Recommendations based on "The New Women of Wonder: Recent Science Fiction Stories by Women about Women"

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

By Clarissa Pinkola Estés

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than 2.7 million copies sold! • “A deeply spiritual book [that] honors what is tough, smart and untamed in women.”—The Washington Post Book WorldBook club pick for Emma Watson’s Our Shared ShelfWithin every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. She is the Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. But she is an endangered species. For though the gifts of wildish nature belong to us at birth, society’s attempt to “civilize” us into rigid roles has muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls.In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, many from her own traditions, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine.Dr. Estés has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

By Kemi Nekvapil

"This book is a miraculous event." –Elizabeth Gilbert, from the forewordA transformative path for women to reclaim their power in a world all too eager to strip it awayWomen know what it’s like to feel powerless. We have had power taken from us and used over us, and sometimes we have had to give it away for our own safety. But when power is built internally, it is stronger and more enduring than that bestowed externally. In Power, renowned leadership coach Kemi Nekvapil introduces a new framework for cultivating your power from the inside out.When you tap into the power that comes from within, you have the capacity to rebuild yourself. You give yourself the opportunity to break free from chronic people-pleasing and start making choices that align with your needs and values. You stop living and leading with apology, and instead use your power as a force for good.Through the principles of Presence, Ownership, Wisdom, Equality, and Responsibility, Power invites you to stop waiting for power to be handed to you and instead choose it for yourself and on your own terms. Drawing on stories from her own life as a Black woman in a society where power is often used as a tool for fear and obedience, and from the lives of leaders, gamechangers, and everyday women who’ve learned to step into their power, Nekvapil shows you how to practice, build, and feel your inner force.

By Wangari Maathai

In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people’s environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya’s forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country . Infused with her unique luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai’s remarkable story of courage, faith, and the power of persistence is destined to inspire generations to come.From the Trade Paperback edition.

By Maira Kalman

From the critically acclaimed artist, designer, and author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty and My Favorite Things comes a wondrous collection of words and paintings that is a moving meditation on the beauty and complexity of women’s lives and roles, revealed in the things they hold.“What do women hold? The home and the family. And the children and the food. The friendships. The work. The work of the world. And the work of being human. The memories. And the troubles. And the sorrows and the triumphs. And the love.”In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into this extraordinary visual compendium.Women Holding Things includes the bright, bold images featured in the booklet as well as an additional sixty-seven new paintings highlighted by thoughtful and intimate anecdotes, recollections, and ruminations. Most are portraits of women, both ordinary and famous, including Virginia Woolf, Sally Hemings, Hortense Cezanne, Gertrude Stein, as well as Kalman’s family members and other real-life people. These women hold a range of objects, from the mundane—balloons, a cup, a whisk, a chicken, a hat—to the abstract—dreams and disappointments, sorrow and regret, joy and love.Kalman considers the many things that fit physically and metaphorically between women’s hands: We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain. Ultimately, she reveals that many of the things we hold dear—as well as those that burden or haunt us—remain constant and connect us from generation to generation.Here, too, are pictures of a few men holding things, such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Anton Chekhov, as well as objects holding other objects that invite us to ponder their intimate relationships to one another.Women Holding Things explores the significance of the objects we carry—in our hands, hearts, and minds—and speaks to, and for, all of us. Maira Kalman’s unique work is a celebration of life, of the act and the art of living, offering an original way of examining and understanding all that is important in our world—and ultimately within ourselves.

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 Julia Gillard

Then It Was Done. After Staying Silent, I’d Had My Say. At No Time Did I Feel Worked Up Or Hotly Angry. I Felt Strong, Measured, Controlled. Yet Emotion Did Play Its Role In The Energy Of The Speech. The Frustration That Sexism And Misogyny Could Still Be So Bad In The Twenty-first Century. The Toll Of Not Pointing It Out. On 9 October 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard Stood Up And Proceeded To Make All Present In Parliament House That Day Pay Attention – And Left Many Of Them Squirming In Their Seats. The Incisive ‘misogyny Speech’, As Her Words Came To Be Known, Continues To Energise And Motivate Women Who Need To Stare Down Sexism And Misogyny In Their Own Lives. With Contributions From Mary Beard, Jess Hill, Jennifer Palmieri, Katharine Murphy And Members Of The Global Institute For Women’s Leadership, Julia Gillard Explores The History And Culture Of Misogyny, Tools In The Patriarchy’s Toolbox, Intersectionality, And Gender And Misogyny In The Media And Politics. Kathy Lette Looks At How The Speech Has Gained A New Life On Tiktok, As Well As Inspiring Other Tributes And Hand-made Products, And We Hear Recollections From Wayne Swan, Anne Summers, Cate Blanchett, Brittany Higgins And Others Of Where They Were And How They First Encountered The Speech. While Behaviours May Have Improved Since The Misogyny Speech, There Remains A Way To Go And Julia Gillard Explores The Roadmap For The Future With Next-generation Feminists Sally Scales, Chanel Contos And Caitlin Figueiredo To Motivate Us With That Rallying Cry: Not Now, Not Ever! Proceeds From The Book Will Go To The Global Institute For Women’s Leadership (giwl).

By Linda Nochlin

In this republication, revisit the late Linda Nochlin’s pioneering writings on the representation of women in art. Women―as warriors, workers, mothers, lovers―haunt nineteenth and twentieth-century Western painting. This republication of Representing Women brings together the late Linda Nochlin’s most important and pioneering writings on the representation of women in art as she considers works by Jean-Francois Millet, Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, Mary Cassatt, and Kathe Kollwitz, among many others. In a riveting, partly autobiographical introduction, Nochlin argues for the honest virtues of an art history that rejects methodological presuppositions and for art historians to investigate the work before their eyes while focusing on its subject matter, informed by a sensitivity to its feminist spirit. 170 illustrations

By Gerda Lerner

"All human beings are practicing historians," writes Gerda Lerner. "We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing." It is as important as breathing, too. History shapes our self-definition and our relationship to community; it locates us in time and place and helps to give meaning to our lives. History can be the vital thread that holds a nation together, as demonstrated most strikingly in the case of Jewish history. Conversely, for women, who have lived in a world in which they apparently had no history, its absence can be devastating. In Why History Matters, Lerner brings together her thinking and research of the last sixteen years, combining personal reminiscences with innovative theory that illuminate the importance of history and the vital role women have played in it. Why History Matters contains some of the most significant thinking and writing on history that Lerner has done in her entire career--a summation of her life and work. The chapters are divided into three sections, each widely different from the others, each revelatory of Lerner as a woman and a feminist. We read first of Lerner's coming to consciousness as a Jewish woman. There are moving accounts of her early life as a refugee in America, her return to Austria fifty years after fleeing the Nazis (to discover a nation remarkable both for the absence of Jews and for the anti-Semitism just below the surface), her slow assimilation into American life, and her decision to be a historian. If the first section is personal, the second focuses on more professional concerns. Included here is a fascinating essay on nonviolent resistance, tracing the idea from the Quakers (such as Mary Dyer), to abolitionists such as Theodore Dwight Weld (the "most mobbed man" in America), to Thoreau's essay Civil Disobedience, then across the sea to Tolstoy and Gandhi, before finally returning to America during the civil rights movement of the 1950s. There are insightful essays on "American Values" and on the tremendous advances women have made in the twentieth century, as well as Lerner's presidential address to the Organization of American Historians, which outlines the contributions of women to the field of history and the growing importance of women as a subject of history. The highlight of the final section of the book is Lerner's bold and innovative look at the issues of class and race as they relate to women, an essay that distills her thinking on these difficult subjects and offers a coherent conceptual framework that will prove of lasting interest to historians and intellectuals. A major figure in women's studies and long-term activist for women's issues, a founding member of NOW and a past president of the Organization of American Historians, Gerda Lerner is a pioneer in the field of Women's History and one of its leading practitioners. Why History Matters is the summation of the work and thinking of this distinguished historian.

By Kirstin Downey

An engrossing and revolutionary biography of Isabella of Castile, the controversial Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history Born at a time when Christianity was dying out and the Ottoman Empire was aggressively expanding, Isabella was inspired in her youth by tales of Joan of Arc, a devout young woman who unified her people and led them to victory against foreign invaders. In 1474, when most women were almost powerless, twenty-three-year-old Isabella defied a hostile brother and a mercurial husband to seize control of Castile and Le�n. Her subsequent feats were legendary. She ended a twenty-four-generation struggle between Muslims and Christians, forcing North African invaders back over the Mediterranean Sea. She laid the foundation for a unified Spain. She sponsored Columbus's trip to the Indies and negotiated Spanish control over much of the New World with the help of Rodrigo Borgia, the infamous Pope Alexander VI. She also annihilated all who stood against her by establishing a bloody religious Inquisition that would darken Spain's reputation for centuries. Whether saintly or satanic, no female leader has done more to shape our modern world, in which millions of people in two hemispheres speak Spanish and practice Catholicism. Yet history has all but forgotten Isabella's influence, due to hundreds of years of misreporting that often attributed her accomplishments to Ferdinand, the bold and philandering husband she adored. Using new scholarship, Downey's luminous biography tells the story of this brilliant, fervent, forgotten woman, the faith that propelled her through life, and the land of ancient conflicts and intrigue she brought under her command.

By Shannon Bream

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The women of the Bible lived timelessstories—by examining them, we can understand what it means to be a woman offaith.People unfamiliar with Scripture often assume thatwomen play a small, secondary role in the Bible. But in fact, they were centralfigures in numerous Biblical tales. It was Queen Esther’s bravery at a vital pointin history which saved her entire people. The Bible contains warriors likeJael, judges like Deborah, and prophets like Miriam. The first person towitness Jesus’ resurrection was Mary Magdalene, who promptly became the firstChristian evangelist, eager to share the news which would change the worldforever.In The Women of the Bible Speak, Fox News Channel's Shannon Bream opensup the lives of sixteen of these Biblical women, arranging them into pairs andcontrasting their journeys. In pairing their stories, Shannon helps us reflectnot only on the meaning of each individual’s life, but on how they relateto each other and to us. From the shepherdesses of ancient Israel who helpedraise the future leaders of the people of God, to the courageous early Christians,the narrative of the Bible offers us many vivid and fascinating femalecharacters. In their lives we can see common struggles to resist bitterness, despair,and pride, and to instead find their true selves in faith, hope, and love. Instudying these heroes of the faith, we can find wisdom and warnings for how tobetter navigate our own faith journeys. The Women of the Bible Speak outlinesthe lessons we can take from the valor of Esther, the hope of Hannah, theaudacity of Rahab, and the faith of Mary. In broadening each woman’s individualstory, Shannon offers us a deeper understanding of each, and wisdom andinsights that can transform our own lives today.