist Rebecca Traister, "the most brilliant voice on feminism in this country" (Anne Lamott), traces the history of unmarried women in America who, through social, political, and economic means, have radically shaped our nation. For legions of women, living single isn't news; it's life. All the Single Ladies is a remarkable portrait of contemporary American life and how we got here, through the lens of the single American woman. Covering class, race, sexual orientation, and filled with vivid anecdotes from fascinating contemporary and historical figures, All the Single Ladies is destined to be a classic work of social history and journalism.

Would-be parents must navigate the decision to have children amidst a daunting combination of cultural expectations and hard facts. And new parents find themselves struggling to reconcile their elation with the often exhausting, confusing, and expensive business of child care. If parenting is making Americans unhappy, if it's impossible to "have it all," if people don't have the economic, social, or political structures needed to support child rearing, then why do it? And why are anxious new parents flocking to every Tiger Mother and Bébé-raiser for advice on how to raise kids? Here, feminist author Jennifer Valenti explores these controversial questions through on-the-ground reporting, startling new research, and her own unique experiences as a mom.

In October 2016, Maine resident Libby Chamberlain created a secret Facebook group encouraging a handful of friends to wear pantsuits to the polls. Overnight, the group of thirty exploded to 24,000 members. By November 8, the group was three million strong. Since Pantsuit Nation's inception, its members have shared personal stories that illustrate the complexities of living in a vibrant, oftentimes contentious democracy. Members turn to Pantsuit Nation as a place of refuge and inspiration, where marginalized voices are amplified, faces are put to political decisions, resources are shared, and activism is ignited. It is a dynamic, diverse community united by an unwavering commitment to building a more just, inclusive world.

Portrays the dramatic story behind the movement toward legal recognition of sex discrimination in this country.

In Missoula, Krakauer chronicles the searing experiences of several women in Missoula -- the nights when they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors, defense attorneys; the public vilification and private anguish; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them.

A powerful argument for abortion as a moral right and a social good by a noted feminist and longtime columnist for The Nation.

In 2013, Annie E. Clark and Andrea L. Pino, then 23 and 20, building on the work of earlier activists, outed themselves as assault survivors and filed a federal complaint against the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) for mishandling such crimes; within a month, the U.S. government began to investigate UNC. Within a year, dozens of colleges were under federal investigation. But Clark and Pino rightly see themselves as two among many. Students from every kind of college and university--large and small, public and private, highly selective and less so--are sounding alarms and staking claims to justice by filing complaints, by pressing chatrges, and by simply living beyond the effects of assault and the betrayals of their schools. A sampling of their voices speak out in this book.

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday October 9, 2012, she almost paid the ultimate price.

Who are the role models for today’s female scientists, and where can we find the stories that cast them in their true light? Headstrong delivers a powerful, global, and engaging response. Covering Nobel Prize winners and major innovators, as well as lesser-known but hugely significant scientists who influence our every day, Rachel Swaby’s vibrant profiles span centuries of courageous thinkers and illustrate how each one’s ideas developed, from their first moment of scientific engagement through the research and discovery for which they’re best known. This fascinating tour reveals these 52 women at their best while encouraging and inspiring a new generation of girls to put on their lab coats.

The first book to explore menstruation in the current cultural and political landscape and to investigate the new wave of period activism taking the world by storm.

Describes the factors that affect a woman's sexual wellbeing, including stress, mood, trust, and body image and explains how the complications of daily life can affect arousal and desire.

The book collects dozens of Hurley's essays on feminism, geek culture, and her experiences and insights as a genre writer, including "We Have Always Fought," which won the 2013 Hugo for Best Related Work. The Geek Feminist Revolution will also feature several entirely new essays written specifically for this volume.

Milk and honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. Milk and honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.

A poetry collection in four parts: the princess, the damsel, the queen, and you. The first three sections piece together the life of the author while the final section serves as a note to the reader. This moving book explores love, loss, grief, healing, empowerment, and inspiration.

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation.

Alida Nugent takes on one of today's hottest cultural topics: feminism. Nugent is a proud feminist--and she's not afraid to say it. From the "scarlet F" thrust upon you if you declare yourself a feminist at a party to how to handle judgmental store clerks when you buy Plan B, You Don't Have to Like Me skewers a range of cultural issues, and confirms Nugent as a star on the rise

A brazen, uproarious collection of illustrations of tough women both historical and fantastical-too awesome, too fierce, and sometimes too weird. These are not fantasy tales of blushing ingenues and happily-ever-afters. Here are the real unsung women of history, real and from literature, mythology and folklore. Illustrated in a contemporary animation style, Rejected Princesses dismisses the 'pretty pink princess' stereotype and profiles, through biography, imagery, wit, and humor, badass women throughout time and from all around the world.

This biography takes a playful, informative look at groundbreaking legal icon and cultural phenomenon Ginsburg, utilizing interviews, photos, and annotated legal documents.

Born in upper-crust black Chicago--Margo Jefferson's father was for years head of pediatrics at Provident, the nation's oldest black hospital; her mother was a socialite--Margo Jefferson has spent most of her life among the colored aristocracy, the colored elite, the blue-vein society. Since the 19th century they have stood apart, these inhabitants of Negroland, "a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty."
Reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments--the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the fallacy of postracial America--Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions.

Morgan Jerkins is only in her twenties, but she has already established herself as an insightful, brutally honest writer who isn’t afraid of tackling tough, controversial subjects. In This Will Be My Undoing, she takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to “be”—to live as, to exist as—a black woman today? This is a book about black women, but it’s necessary reading for all Americans.

Caitlin Moran interweaves provocative observations on women's lives with laugh-out-loud funny scenes from her own, from the riot of adolescence to her development as a writer, wife, and mother. With rapier wit, Moran slices right to the truth--whether it's about the workplace, strip clubs, love, fat, abortion, popular entertainment, or children--to jump-start a new conversation about feminism. With humor, insight, and verve, How To Be a Woman lays bare the reasons why female rights and empowerment are essential issues not only for women today but also for society itself.

A hilarious and affecting essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from celebrated stand-up comedian and WNYC podcaster Phoebe Robinson.

My Life on the Road is 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. From her first experience of social activism among women in India to her work as a journalist in the 1960s; from the whirlwind of political campaigns to the founding of Ms. magazi≠ from the historic 1977 National Women's Conference to her travels through Indian Country--a lifetime spent on the road allowed Gloria to listen and connect deeply with people, to understand that context is everything, and to become part of a movement that would change the world.

In the spirit of Amy Poehler's Yes Please, The Birth of a Nation actress Gabrielle Union shook the world with a vulnerable and impassioned editorial in which she urged our society to have compassion for victims of sexual violence. In the wake of rape allegations made against director and actor Nate Parker, Union, a forty-four-year-old actress who launched her career with roles in iconic '90s movies, instantly became the insightful, outspoken actress that Hollywood has been desperately awaiting. With honesty and heartbreaking wisdom, she revealed her own trauma as a victim of sexual assault: "It is for you that I am speaking. This is real. We are real."

Hailed by the Washington Post as “one of the most visible and successful feminists of her generation,” Jessica Valenti has been leading the national conversation on gender and politics for over a decade. Now, in a memoir that Publishers Weekly calls “bold and unflinching,” Valenti explores the toll that sexism takes on women’s lives, from the everyday to the existential. From subway gropings and imposter syndrome to sexual awakenings and motherhood, Sex Object reveals the painful, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti’s adolescence and young adulthood in New York City.

West has rocked readers in work published everywhere from The Guardian to GQ to This American Life. She is a catalyst for a national conversation in a world where not all stories are created equal and not every body is treated with equal respect. SHRILL is comprised of a series of essays that bravely shares her life, including her transition from quiet to feminist-out-loud, coming of age in a popular culture that is hostile to women (especially fat, funny women) and how keeping quiet is not an option for any of us.

Kamala Khan is an ordinary girl from Jersey City -- until she's suddenly empowered with extraordinary gifts. But who truly is the new Ms. Marvel? Teenager? Muslim? Inhuman? Find out as she takes the Marvel Universe by storm! When Kamala discovers the dangers of her newfound powers, she unlocks a secret behind them, as well. Is Kamala ready to wield these immense new gifts? Or will the weight of the legacy before her be too much to bear?

The great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists describes growing up in Tehran in a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contraditions between public and private life.

When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.

A teen girl seeks revenge on the male classmates who raped her best friend and drove her to commit suicide.

In a small Texas town where high school football reigns supreme, Viv, sixteen, starts a feminist revolution using anonymously-written zines.

Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn't feel bad about it. When her older sister, Anna, was murdered three years ago and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best. The language of violence.

It's the beginning of the summer in a small town in Ireland. Emma O'Donovan is eighteen years old, beautiful, happy, confident. One night, there's a party. Everyone is there. All eyes are on Emma. The next morning, she wakes on the front porch of her house. She can't remember what happened, she doesn't know how she got there. She doesn't know why she's in pain. But everyone else does. Photographs taken at the party show, in explicit detail, what happened to Emma that night. But sometimes people don't want to believe what is right in front of them, especially when the truth concerns the town's heroes....

Three misfit girls come together to avenge the rape of a girl none of them knew and in the process start a movement that transforms the lives of everyone around them.

Amanda Hardy only wants to fit in at her new school, but she is keeping a big secret, so when she falls for Grant, guarded Amanda finds herself yearning to share with him everything about herself, including her previous life as Andrew.

After being assaulted by the sheriff's son, Kellan Turner, Romy Grey was branded a liar and bullied by former friends, finding refuge only in the diner where she works outside of town, but when a girl with ties to both Romy and Kellan goes missing and news of him assulting another girl gets out, Romy must decide whether to speak out again or risk having more girls hurt.