For a long time I wanted to make a list of books where women sincerely and beautifully write about women’s issues, pains, feministic things, healthy feminine and healthy masculine. I haven’t read all the books on this list, so this is also my to-read list. I also hope that the Ukrainian market will see all these feminist books. Those that have a Ukrainian translation, I marked “🇺🇦”.
🇺🇦 1. Simone de Beauvoir – The Second Sex
A seminal text in feminist philosophy. This book explores the oppression of women and the construction of female identity in a patriarchal society. I believe that this is her best book, or actually the only really good one.
🇺🇦 2. Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own
Woolf argues that there is both literal and figurative space for female writers in a male-dominated literary tradition, emphasizing the need for financial independence and creative freedom.
3. Betty Friedan – The Feminine Mystique
This groundbreaking work sparked a second wave of feminism in the United States, addressing the discontent of suburban housewives and challenging traditional gender roles.
4. Audre Lorde – Sister Outsider
A collection of essays and speeches that discuss the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, offering powerful insights into the experiences of marginalized women.
5. Angela Davis – Women, Race & Class
Davis explores the history of racism and class exploitation in the feminist movement, arguing for a more inclusive and intersectional approach to feminism.
6. bell hooks – Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
A concise and accessible guide to understanding feminist theory. hooks emphasizes the importance of a movement that is inclusive and accessible to all.
I read another book by this author, “The Will to Change”, but it seemed too repetitive to me. However, I will quote it in the next article, about partnership.
🇺🇦 7. Kate Millett – Sexual Politics
Millett’s seminal work analyzes power dynamics in literature and society, arguing that patriarchy is deeply rooted in Western culture and must be dismantled.
🇺🇦 8. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – We Should All Be Feminists
In this extended essay based on her popular TEDx talk, Adichie discusses the importance of feminism in today’s world and challenges traditional gender expectations.
🇺🇦 9. Gloria Steinem – My Life on the Road
A memoir that chronicles Steinem’s life as a journalist, activist, and feminist, emphasizing the importance of travel, listening, and grassroots activism in the fight for gender equality.
10. Sara Ahmed – Living a Feminist Life
Ahmed provides a practical and theoretical guide to the feminist life, exploring how feminism shapes personal and collective experience and advocating resistance to everyday forms of oppression.
11. Rebecca Solnit – Men Explain Things to Me
Solnit’s essay addresses the silencing of women and the concept of the “man,” highlighting how gendered power dynamics persist in everyday interactions.
12. Germaine Greer – The Female Eunuch
Greer challenges traditional views of female sexuality, arguing that women have been trained to be passive and submissive, and calling for liberation through radical change.
13. Naomi Wolf – The Beauty Myth
Woolf criticizes society’s obsession with female beauty, arguing that it is used as a tool of control that limits women’s power and potential.
14. Adrienne Rich
Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
Rich examines the institution of motherhood and its impact on women’s lives, advocating a reimagining of motherhood beyond societal expectations and constraints.
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978
A collection of essays that explore themes of feminism, motherhood, sexuality, and the power of language, charting the development of Rich’s thoughts on women’s liberation.
15. Mikki Kendall – Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
Kendall criticizes mainstream feminism for its failure to address the needs of marginalized women, advocating for a more inclusive movement that addresses issues such as poverty, hunger, and violence.
16. Anaïs Nin – The Diary of Anaïs Nin
These diaries offer an in-depth introspection of Nin’s life, exploring themes of female sexuality, identity and creativity, focusing on the complexities of female experience and desire. Diaries brought me a lot of pleasure.
🇺🇦 17. Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar
Although technically a novel, The Bell Jar is largely autobiographical. Plath was able to reflect her inner storms, as well as society’s expectations of women, reflecting on the limitations imposed by patriarchy. For me, this text is an incredible aesthetic pleasure, because there is nothing better than prose texts written by female poets.
🇺🇦 18. Isabel Allende – The Soul of a Woman
Allende reflects on her own experience as a woman, mother, and feminist, offering a passionate and personal exploration of what it means to be a woman in today’s world. A cool book that is easy to read, I love when they write so easily about a difficult subject. I gifted this book to my mother.
19. Roxane Gay – Bad Feminist
Gay’s collection of essays explores the complexities and contradictions of contemporary feminism, combining personal narrative with cultural critique in an accessible and engaging style. Here, too, the story began with TedX.
20. Joan Didion – The White Album
A series of essays that chronicle the breakdown of American society in the 1960s, with a keen eye for the role and perception of women in that tumultuous era.
21. Gloria Anzaldúa – Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Anzaldúa’s work explores the intersections of identity, culture, and feminism, particularly through the lens of her experience as a Chicana, lesbian, and feminist, challenging traditional gender and cultural norms.
22. Susan Faludi – Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Faludi explores the backlash against feminism in the 1980s and 1990s, exposing how the media, politics, and culture worked to undermine the progress made by the women’s movement.
🇺🇦 23. Glennon Doyle – Untamed
The book explores themes of personal liberation, self-empowerment, and breaking free from societal expectations, particularly for women. Doyle encourages readers to listen to their inner voice, reject traditional roles, and live authentically. The book is part memoir and part self-help, filled with raw reflections on motherhood, love, divorce, and finding one’s true self.
🇺🇦 24. Eve Ensler – The Vagina Monologues
A ground-breaking work based on interviews with women from around the world, focusing on female sexuality, body image and empowerment, this book helped ignite the global V-Day movement against gender-based violence.
25. Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Angelou’s powerful memoir chronicles her experience growing up as a black woman in America, addressing issues of racism, identity, and sexual violence, as well as her journey to self-empowerment.
This list includes a rich and diverse range of feminist perspectives, spanning personal memoirs, theoretical works, and cultural criticism that delve deeply into issues affecting women’s lives.
Letter to My Daughter
In this collection of essays, Angelou offers wisdom, advice, and reflection on her experience as a black woman, mother, and activist, addressing themes of love, identity, and empowerment.
26. Nawal El Saadawi – The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World
Saadawi explores the oppression of women in the Arab world, focusing on issues such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage and sexual violence, while advocating for women’s rights and gender equality.
I read another book by this author, which is written in very simple language and can be read in one breath, despite the terrible things described in it. This became the beginning of an article about sexual culture.
🇺🇦 27. Ruth Bader Ginsburg – My Own Words
This collection of the late Supreme Court justice’s writings and speeches offers insight into her views on gender equality, law and justice, highlighting her contributions to the feminist legal movement.
🇺🇦 28. Susan Sontag – Regarding the Pain of Others
Sontag explores how we perceive suffering, particularly in images of war and violence, and critiques the ways in which women’s pain is portrayed and consumed in media and culture.
29. Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga (Editors) – This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
A groundbreaking anthology that brings together works by women of color, explores the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality and challenges mainstream feminist discourse.
30. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – Epistemology of the Closet
Sedgwick’s influential work in queer theory challenges traditional notions of sexuality and identity, arguing for a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of gender and sexual orientation.
31. Carol Gilligan – In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development
Gilligan challenges male-centric theories of moral development by offering a feminist perspective on the psychological differences between men and women and how they shape moral reasoning.
32. Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Infidel
In her memoir, Hirsi Ali recounts her journey from a traditional Muslim upbringing in Somalia to becoming an active defender of women’s rights, criticizing the treatment of women in Islamic societies.
🇺🇦 33. Patti Smith – Just Kids
A memoir that details Smith’s relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe, capturing the bohemian lifestyle of 1970s New York and offering insight into her journey as an artist in a male-dominated world.
🇺🇦 34. Sheryl Sandberg – Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, explores the challenges women face in the workplace and offers practical advice for leadership and success, advocating for a more gender-inclusive workplace.
35. Barbara Ehrenreich – Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Ehrenreich explores the struggles of low-wage workers, especially women, in the U.S. economy, exposing the harsh realities of poverty and the systemic problems faced by those living paycheck to paycheck.
36. Judith Herman – Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Herman’s work is a seminal study of trauma, with a particular focus on the experiences of women who have experienced domestic, sexual, and other forms of gender-based violence.
37. Nancy Friday – The Power of Beauty
Friday explores society’s obsession with female beauty, tracing its impact on women’s self-perception and exploring how the pressure to conform to beauty standards affects women’s lives and personalities.
38. Alice Walker – In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose
A collection of essays and reflections, Walker explores the intersections of race, gender, and creativity, with a particular focus on the experiences of black women and the concept of “womanhood” as an alternative to mainstream feminism.
39. Maxine Hong Kingston – The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
Kingston combines memoir with myth to explore her experience growing up as a Chinese-American woman, exploring the tension between cultural expectations and personal identity.
40. Caitlin Moran – How to Be a Woman
In this memoir and manifesto, Moran combines humor with sharp feminist insight, wittily and candidly addressing issues such as body image, sexism, and reproductive rights.
41. Lidia Yuknavitch – The Chronology of Water
Yuknavitch’s memoir explores her struggles with addiction, grief, and sexuality, offering a raw and poetic reflection on the female experience and the power of storytelling.
42. Toni Morrison – The Origin of Others
Morrison explores themes of race, identity and difference in literature, reflecting on her own work and the wider implications of how society constructs the concept of the ‘other’.
43. Rebecca Walker – Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
Walker’s memoir explores her experiences growing up in America as a woman of a different race, exploring the complexities of identity, race, and feminism through a deeply personal lens.
44. Joan Morgan – When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down
Morgan blends feminist theory with hip-hop culture, offering a unique perspective on the intersections of race, gender, and popular culture, and advocating for a feminism that is inclusive and reflective of the realities of Black women’s lives.
45. Chanel Miller – Know My Name
Californian Chanel Miller was raped while unconscious and wrote a memoir about it. The book well reveals the intricacies of the experiences of a rape victim.
🇺🇦 46. Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism
Arendt’s seminal work examines the emergence of totalitarian regimes, focusing on the interaction of anti-Semitism, imperialism, and political movements. Although Arendt’s analysis of power and totalitarianism is not an exclusively feminist text, it provides a critical understanding of the broader dynamics of oppression and power relevant to feminist theory and activism.
47. Clarissa Pinkola Estés – Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Estes, a Jungian psychoanalyst and storyteller, delves into the archetype of the “wild woman,” exploring the powerful, instinctual nature of women through myths, fairy tales, and stories from various cultures. She weaves these narratives together to offer insights into female creativity, strength, and resilience, encouraging women to reconnect with their inner wildness and reclaim their natural, untamed selves. This book became a seminal work in feminist psychology and spiritual feminism.
