It’s formally “dive into an excellent ebook on the seaside” 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 increase your feminist consciousness on the similar 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 crucial about gender, identification, 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 sizzling, dusty highschool classroom once I first turned conscious of this ebook, which my favourite trainer included on our Tenth-grade modern 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 at any time when 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 ability at portraying 12 very completely different protagonists on this Booker Prize–successful novel, which spans a long time’ price of race, class, gender, and sexuality-based identification, greater than deserves some good old school feminist acclaim. —ES
Starvation: A Memoir of (My) Physique by Roxane Homosexual (2017)
It appears like time will be cleanly divided into “BH” (Earlier than Starvation) and “AH” (After Starvation), because of the eagerness 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 dwell a full and cozy life as a fats, Black, queer American lady. —ES
This ebook is as transient as it’s good, which is saying rather a lot; in it, Italian American author, professor, and Marxist feminist Federici applies her prodigious mental ability to the query of whether or not ladies 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 employees’ management of manufacturing, not the tip of labor.” —ES
Corregidora by Gayl Jones (1975)
A painful learn that I couldn’t tear myself away from. A ebook about how, typically, the inspiration 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 folks aside in one of the simplest ways—it simply cuts proper to the core—the ebook itself is so emotionally ALIVE in the way in which that Enka wishes her artwork to be, the way in which the world within the ebook experiences Mathilde’s artwork to be. It’s so fucking meta what you’re in a position to do—artwork inside artwork inside artwork. I don’t understand how you do it, but additionally don’t care to know, so I can simply experience it!” —Haley Jakobson, creator, Previous 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 doubtlessly one of the vital empowering issues a girl can do, and Jarrar provides 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 Ladies {That a} Motion Forgot by Mikki Kendall (2020)
Race created the circumstances for one of many best authentic fissures inside the feminist motion, which makes Kendall’s exploration of the methods during which mainstream feminism has continued to fail ladies of colour really feel significantly 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 around the globe, however The Most cancers Journals is especially notable for its references to the pioneering Black feminist creator, professor, and civil rights activist’s personal battle with breast most cancers and its examine of sickness and incapacity as a sort of scaffolding that may partly form a life. —ES
The Group by Mary McCarthy (1963)
This rollicking examine a bunch of fairly, privileged (to a point) Vassar alumnae making their approach within the large metropolis might not look like an overtly feminist textual content, however no one did it like McCarthy when it got here to giving voice to ladies’s sexual appetites, skilled desires, and interpersonal wishes. —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 ebook helped me not solely see myself, however see my group in a clearer, brighter mild. I’ve recognized Miss Main for practically 20 years now, and her knowledge has totally formed my life. This ebook captures her vibrant, joyful voice in dialog with Toshio Meronek. For individuals who aren’t acquainted, Miss Main is a trans elder who has led and formed trans and gender-non-conforming folks’s battle for a simply, inclusive world in too some ways to rely. Toshio and Miss Main have interaction 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 creator, 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 folks) that Nelson disseminates is a robust one. —ES
SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas (1967)
You possibly can’t make a correct feminist studying checklist with out finally coming to Solanas, whose exhortation to ladies was easy and clear: Overthrow the patriarchy and cease letting males occupy nearly 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
