As a Feminist: ten books that made me

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

The books we read teach us about other people’s experience, help us articulate our own and shape our view of the world. I can’t remember every book I’ve read but some stick in my memory as foundational texts of my understanding of the world around me.

Here are the ten books that made me:

The Handmaiden’s Tale

The Handmaiden’s Tale is from the point of view of Offred: a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that offers Offred only one function: to breed.

This was my favourite book before it was cool, I swear! Though I do love the TV adaption, this was my favourite book for years. Atwood has long said that “It's not only a feminist story, it's also a human story.” I think when I read it aged 15, I saw it this way. The book after all is the story of an ordinary person trying to survive in a dystopian society. She doesn’t begin as a hero or a rebel but because she is a woman, she is forced to become one. For me this book taught me that there will always be forces who want to take our human rights away, that as women there will always be people trying to control us. It cannot be ignored, we must be stay aware and always willing to fight to stop that happening, to ourselves and others.

Noughts & Crosses

Noughts & Crosses is set in an alternative 21st-century Britain with an alternative history in which African people had gained an advantage over the European people, rather than the other way around. Slavery has been abolished for some time, but segregation continues to operate.

I am lucky enough to have a signed copy of this book, just as I am lucky that at age 10 I needed a book to explain racism, prejudice and segregation to me. It could be said that it is problematic that the book needed to change the races around to make the point that “racial superiority is a mere pigment of the imagination” but as a child the story helped me understand a range of issues relating to the realities of prejudice. Apparently, they are making a TV show, I can’t wait!   

The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar is a novel about a young woman who is in a downward spiral and her challenge to get well again.

I read this book when I was aged 21 as part of my Feminist Book Club, the themes of losing control and feeling that, as a woman, your choices are limited by society really spoke to my friends and I. As ambitious privileged young women, I think we all had a vague sense of the dilemma articulates in this book in Plath’s famous fig tree analogy. This book still haunts me.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China is a family history that spans a century, recounting the lives of three female generations in China,

When I read this book at age 13, I was in love with history and other cultures. I consumed any story different from my own life experiences but this book was my favourite for years. I re-read it over and over again all through my teenage years. Looking back, I think this is because it was one of the few books I found that told the story of a nation and a culture through the eyes of women. And not just any women, three generations of women with agency who were part of their country’s history. Not just watching from the side-lines. In a world where so much history is written by men and about men. This book was and still is a rare gift.  

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a 1969 autobiography describing the early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou.

As a white woman with a comfortable and happy childhood, I have long been aware of my privilege but a powerful book really forces you to examine and confront it. For me it was this book, at the age of 22 the themes of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and black lack of power hit me hard on a personal level. This is a book containing much trauma but not hopelessness. Maya Angelou is a fighter, despite being failed by the world, and she can teach us all an awful lot.

Feminism is for everyone

Feminism is for everyone explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.

Many feminist core texts can be complicated and difficult to digest, but in this books bell hooks explained feminism to the young me using common sense and the wisdom of experience. This accessible book came to me at age 16 when I knew was a feminist but I didn’t really know what that meant. It shapes my understanding feminism to this day.

Half The Sky: How to Change the World

Half the Sky argues that the oppression of women worldwide is "the paramount moral challenge" of the present era, much as the fight against slavery was in the past.

Half the Sky is a call to arms, a call for help, a call for contributions, and a call for volunteers. It is a brutal explanation of the oppression of women worldwide (the maternal mortality section particularly stuck in my mind) while also providing a series of solutions. It is maybe a bit simplistic, but it taught me aged 17 that no matter how horrifying an issue, you can be part of the solution. And not just you can be, you must be.

The Bluest eye

The Bluest eye is from the point of view of a young African-American girl who due to her mannerisms and dark skin, is consistently regarded as "ugly" and develops an inferiority complex, which fuels her desire for the blue eyes she equates with "whiteness".

This book was recommended to me age 14 by my English teacher (which would be rather controversial in some schools!) It was the first book I read that provided me a window into a world that encompasses, in the author’s words, "the far more tragic and disabling consequences of accepting rejection as legitimate, as self-evident." It is a terrible story about horrifying things but we shouldn’t turn away from such horrors. It revealed to me a reality faced by many that cannot and should not be ignore.

Gender Trouble

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by the philosopher Judith Butler argues that gender is a kind of improvised performance.

Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality inspired pretty much every essay I wrote during my MA in Gender aged 24. It’s controversial but to me it made a lot of sense. You know when someone writes a book that changing how you view and understand everything? Yes, that’s this book.

Yes means Yes

Yes means yes consists of a series of essays by various authors which all share the central theme of preventing rape by addressing the cultural and societal milieu that the authors say is complicit in enabling rape. Sexual consent, body image, self-esteem, and sexual violence are covered in the essays.

I found this book in a charity book and the cover sold it to me on the spot, after I read it I discover Jessica Valenti and she has enriched my life. How do we end rape? How do we shift the paradigm from “No means No” to “Yes means Yes”? How do we dismantle the way we view rape in our culture and replaced it with a genuine understanding and respect for female sexual pleasure? Aged 25, this book showed me how this is possible, all it would take is revolution. A revolution that is already happening, I remember thinking “sign me up!”

What books made you? Comment below!

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