Top 100 Feminist Non-Fiction Countdown: 50 - 41

Within books 50 to 41, you’ll find several controversial takes on motherhood and many a memoir, including a reflection on the personal impact of breast cancer, a graphic autobiography from a dyke to watch out for and some gutsy revelations from a Nation columnist. You’ll also see a satire of how the patriarchy tries to dampen women’s creativity and another musing–this one on finding love–from list favorite bell hooks.

Communion: The Female Search for Love (Paperback)

By bell hooks

$14.24

ISBN-13: 9780060938291
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Published: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1/2003

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hooks explores how a patriarchal society encourages men to be unemotional, leaving heterosexual women with emotionally unsatisfying relationships. hooks also offers some creative alternatives to these relationships.

Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology (Paperback)

By Andrea Smith, Beth E. Richie, Julia Sudbury

$22.00

ISBN-13: 9780896087620
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Published: South End Press, 8/2006

This collection of essays released by multiracial grassroots feminist organization INCITE! takes on violence against women, taking up the complicated questions of how domestic violence victims are further abused by the shelter system and how the criminal justice system often does a disservice to abused women of color.

The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (Paperback)

By Shulamith Firestone

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ISBN-13: 9780374527877
Availability: Out of Print
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 3/2003

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Firestone was 25 when she penned this now-classic call for revolution. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the spirit of the 1970s radical feminist movement.

How to Suppress Women's Writing (Paperback)

By Joanna Russ

$23.94

ISBN-13: 9780292724457
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Published: University of Texas Press, 1/1983

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Best known for her experimental science fiction, here Russ offers a guided tour through the many ways in which women and other minorities have been prohibited from creating written art.

Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development (Paperback)

By Vandana Shiva

$23.00

ISBN-13: 9780896087934
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Published: South End Press, 4/2010

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Taking her native India as an example of rural women’s historic role as keepers of the land, Shiva traces a multitude of interconnections: between women’s rights, environmentalism, sustainability, peace and development.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Paperback)

By Alison Bechdel

$14.20

ISBN-13: 9780618871711
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Published: Mariner Books, 6/2007

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A graphic memoir by the author of the beloved alt-comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, Fun Home is a literary and wry look at a childhood shadowed by a father’s closeted homosexuality.

The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World (Paperback)

By Michelle Goldberg

$15.20

ISBN-13: 9780143116882
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Published: Penguin Books, 3/2010

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Combining in-depth cultural analysis and investigative reporting, New York Times bestselling author Goldberg covers the war on women’s reproductive rights as it is waged over four continents.

Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories (Paperback)

By Katha Pollitt

$14.00

ISBN-13: 9780812973549
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Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 9/2008

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In these essays, the renowned Nation columnist turns her acerbic pen on her own life, finding both humor and profundity in topics such as a cheating boyfriend, learning to drive at 52, Marxist study groups and what life will be like after she has outlived all of the men who find her desirable.

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (Paperback)

By Adrienne Cecile Rich

$16.10

ISBN-13: 9780393312843
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Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 4/1995

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In this lifechanging classic, the French theorist and poet provides dazzling insight into the meaning of motherhood.

Zami A New Spelling of My Name: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography (Paperback)

By Geraldine Audre Lorde

$16.14

ISBN-13: 9780895941220
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Published: Crossing Press, 9/1983

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Lorde brings us a new breed of storytelling with this book, a biomythography, combining “the elements of biography and history of myth.” She explores the meaning of having multiple outsider statuses (Black, woman, lesbian).