Herstory

Novels And Stories

Hurston, Zora Neale.

Beloved

Morrison, Toni.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened.

The Good Women Of China

Xinran

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened.

Frida, A Biography Of Frida Kahlo

Herrera, Hayden.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened.

The Year Of Magical Thinking

Didion, Joan.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened.

Fun Home

Bechdel, Alison

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened.

Seriously-- I'm Kidding

DeGeneres, Ellen.

The stand-up comedian, television host, best-selling author and actress candidly discusses her personal life, her professional career and describes what it was like to become a judge on American Idol.

Dear Life

Munro, Alice

This collection of stories illuminates moments that shape a life, from a dream or a sexual act to simple twists of fate that turn a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being. Set in the countryside and towns of Lake Huron, these stories about departures and beginnings, accidents, dangers, and homecomings both virtual and real, paint a portrait of how strange, dangerous, and extraordinary the ordinary life can be.

My Brilliant Friend

Ferrante, Elena.

Beginning in the 1950s Elena and Lila grow up in Naples, Italy, mirroring two different aspects of their nation.

Pink Sari Revolution

Fontanella-Khan, Amana.

Illuminates the thrilling possibilities of female grassroots activism in India through the story of Sampat Pal and her Pink Gang.

Wonder Women

Spar, Debora L.

Illuminates the thrilling possibilities of female grassroots activism in India through the story of Sampat Pal and her Pink Gang.

My Life On The Road

Steinem, Gloria.

Gloria Steinem had an itinerant childhood. Every fall, her father would pack the family into the car and they would drive across the country, in search of their next adventure. The seeds were planted: Steinem would spend much of her life on the road, as a journalist, organizer, activist, and speaker. In vivid stories that span an entire career, Steinem writes about her time on the campaign trail, from Bobby Kennedy to Hillary Clinton; her early exposure to social activism in India, and the decades spentorganizing ground-up movements in America; the taxi drivers who were "vectors of modern myths" and the airline stewardesses who embraced the feminist revolution; and the infinite, surprising contrasts, the "surrealism in everyday life" that Steinem encountered as she traveled back and forth across the country. With the unique perspective of one of the greatest feminist icons of the 20th and 21st centuries, here is an inspiring, profound, enlightening memoir of one woman's life-long journey"--

Sisters In Law

Hirshman, Linda R.

An account of the intertwined lives of the first two women to be appointed to the Supreme Court examines their respective religious and political beliefs while sharing insights into how they have influenced interpretations of the Constitution to promote equal rights for women.

Notorious RBG

Carmon, Irin

Presents an illustrated biography of the feminist icon and legal pioneer who has changed the world, especially in the realms of gender equality and civil rights.

Another Brooklyn

Woodson, Jacqueline.

For August, running into a long-ago friend sets in motion resonant memories and transports her to a time and a place she thought she had mislaid: 1970s Brooklyn, where friendship was everything. August, Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi shared confidences as they ambled their neighborhood streets, a place where the girls believed that they were amazingly beautiful, brilliantly talented, with a future that belonged to them. But beneath the hopeful promise there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where mothers disappeared, where fathers found religion, and where madness was a mere sunset away. Woodson heartbreakingly illuminates the formative period when a child meets adulthood -- when precious innocence meets the all-too-real perils of growing up.

What I Told My Daughter

Woodson, Jacqueline.

A "diverse group of women--from Madeleine Albright To Ruth Bader Ginsburg, from Dr. Susan Love to Whoopi Goldberg and more...reflect on the best advice and conusel they have given their daughters either by example, throughout their lives, or in character-building, teachable moments between parent and child."--Book jacket.

Hunger

Gay, Roxane

Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined," Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and authority that have made her one of the most admired voices of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen. Hunger is a deeply personal memoir from one of our finest writers, and tells a story that hasn’t yet been told but needs to be." --

Dear Ijeawele, Or, A Feminist Manifesto In Fifteen Suggestions

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi

From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today--written as a letter to a friend."--Back cover.

Flâneuse

Elkin, Lauren

Charts the relationships between women and the cities they live in, describing how a good walk in an urban setting has helped many a woman, both fictional and real, through art, history, literature and film, from Virginia Woolf to Holly Golightly.

Six Remarkable Hull-House Women

Bobick, Ruth

Industrialization, an influx of immigrant labor, and the spread of city slums, together with a lack of opportunity for the first generation of college women, contributed to the rise of social settlements. Hull-House brought help and hope to impoverished workers, while providing employment for residents through such services as a kindergarten, evening classes, music school, and gymnasium. Confronted with the harsh living conditions of neighboring women and children, settlement reformers turned first to the city, then to state and federal legislatures. No more admirable women could have been assembled in the struggle for social justice than the six of Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton, and Grace and Edith Abbott. -- Provided by publisher.

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud

Petersen, Anne Helen

From celebrity gossip expert and BuzzFeed culture writer Anne Helen Petersen comes an accessible, analytical look at how female celebrities are pushing boundaries of what it means to be an “acceptable” woman. You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of “unruliness” to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.

Where The Past Begins

Tan, Amy

From New York Times bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir on her life as a writer, her childhood, and the symbiotic relationship between fiction and emotional memory"--

We're Going To Need More Wine

Union, Gabrielle

In the spirit of Amy Poehler's Yes Please, The Birth of a Nation, actress Gabrielle Union shook the world with a vulnerable and impassioned editorial in which she urged our society to have compassion for victims of sexual violence. In the wake of rape allegations made against director and actor Nate Parker, Union, a forty-four-year-old actress who launched her career with roles in iconic '90s movies, instantly became the insightful, outspoken actress that Hollywood has been desperately awaiting. With honesty and heartbreaking wisdom, she revealed her own trauma as a victim of sexual assault: "It is for you that I am speaking. This is real. We are real." In this moving collection of thought provoking essays infused with her unique wisdom and deep humor, Union uses that same fearlessness to tell astonishingly personal and true stories about power, color, gender, feminism, and fame. Union tackles a range of experiences, including bullying, beauty standards, and competition between women in Hollywood, growing up in white California suburbia and then spending summers with her black relatives in Nebraska, coping with crushes, puberty, and the divorce of her parents. Genuine and perceptive, Union bravely lays herself bare, uncovering a complex and courageous life of self-doubt and self-discovery with incredible poise and brutal honesty. Throughout, she compels us to be ethical and empathetic, and reminds us of the importance of confidence, self-awareness, and the power of sharing truth, laughter, and support.

Women & Power

Beard, Mary

Two essays connect the past with the present, tracing the history of misogyny to its ancient roots and examining the pitfalls of gender.