Your Fall feminist reading list

I wasn't born a feminist. Like so many women, I had to learn how to be one — in fact, I'm still learning. If you’re also still learning, here’s a roundup of books that can help you along your journey. 

#1 Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

More than a book, "Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions" is an extended letter in which the author gives her friend tips for raising her soon-to-be-born daughter as a feminist. This introspective personal account reveals the thoughts of two friends who have experienced how hard the world can be for women, and who don't want a new life to face the same challenges.

“Do it together,” Ngozi Adichie writes. “Remember, in primary school we learned that a verb was a ‘doing’ word? Well, a father is much a verb as a mother. Chudi should do everything that biology allows — which is everything but breastfeeding.” 

In terms of practical tips, the book imparts an understanding of basic feminist concepts and how readers can apply them to their own lives. As a short book, it's also an accessible introduction to the world of feminism.

#2 How to Be a Woman, by Caitlin Moran

This book is a firsthand account of how the author has coped with the stress of being a woman since childhood. Moran’s writing is full of humor and her stories easy for those who have made the transition from girl to teenager to relate to. From relatively small issues, like a teenager’s typical worries about beauty and first loves, to the looming issues of abortion access and work discrimination, Moran gives her readers a broad landscape of gender inequality and how becoming feminists can help us all change this reality.

“What is feminism?” she writes. “Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course, you are.”

#3 King Kong Theory, by Virginie Despentes

It’s often helpful to approach comprehending a complex subject by avoiding big words and using real-life examples, which is precisely what Despentes does in her testimony of her experiences with sexism. In this passionate book, Despentes mainly focuses on acts of everyday sexism or behaviors and attitudes that are perceived as common, but in fact, add up to the of gender inequality and women's oppression. She does so by giving vivid examples from her own experiences of sexual violence and sex work, relating each chapter of the book to what she’s learned from what she’s been through.

In one chapter, for example, she shares the story of her violent sexual assault at 17 at the hands of three adult men. “As with most rapes, I suspect, I don’t imagine that any of those three guys now considers himself a rapist,” she writes. “Because if we’d really been determined not to get raped, we would either have preferred to die or managed to kill them. The assailants succeed in persuading themselves that the girls this happens to, if they get out alive, must not really mind all that much.”

#4 Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, by bell hooks

bell hook's work outlines an open-hearted vision of gender, sexuality, and society that focuses on possible alternatives and solutions to our current problems. hooks bases her writing in feminist theory and takes on topics ranging from reproductive rights, violence, race, class, and work. 

“Feminist thinking teaches us all, especially, how to love justice and freedom in ways that foster and affirm life,” hooks writes. 

“Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction,” she writes in another passage.

The author encourages us to strive for a culture of equality and fairness by including others, sharing our thoughts, and collaborating to understand feminism and put it into practice. “Most people have no understanding of the myriad ways feminism has positively changed all our lives. Sharing feminist thought and practice sustains the feminist movement. Feminist knowledge is for everybody.”

#5 The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir

“The Second Sex,” published in 1949, is a long, dense book. It’s also a classic that provides a historical overview of gender inequality. Beauvoir defines what it means to be a woman, starting at the very beginning of humankind until the period in which she lived (the late 1940s). 

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” she famously wrote. This idea inspires her to analyze the places women are obliged to occupy in different moments of their lives, from childhood to adolescence, sexual initiation, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. 

“To be feminine is to show oneself as weak, futile, passive, and docile. The girl is supposed not only to primp and dress herself up but also to repress her spontaneity and substitute for it the grace and charm she has been taught by her elder sisters. Any self-assertion will take away from her femininity and her seductiveness.” 

BONUS 6: La Revolución de Las Hijas, by Luciana Peker

If you speak Spanish, this book will help you better understand how feminism is expanding in Latin America. According to the book’s introduction, the author was inspired by the legal abortion movement in Argentina, which grew stronger than ever over the past year after the Congress voted on an abortion law in August 2018. In the synopsis, she explains that, even though the law wasn't approved, the fight brought together people who are committed to creating a safer and more equal world for women. 

In this inspiring book, Peker shares the journey of different young women who are in this battle and how they got started with feminism by educating themselves and disrupting commonly held views about women. 

 “I’m not going to stop until my daughter has the same rights that my son has. But, above all, she is the one who won’t stop. These girls won’t stop. These girls, this crowd of daughters that filled the streets around Congress, who fought for freedom by doing a revolution of glitter and hope: shining, because they won’t keep quiet, nor hide.”