What To Read

For Women’s History Month, we’ve compiled a list of memoirs by women who have been at the forefront of the fight for women's equality, and whose stories have shaped history and political life. We know all too well that in 2023, equality is under threat and progress is vulnerable to the machinations of powerful political reactionaries. But these books aren't going anywhere, no matter the efforts to roll back the progress that these authors have fought for. We’re celebrating March with these icons. We hope you’ll join us.

Becoming by Michelle Obama

“Becoming is refined and forthright, gracefully written and at times laugh-out-loud funny, with a humbler tone and less name-dropping than might be expected of one who is on chatting terms with the queen of England. One of Obama’s strengths is her ability to look back not from the high perch of celebrity or with the inevitability of hindsight but with the anxieties of the uncertain. She writes in the moment, as she saw and felt and discovered — as events were occurring." – Isabel Wilkerson, via The New York Times

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

“Know My Name is a beautifully written, powerful, important story. It marks the debut of a gifted young writer. It deserves a wide audience — but it especially deserves to be read by the next generation of young men, the could-be Brocks and Elliots, who have grown up seeing women’s bodies as property to plunder, who believe that sex is their right." – Jennifer Weiner, via The New York Times

Angela Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Davis

"Now, nearly fifty years after its first publication in 1974, Davis has brought forth a new edition of Angela Davis: An Autobiography, a landmark text of left-wing Black politics. Today it is popular to see socialism as a preoccupation of young white men; the reissue reminds us of the long tradition of Black involvement in socialist and communist organizations, and of this preeminent Black woman radical’s brilliance." – Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, via New York Review of Books

Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride

“Informative, heartbreaking and empowering, Tomorrow Will Be Different is McBride’s story of love and loss, a powerful entry point into the LGBTQ community’s battle for equal rights and what it means to be openly transgender." – Frannie Jackson, via Paste Magazine

My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem

"In her latest book, My Life on the Road, Steinem, a social activist, writer, lecturer, itinerant feminist organiser and transformational leader, offers snapshots of dozens of women she has met crisscrossing America, including portraits of her powerful partners on speaking tours such as African American Florynce Kennedy and Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected chief of the Cherokee nation. In the process, perhaps for the first time, Steinem most certainly does delve." – Yvonne Roberts, via The Guardian

Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo

“Crazy Brave tells a story of survival, but stops on the cusp of a story of poetry. If that story is anywhere near as fantastic, terrible, and beautiful as this one, we can only hope Harjo writes it soon.” – Rebecca Steinitz, via Boston Globe

Just As I Am by Cicely Tyson

“What shines most from the memoir is how Tyson’s story, while frankly written and supremely eye-opening, isn’t just her own. It’s also the story of Black women in America, of generations past, present and yet to come, whose wills to survive are divinely gifted and ancestrally guided. Perhaps that’s why, in the last pages of the book, she speaks directly to her proverbial sisters and daughters, nieces and grandchildren, revealing what she hopes her legacy will be, whenever God calls her home.” – Moira Macdonald, via Seattle Times

Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit

​​"This memoir is a valuable glimpse into the grit and courage that enabled her to keep telling sidelined stories when the forces opposing her seemed monolithic." – Stephanie Merritt, via The Guardian

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall

This best-selling collection of essays draws on the author’s own experiences with violence and hyper-sexualization along with commentary about the mainstream feminist movement’s own blind spots.

"If you're someone who claims the mantel of feminism, who believes in the innate equality of all genders, who thinks that solidarity among communities of women is a core component of the world you want to live in, I strongly encourage you to read Mikki Kendall's debut essay collection, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot." – Ericka Taylor, via NPR

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor

"This book delivers on its promise of intimacy in its depictions of Sotomayor’s family, the corner of Puerto Rican immigrant New York where she was raised and the link she feels to the island where she spent childhood summers eating her fill of mangoes ... This is a woman who knows where she comes from and has the force to bring you there." – Emily Bazelon, via The New York Times

Fairest by Meredith Talusan

"As it plunges into the complexities of how race is woven into sexuality and gender, Fairest attests to an inexhaustible performativity of identity. Talusan masterfully traces the narrative of her life, from the departure from and sporadic return to her homeland to the myth of an American Dream that only requires dreamers to sustain its false reality, to the heartbreaks that let her revel in her idiosyncratic uniqueness, to the transgressive and gender-bending art practices she developed at Harvard and beyond." – Michael Valinsky, via Los Angeles Review of Books

Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood by bell hooks

"The memoir, told mostly in third person, observes everyday acts and unpeels the trauma of a Black girl trying to use her voice when it’s restrained by others... The writing is simple, but every word conveys more meaning than what meets the eye." – Kibby Araya, via She Lit

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

​​"Hunger is an intimate and vulnerable memoir, one that takes its readers into dark and uncomfortable places. Gay examines wells of trauma and horror, not sparing her own self-loathing from her forthright analytic eye. But all the while, she insists on her right to be treated with dignity." – Constance Grady, via Vox