Historical ContextBooks

A chilling investigation into the 1990 murder of Keri Sullivan, exploring the cultural obsession with violence against women, the failures of the justice system, and the psychological toll on survivors and investigators.

Veteran financial journalist Josie Cox's groundbreaking work telling the story of how women have fought for financial freedom and the social and political hurdles that have kept them from equality. From WWII 'Rosies' to the investor who broke into the New York Stock Exchange boys' club, this work chronicles centuries of women's relentless struggle for money and power, while revealing challenges women still face today.

Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen unveils the collective medical history of women, exploring how medicine has long misunderstood women's bodies and how these historical oversights continue to affect women's health today.

New York Times bestselling historical novelist Philippa Gregory's magnum opus - a groundbreaking feminist nonfiction milestone that radically redefines the extraordinary role ordinary women played in British history. Did you know there are more penises than women in the Bayeux Tapestry? That the 1381 Peasants' Revolt was a tax protest started by women? That Darwin believed women would evolve to become inferior? For the first time, placing women - 50% of the population - at center stage of 900 years of English history.

A radical work by Cambridge economist Victoria Bateman, who has appeared naked on TV, stage, art and protests, using body and brain to deliver her message. Questions: Despite feminism's promises, why do women's bodies remain at mercy of state, society and religion? Are sexy and smart mutually exclusive? Traces bodily modesty pendulum from ancient Egypt to present, calling feminists to unite against female body repression.

Award-winning science journalist Angela Saini's groundbreaking exploration challenging assumptions that male dominance is natural to the human species. Through archaeology, scientific research, and global cultural histories, this book reveals how patriarchy emerged around 7,000 years ago, spread through colonialism, and why understanding this history is crucial for achieving genuine gender equality.

Kit Heyam challenges modern, white, medicalized origin stories of gender variance while demonstrating how to write trans history without imposing definitive identities on people in the past.

A theoretical cornerstone for the 'Wages for Housework' movement, Silvia Federici explores how capitalism has systematically invisibilized and exploited women's reproductive labor. This collection of essays points out the limitations of traditional Marxism and revolutionizes contemporary feminist economics.

This collection rewrites computing history through colonialism, race, gender, environment, and labor, refusing to treat technical problems as merely engineering problems.

Isabel Wilkerson compares U.S. racial hierarchy, Indian caste, and Nazi Germany to describe caste as a hidden grammar of domination.

A revisionist history showing how Latin American and Caribbean feminists helped build international women’s rights and human-rights institutions while contesting US dominance inside Pan-American organizing.

Jen Manion reconstructs the lives called “female husbands” in Britain and the United States, asking how marriage, labor, class, and the press produced gender.

A poetically written and sharply critical exploration of the unspoken pain, anger, and alienation hidden behind the myth of the 'model minority.' Cathy Park Hong dismantles the racial and social hierarchies of American society through the lens of her own experiences as an Asian American woman.

Thirty-four years after 'The Handmaid's Tale,' Margaret Atwood delivers a stunning sequel following the collapse of the Republic of Gilead through the perspectives of three different women. It depicts how the fires of resistance are lit from within an oppressed regime and how absolute power eventually crumbles.

A sweeping historical novel set on the Korean island of Jeju, following the intersecting fates of two female divers over several decades. From the Japanese colonial era through the Korean War and into the present, the story depicts the resilient lives, solidarity, and ultimate forgiveness of women caught in the tides of history.

Jules Gill-Peterson uncovers twentieth-century histories of transgender children and the medical, racial, and political systems around them.

Baby Kamble’s memoir treats “prison” as a structure built by caste, poverty, religious discipline, and household patriarchy together.

From early computing and programming languages to network directories and online communities, Claire L. Evans reconstructs women’s history as programmers, infrastructure maintainers, and creators of internet culture.

From slavery, gynecological medicine, fugitivity, and public memory, C. Riley Snorton argues that blackness and transness are not parallel histories that later intersect but categories produced together in the United States.

Susan Stryker offers a concise history of transgender movements in the United States from mid-twentieth-century organizing to contemporary politics.

Through her mother and uncles, Sujatha Gidla shows how caste, class, and patriarchy shaped the meaning of freedom across colonial rule, independence, and revolutionary politics.

A ground-breaking investigation into how deep-seated gender bias has permeated the scientific community, leading to long-standing 'scientific' misconceptions about women's capabilities. Spanning biology, psychology, and anthropology, Angela Saini reveals the true nature of women supported by the latest research.

Arundhati Roy revisits the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi to expose the caste question muted inside Indian nationalist narratives.

'To transform silence into language and action' - . A definitive collection covering the representative works of Audre Lorde, who fought against discrimination, illness, and power while upholding her identity as Black, lesbian, mother, and warrior. An incredibly powerful intellectual legacy for turning difference into the power of solidarity.

Marie Hicks rewrites the history of British computerization by showing how women’s computing labor was demoted from core expertise into low-paid, low-status work.

A brave and heartbreaking contemporary novel exploring the thin line between love and violence, and the courage required to break the cycle of domestic abuse spanning generations. Based on a true story, it is a tale of difficult choices, resilience, and the power of self-love.

A raw and unflinching memoir detailing how women are treated as 'sex objects' from a young age and the deep scars this leaves on their self-perception, relationships, and mental health. A leading voice in contemporary feminism, Valenti indicts the essence of misogyny in modern society through her own experiences.

A memoir by legendary feminist activist Gloria Steinem, chronicling her decades of travel and the conversations she held with the people she met along the way. It beautifully illustrates how moving, listening, and organizing can transform the world and shape the self.

Ifi Amadiume’s study of Nnobi society separates social roles such as daughter and husband from anatomical sex, while tracing how colonial rule narrowed women’s political and economic authority.

The final autobiography written by the legendary poet Maya Angelou. Addressing her early abandonment by her mother, years of estrangement, and a dramatic eventual reconciliation, this work beautifully maps how one woman learned to be independent, to forgive, and to blossom into a world-renowned writer through the complexities of maternal love.

A transformative call to action for women worldwide from former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. By addressing leadership in the workplace, the balance of domestic labor, and the affirmation of personal ambition, Sandberg ignited a global 'Lean In' movement that serves as a modern business bible for women.

Sharmila Rege curates Ambedkar’s writings on Brahmanical patriarchy, foregrounding anti-caste thought as a deeply feminist critique.

Carol Cohn’s edited volume gathers feminist analyses of women, gender, armed conflict, memory, displacement, and postwar futures.

Srividya Natarajan and Aparajita Ninan use stark images, satire, and historical narration to remake Jotiba Phule’s Slavery while weaving Savitribai’s struggle back into anti-caste thought.

Urmila Pawar weaves family, education, marriage, and movement work into a life history that shows how caste enters the body and intimate life.

A raw and powerful record of a girl growing up amidst poverty, violence, and rigid social expectations in Jamaica, winning her freedom through poetry and her own voice. It reveals the truth behind the illusion of 'paradise' while exploring biracial identity, sexuality, and the reclamation of self.

Gail Omvedt traces five centuries of anti-caste social visions, from Bhakti traditions to Phule, Periyar, and Ambedkar.

Through biography, letters, poetry, and student writing, this collection reconstructs Savitribai Phule’s anti-caste pedagogy and asks why her thought was excluded from national and feminist histories.

A powerful novel by the Nigerian-born author following the lives of four African women working in Antwerp's red-light district. Driven to Europe by poverty, betrayal, and a longing for a better life, they seek to reclaim their identities and find new solidarity amidst cold realities.

This reader gathers foundational texts that helped consolidate transgender studies as a field across feminism, queer theory, medicine, law, and history.

Anupama Rao’s anthology brings history, political argument, and Dalit women’s testimony together to show how caste and gender jointly organize bodies, labor, law, and intellectual authority.

A comparative study asking what women contribute to revolutions - and what revolutionary movements, victories, defeats, and transitions subsequently do to women and feminist politics.

Joanne Meyerowitz writes a social, cultural, and medical history of transsexuality in the United States.

A groundbreaking feminist re-examination of capitalist primitive accumulation that reveals how violent control over women's bodies became foundational to capitalist development.

Uma Chakravarti reads caste not as a simple social hierarchy, but as a historical order sustained through control of women’s sexuality, marriage, and inheritance.

The madness known as the 'ideal womanhood' imposed on American women throughout the 20th century. This sociological entertainment dismantles etiquette education, strange beauty regimens, and patriarchal social expectations through extensive archival research and sharp humor.

A historical collection on gender, state formation, citizenship, family, law, and power in Latin America.

An autobiographical graphic novel depicting the tumultuous years of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War through the eyes of a young girl. It explores a rebellious spirit seeking freedom, identity struggles, and oppression by state power. A deeply human and powerful record of resilience told through stark black-and-white drawings.

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí argues that Western scholarship projected a body-centered gender hierarchy onto Yoruba society, forcing feminist analysis to confront the colonial history of its own categories.

The most reliable introductory text exploring the complex and transformative lineage of 'Queer Theory.' It systematizes the field with clear and precise logic, covering identity politics, deconstruction, intersectionality with feminism, and its potential to fundamentally destabilize the definitions of sexuality.

A monumental work of non-fiction intended to reclaim transgender history and pride. Covering from ancient communities to contemporary activism, it reveals through abundant illustrations how gender diversity has been suppressed and how it has been fought for with unyielding will.

A record of the soul's cry and intellectual legacy of Black women thinkers from the 19th century to the present. A monumental anthology that can be called a canon of Black Feminism, gathering the 'Words of Fire' spoken to shatter the triple constraints of racism, sexism, and class oppression.

Jean Bethke Elshtain examines the myths of men as just warriors and women as beautiful souls in Western political imagination.

An enduring monument in transgender and lesbian history. Set in 1950s - 70s America, it tells the story of Jess Goldberg’s lonely struggle on the boundaries of gender, the solidarity of the working class, and an unyielding spirit in pursuit of personal truth.

Susan Faludi's 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning work deeply analyzes the 1980s American backlash against feminist progress, revealing how media, culture, and politics collaborated to create the myth of 'women's unhappiness.'

Joan Wallach Scott's 1988 landmark work establishes gender as a central category of historical analysis, profoundly challenging biological determinism and essentialism in traditional historiography, and laying a solid foundation for feminist historical theory.

Traces the origins and development of patriarchy from a historical perspective, providing crucial understanding of the historical roots of gender oppression.

A monumental work of literary criticism that analyzes how the social norm of the 'Proper Lady' governed the creation and style of women writers in late 18th and early 19th-century Britain. It reveals how Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen struggled with oppressive ideology to express their own voices.

This groundbreaking work examines the experiences of Black women from slavery to the present, analyzing how the intersection of sexism and racism creates unique forms of oppression. hooks critiques both the racism of white feminism and the sexism of Black liberation movements, arguing that anti-racist and anti-sexist struggles are inseparable, laying the foundation for later intersectionality theory.

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's 1979 classic feminist literary criticism work deeply analyzes how nineteenth-century women writers found their voices within patriarchal literary traditions, establishing a foundation for feminist literary criticism.

A seminal work of the late 20th century that dismantles how the West constructed a distorted image of the 'Orient' as a tool of domination. Founding the field of postcolonial theory, it serves as an indispensable guide to understanding the complex relationships between gender, race, and power.

Marilyn French's 1977 feminist fiction classic follows protagonist Mira's transformation from a submissive 1950s housewife to a 1960s feminist awakening, revealing patriarchal marriage's oppression of women and the possibility of women's liberation.

Adrienne Rich's 1976 classic feminist work deeply analyzes how motherhood as an institution is shaped and controlled by patriarchy while exploring the liberating potential inherent in the experience of mothering itself.

A creative memoir that weaves together Chinese legends, family storytelling, and American reality to depict the complex identity and silent struggles of a second-generation Chinese immigrant. A soulful record of breaking silence with words and winning back one's own story through the image of a warrior like Mulan.

One of the most significant and controversial essays of second-wave feminism, published in 1968. It dismantles the myth of the 'mature female sexual response' as defined by Freudian psychoanalysis and argues, both scientifically and politically, for the importance of the clitoris as the true source of female physical pleasure. A historical manifesto for the struggle for bodily and sexual autonomy.

A masterpiece of modern literature that captures the passage of time, lost years, and the completion of art through the innovative technique of 'stream of consciousness.' Deep insights into motherhood, marriage, and female creativity are poetically rendered alongside beautiful Scottish seaside landscapes.