Who Runs The World? Girls!

Penning a poignant and painful tribute to her mother’s final year, Erin Coughlin Hollowell’s poems address both the loss of a parent, and a parent losing their memory.

In 1965, Helen Gurley Brown, author of the groundbreaking bestseller Sex and the Single Girl, took over an ailing Cosmopolitan and soon revamped it into one of the most bankable—and revolutionary—brands on the planet. At a time when women’s magazines taught housewives how to make the perfect casserole, Helen spoke directly to the single girl next door, cheekily advising her on how to pursue men, money, power, pleasure, and, most of all, personal happiness.

Bringing New York City vibrantly to life during the sexual revolution and the women’s movement, and featuring a rich cast of characters, including Hugh Hefner and Gloria Steinem, Enter Helen is the riveting story of a polarizing pioneer who bucked convention to define her own destiny, baiting a generation that both revered and rejected her.

In May of 2012, Janine di Giovanni travelled to Syria, marking the beginning of a long relationship with the country, as she began reporting from both sides of the conflict, witnessing its descent into one of the most brutal, internecine conflicts in recent history.

The Morning They Came for Us is one woman's unflinching account of a nation on the brink of disintegration, charting an apocalyptic but at times tender story of life in a jihadist war — and an unforgettable testament to human resilience in the face of devastating, unimaginable horrors.

Ida: A Sword Among Lions is a sweepingnarrative about a country and a crusader embroiled in the struggle against lynching: a practice that imperiled not only the lives of blackmen and women, but also a nation based on law and riven by race. Writer and historian Paula Giddings at long last gives this visionary reformer her due and, in the process, sheds light on an aspect of our history that isoften left in the shadows.

Feminism has been continually changing and evolving. That's because over the years, the needs of women have changed as well. So needless to say, the criticism for such a woman has always been vocal as well. Are you intersectional enough?

Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years and commenting on the state of feminism today. The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

Is there a male and female brain? Are women irrational and emotional compared to men?

Gender inequalities are increasingly defended by citing hard-wired differences between the male and female brain. That’s why, we’re told, there are so few women in science, so few men in the laundry room — different brains are just suited to different things.

With sparkling wit and humour, Cordelia Fine attacks this ‘neurosexism’, revealing the mind’s remarkable plasticity, the substantial influence of culture on identity, and the malleability of what we consider to be ‘hardwired’ difference.

Who will overthrow the Imam? Who will defeat the oppression, the tyranny, the injustice and the killings?… Then, who is the Imam? Is he the man, the male, the father, the husband, the ruler, the leader?

Nawal El Saadawi asks these important questions in The Fall of the Imam. This powerful and poetic novel by Egypt's leading feminist writer reveals the underlying hypocrisy of a male-dominated religious state, and raises awareness of the insufferable predicament of women in a society which will ultimately self-destruct. When it comes to Arab feminism, Nawal El Saadawi is one of the definitive voices.

Author, activist, feminist, teacher, and artist bell hooks is celebrated as one of the nation's leading intellectuals. n Appalachian Elegy, bell hooks continues her work as an imagist of life's harsh realities in a collection of poems inspired by her childhood in the isolated hills and hidden hollows of Kentucky. At once meditative, confessional, and political, this poignant volume draws the reader deep into the experience of living in Appalachia. Touching on such topics as the marginalization of its people and the environmental degradation it has suffered over the years, hooks's poetry quietly elegizes the slow loss of an identity while also celebrating that which is constant, firmly rooted in a place that is no longer whole.

God knows how difficult it is to be a woman. But Caitlin Moran puts a new face on feminism, cutting to the heart of women’s issues today with her irreverent, transcendent, and hilarious in "How to Be a Woman". This is 100% relatable and will have you chuckling at its blunt wit and refreshing honesty.

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Initially delivered as messages to two women's colleges at Cambridge University, this narrative explores women both as writers of and characters in fiction, The essay is generally seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.

Acclaimed author of The Beauty Myth and The End of America, brings us an astonishing work of cutting-edge science and cultural history that radically reframes how we understand the vagina—and, consequently, how we understand women. "Vagina" is what is a radical and endlessly fascinating exploration of the gateway to a realm of female consciousness from a remarkable writer and thinker at the forefront of the new feminism.

Here's summarising this book in a sentence: “Real Women Write about Real Sex”. What is the female desire? What does sex mean to women? Erica Jong gathers a list of acclaimed and prolific feminist writers like Gail Collins, Eve Ensler, Daphne Merken, Anne Roiphe, Liz Smith, Naomi Wolf, and Jennifer Weiner to write about the multi-faceted women with wit and candour.

One reason to pick up this book: Emma Watson had this book as part of her book club. Another reason? Gloria Steinem is a badass.

Steinem spends most of her life on the road, as an activist, journalist, and speaker. And those seeds of adventure were planted from a young age: Every fall, her father would pack the family into the car and they would drive across the country, in search of their next adventure.

With the unique perspective of one of the greatest feminist icons of the 20th and 21st centuries, here is an inspiring, profound, enlightening memoir of one woman's life-long journey.

In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of “the flawless beauty.”

The publication of Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch in 1970 was a landmark event, raising eyebrows and ire while creating a shock wave of recognition in women around the world with its steadfast assertion that sexual liberation is the key to women's liberation.

Some four decades later, this piece of work still remains important within the feminist literary circle. The Female Eunuch is searing examination of the oppression of women in contemporary society, and is an important historical record of where we've been and a shockingly relevant treatise on what still remains to be achieved.

Difficult women is all about well, the lives of women. The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other.

Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America reminiscent of Merritt Tierce, Jamie Quatro, and Miranda July.