WoLF Recommended Reading List
Are you ready to cozy up with a good book this winter? Looking for the perfect gift for the radical feminist in your life? Or maybe you just want to expand your world-view with a variety of new ideas? We have the ultimate reading list for you!
These books have been hand-selected by WoLF volunteers and staff to represent a range of views on issues that matter to us. The books don’t have much in common, but they’re all written by women (or, at least one woman in the case of books with multiple authors), and we believe that each of them can help inform a radical feminist perspective in one way or another. We don’t necessarily agree with every word in every book, nor with everything that every author here has ever said or done. But these books have brought us value, and we believe they could bring value to you, too!
If you would like to help support WoLF while you shop, using the Amazon Affiliate links we’ve included means that a small portion of the money you spend will go to support our radical feminist work. You can also add WoLF as your Amazon Smile Charity to ensure that a portion of every dollar you spend this holiday season supports women’s rights.
For those opposed to using Amazon, we get it. Many of these books are available in thrift shops, local bookstores, or even as downloadable PDFs online. You can skip the Big Tech and make a direct tax-deductible donation this holiday season to WoLF here.
Warning: reading these books may result in heterodox thoughts! Proceed at your own risk.
Feminist Starter Pack
We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If you’re brand new to feminism, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s New York Times bestselling book is the perfect introduction for you. Adapted from her TED Talk of the same title, this personal essay explores sexual politics through her lens as a Nigerian woman. Bonus: also check out her other works: Americanah and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.
Everything by Andrea Dworkin
It simply wouldn’t be a radical feminist reading list without Andrea Dworkin. Perhaps most infamous for the “all heterosexual sex is rape” bit (a misrepresentation), her analyses of sexuality, pornography, prostitution, and misogyny have shaped generations of feminist thought. If we had to pick a top three, they would be Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Right-Wing Women, and Woman Hating.
Buy Pornography, Right-Wing Women, and Woman Hating on Amazon.
All of her work is also available for free PDF download on radfem.org.
Invisible Women, by Caroline Criado Perez
What do snow plow schedules and biomass-burning stoves have to do with feminism? Caroline Criado Perez will tell you. In a world built by and for men, the thousands of little ways women are disadvantaged have become invisible. This book makes our daily realities seen, and paints a larger picture of how these “little” differences can lead to major lifetime consequences for women.
Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression, by Christine Delphy
A seriously underrated work of feminist analysis, Christine Delphy’s Close to Home takes a materialist approach to understanding women’s place in society. She argues that women should be understood as a “sex class”, and examines how leftist narratives of class have historically failed to take women’s position into account.
Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts: Feminist Essays, by Joanna Russ
In this short collection of essays published in 1986, feminist sci-fi writer Joanna Russ provides meta-commentary on the state of the women’s movement. The second essay, Power and Helplessness in the Women’s Movement, provides a framework for understanding feminist in-fighting and drama that is still as relevant today as it was 35 years ago.
Lesbian History
The Spinster and Her Enemies, by Sheila Jeffreys
Sheila Jeffreys is another second-wave feminist author whose entire body of work should really be included. For the sake of this list, we’ve narrowed it down to two. Her first book, The Spinster and Her Enemies, examines feminism and sexuality from 1880-1930. It’s an absolute must-read for everyone who has ever wondered, “How the hell did we get here??”
Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist, by Kathleen Barry
Both a thorough and fresh look into the life of one of America’s most well-known suffragists, Kathleen Barry’s biography of Susan B. Anthony provides a deep portrait of a feminist icon. This book will leave you inspired by her life and work, and show you sides of Anthony’s relationships with other women that have been commonly erased.
To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America - A History, by Lillian Faderman
Described as “a landmark work of lesbian history”, Lillian Faderman’s To Believe in Women argues that lesbianism was central to the theory and accomplishments of many late-nineteenth and twentieth-century feminists. A great companion to Barry’s biography, this tome includes letters from Susan B. Anthony and a deeper analysis of her lesbianism, among other American suffragists.
Trigger Warning, my Lesbian Feminist Life, by Sheila Jeffreys
Just released this year, Jeffreys’ latest book provides an autobiographical overview of her life and journey as a lesbian feminist. Controversial for her support for “political lesbianism”, Jeffreys argues that lesbianism was a feminist choice she made - and that it was key to her feminism going forward. The book traces her work all the way up to the present with the launch of the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights.
Gender Identity and Medicine
Female Erasure: What You Need To Know About Gender Politics' War on Women, the Female Sex and Human Rights, edited by Ruth Barrett
This feminist anthology includes a forward by Germaine Greer and essays by gender critical mainstays such as GallusMag, Jennifer Bilek, Carol Downer, and WoLF Founder Lierre Keith.
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, by Abigail Shrier
The book that will not be cancelled. While, at the time of writing, Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage is sold out just about everywhere, we definitely recommend you get your hands on it when you can. Providing a deep-dive into Dr. Lisa Littman’s theory of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria in girls, this vital resource is helping to finally expose how a staggering number of teen girls are being irresponsibly medicalized by the transgender trend.
Gender and Our Brains: How Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds, by Gina Rippon
While not explicitly about gender identity, this book by feminist and cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon provides a refreshing analysis of what neuroscience can tell us about sex differences in the brain and the impact of our heavily-gendered lives on our thoughts, decisions, and behavior.
The XX Brain, by Lisa Mosconi
This book takes a look at how hormones influence brain health in women, with a focus on the importance of estrogen. While at first glance the flowery pink book may look like pseudoscience, Dr. Lisa Mosconi brings an impressive resume to back up her claims as the Director of the Women's Brain Initiative at Weill Cornell Medical College. This book is helpful to anyone trying to understand how women’s hormones can impact their wellbeing.
Women and Madness, by Phyllis Chesler
If you weren’t mad already, this Phyllis Chesler’s Women and Madness will make you mad. The book examines the long history of sexism in psychiatry and the pathologization of women’s responses to trauma, abuse, and oppression. Originally published in 1972, the book is still remarkably relevant.
Doing Harm, by Maya Dusenbery
A broad analysis that ties together many themes from previous suggestions, Doing Harm looks at how gender bias in medicine is leaving women “dismissed, misdiagnosed, and sick”.
Reproductive Rights & The Sex Industry
The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service, by Laura Kaplan
What was the world like for women before Roe V Wade? For those of us too young to remember, The Story of Jane by Laura Kaplan provides a gripping tale that will suck you right back into the 1970s. The book follows the true story of the rise and fall of a secret underground abortion service in Chicago - and Kaplan doesn’t hold back. Her descriptions of group in-fighting, racial tension, and a desperate desire to do everything possible to help women will resonate with feminists of any era.
The Means of Reproduction, by Michelle Goldberg
By New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, this book explores decades of international policy around women’s reproductive freedom. The book provides an eye-opening timeline of Western intervention in birth control and abortion access across the globe, religious control over reproductive rights, and how women’s and girls’ bodies serve as a battleground where the men of the world wrestle for power.
Women as Wombs, by Janice Raymond
Published in 1993, Janice Raymond’s Women as Wombs provides a scathing feminist critique of modern reproductive technologies and the “baby industry”. Serving as a bit of a spiritual precursor to The Means of Reproduction, the book points out how technologies like IVF are used in the west to increase women’s fertility while “infertility technologies” are deployed in developing countries as a means of population control.
Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy, and the Split Self, by Kasja Ekis Ekman
Grounded in the reality of the violence of the sex trade, Kasja Ekis Ekman’s Being and Being Bought exposes the lies of “sex work.” She argues that the body can not be sold without selling the self, and connects the between surrogacy and prostitution.
Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, Gail Dines
Many women have no idea how bad the porn men in their lives watch can truly be. Gail Dines’ Pornland pulls back the curtain, revealing the dark truth we may have never wanted to know. Tracing the rise of the modern porn industry from early magazines to “gonzo” internet porn, the book argues that porn is increasingly desensitizing us to sexual violence and abuse.
Civil Rights, Culture, and History
The Politics of Women’s Rights: Parties, Positions, and Change, by Christina Wolbrecht
Prior to the 1970s, young Americans may be surprised to learn that the Republican Party was actually slightly more amenable to women’s rights than the Democrats were. But beginning in the 1980s, everything changed as the parties swapped sides and polarized sharply - with women’s rights becoming a key point of differentiation. Christina Wolbrecht’s The Politics of Women’s Rights examines how this shift occurred with an eye towards how we can use this understanding in the modern era.
Cynical Theories, by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose
Subtitled, “How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody”, this critique of illiberal critical scholarship asks readers to think (ironically) critically about the identity politics that are being pushed by activist scholars on the left.
Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women’s Prisons, by Megan Sweeney
This book about reading is more than just that. Megan Sweeny artfully uses incarcerated women’s relationship with books as a means to tell a larger story: one about male violence, systems of oppression, and the power and resilience of women despite it all. This window works both ways, giving us a peek from outside the justice system into what life is like for women on the inside.
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, by Danielle McGuire
Rosa Parks is best known for her key role in the Montgomery bus boycotts. But a decade before she refused to give up her seat, the civil rights icon was the key investigator in the rape and murder of a local black mother at the hands of seven white men. This book bravely reckons with the history of white men’s violence against black women.
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo", by Zora Neale Hurston
By the acclaimed author of Her Eyes Were Watching God, New York Times bestseller Barracoon tells the story of the Cudjo - one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Through his voice and Zora Neale Hurston’s compassionate perspective, we are left with a haunting portrait of the legacy of slavery on our nation.
The Subsistence Perspective, by Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen and Maria Mies
This 1999 polemic provides a harsh rebuke of our current capitalist system, arguing that it depends on the exploitation of women and the environment. Instead, the authors propose a new (or, perhaps, old) way of living - one based on subsistence living.
Swastika Night, by Katharine Burdekin
Our token work of dystopian fiction, Swastika Night was first published in 1937 at the height of Hitler’s rise to power. It imagines a post-Hitler world of extreme patriarchal fascism where women have become completely erased from society, turned into caged cattle that exist only for rape. Considered a precursor to Orwell’s 1984 or Attwood’s The Handmaid's Tale, the exaggerated universe of this book is the perfect reminder of how much we have to lose.
2020… The Year We Were All Cancelled!, by Stella Perrett
Ending on a lighter note, this collection of tongue-in-cheek cartoons by cancelled artist Stella Perrett is the perfect end to a nightmare of a year. Pick up a copy of her self-published work to support women who have faced economic consequences for standing up for our sex-based rights, and have a good laugh while you’re at it.