Feminism

44 of Your Favorite Feminist Books

Kelly Jensen

Editor

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

This post is sponsored by Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill.

only every yoursWhere women are created for the pleasure of men, beauty is the first duty of every girl. In Louise O’Neill’s world of Only Every Yours women are no longer born naturally, girls (called “eves”) are raised in Schools and trained in the arts of pleasing men until they come of age. freida and isabel are best friends. Now, aged sixteen and in their final year, they expect to be selected as companions—wives to powerful men. All they have to do is ensure they stay in the top ten beautiful girls in their year. The alternatives—life as a concubine, or a chastity (teachers to endless generations of girls)—are too horrible to contemplate. But as the intensity of final year takes hold, the pressure to be perfect mounts. isabel starts to self-destruct, putting her beauty—her only asset—in peril. And then into this sealed female environment, the boys arrive, eager to choose a bride. freida must fight for her future—even if it means betraying the only friend, the only love, she has ever known.

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Books have the power to change minds, create empathy, and explore situations and circumstances in which we’d never find ourselves otherwise. It’s the nature of being born into a patriarchy that very few of us spring forth as fully-formed feminists from the forehead of Zeus, but books can help us along the path toward wanting equality for all genders.

We wanted to know what your favorite feminist books were, and you answered. Here’s a wonderfully wide list of 44 of your favorite feminist titles. There’s a mix of novels, short stories, poems, and more.

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafo

All The Rage by Courtney Summers

America’s Women by Gail Collins

Ash by Malinda Lo

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick

“The Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Dietland by Sarai Walker

Dora: A Headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch

Dumplin‘ by Julie Murphy

“The Edible Woman” by Margaret Atwood

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by AS King

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ

Oreo by Fran Ross

Out by Natsuo Kirino

Poisoned Apples by Christine Heppermann

The Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Squire by Tamora Pierce

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

Virgile, non/ engl. Across the Acheron by Monique Wittig

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman