STACKED: What’s on Samina Ali's Shelf

I want to pull out books that really show how women have been resisting being erased. The first is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

One of my writing heroes is Toni Morrison. In 1993, Morrison made history by becoming the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature... I really turned to Toni Morrison to inspire me and to show me how to center stories that weren't already centered in literature.

This book will leave you in tears. I marvel at everything Westover had to overcome just to get an education. Tara's parents were survivalists and raised her in the mountains of Idaho. She grew up so isolated, she didn’t know anything about the civil rights movement, the Holocaust, or the assassination of JFK. It’s about how she struggled to get an education and the heavy, heavy price that she paid. It’s amazing and inspiring.