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.
Elif Shafak’s 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was published in 2019. Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist who advocates for women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights through her fiction. Shafak’s 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World examines the life of a sex worker who was murdered in Istanbul, Turkey, exploring key moments in her life while her friends desperately try to arrange her funeral. The novel investigates topics like violence against... Read 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World Summary
Abeng (1984) is a fictionalized semi-autobiographical novel by Jamaican-American author Michelle Cliff (1946-2016). Born in Kingston, Cliff spent most of her life in the US where she taught at several prestigious colleges and universities. Abeng, the first of Cliff’s three novels, is a subversive history of Jamaica, as well as a coming-of-age story of bi-racial girl Clare Savage. Through her efforts to understand her surroundings and her own place in the world, Clare gradually uncovers... Read Abeng Summary
A Dream Called Home is a memoir published in 2018 by the award-winning Mexican American author Reyna Grande. The book is the sequel to her bestselling 2012 memoir, The Distance Between Us, which addresses Reyna’s experiences crossing the US-Mexico border as a child. The title alludes to the American dream while also gesturing to varied concepts of home. This summary refers to the 2018 English-language edition published by Atria Books.Plot SummaryReyna divides her memoir into... Read A Dream Called Home Summary
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
In At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, historian Danielle L. McGuire uncovers the untold history of many Black female civil rights activists. McGuire’s book is meant to serve as a correction to popular accounts of the civil rights era. While the movement has frequently been associated with its male leaders, such as Martin... Read At the Dark End of the Street Summary
Written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and first published in 1856 at the height of the Romantic Movement, Aurora Leigh is a narrative novel in blank verse that divided critics by challenging the standard positions within contemporary debates regarding class and gender. Standing at nine books and 11,000 lines, it is the first feature-length poem in English that places a female artist at the center of the plot, and as such, it catapulted its equally atypical... Read Aurora Leigh 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
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy is a 2019 biography by Sonia Purnell. It tells the story of Virginia Hall, a US spy whose efforts were critical to France’s success in World War II. Despite its larger-than-life nature and importance to the Allies’ success, Hall’s story has remained largely unknown until now. In recounting Virginia Hall’s life, Purnell examines themes like the importance of Serving a... Read A Woman of No Importance 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
Celestial Bodies is a novel by Omani author Jokha Alharthi, translated into English by Marilyn Booth. Charting the lives of various generations of a family in the fictional town of al-Awafi, it depicts an evolving Omani society that is still coming to grips with the post-colonial world and the abolition of slavery. It won the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.Plot SummaryThe plot for Celestial Bodies skips around in time, alternating between Abdallah’s reminiscences on a... Read Celestial Bodies Summary
Clear Light of Day (1980) is Anita Desai’s sixth and—according to the author—most autobiographical novel. This novel was the first of three of Desai’s books to be nominated for the prestigious Booker Prize. Like other books in her corpus, such as Cry, the Peacock (1963) and Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), it deals with gender struggles in a modernizing India. Set against the backdrop of Indian Independence and Partition, it explores the lives... Read Clear Light of Day Summary
Crazy Brave: A Memoir is an autobiographical work by poet, writer, artist, and musician Joy Harjo that was published by W. W. Norton and Company in 2012. The memoir follows the life of Joy Harjo from birth to adulthood and her struggles with spirituality and creativity while living with various alcoholic and abusive men. Over the course of her life, she discovers that poetry, art, storytelling, and music can liberate her from her oppressive domestic... Read Crazy Brave Summary
Crimes of the Heart is a three-act play by Beth Henley. It opens five years after Hurricane Camille, in a Mississippi town called Hazlehurst. The entirety of the play takes place in the kitchen of the house belonging to the Magrath sisters: Lenny, Babe, and Meg. The play begins on Lenny’s thirtieth birthday. Lenny and Chick, a first cousin, are taking about an unspecified piece of terrible news that will be appearing in the newspaper. It has something to do... Read Crimes of the Heart Summary
Crossing the Mangrove (1995) by Maryse Condé was originally published in French as Traversée de la Mangrove. It was translated to English by her husband Richard Philcox. Told from multiple perspectives, the novel opens with a mystery—that of Francis Sancher’s murder. As characters gather to speak at Sancher’s wake, they reveal his impact on the village of Rivière au Sel (“Salty River”), as well as why he returned to the village of his ancestors. While... Read Crossing the Mangrove 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
“Diving into the Wreck” is the title poem of Adrienne Rich’s 1973 National Book Award-winning collection. A 94-line, ten stanza free verse poem, the work encompasses Rich’s thematic concerns of radical feminism and art and examines how gender functions within the larger context of culture, literature, and oral tradition.Rich’s mid-career poem came about during a period of intense change in her life. While her earlier poems had been more traditional in form and topic, over... Read Diving into the Wreck Summary
First published in 1994, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood is Fatima Mernissi’s memoir of her experience growing up in a harem in Fez, Morocco, in the 1940s. Mernissi, who received her PhD in political science from Brandeis University and won the Prince of Asturias Award and the Erasmus Prize for her feminist writing, was the author of several nonfiction works examining women’s place in the Islamic world.Dreams of Trespass encompasses Fatima’s life... Read Dreams of Trespass 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
A choreopoem is a work of art that combines dance, music, and poetry. Because the medium focuses as much on nonverbal communication as the written word, choreopoems are performance pieces. Ntozake Shange originated this format in 1974, when for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf debuted in San Francisco, California. Later, the choreopoem made its Broadway debut in December 1976, a move that Shange describes as “either too big for... Read For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf Summary
Published in 2004, Cokie Roberts’s Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation is a non-fiction, historical study of the role women played in establishing the United States as an independent nation. This study guide refers to the first edition of the text, published by William Morrow-HarperCollins in 2004. In her introduction, Roberts recalls her childhood delight at hearing tales of her ancestor William Claiborne, who met the Founding Fathers. However, she recognizes that she... Read Founding Mothers Summary
“Friend of My Youth” is the title short story from the collection of the same name by Alice Munro, published in 1990. The collection won the 1990 Trillium Book Award, which recognizes writers from Ontario, Canada.Narrated in the first person, the story is told from the perspective of an unnamed female writer in mourning for her mother, who died some years earlier of Parkinson’s disease. The narrator describes a recurrent dream that she used to... Read Friend of My Youth 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 Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, published in 2004, historian Gene Brucker describes the events of a single relationship in fifteenth-century Florence. This “microhistory” of a romance and subsequent court trial demonstrates how Florentine society treated love, marriage, and social class.In Chapter 1, Brucker reveals that he learned of the relationship between Giovanni di Ser Lodovico della Casa and Lusanna di Girolamo through the records of the notary Ser Filippo Mazzei... Read Giovanni and Lusanna Summary
Girls Like Us: Fighting For a World Where Girls Are Not For Sale, is a memoir by Rachel Lloyd that challenges how sexually exploited girls are treated and perceived in society. The book was originally published by Harper Perennial in February 2012 to positive reviews from various sources and figures such as Elle, Marie Claire, Demi Moore, Harlem Children’s Zone, and Tony Award-winning playwright and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Sarah Jones. Rachel Lloyd, a survivor of... Read Girls Like Us Summary
Bernardine Evaristo’s polyphonic novel of modern Britain and womanhood, Girl, Woman, Other, won the 2019 Booker Prize. Evaristo was the first Black woman to receive this literary prize for books written in the English language. Employing an experimental, poetic form, the novel follows several generations of mainly Black, British women who interrogate the intersections of identity, Human Connectivity and Interdependence, Diaspora in Great Britain, and The Impact of Family Legacy. Girl, Woman, Other is Evaristo’s... Read Girl, Woman, Other Summary
Published in 1939, Good Morning, Midnight is a semiautobiographical work written by Jean Rhys. A writer of Creole and Welsh descent, Rhys lived in the British West Indies before traveling to England to study. She married and traveled throughout Europe with her first husband, a journalist of French origin. This marriage ended in divorce. Sasha Jensen, the narrator of Good Morning, Midnight, also leaves London to follow her husband Enno. They eventually settle in Paris... Read Good Morning, Midnight 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
Herland (1915) is the second installment of The Herland Trilogy by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, but it is typically read as a standalone novel. Gilman was an American humanist, feminist activist, and author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her most famous work is “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), a short story that depicts the late 1800s “rest cure”: a popular treatment for women’s mental health that Gilman underwent herself. Herland follows three men—Van, Jeff, and Terry—who find... Read Herland Summary
How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (1992) by Croatian essayist and journalist Slavenka Drakulić details life in Communist Eastern Europe, especially the former Yugoslavia (which after 1989 would become eight distinct countries, including Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Montenegro). Drakulić wrote this collection in response to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of the USSR; in her view, there was more political coverage than reflections of how communism affected quotidian life. In... Read How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed 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
I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced tells the story of Nujood Ali, a Yemeni girl who is possibly the youngest divorcée in the world. Nujood published her biography, co-written with French journalist Delphine Minoui, in 2010, two years after her controversial divorce. The novel begins with an introduction to the country of Yemen and to Nujood’s story written by Delphine Minoui, the book’s second and adult writer. Minoui never specifies how she and Nujood... Read I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced 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
In the Name of Salomé, first published in 2000, is the fourth novel by Dominican-American author Julia Alvarez. Alvarez is a poet as well as a novelist and has also written essays, nonfiction works, and children’s books. Alvarez was born in the United States but raised in the Dominican Republic, and her work focuses heavily on the experience of a Latina assimilating into American culture. Her family’s political activity in their homeland and her own... Read In the Name of Salome Summary
Part I relates the story of Tituba from her birth to her arrival in Salem. Part II begins with the witch trials and ends with Tituba’s execution in Barbados in the 1700s. The Epilogue, narrated by Tituba’s spirit, brings the story from the century of her death to that of the present-day reader. Following the Epilogue are two sections that Condé included in the original French publication: a Historical Note on the Salem witch trials... Read I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem Summary
Published in 1991, Jump and Other Stories is a collection of 16 short stories by Nadine Gordimer. Each story provides insight into how apartheid affected the people of South Africa. Featuring tales of tragedy, war, revolution, and love, the collection uses a diverse cast of characters to address systemic racism and offer hope for an inclusive future. Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer and political activist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature... Read Jump and Other Stories Summary
Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America, written by Helen Thorpe, is detailed account of the lives of four Mexico-born girls as they come of age in Denver, Colorado. Thorpe, an Irish-American journalist, published the nonfiction novel in 2009. Two of the girls, Clara and Elissa, are here legally, while the other two, Marisela and Yadira, are without documents. While the girls are similar in birth and... Read Just Like Us 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
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War is the third book by New York Times best-selling author Karen Abbott. Though Abbott has recently changed her publishing name to Abbott Kahler, because Liar Temptress, Soldier, Spy is still printed and published as authored by Karen Abbott, this guide will refer to the author by that name. Abbott often writes about American women’s history, focusing on overlooked stories, accomplishments, and contributions of women... Read Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy 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
Carmen Laforet’s first novel, Nada, tells the coming-of-age story of Andrea, an orphan who moves from a convent in provincial Spain to the city of Barcelona. Published to widespread acclaim in 1945 when Laforet was just 23, the novel won the Premio Nadal literary prize. Known for its artful portrayal of the poverty, class stratification, and domestic struggles many families faced after the Spanish Civil War, Nada paints a realistic portrait of life under Francisco... Read Nada Summary
’Night, Mother by Marsha Norman opened on Broadway in 1983, earning the Tony Award for Best Play and the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play takes place in real time, with no intermission or breaks in the action, to depict the unrelenting emotional exchange between Thelma and her daughter, Jessie, after Jessie announces that she plans to commit suicide. As Jessie sets her affairs in order, Thelma tries unsuccessfully to stop Jessie’s plan from... Read Night, Mother Summary
Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes, was first published in 1936. It tells the story of Robin Vote and the lives of those she becomes entangled with as she struggles with her desires and need for freedom. While set mostly in 1930s Paris, the novel is cosmopolitan in nature, with action also taking place in Vienna, Berlin, and various parts of America. This book is an example of modernist literature from the period between world wars and... Read Nightwood 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
Paradise of the Blind (1988) is a fictional novel written by Duong Thu Huong, a dissident Vietnamese writer and former Communist Party member who openly criticizes the disillusionment of communism through her writings. As a former Communist Youth Brigade leader, Duong was in a unique position to observe the political and social chaos of communist Vietnam. Paradise of the Blind is set against the backdrop of Land Reform, the official state-run attempt at land redistribution... Read Paradise of the Blind Summary
Play It as It Lays is a novel by Joan Didion published in 1970. It was named one of TIME’s 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923-2005, cementing its status as one of the greatest works of American literature. In 1972, the novel was adapted for film, and Didion and her husband co-wrote the screenplay. Joan Didion is known for her fiction and nonfiction as well as for screenplays and a memoir entitled The Year of Magical Thinking. She has... Read Play It As It Lays Summary
Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral recounts the story of a young Black woman in the 1920s who decides to pass as white. Ostensibly a coming-of-age story, the novel features a complex treatment of racial barriers and gender inequalities. While the trajectory of the novel is straightforward and relatively typical for the bildungsroman—young woman leaves home, discovers herself through a series of obstacles she must overcome, and finally learns how to... Read Plum Bun Summary
Prayers for the Stolen is a 2012 coming-of-age novel by American Mexican author Jennifer Clement, who resides in Mexico City. Clement formerly served as president of PEN Mexico, part of a worldwide association of playwrights, poets, editors, essayists, and novelists that advocates for freedom of expression. Clement took up this role at a time when Mexico was among the most dangerous countries in the world in which to work in journalism. The narrator and protagonist... Read Prayers for the Stolen Summary
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books is a memoir by Iranian American author Azar Nafisi, first released to widespread critical and popular acclaim in 2003. The memoir recalls Nafisi’s experiences living and teaching in Iran after the 1979 revolution that created the Islamic Republic of Iran, until her eventual exile in the United States in 1997. At the center of the memoir is Nafisi’s account of a secret book club she hosted during... Read Reading Lolita in Tehran Summary
Remarkable Creatures (2009), a novel by Tracy Chevalier, is historical fiction that explores the unlikely friendship between Mary Anning, a working-class woman with a passion for fossil hunting, and Elizabeth Philpot, an unmarried middle-class woman. The novel is set against the backdrop of the rigid societal conventions of 19th-century England. When Mary uncovers a prehistoric fossil on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, her discovery ignites enthusiasm in the scientific community and threatens her village’s deeply... Read Remarkable Creatures 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
Riding the Bus With My Sister: A True Life Journey is the New York Times bestselling author Rachel Simon’s 2002 memoir chronicling her experiences with her intellectually disabled sister, Beth. Over the course of a year, Simon rides the bus with Beth and writes about the journey. She learns to confront her own ignorance about her sister’s condition and forms a close bond with her. The book chronicles Rachel’s emotional and spiritual growth, as Rachel’s... Read Riding The Bus With My Sister 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
“Spunk” is a short story by Zora Neale Hurston published in 1925. Set in the rural Southern United States, “Spunk” follows the conflict that ensues when one man pursues another man’s wife. The story’s publication helped establish Hurston as a significant literary voice during the Harlem Renaissance. In 1989, George C. Wolfe adapted the story, along with content from two others by Hurston, into a play by the same name. Citations in this guide correspond... Read Spunk Summary
Stealing Buddha’s Dinner is a memoir by Bich Minh Nguyen that tells the story of her childhood in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a young Vietnamese refugee. Bich’s family, made up of her father; her grandmother, Noi; her sister, Anh; and her uncles, Chu Anh, Chu Cuong, and Chu Dai; flee to the United States from Vietnam in April 1975, just as Saigon is falling to the North Vietnamese. Her mother is left behind, and the... Read Stealing Buddha's Dinner Summary
Maya Angelou was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist whose career spanned over 50 years. She published seven autobiographies, several books of poetry, and three essay collections and wrote plays, movies, and television shows. Her widely acclaimed work has received numerous awards, and Angelou has received over 50 honorary degrees. Her best known work is her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing, which focuses on her childhood up to the... Read Still I Rise 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
The Artificial Silk Girl, by Irmgard Keun, originally published in 1932 as Das kunstseidene Mädchen, is an example of Neue Sachlichkeit, a German literary movement of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). This guide follows the 2019 Penguin Modern Classics version translated by Kathie von Ankum. Plot SummaryDoris, an 18-year-old German girl from a mid-sized town in the Ruhr Valley, dreams of becoming a star and living a life of luxury. She comes from a lower-middle-class family, lives... Read The Artificial Silk Girl Summary
Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women was published in 1990 and republished in 2002 by HarperCollins with an updated introduction. At the time of its original release, The Beauty Myth was considered a seminal feminist work for its analysis of the way the market—and its consumer culture—generates and perpetuates the myth of beauty to control women on a psychological level. This study guide refers to the 2009 HarperCollins... Read The Beauty Myth Summary
The Birth House is a work of historical fiction written by Canadian novelist Ami McKay and published in 2009. The book was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and won three Libris Awards from the Canadian Booksellers Association. The story takes place in the early 20th century during World War I and is set primarily in Scots Bay, a small shipbuilding community in Nova Scotia, Canada. While she is originally from Indiana, McKay... Read The Birth House 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
The Clean House, which premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2004 and opened Off-Broadway in 2006, was the first major play by celebrated American playwright Sarah Ruhl, whose other widely recognized works include Eurydice (2004), Dead Man’s Cell Phone (2007), and In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) (2009). The Clean House received a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004 and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Ruhl also earned... Read The Clean House Summary
The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe is the nonfiction debut of American journalist and author, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, first published in 2011. It chronicles the story of Kamila Sidiqi, a young woman living under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, who became a fashion entrepreneur at a time when the rights of women were strictly limited. Lemmon traveled to Afghanistan to study... Read The Dressmaker of Khair Khana Summary
Published in 1969, The Edible Woman was Margret Atwood’s first novel and established her reputation as a significant contemporary novelist. The Edible Woman follows recently engaged Marian McAlpin as she attempts to reconcile her need for personal autonomy with the gendered expectations inherent within the roles of a wife and mother. As Marian begins to feel a loss of identity, her body suddenly refuses certain foods, particularly meat. To reflect the inner struggle her protagonist... Read The Edible Woman Summary
Published in 1948 in the wake of World War II, The Ethics of Ambiguity by French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) is a significant contribution to existentialist thought and outlines a practical system of ethics. Human freedom is of the utmost concern to the existentialist, and de Beauvoir argues that with human freedom comes ethical responsibility, countering those philosophers and skeptics who say that existentialism does not give practical guidance on how to live our... Read The Ethics Of Ambiguity Summary
Betty Friedan’s 1963 The Feminine Mystique is considered a classic text of feminist non-fiction. It was enormously influential in kick-starting the second wave of feminism, a movement that began in the 1960s advocating increased rights and new social roles for women. By voicing the despair that many women felt, The Feminine Mystique galvanized readers across the US to join the feminist movement and prompted others to at least to take its criticisms of mid-century American... Read The Feminine Mystique Summary
Published in 2013, Denise Kiernan’s The Girls of Atomic City tells the stories of Oak Ridge, a secret town that grew around plutonium processing plants in Tennessee, and of the women who worked there during the Second World War. A New York Times bestseller within its first week of publication, the book went on to receive the 2014 APSA Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award. Via the experiences of several new arrivals, the reader learns about Oak Ridge... Read The Girls of Atomic City Summary
Considered the most influential of Doris Lessing’s many novels, The Golden Notebook explores the development of a young writer. Anna Wulf has published one novel, Frontiers of War, to great acclaim, but she now finds herself uncomfortable with what she sees as its sentimentality and romanticization of war. Thus, she remains mired in a kind of writer’s block. She still writes in her notebooks, but she cannot bring herself to return to writing novels—especially in... Read The Golden Notebook Summary
The Joys of Motherhood (1979) is a historical fiction novel by Buchi Emecheta. Set in both rural and urban Nigerian locales over several decades, the novel explores changes in the roles and status of women against the backdrop of colonialism. It follows the life of Nnu Ego, a woman whose identity and self-worth are deeply intertwined with her role as a mother.This guide is based on the 1990 George Braziller edition of the text. It... Read The Joys of Motherhood Summary
The Labyrinth of Solitude is a nine-part philosophical and historical essay on Mexican identity and culture. Octavio Paz, a famous Mexican poet and career diplomat, began writing The Labyrinth of Solitude during his time as the Mexican ambassador to France in the late 1940s. Originally published in 1951, the first edition of Paz’s work appeared in Spanish under the title El labertino de la soledad, and it is widely considered to be Paz’s masterpiece. This... Read The Labyrinth of Solitude Summary
The Liars’ Club is a memoir by Mary Karr and was first published in 1995. It won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for nonfiction and was a New York Times bestseller.The subject of the memoir is Karr’s turbulent childhood. Karr and her older sister Lecia grew up in Leechfield, Texas and lived briefly in Colorado. Their father was a World War II veteran who worked at an oil refinery and came from a modest Texan background... Read The Liars' Club Summary
The Lying Life of Adults (2020) by Elena Ferrante is a work of fiction. Set in Naples, Italy, the narrative is a coming-of-age story, also known as a bildungsroman, told by Giovanna Trada. Giovanna details her adolescence from 13 to 16 years of age and the growing pains she endured while searching for identity and autonomy. Themes include the struggle between good and evil, women as either sinners or saints, and compunction and gender roles... Read The Lying Life of Adults Summary
The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, co-authored by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, is a nonfiction scholarly text comprising 16 interconnected essays. Published in 1979, this lengthy volume is now widely considered a foundational text of feminist literary criticism. A second edition appeared in 2000 accompanied by a new Introduction by the authors that offers readers insight into Gilbert and Gubar’s decision to focus the work on... Read The Madwoman in the Attic Summary
The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986) by Ana Castillo is a series of nonchronological, fictional letters from a poet named Teresa to her friend Alicia, an artist. The letters describ1/10/20e their experiences through a decade of friendship, including the study abroad trip on which they meet, and a second trip they take together in Mexico.Castillo’s debut work, The Mixquiahuala Letters received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1987. It pays homage to Hopscotch... Read The Mixquiahuala Letters Summary
Marie Benedict’s work of historical fiction, The Only Woman in the Room, tells the life story of Hedy Lamarr, a famed actress of the 1930s and 1940s. The 2019 novel rewrites Lamarr’s legacy by focusing on her path towards inventing a frequency-hopping radio technology that anticipates wi-fi. Benedict uses the political machinations of WWII and Hedy’s experiences to explore performativity, guilt, and sexism.Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain instances and discussions of... Read The Only Woman in the Room Summary
Eudora Welty’s novel The Optimist’s Daughter was published in 1972 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year. Welty, who was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1906, originally wrote the The Optimist’s Daughter as a short story for The New Yorker, in which it was published in 1969. Welty is widely known as a Southern writer because her fiction is derived from the politics, people, and culture of the American South. Before becoming... Read The Optimist's Daughter Summary
