Favorite Fridays Feminist Voices

Favorite Fridays highlight media the HCDL staff recommend. Find your next favorite book, audiobook, movie, TV show, magazine, etc., here every Friday—and share your own favorites in the weekly posts’ comments!

The Read Woke Challenge runs October 1 through November 30. Today we’ll be sharing the book list for the Feminist Voices category— keep an eye out for the ones that our staff particularly recommend!

Have you read any of these titles? Do you recommend any not listed? Share with us in the comments!

Feminist Voices Fiction

  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*

    This novel–echoing Plath’s own experiences as a rising writer/editor in the early 1950s–chronicles the nervous breakdown of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful, but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

    *Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.

  • The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    Raised in a wealthy family in Sepphoris with ties to the ruler of Galilee, Ana is rebellious and ambitious, a relentless seeker with a brilliant, curious mind and a daring spirit. Defying the expectations placed on women, she engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes secret narratives about neglected and silenced women. When she meets the eighteen-year-old Jesus, each is drawn to and enriched by the other’s spiritual and philosophical ideas. He becomes a floodgate for her intellect, but also the awakener of her heart. Their marriage unfolds with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, James and Simon, and their mother, Mary. Here, Ana’s pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to the Roman occupation of Israel, partially led by her charismatic adopted brother, Judas.

  • Circe by Madeline Miller * Staff Choice *

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus. But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians.

  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*

    The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.

    *Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.

  • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood * Staff Choice *

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now . . .

  • Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*

    A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment.

    *Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.

  • My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager–and who professed to worship only her–may be far different from what she has always believed? Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield.

  • The Power by Naomi Alderman

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    In The Power the world is a recognizable place: there’s a rich Nigerian kid who lounges around the family pool; a foster girl whose religious parents hide their true nature; a local American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But something vital has changed, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power – they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world changes utterly.

  • Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places . . . including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?’ — all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her. Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today’s world.

  • The Red Tent by Anita Diamant * Staff Choice *

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah’s voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood—the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers—Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah—the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through a hard-working youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land.

Feminist Voices Nonfiction

  • Dear Ijeawele, or, A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie * Staff Choice *

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    Receiving a letter from a friend asking her how to raise her baby girl to be a feminist, Adichie responded with fifteen suggestions for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. Her suggestions ranged from options for non-stereotyped toy options, to debunking myths that women are somehow biologically programmed to be in the kitchen instead of having a career. Adichie’s letter will start an urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.

  • Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall * Staff Choice *

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    In this collection of essays, Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement. She argues that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women. Prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?

  • Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*

    Invisible Women shows us how, in a world largely built for and by men, we are systematically ignoring half the population. It exposes the gender data gap – a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women’s lives. From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media, Invisible Women reveals the biased data that excludes women.

    *Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.

  • Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller * Staff Choice *

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral–viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time. Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways–there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

  • The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates * Staff Choice *

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*

    For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission. Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, invest in women. Gates traces her awakening to the link between women’s empowerment and the health of societies. She shows some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to “turbo-charge” change. And she provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference.

    *Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.

  • Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon * Staff Choice *

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*

    Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers a visually rich, intimate, unprecedented look at the Justice and how she changed the world. From Ginsburg’s refusal to let the slammed doors of sexism stop her to her innovative legal work, from her before-its-time feminist marriage to her perch on the nation’s highest court–with the fierce dissents to match–get to know RBG as never before. As the country struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stands as a testament to how far we can come with a little chutzpah.

    *Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.

  • Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*

    At once a searing indictment of a racist, patriarchal society and a manual for claiming an intersectional identity, Sister Outsider is a comprehensive collection of the lauded poet and writer Audre Lorde’s most famous and influential works of nonfiction prose. Sister Outsider depicts the idea of “difference”–whether through race, gender, or sexuality–as a powerful tool for empowerment that can be used as a catalyst for change. Throughout the fifteen essays and speeches that comprise the volume, Lorde asserts that because she is a black, queer woman, she is considered an outsider, but that it is precisely her outsider perspective that allows her to see the various layers of identity-based oppression.

    *Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.

  • Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves by Glory Edim

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    An inspiring collection of essays by black women writers, curated by the founder of the popular book club Well-Read Black Girl, on the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature. Remember that moment when you first encountered a character who seemed to be written just for you? That feeling of belonging remains with readers the rest of their lives–but not everyone regularly sees themselves on the pages of a book. In this timely anthology, Glory Edim brings together original essays by some of our best black women writers to shine a light on how important it is that we all–regardless of gender, race, religion, or ability–have the opportunity to find ourselves in literature. In this anthology, Glory Edim has created a space in which black women’s writing and knowledge and life experiences are lifted up, to be shared with all readers who value the power of a story to help us understand the world and ourselves.

  • The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West * Staff Choice *

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    This is a witch hunt. We’re witches, and we’re hunting you. From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You’ve got one. In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the 21st century.

  • Women and Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard * Staff Choice *

    HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby

    At long last, Mary Beard addresses in one brave book the misogynists and trolls who mercilessly attack and demean women the world over, including, very often, Mary herself. In Women & Power, she traces the origins of this misogyny to its ancient roots, examining the pitfalls of gender and the ways that history has mistreated strong women since time immemorial. As far back as Homer’s Odyssey, Beard shows, women have been prohibited from leadership roles in civic life, public speech being defined as inherently male. From Medusa to Philomela (whose tongue was cut out), from Hillary Clinton to Elizabeth Warren (who was told to sit down), Beard draws illuminating parallels between our cultural assumptions about women’s relationship to power—and how powerful women provide a necessary example for all women who must resist being vacuumed into a male template.

* Adapted from the summaries provided by the publishers