11 Books Every Aspiring Feminist Should Read

There's no such thing as a "perfect" feminist. It's all about learning and asking the hard questions. [This is for the Editorial Fellowship]

Look, this has been a hell of a year. Now, it's finally 2021. Y'all, we did it. At the same time, it's important that we fulfill the promises many of us made to continue on as allies for our communities.

As someone who was always the loud-mouthed girl in the back, eliciting eye-rolls from my fellow classmates, I've never been afraid to, well, be loud. But it's not just about being loud. It's about knowing what we're being loud about.

Melissa Harris-Perry, writer and political science professor, once wrote, “For me, feminism is a question: What truths are we missing here? The feminist thinker and organizer should always be asking…What are we missing? Who are we excluding? How is our analysis true, but still limited by missing truths?”

When it comes to feminism, there truly is no end journey. Instead, it's all about pushing ourselves to acknowledge and work on our blind spots, particularly when it comes to the lived experiences of others. We can only succeed as political allies, actively seeking to end economic, cultural, and governmental disenfranchisement, by understanding the current social infrastructure and what historically led to its formation. It's not always easy work, but it is necessary work. And, in the process, we get to read some really great books.

While this is certainly not a comprehensive list--and I encourage all readers to expand their scope when it comes to what they consume--these are just a few (of many) books that left an imprint on me.

1. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

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In 1980, Audre Lorde, prolific writer and activist, gave a speech titled “I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities.” She expressed how various life stories contribute to understandings of liberation and struggle: “When I say I am a Black feminist, I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my Blackness as well as my womanness, and therefore my struggles on both these fronts are inseparable.” Lorde's work critiqued both racism and misogyny, underscoring the ways in which many forms of oppression overlap.

2. Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay

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Like so many of us, Roxanne Gay is just trying to figure it all out. As she writes, “I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying — trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.”

3. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino

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A funny and honest writer, Jia Tolentino draws from her own experiences in a collection of fresh, vulnerable essays to, ultimately, have a conversation with her readers about womanhood. Ultimately, she is more interested in the exploration, rather than the endpoint. “There is no good answer to being a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question.”

4. Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Leslie Feinberg / Via Jewish Women's Archive

In Leslie Feinberg’s semi-autobiographical Stone Butch Blues, the protagonist, Jess, navigates a terrain fraught with homophobia and transphobia in the 1940s and 1950s. Her voice, her perspective, is a necessary one. Feinberg carefully describes Jess’s conflicting emotions as she attempts to live the life that she wants. After taking hormones and finally passing as a man, Jess wonders, “Why was I so angry? This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? To be able to be myself and yet live without fear? It just didn’t seem fair. All my life I’d been told everything about me was really twisted and sick. But if I was a man, I was ‘cute.’ Acceptance of me as a he felt like an ongoing indictment of me as a he-she."

5. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan

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In Laura Kaplan’s The Story of Jane, members of the secretive Chicago group must continually regroup their efforts to help other women access critical reproductive services. While reading this book, it was striking to see similarities to today’s political landscape. The resurgence of legal antiabortion restrictions has manifested throughout the country, even though, as Jane shows, these regulations do not prevent abortions—they simply prevent safe ones. As Kaplan illustrates, reproductive autonomy is not like a “mink coat,” a consumer good predicated on financial luxury. The right to self-determination was—and is—a human right.

6. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa Harris-Perry

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In one (of many) key passages, Melissa Harris-Perry writes, "Many African Americans bristle at the idea of color blindness because it suggests that race is irrelevant to identity. They want to be understood as black and thus tied to a history and culture associated with blackness. At the same time, they do not want to be reduced to their racial identity alone. Just recognition means being neither blind to nor blinded by identity differences."

As Harris-Perry explains, the validation of a shared humanity does not mean ignoring race or gender and calling it "equality." It is about acknowledging difference while, at the same time, not exploiting that difference as reasons for discrimination and prejudice.

7. Know My Name by Chanel Miller

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I read this book almost a year ago and I still haven't been able to stop thinking about it. It is a powerful opus that rigorously critiques and dismantles the toxic myths transmitted by rape culture. Chanel Miller speaks openly about her assault at Stanford University, charting the subsequent trial with a keen eye, while also sharing the devastating aftereffects of her PTSD.

Miller says, “I do not write to trigger victims. I write to comfort them, and I’ve found that victims identify more with pain than platitudes. When I write about weakness, about how I am barely getting through this, my hope is that they feel better, because it aligns with the truth they are living."

8. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts

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Not gonna lie, this book made me cry multiple times. Randy Shilts, reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, charts the emergence and devastating spread of AIDS in the late 1970s and early 80s. Originally released in 1987, it is an incredibly thorough investigation of the primary political and medical players of the global epidemic. In searing detail, Shilts demonstrates the ways in which utter apathy from the American government contributed to a form of bodily violence that hurt hundreds of thousands of the population.

“The bitter truth was that AIDS did not just happen to America—it was allowed to happen by an array of institutions, all of which failed to perform their appropriate tasks to safeguard the public health.”

9. The Massacre at El Mozote by Mark Danner

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Mark Danner’s The Massacre at El Mozote shrewdly deconstructs the ways in which the United States deliberately overlooked the symptoms of a corrupt military government in El Salvador. In 1981, photographer Susan Meiselas, Raymond Bonner of The New York Times and Alma Guillermoprieto of the Washington Post traveled to El Mozote to investigate rumors of mass carnage and political violence. After trekking through the razed town and interviewing survivors, including Rufina Amaya, both Bonner and Guillermoprieto released their stories on the front pages of their esteemed newspapers. Almost immediately, politicians questioned their “sources,” citing guerilla propaganda as proof of fabrication.

According to Danner, “[O]fficials made active use of the obstacles to finding out the truth…to avoid saying clearly and honestly what they knew and what they suspected." Rather than acknowledge the few Salvadoran voices that bravely shared their stories, the American government spoke over them. They also ignored Western involvement in the formation of specific historical conditions, including colonialist violence and political intervention, which originally shaped the very problems from which many Salvadorans were trying to escape.

10. Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks

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All of the writings of bell hooks should be required reading for everyone. An author and activist, she powerfully describes a feminist theory that illustrates how the historical violence inflicted upon female slaves has contributed to a system that devalues black women to this day.

As bell hooks writes, "[P]ositive social equality that grants all humans the opportunity to shape their destinies in the most healthy and communally productive way can only be a complete reality when our world is no longer racist and sexist.”

11. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

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Fun fact: a few months ago, I wanted to reread this book but couldn't find it, so I quickly bought a new one. And then discovered the original copy hidden under a pile of books. So now I have two and I'm not even mad about it. Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel follows her journey from childhood into adulthood, diving into resonant political and social themes about the changes in Iran's government system and its subsequent effects on her broader community. It is a funny, heartbreaking read that I can't recommend enough.

Writing about her ambitions as a child, Satrapi epically notes, "I wanted to be justice, love and the wrath of God all in one.”