It’s formally “dive into a great e book on the seashore” season, however there’s no rule that claims you’ll be able to’t work in your tan (with the assistance of judiciously utilized SPF, please) and develop your feminist consciousness on the identical time. To that finish, we’ve rounded up a few of our all-time favourite feminist books with the assistance of a handful of authors whose work by no means fails to show us one thing new and mandatory about gender, id, and energy.
The place the Ladies Are: Rising Up Feminine With the Mass Media by Susan J. Douglas (1994)
I used to be in a scorching, dusty highschool classroom once I first turned conscious of this e book, which my favourite trainer included on our Tenth-grade up to date American historical past syllabus (shoutout, Dr. Catapano!). I nonetheless return to Douglas’s fastidiously laid-out and incisive social historical past of feminism as introduced by postwar American media every time I want a refresher on how far we’ve come. —Emma Specter, tradition author, Vogue
Woman, Girl, Different by Bernardine Evaristo (2019)
It could be shocking to see fiction on this checklist, however Evaristo’s talent at portraying 12 very totally different protagonists on this Booker Prize–successful novel, which spans many years’ value of race, class, gender, and sexuality-based id, greater than deserves some good old style feminist acclaim. —ES
Starvation: A Memoir of (My) Physique by Roxane Homosexual (2017)
It seems like time will be cleanly divided into “BH” (Earlier than Starvation) and “AH” (After Starvation), due to the fervour and energy of Homosexual’s story about trying to heal from intense trauma by binge-eating, succumbing to the all-too-familiar diet-binge cycle, and, lastly, striving to reside a full and cozy life as a fats, Black, queer American girl. —ES
This e book is as temporary as it’s good, which is saying so much; in it, Italian American author, professor, and Marxist feminist Federici applies her prodigious mental talent to the query of whether or not girls deserve pay for the home labor they disproportionately carry out at residence. A private favourite quote: “Homosexuality and heterosexuality are each working circumstances…however homosexuality is staff’ management of manufacturing, not the top of labor.” —ES
Corregidora by Gayl Jones (1975)
A painful learn that I couldn’t tear myself away from. A e book about how, generally, the muse of connection is shared ache. —Jazmine Hughes, author
Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang (2025)
“I’m breathless over this one. I do know this one goes to tear individuals aside in one of the simplest ways—it simply cuts proper to the core—the e book itself is so emotionally ALIVE in the way in which that Enka needs her artwork to be, the way in which the world within the e book experiences Mathilde’s artwork to be. It’s so fucking meta what you’re capable of do—artwork inside artwork inside artwork. I don’t understand how you do it, but in addition don’t care to know, so I can simply enjoy it!” —Haley Jakobson, writer, Outdated Sufficient, in a textual content to Huang after studying the novel
Love Is an Ex-Nation by Randa Jarrar (2021)
Driving cross-country solo is probably one of the vital empowering issues a lady can do, and Jarrar offers a brand new and distinctive voice to the expertise on this memoir about traversing America as a queer, Muslim, Palestinian Egyptian feminist decided to chart the course of her personal story. —ES
Hood Feminism: Notes From the Girls {That a} Motion Forgot by Mikki Kendall (2020)
Race created the circumstances for one of many biggest authentic fissures inside the feminist motion, which makes Kendall’s exploration of the methods during which mainstream feminism has continued to fail girls of colour really feel notably well timed, even 5 years after its publication. —ES
The Most cancers Journals by Audre Lorde (1980)
Lorde’s work will be discovered on Gender Research 101 studying lists world wide, however The Most cancers Journals is especially notable for its references to the pioneering Black feminist writer, professor, and civil rights activist’s personal wrestle with breast most cancers and its examine of sickness and incapacity as a form of scaffolding that may partly form a life. —ES
The Group by Mary McCarthy (1963)
This rollicking examine a gaggle of fairly, privileged (to some extent) Vassar alumnae making their approach within the large metropolis could not appear to be an overtly feminist textual content, however no person did it like McCarthy when it got here to giving voice to girls’s sexual appetites, skilled desires, and interpersonal needs. —ES
Miss Main Speaks: Conversations With a Black Trans Revolutionary by Toshio Meronek and
Miss Main Griffin-Gracy (2023)
Miss Main Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary
This e book helped me not solely see myself, however see my group in a clearer, brighter mild. I’ve identified Miss Main for almost 20 years now, and her knowledge has completely formed my life. This e book captures her vibrant, joyful voice in dialog with Toshio Meronek. For many who aren’t acquainted, Miss Main is a trans elder who has led and formed trans and gender-non-conforming individuals’s struggle for a simply, inclusive world in too some ways to depend. Toshio and Miss Main interact in a dialog that pulls out historical past and story and reminiscence in such a particular approach, and I’m so grateful to Miss Main for sharing her knowledge with us all. —Tourmaline, artist and writer, Marsha: The Pleasure and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (2016)
Gender is simply one of many matters that Nelson excavates on this memoir-cum-philosophical-theory undertaking about assembly, falling in love with, and constructing a household along with her transmasculine associate, however the central message of physique liberation (for trans people in addition to pregnant individuals) that Nelson disseminates is a strong one. —ES
SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas (1967)
You’ll be able to’t make a correct feminist studying checklist with out finally coming to Solanas, whose exhortation to girls was easy and clear: Overthrow the patriarchy and cease letting males occupy virtually all of the positions of energy in international society. Is that this one fairly radical? Positive. Does it really feel extra related than ever in our present hellscape? Completely. —ES
