Recommendations based on "Female Man: A Novel"

Based on your reading history, we think you will also enjoy the following books.

By Kari Herbert

Wonderfully illustrated throughout, this book tells inspiring stories of fifteen women artists who made a lasting impact on art and the world through their lives and work.A richly illustrated book, We Are Artists celebrates the life and work of fifteen female artists from around the globe and the distinctive mark they made on art. Presented as a collection of exciting biographical stories, each section reveals how the artist’s unique approach and perspective provided art and society with a new way of seeing things.We Are Artists places the spotlight on women painters, sculptors, printmakers, illustrators, designers, and craftswomen who created monumental artwork, often against daunting odds. The book includes reproductions of modern and contemporary artwork by Frida Kahlo, Yayoi Kusama, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alma Thomas, and Kenojuak Ashevak, to name a few. Through their personal stories, readers will learn about the art movements each artist worked in and the influence they exerted on both the art world and society as a whole.This book starts to rewrite art history for the next generation, and will inspire young readers and artists everywhere. Illustrated in color throughout

By Jane Cholmeley

A Waterstones Best Memoir of 2024An Independent and Stylist Best Non-Fiction Book for 2024 The captivating true story of an underdog business – a feminist bookshop founded in Thatcher’s Britain – from a woman at the heart of the women’s liberation movement.

By Kathleen Ragan

One hundred great folk tales and fairy tales from all over the world about strong, smart, brave heroines.Dismayed by the predominance of male protagonists in her daughters' books, Kathleen Ragan set out to collect the stories of our forgotten heroines. Gathered from around the world, from regions as diverse as sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe, from North and South American Indian cultures and New World settlers, from Asia and the Middle East, these 100 folktales celebrate strong female heroines.Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters is for all women who are searching to define who they are, to redefine the world and shape their collective sensibility. It is for men who want to know more about what it means to be a woman. It is for our daughters and our sons, so that they can learn to value all kinds of courage, courage in battle and the courage of love. It is for all of us to help build a more just vision of woman.

By Allison Yarrow

Finalist for the Los Angeles Press Club Book Award, muse to a Givenchy fashion collection, and recommended by the The New York Times, The Skimm, US Weekly, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Refinery 29, Book Riot, Bitch Media, and more."Yarrow’s biting autopsy of the decade scrutinizes the way society reduced — or “bitchified” — women at work, women at home, women in court, even women on ice skates . . . Direct quotes from politicians, journalists and comedians about the women provide the most jarring, oh-my-god-that-really-happened portions of Yarrow’s decade excavation." — Pittsburg Post-GazetteThe nostalgic, smart, and shocking account of how the 90s set back feminism, undermined girls and women, and shaped the millennial generation from award-winning journalist, Allison Yarrow.To understand how we got here, we have to rewind the VHS tape. 90s Bitch tells the real story of women and girls in the 1990s, exploring how they were maligned by the media, vilified by popular culture, and objectified in the marketplace.Trailblazing women like Hillary Clinton, Anita Hill, Madeleine Albright, Janet Reno, and Marcia Clark, and were undermined. Newsmakers like Britney Spears, Monica Lewinsky, Tonya Harding and Lorena Bobbitt were shamed and misunderstood. The advent of the 24-hour news cycle reinforced society's deeply entrenched misogyny. Meanwhile, marketers hijacked feminism, sold “Girl Power,” and poisoned a generation.Today echoes of 90s “bitchification” still exist everywhere we look. To understand why, we must revisit and interrogate the 1990s—a decade in which empowerment was twisted into objectification, exploitation, and subjugation.Yarrow’s thoughtful, juicy, and timely examination is a must-read for anyone trying to understand 21st century sexism and end it for the next generation.

By Barbara G. Walker

A probing account of the honored place of older women in ancient matriarchal societies restores to contemporary women an energizing symbol of self-value, power, and respect.

By Dominique Godineau

During the French Revolution, hundreds of domestic and working-class women of Paris were interrogated, examined, accused, denounced, arrested, and imprisoned for their rebellious and often hostile behavior. Here, for the first time in English translation, Dominique Godineau offers an illuminating account of these female revolutionaries. As nurturing and tender as they are belligerent and contentious, these are not singular female heroines but the collective common women who struggled for bare subsistence by working in factories, in shops, on the streets, and on the home front while still finding time to participate in national assemblies, activist gatherings, and public demonstrations in their fight for the recognition of women as citizens within a burgeoning democracy.Relying on exhaustive research in historical archives, police accounts, and demographic resources at specific moments of the Revolutionary period, Godineau describes the private and public lives of these women within their precise political, social, historical, and gender-specific contexts. Her insightful and engaging observations shed new light on the importance of women as instigators, activists, militants, and decisive revolutionary individuals in the crafting and rechartering of their political and social roles as female citizens within the New Republic.

By Emma Goldman, Candace Falk

Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years redefines the historical memory of Emma Goldman and illuminates a forgotten yet influential facet of the history of American and European radicalism. This definitive multivolume work, which differs significantly from Goldman’s autobiography, presents original texts—a significant group of which are published in or translated into English for the first time—anchored by rigorous contextual annotations. The distillation of years of scholarly research, these volumes include personal correspondence, newspaper articles, government surveillance reports from America and Europe, dramatic court transcripts, unpublished lecture notes, and an array of other rare items and documentation. Biographical, newspaper, and organizational appendixes are complemented by in-depth chronologies that underscore the complexity of Goldman’s political and social milieu.The first volume, Made for America, 1890–1901, tracks the young Emma Goldman’s introduction into the anarchist movement, features her earliest known writings in the German anarchist press, and charts her gradual emergence from the radical immigrant circles of New York City’s Lower East Side into a political and intellectual culture of both national and international importance. Goldman’s remarkable public ascendance is framed within a volatile period of political violence: within the first few pages, Henry Clay Frick, the anti-union industrialist, is shot by Alexander Berkman, Goldman’s lover; the book ends with the assassination of President William McKinley, an act in which Goldman was falsely implicated. The documents surrounding these events shed light on difficult issues—and spark an important though chilling debate about Goldman’s strategy for reconciling her "beautiful vision" of anarchism and the harsh realities of her times.The documents articulate the force of Goldman’s rage, tracing the development of her political and social critique as well as her originality and her remarkable ability to synthesize and popularize cutting-edge political and cultural ideas. Goldman appears as a rising luminary in the mainstream press—a voice against hypocrisy and a lightning rod of curiosity, intrigue, and sometimes fear. The volumes include newspaper accounts of the speaking tours across America that eventually established her reputation as one of the most challenging and passionate orators of the twentieth century.Themes that came to dominate Goldman’s life—anarchism and its possibilities, free speech, education, the transformative power and social significance of literature, the position of labor within the capitalist economic system, the vital importance of women’s freedom, the dynamics of personal relationships, and strategies for a social revolution—are among the many introduced in Made for America.

By Alexandre Dumas

A swashbuckling novel by the author of The Three Musketeers Set in the same period as his best-known novel, Alexandre Dumas’s “forgotten masterpiece” (Le Monde) features two steely and preternaturally modern heroines fighting on opposite sides of the wars that ravaged seventeenth-century France. An unabashed page-turner, humorous, dramatic, and crackling with panache, this new English translation—the first in more than 100 years—shows Dumas at the peak of his powers.

By Moderata Fonte

Gender equality and the responsibility of husbands and fathers: issues that loom large today had currency in Renaissance Venice as well, as evidenced by the publication in 1600 of The Worth of Women by Moderata Fonte. Moderata Fonte was the pseudonym of Modesta Pozzo (1555–92), a Venetian woman who was something of an anomaly. Neither cloistered in a convent nor as liberated from prevailing codes of decorum as a courtesan might be, Pozzo was a respectable, married mother who produced literature in genres that were commonly considered "masculine"—the chivalric romance and the literary dialogue. This work takes the form of the latter, with Fonte creating a conversation among seven Venetian noblewomen. The dialogue explores nearly every aspect of women's experience in both theoretical and practical terms. These women, who differ in age and experience, take as their broad theme men's curious hostility toward women and possible cures for it. Through this witty and ambitious work, Fonte seeks to elevate women's status to that of men, arguing that women have the same innate abilities as men and, when similarly educated, prove their equals. Through this dialogue, Fonte provides a picture of the private and public lives of Renaissance women, ruminating on their roles in the home, in society, and in the arts. A fine example of Renaissance vernacular literature, this book is also a testament to the enduring issues that women face, including the attempt to reconcile femininity with ambition.

By Riane Eisler

The phenomenal bestseller, with more than 500,000 copies sold worldwide, now with a new epilogue from the author--The Chalice and the Blade has inspired a generation of women and men to envision a truly egalitarian society by exploring the legacy of the peaceful, goddess-worshipping cultures from our prehistoric past.