44 of Your Favorite Feminist Books

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