Women and Feminism

Nonfiction

1.	The Right Women: A Journey Through the Heart of Conservative America 
DB 48734
Burkett, Elinor. 
Examines the status and impact of feminism in the United States. For two years, Burkett traveled across the country conducting interviews outside the mainstream women's movement. She finds that many who reject official feminist dogma are, nonetheless, able to make nontraditional choices about their own lives. Strong language.

2.	Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America 
DB 52291 
Ehrenreich, Barbara 
Inspired by welfare reforms, the author explores surviving on less than $8 per hour as an "unskilled" worker. Traveling across the country, she takes on six jobs and lives anywhere she can afford. Concludes that low-paying jobs without supportive public services are a disgrace to the United States. Some strong language. 

3.	The Feminine Mystique 
DB 53797
Friedan, Betty. 
1960s feminist discusses problems of American women. Considers a distorted image of femininity to have arrested women's intellectual growth, hampered their sexual fulfillment, threatened their marriages, and become their major barrier to self-realization. 1963.

4.	Feminasty: The Complicated Woman's Guide to Surviving the Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself to Death 
DB 92538
Gibson, Erin. 
A collection of essays discussing women's issues and feminism in early twenty-first-century America. Topics include period shame, a lack of true acceptance in STEM fields, the endless rules for how women "should" dress, breast cancer, not being taken seriously by doctors, and more. Strong language and descriptions of sex. 

5.	Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America 
DB 78643
Gorn, Elliott J. 
Biography of Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (1837-1930), labor organizer and self-described hell-raiser who advocated for children's, women's, immigrants', and workers' rights. Discusses her role in protests and strikes--including the 1886 Haymarket Massacre, the 1897 United Mine Workers strike and the 1903 Children's Crusade--that defined the modern American labor movement. Violence and strong language. 

6.	American Muslims: The new generation 
DB 53384
Hasan, Asma Gull. 
A twenty-five-year-old Muslim woman, born, raised, and educated in the United States, examines Islam in America. She discusses beliefs, practices, values, stereotypes, militancy, women's issues, and politics. Includes personal anecdotes to support her points. 

7.	Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot 
DB 98638 BR23152
Kendall, Mikki. 
Collection of eighteen essays examining feminism and its need to intersect with race, class, and sexual orientation. Topics discussed include gun violence, food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, earning a living wage, and access to medical care. Violence and strong language. 

8.	The Selected Works of Audre Lorde 
DB 100743 BR 23365
Lorde, Audre; Gay, Roxane. 
Collection of essays and poems by the author of A Burst of Light (DB 91119) exploring being black, a woman, a lesbian, and the intersection of those identities. Edited by and includes an introduction from Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist (DB 80463). Violence and strong language. 2020.

9.	At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance- A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power 
DB 84006 
McGuire, Danielle L. 
Historian presents the forgotten history of sexual violence against women of color in the twentieth-century Jim-Crow South. Begins with the notorious 1944 case of Recy Taylor, which brought to prominence a young NAACP investigator named Rosa Parks. Violence, strong language, and descriptions of sex. 

10.	Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s anger 
DB 93096 
Traister, Rebecca 
The author and journalist discusses the power of female anger and its ability to propel political action. She examines the effects of women's anger historically and politically, anger between allies and foes,                  the history of delegitimizing female anger, and more. 
Fiction

1.	Phenomenal woman: four Poems Celebrating Women 
DB 40783 BR 10183
Angelou, Maya. 
The author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (DB 57200) and the poem read at President Clinton's inauguration, On the Pulse of the Morning (DB 36169, BR 9188), presents four poems that celebrate women. The collection includes "Phenomenal Woman," "Still I Rise," "Weekend Glory," and "Our Grandmothers."

2.	The Vanishing Half 
DB 99791 BR 23212
Bennett, Brit 
Desiree Vignes and her daughter return home to Louisiana in 1968, fourteen years after Desiree and her identical twin sister Stella ran away. The sisters ended upon different paths, and as Desiree struggles with the racial tensions of her hometown, Stella lives her life passing as white. Violence, strong language, and some descriptions of sex.

3.	Parable of the Sower 
DB 39777 BR 21257
Butler, Octavia E. 
In 2024, most well-to-do families live in walled enclaves to protect themselves from the roaming drug addicts who live in squalor and are prone to stealing, rape, and murder. Lauren Olamina, eighteen, suffers from hyperempathy, which means that she feels not only her own pain but that of others. When the addicts overrun Lauren's community, she and others are forced to seek refuge outside the walls. Strong language and violence. 

4.	Difficult Women 
DB 87197
Gay, Roxane. 
Twenty-one short stories by the author of Bad Feminist (DB 80463), exploring women's lives. Topics range from sisters escaping from the trauma of their past in "I Will Follow You" to a couple determining the limits of their relationship in "Open Marriage". Violence and some explicit descriptions of sex.

5.	Born Palestinian, born Black
DB 83583 (BR21520)
Hammad, Suheir. 
Augmented second edition of a collection of poetry originally published in 1996. Explores themes of being Palestinian and the child of refugees, femininity and feminism, and black culture in the United States. Some strong language and some descriptions of sex. 

6.	Still Alice: a novel 
DB 68429
Genova, Lisa. 
As she turns fifty and begins experiencing odd lapses of memory, Harvard psychology professor Alice Howland gets the life-altering diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Her lecturing and traveling for work, and her relationships with her scientist husband and grown children, morph along with the disease. Some strong language. 

7.	The Giver of Stars 
DB 96907 
Moyes, Jojo
1937. Alice Van Cleve is still trying to adjust to married life and living in Kentucky after being raised in England. When offered the chance to join a group of women to deliver Eleanor Roosevelt's new traveling library, she jumps at it. But they face dangers…“they're committed to their job—bringing books to people who have never had any, sharing the gift of learning that will change their lives.” 

8.	The bell Jar
DB 21558 BR 16452
Plath, Sylvia. 
In this autobiographical novel by the late poet, events parallel the author's twentieth year when she experienced a mental breakdown and attempted suicide.

9. Rivington Street 
DB 18336
Tax, Meredith.
A gutsy Lower East Side saga focuses on the lives of four strong women as it tells the story of the Jews who wanted to rise with their class, not from it. Between 1903 and 1917, the women and their neighbors experienced shameful exploitation, the rise of unionism, collaboration with organized crime, the uncertainty of assimilation, and the excitement of suffrage. Some descriptions of sex.

10. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose 
DB 22074 
Walker, Alice. 
Novelist and poet Walker brings together assorted essays and reviews that refocus attention on her own life and literary work. By "womanist" Walker means an extended concept of black feminism, and this dual minority consciousness informs the basic ideas and themes of her writing. Some descriptions of sex.