Book recommendations from eleven feminists

While 2020 has (obviously) not been the year that many hoped it would be (understatement of the year, perhaps?) it has propelled people to reflect on the way they’re living, the world they want, and the things they want to do.

For me, one of the things that 2020 allowed me to do was take the time to FINALLY start a podcast. I had this time because I spent June, July, and August (mostly) unemployed, my usual clients holding tight to budgets and stepping cautiously. I spent those months writing my novel and planning the podcast, working out how I’d do it and scheduling slots with guests.

And so the Living While Feminist podcast came into existence. As a reader and a writer I was interested in what these feminists read, and how it shaped them. So I asked each feminist to recommend books – books that inspired their feminist journeys and made them think differently. Books that took them to other worlds so they could understand their own.

Here is the list of them, as recommended by my first eleven guests.

Tiffany Kagure Mugo

• African Sexualities: A Reader – Sylvia Tamale

Carla Watson

• The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

Kerry Hammerton

• The Mother of All Questions – Rebecca Solnit
• Of Women: In the 21st Century – Shami Chakrabarti
• Meat Market – Lauri Penny

Shari Maluleke

• A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
• Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangaremba

Desiree-Anne Martin

• Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
• A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf
• Henry and June – Anaïs Nin

Karin Schimke

• Pippi Longstocking – Astrid Lindgrun
• The Women’s Room – Marilyn French
• The Female Eunuch – Germaine Greer
• Fresh Milk: The Secret Life of Breasts – Fiona Giles
• The Vagina Monologues – Eve Ensler

Aaisha Dadi Patel

• Feminism Is – Jen Thorpe (ed)
• Do Muslim Women Need Saving? – Lila Abu-Lughod
• Orientalism – Edward Said

Professor Srila Roy

• Read feminist voices in third world contexts.

Owethu Makhathini

• The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison.
• Black fiction by black queer authors.

Helen Moffett

• Rape: A South African Nightmare – Pumla Dineo Gqola

Sam Beckbessinger

• The Farm – Joanne Ramos
• Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money – Vicky Robin