Feminist Books: Where to Start (and What to Read Next)

Where to Start: Three Books to Read First

Feminism Is for Everybody by bell hooks (2000). A short, plain primer on what feminism is and what it promises, which is an end to sexism, for everybody. Read it first.

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2014). An essay adapted from her TEDxEuston talk of December 2012, and a definition of feminism for this century. It is the one to hand to someone who says they are not a feminist.

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall (2020). Kendall argues that the modern feminist movement has failed to address the needs of all but a few women. Read it third, because it complicates the first two.

What are the top 5 feminist books? Our five are the three above plus two more. Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde (1984) is fifteen essays and speeches on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia and class. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay (2014) is funny, clever essays on pop culture, her own life and the state of feminism. Lorde slowly, Gay on the train.

Feminist Books for the Problem You Have

Your pay. Women Don't Ask by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever (2003) looks at how institutions, the way girls are raised and unspoken assumptions discourage women from asking, then tells women how to ask and why they should. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez (2019) shows how, in a world built for and by men, the data ignores half the population. Then use our guide to negotiating salary without apologising for the actual words.

The mental load at home. Fair Play by Eve Rodsky is a system, not a rant: 100 household tasks and a card game you play with your partner to divide them. Fed Up by Gemma Hartley (2018) followed her Harper's Bazaar article "Women Aren't Nags; We're Just Fed Up", which set off a national conversation about emotional labour. If your partner does the job badly until you stop asking, start with our guide to weaponized incompetence.

Burnout and rest. Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski (2019) explains why women experience burnout differently from men, and what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle. Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey (2022), founder of The Nap Ministry, goes further: rest is a way to push back against grind culture, capitalism and white supremacy. Our story of the same name, Rest Is Resistance, is the short version.

Boundaries. Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab (2021) is the practical one: simple ways to set healthy boundaries in every part of your life. Our guides to boundaries with family and how to stop being a people pleaser give you the scripts.

Feminist Books That Widen the Lens

If the books above seem to assume the reader is white, straight, able bodied and secular, these are the correction. Read whichever one is furthest from your own life first.

Women, Race and Class by Angela Y. Davis (1981) traces the intertwined histories of the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements. In our view it is still the first book to read on race and class in American feminism.

What is the book Against White feminism about? Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria (2021) argues for a radically inclusive, intersectional and transnational fight for women's rights. According to its publisher, it takes apart the apolitical aspirations of white feminism, and centres women of colour and the world beyond the West.

Whipping Girl by Julia Serano (2007) is a collection of personal essays on how fear, suspicion and dismissiveness towards femininity shape attitudes to trans women. Disability Visibility, edited by Alice Wong (2020), gathers first person writing on the joys and challenges of disabled life now. For faith, Headscarves and Hymens by Mona Eltahawy (2015) argues that political revolution in the Arab world needs a social and sexual revolution alongside it, and Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey (2013) is her own account of how Jesus made a feminist out of her.

What are some good feminist fiction books? The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985): Offred's life in Gilead, where a Handmaid has one function, to breed. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (1979): a modern Black woman snatched from her home in California. The Color Purple by Alice Walker, which won the National Book Award for fiction in 1983. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (2019): twelve very different people, mostly Black and female, across more than a hundred years. And Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (2016 in Japan, English 2018): Keiko Furukura, called strange since childhood, and her convenience store job.

How to Actually Read Them

A reading list only works if you read it, so keep it small. Our rule of thumb: one book a month, the shortest first, and no guilt about the ones you never reach. Put the first three on hold at the library. Try the audiobook for the essays and listen while you do the dishes. Read with a friend: one book, one month, one conversation. And stop any book that is not landing.

How do I educate myself on feminism? Start with the three books at the top, in order, then follow the problem you actually have into the second section. If you want the ground floor first, read our beginner's guide to intersectional feminism. Then notice where the books disagree. That is the education.

What are some feminist publications? Ms. magazine was launched as a one shot insert in New York magazine in December 1971, put out its first regular issue in July 1972, and still publishes in print and online. For the academic side, Signs, published by the University of Chicago Press, describes itself as the leading international journal in women's and gender studies.

Put Feminism Is for Everybody on hold at your library today, or order it, and write the date you will start it in your calendar. Three books, in order. Then the one for the problem on your plate.