Recommendations based on "Of Woman Born"

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. What was it like to start a feminist bookshop, in an industry dominated by men'? How could a lesbian thrive in Thatcher's time, with the government legislating to restrict her rights? How do you run a business when your real aim is to change the world? Silver Moon was the dream of three women - a bookshop with the mission to promote the work of female writers and create a much-needed safe space for any woman. Founded in 1980s London against a backdrop of homophobia and misogyny, it was a testament to the power of community, growing into Europe's biggest women's bookshop and hosting a constellation of literary stars from Margaret Atwood and Maya Angelou to Angela Carter. While contending with day-to-day struggles common to other booksellers, plus the additional burdens of misogyny and the occasional hate crime, Jane Cholmeley and her booksellers created a thriving business. But they also played a crucial and relatively unsung part in one the biggest social movements of our time. A Bookshop of One's Own is a fascinating slice of social history from the heart of the women's liberation movement, from a true feminist and lesbian icon. Written with heart and humour, it reveals the struggle and joy that comes with starting an underdog business, while being a celebration of the power women have to change the narrative when they are the ones holding the pen.

________The Sunday Times BestsellerNational Book Awards - Young Adult Book of the Year 2018!"Brilliant, hysterical, truthful and real. These essays illuminate the path for our future female leaders." - Reese Witherspoon"As a feminist who loves pink, I give this brilliant book of essays an enthusiastic "YES"" - Mindy Kaling"A refreshing and honest celebration of all that it means to be a woman today." - Fearne CottonYou need this book. Funny, powerful and personal writing by women, for women, about what the F word means to them.Every woman has a different story to tell. Reading them all in one book might just change your life.New pink feminists are being announced every week - follow @feminists on Instagram to find out more!Keira Knightley - Gemma Arterton - Bridget Jones (by Helen Fielding) - Saoirse Ronan - Dolly Alderton - Karen Gillan - Alicia Garza - Jameela Jamil - Kat Dennings - Nimco Ali - Beanie Feldstein - Olivia Perez - Amika George - Evanna Lynch - Akilah Hughes - Tanya Burr - Grace Campbell - Alison Sudol - Elyse Fox - Charlie Craggs - Rhyannon Styles - Skai Jackson - Tasha Bishop - Lolly Adefope - Bronwen Brenner - Dr Alaa Murabit - Trisha Shetty - Jordan Hewson - Amy Trigg - Em Odesser - Emi Mahmoud - Lydia Wilson - Swati SharmaMore praise for Feminists Don't Wear Pink:"Pick it up and read one story from your favourite columnist or actress, but I guarantee you'll end up reading the full, illuminating collection, and you'll possibly finish it knowing more about your own personal stance than you imagined." - Glamour.co.uk"This collection of essays curated by writer Scarlett Curtis is a call-to-arm that allows us to unpick what it means to be a feminist in a safe space." - Stylist.co.uk"We advise placing a copy in the hands of every girl (and guy) you know." - Red Magazine**Published in partnership with Girl Up, the UN women's foundation, royalties will benefit this amazing charity**

Feminism is the insight that sexism exists, and the struggle against that oppression. The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing is a global anthology of feminist writers, edited and introduced with a major new essay by Hannah Dawson.Beginning in the fifteenth century with Christine de Pizan, who imagined a City of Ladies that would serve as a refuge from the harassment of men, the book reaches around the earth and through the years to us, now, splashing about in the fourth wave. It goes beyond the usual white, western story, encompassing also race, class, capitalism, imperialism, and other axes of oppression that intersect with patriarchy. Alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who declared in Seneca Falls in 1848 the self-evident truth 'that all men and women are created equal', we find Sojourner Truth, born into slavery in New York in 1797, who asked 'and ain't I a woman?' Drawing on poems, novels and memoirs, as well as roaring manifestos, The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing parts the clouds on a constellation of feminist classics.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation—the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. From the bestselling authors of Tightrope,two of our most fiercely moral voicesWith Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.

This is a fascinating and innovative look at women's psychology. Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen examines the seven archetypal goddesses, or personality types, that exist within the female psyche and how identifying them can provide the key to self-knowledge.

Do You Know... where the legend of a cat's nine lives comes from? why "mama" is a word understood in nearly all languages? how the custom of kissing began? whether there really was a female pope? why Cinderella's glass slipper was so important to the Prince? The answers to these and countless other intriguing questions are given in this compulsively readable, feminist encyclopedia. Twenty-five years in preparation, this unique, comprehensive sourcebook focuses on mythology anthropology, religion, and sexuality to uncover precisely what other encyclopedias leave out or misrepresent. The Woman's Encyclopedia presents the fascinating stories behind word origins, legends, superstitions, and customs. A browser's delight and an indispensable resource, it offers 1,350 entries on magic, witchcraft, fairies, elves, giants, goddesses, gods, and psychological anomalies such as demonic possession; the mystical meanings of sun, moon, earth, sea, time, and space; ideas of the soul, reincarnation, creation and doomsday; ancient and modern attitudes toward sex, prostitution, romance, rape, warfare, death and sin, and more. Tracing these concepts to their prepatriarchal origins, Barbara G. Walker explores a "thousand hidden pockets of history and custom in addition to the valuable material recovered by archaeologists, orientalists, and other scholars." Not only a compendium of fascinating lore and scholarship, The Woman's Encyclopedia is a revolutionary book that offers a rare opportunity for both women and men to see our cultural heritage in a fresh light, and draw upon the past for a more humane future.

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDAcclaimed journalist Julia Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the history of its women, from revolution to utopia to autocracy.In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow--only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up--doctors, engineers, scientists--seemed to have been replaced by women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to becoming a bastion of conservative Christian values?In Motherland, Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women. From her own physician great-grandmothers to Lenin's lover, a feminist revolutionary; from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet girls who fought in World War II to the millions of single mothers who rebuilt and repopulated a devastated country; from the members of Pussy Riot to Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, Ioffe chronicles one of the most audacious social experiments in history and documents how it failed the very women it was meant to liberate--and how that failure paved the way for the revanche of Vladimir Putin.Part memoir, part journalistic exploration, part history, Motherland paints a portrait of modern Russia through the women who shaped it. With deep emotion, Ioffe reveals what it means to live through the cataclysms of revolution, war, idealism, and heartbreak--and how the story of Russia today is inextricably tied to the sacrifices of its women.

Winner of The Green Prize for Sustainable Literature A Finalist for the PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography Four influential women we thought we knew well—Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters—and how they spearheaded the modern progressive movement This is the story of four visionaries who profoundly shaped the world we live in today. Together, these women—linked not by friendship or field, but by their choice to break with convention—showed what one person speaking truth to power can do. Jane Jacobs fought for livable cities and strong communities; Rachel Carson warned us about poisoning the environment; Jane Goodall demonstrated the indelible kinship between humans and animals; and Alice Waters urged us to reconsider what and how we eat.  With a keen eye for historical detail, Andrea Barnet traces the arc of each woman’s career and explores how their work collectively changed the course of history. While they hailed from different generations, Carson, Jacobs, Goodall, and Waters found their voices in the early sixties. At a time of enormous upheaval, all four stood as bulwarks against 1950s corporate culture and its war on nature. Consummate outsiders, each prevailed against powerful and mostly male adversaries while also anticipating the disaffections of the emerging counterculture. All told, their efforts ignited a transformative progressive movement while offering people a new way to think about the world and a more positive way of living in it.   

In time for the 250th Anniversary of the birth of the United States comes a sweeping, intimate portrayal of Abigail Adams—wife of one president and mother to another—whose wit, willpower, and wisdom helped shape the fledgling republic. A stunning historical novel with modern-day implications from the New York Times bestselling authors of America’s First Daughter and My Dear Hamilton. In the heart of revolutionary Boston, Abigail Adams raises her children amid riots, blockades, and the outbreak of war. While her husband, John Adams, rises from country lawyer to nation-builder, often away for years at a time, Abigail builds her own independence—managing their farm, making lucrative investments, amassing savings, battling plague and loss, and defending their home. Unafraid to speak her mind, she famously offers fearless political counsel, urging John to “remember the ladies” in the new government. Through it all, she becomes his most trusted confidante and indispensable ally. When peace is secured, Abigail steps onto the world stage—exchanging ideas with Thomas Jefferson in the French countryside, navigating court life as the wife of the Minister to Great Britain, and presiding over the parlor politics of the early American republic in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Even after her husband’s presidential administration, she continues battling political foes and working behind the scenes to advance her family, secure independence for the women in her life, and ensure a better life for the next generation of Americans. From war-torn streets to the chandeliered halls of power, A Founding Mother is the unforgettable story of a woman ahead of her time—one whose voice, vision, and valor still resonate powerfully today.

When a Texas debutante bows her forehead to the floor in the famous "Texas dip", society columnists all across the country speculate interminably over what it is that sets Texas women apart. But really, how could they know? Even women born and bred in Texas - the daughters of generations of Texans - can't always answer that question. Prudence Mackintosh comes very close to an answer, though, in this endlessly entertaining book. Writing with both a wry sense of humor and an insider's compassion, she offers us a fascinating, nose-against-the-glass look into the world of privileged, educated, well-married, well-connected, and mostly wealthy white Texas women. What really sets these women apart, Ms. Mackintosh tells us, is the comfortable yet demanding path they follow from their idyllic girlhoods to positions of prominence - either in their own right or as the wives, mothers, and daughters of prominent men. In eleven essays, some of which originally appeared in Texas Monthly magazine, she charts the way stations that mark this path: summer camps in the Texas Hill Country, exclusive private schools like Dallas' Hockaday, sorority membership, and acceptance into the Junior League. Prudence Mackintosh has been both an outsider and an insider in this privileged world, and she knows its ways. Whether she's writing about the elaborate rituals of pledge week in the 1960s, or the ambivalent ties that bind white women and the women of color who work in their homes, or the achievements of such prominent figures as Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, and Liz Carpenter, her observations are shot through with wit and real insight. Just As We Were may not be the final word on elite Texas women, but no oneelse has described their world with more irony and accuracy than Prudence Mackintosh.