Women's Studies
This study guide collection of nonfiction titles spans foundational Women's Studies texts such as Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, critical texts such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic, and contemporary best sellers like Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit.
Esmeralda’s family relocates from Puerto Rico to Brooklyn in 1961, when Esmeralda is 13 years old. On the cusp of womanhood, Esmeralda receives warnings from her family members, and especially her mother, Mami, to watch out for the many algos or dangers lurking in the city. Struggling to adjust to city life in Brooklyn, Esmeralda misses Puerto Rico, and she dreams of the day when she will return. Initially put into remedial classes because she... Read Almost a Woman Summary
A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785-1812 is a 1990 nonfiction biography of midwife Martha Ballard by American historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Using Martha Ballard’s diary as a primary source, Ulrich utilizes a microhistorical approach to evaluate the life of Ballard, the history of Maine’s Kennebec River region, and the themes of social medicine, women’s role in the economy, and religion’s place in everyday life. A Midwife’s Tale won... Read A Midwife's Tale Summary
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects was written in 1792 by Mary Wollstonecraft. It is often referred to as one of the earliest feminist texts, and Wollstonecraft herself described it as proto-feminist. In it, Wollstonecraft explores the oppression of women by men, and argues that no society can be either virtuous or moral while half of the population are being subjugated by the other half. Ultimately, Wollstonecraft... Read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Summary
Bad Feminist is a collection of essays from writer, scholar, and social critic Roxane Gay. Published in 2014 by Harper Perennial, the New York Times best seller draws together an array of topics, from pop culture to literary discourse to political legislation to personal recollections, in an analysis of society, culture, and politics. Gay tackles modern patriarchy and racism in ways that emphasize the humanity of marginalized people and how those systems of oppression deny... Read Bad Feminist Summary
Becoming is a memoir by Michelle Obama, the former First Lady of the United States from 2008-2016, originally published in 2018. In addition to describing her time in the White House, Obama details her upbringing, her education, her work in community outreach, and her relationship with former president Barack Obama, all of which contribute to the process of becoming the woman she is today. Becoming was the bestselling book of the year in 2018 and... Read Becoming Summary
Bossypants is a humorous memoir published in 2011 by actor and writer Tina Fey. Fey describes growing up as an awkward, smart-mouthed girl and traces the process by which she enters show business, from working at a theater summer camp, to taking night improv classes, to writing for Saturday Night Live, and finally to creating her own television sitcom, 30 Rock. Fey writes of the discrimination and double standards to which women in show business... Read Bossypants Summary
Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, also known as Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences, is a 2010 work of feminist nonfiction by British psychologist and philosopher Dr. Cordelia Fine. Through an intensive but accessible review of neurological and sociological studies, the book debunks the idea that men and women have different brains. Nominated for numerous awards upon its publication, it went on to become a bestseller... Read Delusions of Gender Summary
Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad is a memoir published in 1998 by the Somali model, author, and activist Waris Dirie and author Cathleen Miller. The book recounts Dirie’s harrowing life story, from her roots as a member of a nomadic family and the abuses she suffered as a child to her rise to international fame as a fashion model, an ambassador and advocate for women's rights, and an author. The novel... Read Desert Flower Summary
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Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by critic, academic, and writer bell hooks is described by the author as a primer, a handbook, even “a dream come true” (ix). In the Introduction to the book, hooks describes her labor of love in writing this brief guide to feminism, and she employs a concise style that does not waver from her goal of educating readers about the fundamentals of feminism. This book is the product of... Read Feminism Is For Everybody Summary
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers is a nonfiction memoir by the Cambodian author Loung Ung. A survivor of the 1970s Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, Ung wrote the story as an adult looking back on her childhood years between the ages of five and nine. Although some experts criticized the book over its historical accuracy, other critics lauded Ung for capturing the emotional truth of her experiences... Read First They Killed My Father Summary
Published in 1990, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity is a seminal work in feminism and a foundational work in queer theory. This study guide is based on the 2006 Routledge edition of Butler’s text. Butler's primary aims in the work are to make a case for rejecting an essential female identity as the basis for feminist practice and to come up with an account of gender formation without recourse to... Read Gender Trouble Summary
Gift from the Sea is a 1955 work of inspirational nonfiction literature by American author Anne Morrow Lindbergh. While vacationing on Captiva Island, Florida, Lindbergh explores the questions of how to find a new, more natural rhythm of life and how to gain a deeper relationship with herself and others. To gain inspiration for this, she discusses various shells that she finds on the beach. The first two shells she finds symbolize the importance of... Read Gift From The Sea Summary
In their 2009 nonfiction book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, husband-and-wife journalist team Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn document what they consider the paramount moral challenge of the 21st century: the oppression of women and girls. The book was an international bestseller, inspired a four-part PBS documentary of the same name, and launched the Half the Sky movement.Like many journalists, when Kristof and WuDunn first began their careers, they... Read Half the Sky Summary
Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad is a 1955 biography by American author Ann Petry. This book takes the reader on a journey through Harriet Tubman’s life, from her birth to enslaved parents on a Maryland plantation to her death as a free woman in New York in 1913. Tubman is a well-known figure in American history and is best known for her heroic actions as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. After escaping... Read Harriet Tubman Summary
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban is an autobiographical book written by Christina Lamb and Malala Yousafzai and published in 2013.Malala Yousafzai was born a little different. From the beginning, her father, Ziauddin, treated her differently than most fathers in Swat, Pakistan treated their daughters. He put her on the family tree, a position usually reserved for the men in the family and nicknamed her... Read I Am Malala Summary
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens is a collection of essays, speeches, and letters by Alice Walker. The collection was published in 1983. Walker is also a novelist and a poet. Her most famous novel, The Color Purple, was published in 1982 and won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1983. The novel was adapted into a movie as well as a musical. These essays are collected from different books and... Read In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens Summary
Published in 2019, Chanel Miller’s Know My Name: A Memoir is her first book. A harrowing account of surviving rape and reclaiming identity, Miller’s memoir documents her 2015 rape at Stanford University and its aftermath. A New York Times bestselling author, Miller provides a raw yet hopeful examination of sexual assault. Through the intersections of gender, race, and class, Miller, who is Chinese American, explores society’s treatment of survivors. Ultimately, Miller offers a hopeful journey... Read Know My Name: A Memoir Summary
Men Explain Things to Me is Rebecca Solnit’s 19th book. First published in 2014, it is comprised of a collection of essays primarily concerned with gender politics. The first essay explores men silencing women. It begins with Solnit recounting a conversation with “Mr. Very Important” in which he asks her about her writing, only to talk over her and lecture her about a book that, it turns out, she actually wrote. She uses this to... Read Men Explain Things To Me Summary
Sonia Sotomayor (b. June 25, 1954) is an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Born and raised in the Bronx, NY to Puerto Rican parents, she graduated from Princeton University summa cum laude in 1976 and Yale University’s law school in 1979. After four and a half years working as an assistant district attorney in New York City, she joined Pavia & Harcourt, a small Manhattan law firm, eventually becoming a partner. In... Read My Beloved World Summary
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us (2019) was written by Rachel Louise Snyder, an associate professor of creative writing and journalism at American University. A world traveler, longtime contributor to magazines and podcasts, and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Snyder has won awards for both her fiction and nonfiction works, which include Fugitive Denim and What We’ve Lost is Nothing. No Visible Bruises, published by Bloomsbury Publishing, won the... Read No Visible Bruises Summary
Reviving Ophelia was written in 1994 by Mary Pipher, a psychologist who works with women and teen girls, studying the ways cultural norms impact their mental health. The book comprises a collection of Pipher’s essays, which are based on the interviews and focus groups with adolescent girls she conducted with her daughter, Sara Pipher. She wrote the collection to bring awareness to the cultural trauma and dysfunction experienced by adolescent girls and to assist girls... Read Reviving Ophelia Summary
Kate Millett’s 1970 book Sexual Politics is a groundbreaking feminist critique of literature and social organization that is widely regarded as an essential radical feminist text.It opens with brief exploration of fiction by Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, and Jean Genet. Presenting these as “Incidents of Sexual Politics,” Millett examines how power operates within sexual relationships and builds an argument that the relationship between the sexes is a political issue revolving around the dominance of one... Read Sexual Politics Summary
Writer and professor Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, originally published in 2015, is a work of “autotheory”— it combines Nelson’s personal experiences of marriage and motherhood with reflections on the writing process, queer and feminist theory, and psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. This blending of genres gives the book its unconventional form; unlike a more traditional memoir, The Argonauts jumps backwards and forwards in Nelson’s life as she explores ideas and images related to pregnancy, sexuality, identity... Read The Argonauts Summary
Audre Lorde was a poet, essayist, activist, and memoirist whose writings on lesbian feminism and race were integral to second-wave feminism. Lorde was born in New York City on February 18, 1934 to Grenadian immigrant parents. She attended Hunter High School, where she edited the school’s literary magazine. She published her first poem, which had been rejected by an English teacher, in Seventeen magazine. She later attended Hunter College, where she trained to become a... Read The Cancer Journals Summary