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.
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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
