10 Feminist Books to Read

It’s not news that lately, feminism is one of the most popular and most talked about topics in our society. Women’s fight for equal rights has been reaching an even more notorious space and caught the media’s attention, approaching this topic in different ways, from TV shows, movies, and also in books. Female and feminist characters that do not accept inequalities, injustices and being less than men are even more usual and help to influence young women’s thoughts around the world.

Thinking about it, we selected some books from women writers that talk about feminism, either through feminist focused theory or through novels. After these reading, you’re gonna know more over this subject and get even more involved at the cause:

1. Americanah, from Chimamanda Ngozi In the context of a military government from 90’s Nigeria, Ifemelu moves to the United States to go to the university, where she’s gonna have to deal with the difficulties of being a woman, black and immigrant as she stands out at the academic world. Fifteen years later, she became a successful blogger, but she still thinks about her hometown and her teenage first love, Obinze, that she had to left behind. When she decides to come back to Nigeria, she’ll find a very different country from when she moved.

1. A Room of One’s Own, from Virginia Woolf: The book is about lectures based on authoress speaking engagements at Newnham College and Girton College and reflects about women’s social conditions and her influence over feminine literary productions: what are the difficulties that women have to face to express their thoughts, without her writing being changed and seeing as unimportant from society?

1. Le Deuxième Sexe, from Simone de Beauvoir Originally published in 1949, this book is considered one of the most important and pioneers works over women’s studies. The authoress analyzes the whole question about the woman inside the society, claiming that ‘’we’re not born women; we became women’’. De Beauvoir talks about the feminine body, through psychological, biological and historic aspects, with a very shocking writing for the time.

1. The feminine mystique, from Betty Friedan The book tells how women were mystified after the 1929’s crisis and the mobilization to the 2nd World War, and started to be seen only as mothers and wives. This caused a non-stimulation to the generation of independent women since their childhood, and ended up on the development of lots of psychological disturbs and leading to consumerism.

1. Chapeuzinho esfarrapado, from Julia Romeu While we were kids, we were very influenced for the fragile and defenseless fairy tales princesses. This book came to show that it’s not always like that, and brings a collection of five folkloric tales, that travel through different countries of the world, about women who are the real heroines of the stories, and have won challenges and crossed walls only with their nerve and wisdom (without any prince charming or anything like that)

1. Good night stories for rebel girls, from Elena Favilli 100 stories over 100 extraordinary women of world’s history. That’s what Good night stories for rebel girls’s about. With a very simple writing and the ‘’once upon a time’’ thing (giving the feeling of reading a good night story), the book tells the story and the achievements of great women, that come from Frida Kahlo to Serena Williams to inspire you!

1. Heroínas negras brasileiras em 15 cordéis, from Jarid Arraes Brazilian authoress Jarid Arraes has dedicated herself at letting important black women in Brazil speak, showing the matter of diversity to current women. She reunited 15 of those stories at the shape of the cordel literature (very popular mostly at the north-east of Brazil) to try to make them available to everyone.

1. The Beauty Myth, from Naomi Wolf In this book, Naomi Wolf shows through statistics how the beauty could be an obstacle at women’s reach of equality at several fields, and how the obsession at the perfect shape manipulates women psychologically and turn up all of their conquers at illusions. The book reunites matters of job, culture, religion, sexuality, eating disorders and plastic surgeries.

1. Bad feminist, from Roxane Gay This selection of non-fiction rehearsals, written in a very funny and far-sighted way, brings the authoress’ own evolution as a black woman and talks about polemic current themes like racism, politic and violence to show how feminism has been approached, and its contradictions. She declares that she rather be a ‘’bad feminist than not being a feminist at all’’.

1.  The Handmaid’s Tale, from Margaret Atwood In a world dominated by a totalitarian state where there are no more newspapers, magazines, books and movies, women are the mainly victims and the ones that suffer the most with these government oppression. They’ve been divided at different classes, with a specific function each. Offred’s at the handmaid’s class, who determinates that she belongs to the government and that her only function is procreate. As is wasn’t bad enough, her daughter was taken and given to adoption because she’s fruit of a second marriage (thing that is completely forbidden at this new society); and now Offred has to get used with this new and awful reality. Margaret Atwood takes her readers to a reflection about the civil rights, freedom, power, the future and the present.

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