Best Feminist Books

76 books on the list
Sort by
Number of Articles
Layout
Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pinkall shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and Im not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the jou...
Appears in 10 articles
Recommended by
Emma WatsonThe Feminine Mystique
Goodreads Rating
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 confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept the...
Appears in 10 articles
We Should All Be Feminists
Goodreads Rating
What does “feminism” mean today? That is the question at the heart of We Should All Be Feminists, a personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from her much-viewed TEDx talk of the same name—by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. With humor and levity, here Adichie offers readers a unique defini...
Appears in 9 articles
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and...
Appears in 8 articles
The Second Sex
Goodreads Rating
Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of “woman,” and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness. This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translatio...
Appears in 8 articles
Recommended by
Laura R WalkerThe Handmaid's Tale
Goodreads Rating
Before The Testaments, there was The Handmaids Tale: an instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction (New York Times).The Handmaids Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was...
Appears in 8 articles
Feminism is for Everybody
Goodreads Rating
What is feminism?In this short, accessible primer, Bell Hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her characteristic clarity and directness, Hooks encourages readers to see how feminism can touch and change their lives - to see that feminism is for everybody....
Appears in 6 articles
Recommended by
Sally BergesenI come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday.When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She ...
Appears in 6 articles
Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanityEsther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going undermaybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown wit...
Appears in 6 articles
Recommended by
Chloe Grace MoretzMen Explain Things to Me
Goodreads Rating
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...
Appears in 6 articles
Featuring forty trailblazing black women in American history, Little Leaders educates and inspires as it relates true stories of breaking boundaries and achieving beyond expectations. Illuminating text paired with irresistible illustrations bring to life both iconic and lesser-known female figures of Black history such as abolitionist Sojourner Tru...
Appears in 5 articles
Recommended by
Alexis OhanianThe Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Women, Culture & Politics by Angela Y. Davis
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Francesca Elena; Cavallo Favilli
Women in Science by Rachel Ignotofsky
Redefining Realness by Janet Mock
The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
She Persisted Around the World by Chelsea Clinton
Revolting Prostitutes by Molly Smith
Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed
This Little Trailblazer by Joan Holub
My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
Feminists Don't Wear Pink and Other Lies by Scarlett Curtis
Here We Are by Kelly Jensen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins
Slay In Your Lane by Yomi Adegoke
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
Not That Bad by Roxane Gay
This Bridge Called My Back by Cherríe Moraga
Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty
Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister
Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper
Ain't I a Woman by bell hooks
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 by Rebel Girls
I Like Myself! by Karen Beaumont
Circe by Madeline Miller
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I Dissent by Debbie Levy
Malala's Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens by Alice Walker
A Is for Awesome! by Eva Chen
Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore
The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur
Down Girl by Kate Manne
Little Dreamers by Vashti Harrison
Counting With / Contando Con Frida by Patty Rodriguez by
A Computer Called Katherine by Suzanne Slade
Can We All Be Feminists? by June Eric-Udorie
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Art of Feminism by Helena Reckitt
Women & power by Mary BEARD
Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein
Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls
Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Sexual Politics by Kate Millett
The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud by Anne Helen Petersen