I recently read a fantastic feminist novel called Dietland by Sarai Walker.
But perhaps it seemed particularly fantastic because I feel like I've read so few feminist novels at all. Philosophy texts and essays and memoirs and other nonfiction, sure - I took a couple Women's and Gender Studies courses in college, after all - but feminist fiction is so hard to find! And I love me a good novel.
In her author's note at the end of Dietland, Walker commented that she was inspired by feminist novels of the 1970s/80s (the second wave feminist movement). This immediately caused two questions to spring up in my mind -
1) What are these feminist novels of the 1970s/80s? I would like names please, so I can find them and read them!
And
2) Have there been feminist novels since the 1970s/80s? Where are the contemporary feminist novels??
Basically, I just want all the feminist novels. Gimme gimme gimme.
And if I don't know where to find these books (when I read 70-90 books a year), there must be others also struggling. So I decided I wanted to start a list, which I would come back through and update as I discovered more books to include. The list is pretty short now, but I will be adding to it periodically. Hopefully it'll grow into a much more comprehensive list!
--
Note 1: Checkmarks indicate which ones I have personally read. Mild SPOILERS may be in some of the descriptions.
Note 2: I am using an "umbrella" definition of feminism which includes all aspects of intersectional feminism, including discussions of racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. I am looking for books that make a CLEAR point about the importance of equality, either by setting up a utopian/dystopian world that comments on socio-cultural issues, or by following a character through an "awakening." Books that simply "have a strong female lead" (i.e. a woman who figures out how to balance her work and love life, or a woman who cleaves herself from dependence on a man) are not exactly what I have in mind, although I may include such books on this list if they do a *particularly* good job and attempt to raise social commentary on other feminist issue(s) as well.
Note 3: This list is organized by year (most current year first), and alphabetically by author within each year.
If you have a suggestion for something I'm missing that I should include, please let me know - in the comments below, on Twitter, etc.
--
FEMINIST FICTION
√ Ally Hughes Has Sex Sometimes - Jules Moulin (2015) [Contemporary, Romance, Mother-Daughter Relationships] - Single mother and college professor Ally Hughes does not have time for sex - but she makes an exception for Jake, a surprisingly mature student in one of her classes. Ten years later, Jake comes back into her life as her daughter's friend - at the same time that her grown daughter finds herself so desperate for a nose job her mother won't help pay for that she's willing to work as a "live sex cam girl." Reads like chick lit/romance, but does confront issues such as female sexual empowerment (though with the goading of a man) and some of the problems of the sex industry.
√ * Dietland - Sarai Walker (2015) [Contemporary, Humor, Satire, Revenge Fantasy] - Plum Kettle has always believed her weight is an abomination - until she meets an underground community of women who live life on their own terms, and realizes she's been living the life others expect of her. Meanwhile, a dangerous guerrilla group called "Jennifer" is terrorizing a world that mistreats women, slicing this fast-paced and often funny satire with delicious moments of revenge fantasy.
An Untamed State - Roxane Gay (2014) [Contemporary]
Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013) [Contemporary]
√ * Life After Life - Kate Atkinson (2013) [Literary, Historic, Philosophical, Reincarnation] - As Ursula Todd lives many lives, she suffers tragedies on a personal scale (rape, crude 1930s abortion, domestic violence) and international scale (World War II). Using the "practice makes perfect" mentality to adjust her existence, she confronts the changes that one person - herself - is capable of producing.
√ A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki (2013) [Historic, Contemporary, Philosophical] - This book is about strong women spanning generations: an elderly Buddhist Japanese nun, her Japanese-American granddaughter Nao, and a Japanese-Canadian novelist named Ruth (very meta) who finds Nao's diary washed up on the shore of her Vancouver island residence and believes it's an artifact carried across the Pacific by the 2004 tsunami. But what really makes it feminist is the struggles Nao goes through at her Japanese high school, where she is mercilessly bullied.
Cinnamon - Samar Yazbek (2013)
The Round House - Louise Erdrich (2012) [Contemporary]
The Flamethrowers - Rachel Kushner (2012)
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? - Jeanette Winterson (2011)
The Nightingales of Troy - Alice Fulton (2008) [Connected Short Stories]
√ * The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks - E. Lockhart (2008) [YA, Contemporary, Humor] - In this fun Young Adult novel, sixteen-year-old boarding school student Frankie is absolutely unwilling to act "appropriately" for her gender. She hates being excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society - especially when she knows she's smarter than any of them - and uses both her intellect/creativity and the boy's utter dismissal of her to her advantage to plan a series of pranks with socio-political commentary right under their noses.
The Dark Abode - Sarojini Sahoo (2008)
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini (2007)
Tales from the Town of Widows: And Chronicles From the Land of Men - James Canon (2006)
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See (2006)
The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan (2006)
The Red Tent - Anita Diamant (2005)
√ * The Birth of Venus - Sarah Dunant (2004)
The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd (2003)
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned - Brian K. Vaughan (2003) [Graphic Novel]
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters (2002)
√ * Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson (1999) [YA, Contemporary] - Melinda is cynical about high school. She has no friends, and she spends the entirety of her freshman year withdrawing into herself, refusing to talk about - or think about - the rape she survived over the summer. This heartbreaking book flawlessly demonstrates what the aftermath of such trauma looks like for many young women - women who are forced to relive the experience every day that they see their rapist walking the hallways of their school, and who struggle to process the event, pushing away family and friends at precisely the moment when they might need them most.
√ Matilda - Roald Dahl (1998) [Children's]
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
Push - Sapphire (1996)
√ * Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - Gregory Maguire (1995) [Reimagining of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz]
So Far From God - Ana Castillo (1993)
A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley (1991)
Dirty Weekend - Helen Zahavi (1991)
Paradise - Toni Morrison (1988)
√ * The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (1985) [Dystopian] - This cautionary (and, unfortunately, prophetic) book features a world where a totalitarian Christian theocracy has overthrown the U.S. government and taken away the bodily agency of all women. Women are not allowed to do anything that would make them independent - they can't vote, have a job, read, or even own any personal belongings. Their finances and bodies are controlled for political purposes; they are turned into baby factories. Women who are sterile, lesbians, feminists, or politically dissident are labeled "unwomen" and exiled from society. The true horror comes from the realization of how easily this "speculative fiction" could become a reality.
House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros (1984) [Children's]
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende (1982)
√ The Color Purple - Alice Walker (1982)
Kindred - Octavia E. Butler (1979) [Sci-Fi]
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories - Angela Carter (1979) [Short Stories, Magic Realism]
The Women's Room - Marilyn French (1977)
Kinflicks - Lisa Alther (1976)
Lover - Bertha Harris (1976) [Lesbian Romance]
Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy (1976) [Sci-Fi]
The Female Man - Joanna Russ (1975) [Sci-Fi]
Free to Be... You and Me - Marlo Thomas (1974) [Children's]
Fear of Flying - Erica Jong (1973)
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume (1970) [Children's]
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin (1969) [Sci-Fi]
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (1966) [Re-imagining of Jane Eyre]
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (1963) [Mental Illness, Semi-Autobiographical]
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing (1962)
√ * To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1960)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith (1940)
A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf (1929)
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton (1921)
Moving the Mountain, Herland, & With Her in Ourland - Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1911-1916) [Sci-Fi, Trilogy, Utopian]
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911) [Children's]
Sultana's Dream - Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain (1905) [Sci-Fi, Short Story]
√ * The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum (1900) [Children's]
The Awakening - Kate Chopin (1899)
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
--
FEMINIST MEMOIR
I know these aren't fiction, but I just had to include a space for memoirs, too. :)
How to Be a Woman - Caitlin Moran (2011)
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity - Julia Serano (2007)
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - Audre Lorde (1982)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou (1969)
But perhaps it seemed particularly fantastic because I feel like I've read so few feminist novels at all. Philosophy texts and essays and memoirs and other nonfiction, sure - I took a couple Women's and Gender Studies courses in college, after all - but feminist fiction is so hard to find! And I love me a good novel.
In her author's note at the end of Dietland, Walker commented that she was inspired by feminist novels of the 1970s/80s (the second wave feminist movement). This immediately caused two questions to spring up in my mind -
1) What are these feminist novels of the 1970s/80s? I would like names please, so I can find them and read them!
And
2) Have there been feminist novels since the 1970s/80s? Where are the contemporary feminist novels??
Basically, I just want all the feminist novels. Gimme gimme gimme.
And if I don't know where to find these books (when I read 70-90 books a year), there must be others also struggling. So I decided I wanted to start a list, which I would come back through and update as I discovered more books to include. The list is pretty short now, but I will be adding to it periodically. Hopefully it'll grow into a much more comprehensive list!
--
Note 1: Checkmarks indicate which ones I have personally read. Mild SPOILERS may be in some of the descriptions.
Note 2: I am using an "umbrella" definition of feminism which includes all aspects of intersectional feminism, including discussions of racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. I am looking for books that make a CLEAR point about the importance of equality, either by setting up a utopian/dystopian world that comments on socio-cultural issues, or by following a character through an "awakening." Books that simply "have a strong female lead" (i.e. a woman who figures out how to balance her work and love life, or a woman who cleaves herself from dependence on a man) are not exactly what I have in mind, although I may include such books on this list if they do a *particularly* good job and attempt to raise social commentary on other feminist issue(s) as well.
Note 3: This list is organized by year (most current year first), and alphabetically by author within each year.
If you have a suggestion for something I'm missing that I should include, please let me know - in the comments below, on Twitter, etc.
--
FEMINIST FICTION
√ Ally Hughes Has Sex Sometimes - Jules Moulin (2015) [Contemporary, Romance, Mother-Daughter Relationships] - Single mother and college professor Ally Hughes does not have time for sex - but she makes an exception for Jake, a surprisingly mature student in one of her classes. Ten years later, Jake comes back into her life as her daughter's friend - at the same time that her grown daughter finds herself so desperate for a nose job her mother won't help pay for that she's willing to work as a "live sex cam girl." Reads like chick lit/romance, but does confront issues such as female sexual empowerment (though with the goading of a man) and some of the problems of the sex industry.
√ * Dietland - Sarai Walker (2015) [Contemporary, Humor, Satire, Revenge Fantasy] - Plum Kettle has always believed her weight is an abomination - until she meets an underground community of women who live life on their own terms, and realizes she's been living the life others expect of her. Meanwhile, a dangerous guerrilla group called "Jennifer" is terrorizing a world that mistreats women, slicing this fast-paced and often funny satire with delicious moments of revenge fantasy.
An Untamed State - Roxane Gay (2014) [Contemporary]
Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013) [Contemporary]
√ * Life After Life - Kate Atkinson (2013) [Literary, Historic, Philosophical, Reincarnation] - As Ursula Todd lives many lives, she suffers tragedies on a personal scale (rape, crude 1930s abortion, domestic violence) and international scale (World War II). Using the "practice makes perfect" mentality to adjust her existence, she confronts the changes that one person - herself - is capable of producing.
√ A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki (2013) [Historic, Contemporary, Philosophical] - This book is about strong women spanning generations: an elderly Buddhist Japanese nun, her Japanese-American granddaughter Nao, and a Japanese-Canadian novelist named Ruth (very meta) who finds Nao's diary washed up on the shore of her Vancouver island residence and believes it's an artifact carried across the Pacific by the 2004 tsunami. But what really makes it feminist is the struggles Nao goes through at her Japanese high school, where she is mercilessly bullied.
Cinnamon - Samar Yazbek (2013)
The Round House - Louise Erdrich (2012) [Contemporary]
The Flamethrowers - Rachel Kushner (2012)
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? - Jeanette Winterson (2011)
The Nightingales of Troy - Alice Fulton (2008) [Connected Short Stories]
√ * The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks - E. Lockhart (2008) [YA, Contemporary, Humor] - In this fun Young Adult novel, sixteen-year-old boarding school student Frankie is absolutely unwilling to act "appropriately" for her gender. She hates being excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society - especially when she knows she's smarter than any of them - and uses both her intellect/creativity and the boy's utter dismissal of her to her advantage to plan a series of pranks with socio-political commentary right under their noses.
The Dark Abode - Sarojini Sahoo (2008)
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini (2007)
Tales from the Town of Widows: And Chronicles From the Land of Men - James Canon (2006)
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See (2006)
The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan (2006)
The Red Tent - Anita Diamant (2005)
√ * The Birth of Venus - Sarah Dunant (2004)
The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd (2003)
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned - Brian K. Vaughan (2003) [Graphic Novel]
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters (2002)
√ * Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson (1999) [YA, Contemporary] - Melinda is cynical about high school. She has no friends, and she spends the entirety of her freshman year withdrawing into herself, refusing to talk about - or think about - the rape she survived over the summer. This heartbreaking book flawlessly demonstrates what the aftermath of such trauma looks like for many young women - women who are forced to relive the experience every day that they see their rapist walking the hallways of their school, and who struggle to process the event, pushing away family and friends at precisely the moment when they might need them most.
√ Matilda - Roald Dahl (1998) [Children's]
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
Push - Sapphire (1996)
√ * Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - Gregory Maguire (1995) [Reimagining of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz]
So Far From God - Ana Castillo (1993)
A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley (1991)
Dirty Weekend - Helen Zahavi (1991)
Paradise - Toni Morrison (1988)
√ * The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (1985) [Dystopian] - This cautionary (and, unfortunately, prophetic) book features a world where a totalitarian Christian theocracy has overthrown the U.S. government and taken away the bodily agency of all women. Women are not allowed to do anything that would make them independent - they can't vote, have a job, read, or even own any personal belongings. Their finances and bodies are controlled for political purposes; they are turned into baby factories. Women who are sterile, lesbians, feminists, or politically dissident are labeled "unwomen" and exiled from society. The true horror comes from the realization of how easily this "speculative fiction" could become a reality.
House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros (1984) [Children's]
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende (1982)
√ The Color Purple - Alice Walker (1982)
Kindred - Octavia E. Butler (1979) [Sci-Fi]
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories - Angela Carter (1979) [Short Stories, Magic Realism]
The Women's Room - Marilyn French (1977)
Kinflicks - Lisa Alther (1976)
Lover - Bertha Harris (1976) [Lesbian Romance]
Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy (1976) [Sci-Fi]
The Female Man - Joanna Russ (1975) [Sci-Fi]
Free to Be... You and Me - Marlo Thomas (1974) [Children's]
Fear of Flying - Erica Jong (1973)
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume (1970) [Children's]
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin (1969) [Sci-Fi]
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (1966) [Re-imagining of Jane Eyre]
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (1963) [Mental Illness, Semi-Autobiographical]
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing (1962)
√ * To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1960)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith (1940)
A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf (1929)
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton (1921)
Moving the Mountain, Herland, & With Her in Ourland - Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1911-1916) [Sci-Fi, Trilogy, Utopian]
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911) [Children's]
Sultana's Dream - Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain (1905) [Sci-Fi, Short Story]
√ * The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum (1900) [Children's]
The Awakening - Kate Chopin (1899)
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
--
FEMINIST MEMOIR
I know these aren't fiction, but I just had to include a space for memoirs, too. :)
How to Be a Woman - Caitlin Moran (2011)
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity - Julia Serano (2007)
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - Audre Lorde (1982)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou (1969)
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