The feminist reading list I made myself

I took one gender studies course in college: Writing and Gender, during my freshman year at the former New Hampshire Institute of Art. We analyzed the gender constructs in five books, some of which included Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. (Sorry; it was 2018 and I can only remember 3/5 titles eight years on. My bad.) 

I was glad for the takeaways I got from that course. I started thinking about gender roles, the self, and societal expectations in new ways. I only wish I'd taken it as a cue to enroll in more gender studies and feminist courses. There's a long history of work that today's feminist movement draws upon, and I only know the bones of it. 

Feminism and a connection to my female identity are part of my core beliefs, thanks to my forward-thinking family. Especially my mom, who has felt much the same throughout her life. Even when she was in art school, before I was born, she made her senior thesis on the theme of the divine feminine. 

But that phrase, "divine feminine", has been twisted today for use by red-pilled misogynist rhetoric. It's one of the ways in which that, well, cult has started using traditionally feminist ideology to funnel men and even some women into their alt-right pipeline. 

There's nothing wrong with homemaking, child-rearing, or anything else they say women are uniquely gifted at doing. It just shouldn't be our only option, and we shouldn't be viewed as lesser if we choose another path. Men certainly aren't. 

So now, in the age of the internet and incels, I have to parse through female empowerment talk to make sure I'm not reading (err, let's be real: watching) the kind that ends up hurting women's rights. It's exhausting. 

That's why I made myself this reading list. I've read a few books of note in the feminist sphere, but not nearly enough. Not when I've wanted to read some of these for years and I work in a library! This foundation should help me view modern women's messaging with a bit more context. Hopefully, this means both stronger conviction within me and a more critical eye. 

I chose 14 books I haven't yet read that seemed, to me, to be within the canon of feminist writing. Please don't pretend this list is exhaustive. It's simply enough that if I kept going, I'd be too overwhelmed to start reading. And please see my notes at the end, when you're done with the list. 

Without further ado, here are the titles:

*All synopses are taken in whole or in part from each title's listing on Goodreads. 

The Feminine Mystique 

Betty Friedan 

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 them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle, part manifesto, The Feminine Mystique is filled with fascinating anecdotes and interviews as well as insights that continue to inspire.

I learned about The Feminine Mystique during my American History class in high school; the one that finally taught us about post-WWII through then-modern day. It brought awareness of dissatisfaction in life to a generation of women, and it continues to speak to us today. It changed the world. 

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir 

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 translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir's pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as it was back then, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.

It's one of those books I've heard referenced in conversation and never really looked into until I made this list. Based on its continued cultural relevance so many decades after publication (and especially when the original was in French and it still made such an impact in the English-speaking world) I'd say this is a must. 

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Judith Butler

Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world.

Judith Butler is one of two authors on this list whose work on gender and intersectional justice is so important, it was hard to choose just one title. Depending how the first read of hers goes, I might pursue the rest. 

Women, Race & Class

Angela Y. Davis

Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women's rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger's racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work. 

I really wanted to include something that reframes some of the classic feminist texts with a more intersectional lens. Lots of the gender studies canon are by white women and disregard how other marginalizing factors matter to feminism. 

A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf

First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy. 

I believe this is the only fiction title on my list, and as you read in its synopsis, its classification as fiction is dubious. Regardless, this shorter one will help me gain momentum as I work through the list. 

When God Was A Woman

Merlin Stone

Here, archaeologically documented, is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Under her, women's roles were far more prominent than in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures. Stone describes this ancient system and, with its disintegration, the decline in women's status. Index; maps and illustrations.

If you don't already know, I'm a big podcast-listener due to my long commutes. Well, just last week, one of my regular shows mentioned a theory (maybe it's proven?) that most ancient societies worshipped women before the beginnings of patriarchy wiped the evidence. They believed women were divine because they could create new life, and at the time, they didn't understand what caused pregnancy, so it seemed spontaneous. 

When I scrolled past this title, I wanted to add it to my list and look more into this idea of the true divine feminine. (The list didn't exist yet. This was what got me to finally put it in writing.) 

Men Explain Things To Me

Rebecca Solnit

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.

She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!”

This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the writer Virginia Woolf ’s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women.

I'm nervous about this one. I've read some Rebecca Solnit before, and her work is just not a style I can get into. But this sounds different in concept than her other work that I've tried, so I'd like to give it a go. 

The Creation of Patriarchy

Gerda Lerner

A major new work by a leading historian and pioneer in women's studies, The Creation of Patriarchy is a radical reconceptualization of Western civilization that makes gender central to its analysis. Gerda Lerner argues that male dominance over women is not "natural" or biological, but the product of a historical development begun in the second millennium B.C. in the Ancient Near East. As patriarchy as a system of organizing society was established historically, she contends, it can also be ended by the historical process.

Focusing on the contradiction between women's central role in creating society and their marginality in the meaning-giving process of definition and interpretation, Lerner explores such fascinating questions as: What can account for women's exclusion from the historical process? What could explain the long delay—more than 3,500 years—in women's coming to consciousness of their own subordinate position? She goes back to the cultures of the earliest known civilizations—those of the ancient Near East—to discover the origins of the major gender metaphors of Western civilization. Using historical, literary, archaeological, and artistic evidence, she then traces the development of these ideas, symbols, and metaphors and their incorporation into Western civilization as the basis of patriarchal gender relations.

This I was just really interested in reading. How did we actually end up in a patriarchal society? An in-depth history will really help me make sense of it, because this can't just be the natural way of things. We need all the genders to survive, so why would we have started treating one as superior? 

Bad Feminist

Roxane Gay

In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years and commenting on the state of feminism today. The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

Published in 2014, this is one of the newer picks on the list. I wanted to include something to give me some more context on today's rhetoric. Though technically, women had more rights in 2014 than 2026 (Roe v. Wade was still law.) This is a higher-circulating title at the library I work for, so it's caught my attention. 

The Beauty Myth

Naomi Wolf

The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity. In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty." 

Not to overshare, but this has been a topic in therapy lately. I'm hoping this book will help deconstruct some of the hurtful stuff that's been sitting, unwelcome, in my brain. 

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

bell hooks

A sweeping examination of the core issues of sexual politics, bell hooks' new book Feminist Theory: from margin to center argues that the contemporary feminist movement must establish a new direction for the 1980s. Continuing the debates surrounding her controversial first book, Ain't I A Woman, bell hooks suggests that feminists have not succeeded in creating a mass movement against sexist oppression because the very foundation of women's liberation has, until now, not accounted for the complexity and diversity of female experience. In order to fulfill its revolutionary potential, feminist theory must begin by consciously transforming its own definition to encompass the lives and ideas of women on the margin. Hooks' work is a challenge to the women's movement and will have profound impact on all whose lives have been touched by feminism and its insights. 

bell hooks (intentionally lowercase) is the other author for whom I had a hard time choosing one title. While All About Love is by far her most widely-read piece, this seemed to relate to my reading goals more closely. 

Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists

Multiple contributors

When did you know you were a feminist? Whether it happened at school, at work, while watching TV, or reading a book, many of us can point to a particular moment when we knew we were feminists. In Click , editors Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan bring us a range of women—including Jessica Valenti, Amy Richards, Shelby Knox, Winter Miller, and Jennifer Baumgardner—who share stories about how that moment took shape for them.  Sometimes emotional, sometimes hilarious, this collection gives young women who already identify with the feminist movement the opportunity to be heard—and it welcomes into the fold those new to the still-developing story of feminism. 

What can I say? I love an anthology. Each chapter is a bite-sized piece you can consume in a single serving. This might not have the classic or even canon status so much as the others on this list... but it's my list. We have it at my library, so I'm going to read it, and you can't stop me. 

Men Who Hate Women: The Extremism Nobody is Talking About

Laura Bates

The first comprehensive undercover look at the terrorist movement no one is talking about.

Men Who Hate Women examines the rise of secretive extremist communities who despise women and traces the roots of misogyny across a complex spider web of groups. It includes eye-opening interviews with former members of these communities, the academics studying this movement, and the men fighting back.

Women's rights activist Laura Bates wrote this book as someone who has been the target of many hate-fueled misogynistic attacks online. At first, the vitriol seemed to be the work of a small handful of individual men... but over time, the volume and consistency of the attacks hinted at something bigger and more ominous. As Bates went undercover into the corners of the internet, she found an unseen, organized movement of thousands of anonymous men wishing violence (and worse) upon women.
In the book, Bates explores:

Extreme communities like incels, pick-up artists, MGTOW, Men's Rights Activists and more
The hateful, toxic rhetoric used by these groups
How this movement connects to other extremist movements like white supremacy
How young boys are targeted and slowly drawn in
Where this ideology shows up in our everyday lives in mainstream media, our playgrounds, and our government

By turns fascinating and horrifying, Men Who Hate Women is a broad, unflinching account of the deep current of loathing toward women and anti-feminism that underpins our society and is a must-read for parents, educators, and anyone who believes in equality for women.

This list was 13 books at first, and then I saw this one. It's the perfect punctuation mark at the end of my DIY gender studies course, because it addresses the problem that (in part) made me want to learn more and fight back. 

The more we know the warning signs of predatory groups, the more we are protected (and can help protect others.) 

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Bonus: two quick picks I've already read 

I wanted to include just a few titles I've already read and would recommend adding to the list, for others that may want to use it. 

We Should All Be Feminists

Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie

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 definition of feminism for the twenty-first century—one rooted in inclusion and awareness. She shines a light not only on blatant discrimination, but also the more insidious, institutional behaviors that marginalize women around the world, in order to help readers of all walks of life better understand the often masked realities of sexual politics. Throughout, she draws extensively on her own experiences—in the U.S., in her native Nigeria, and abroad—offering an artfully nuanced explanation of why the gender divide is harmful for women and men, alike.

Argued in the same observant, witty and clever prose that has made Adichie a bestselling novelist, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman today—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

Weighing in at just 52 small pages, this is an easy primer for you. It's been a few years, but I remember this book tugging at my heart in a she gets it kind of way. 

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie

A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's letter of response.
Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions–compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive–for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.

Naturally, I wanted more from Adichie. This was also a short 63 pages, made even easier with an author-narrated audiobook. 

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My hope with this list is that I can get to know feminist concepts more deeply than my current surface-level agreement. And on top of that, I want more of a historical perspective; a better understanding of what my foremothers went through to get to the point we're at now. 

When I'm through this starter list, I'd like to work on reading some biographies and memoirs of notable women. People like Malala Yousafzai and the writers on this list, perhaps. But I'll read the stories of people in different fields, too. All of them matter. If you have any recommendations, please leave a comment for me. 

And let me know if you've read anything on this list or plan to!