Social MovementsBooks

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.

A contemporary collection placing street movements, Black and decolonial theory, Indigenous ecological knowledge, queer practice, and art across the Americas on one political map.

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 feminist movement history spanning more than three decades and five continents, documenting how Women in Black used black clothing, silent vigils, and local coalitions against occupation, war, militarism, apartheid, and gendered violence.

Culture writer Marcie Bianco boldly argues that 'equality' is a racist, patriarchal ideal that perpetuates women's systemic oppression and limits the possibilities of feminism - with a plan to transform the movement.

Cynthia Enloe develops twelve connected principles for tracing the gender politics of recruitment, care, wounds, wartime rape, women soldiers, feminist organizing, and the long aftermath misleadingly called “postwar.”

One of Ms. Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of 2023. Continuing the trajectory of the Combahee River Collective, this collection brings together scholars, activists, and writers to examine how carceral liberalism masquerades as freedom while perpetuating oppression, critiquing the confluence of neoliberalism, incarceration, and patriarchy.

Former AFP Seoul correspondent Hawon Jung provides a firsthand account from the frontlines of South Korea's feminist movement, documenting how tens of thousands of Korean women sparked a MeToo wave, ended abortion bans, fought spycam crimes, and shattered Western stereotypes of 'docile' Asian women. Named one of The Economist's Best Books of 2023.

Through the personal experiences of historian Felicia Kornbluh's mother and neighbor, this book reveals the untold story of two grassroots movements in New York that transformed American reproductive rights politics - the fight to decriminalize abortion and the struggle against sterilization abuse.

Piepzna-Samarasinha turns disabled survival, grief, mutual aid, and imagination in the COVID era into a political account of disabled futures.

Alice Wong's memoir braids Asian American identity, disability activism, family, humor, media work, and community building into a personal archive of disability justice.

No More Police reframes safety by taking it out of punishment infrastructure and into care, survivor support, and social redesign, advancing abolitionist feminist and transformative justice frameworks.

A record of liberation and transformation by Tarana Burke, the founder of the 'Me Too' movement. With overwhelming honesty, it depicts the deep wounds as a survivor of sexual violence, the reality of silenced Black women, and how the hope of 'empowerment through empathy' was born.

An extraordinary work of memoir and investigative journalism by award-winning Gitxsan journalist Angela Sterritt who survived life on the streets. Combining personal narrative with in-depth investigation into Canada's missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG), this book reveals how colonialism and racism created a society where Indigenous women's lives are ignored and devalued, while proving that Indigenous women's strength and brilliance is unbroken.

We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice connects punishment, gender, race, and community safety, strengthening FemRes coverage of abolition feminism and transformative justice.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs learns Black feminist survival from marine mammals, linking breath, sound, collective protection, and ecological crisis.

This climate anthology gathers women scientists, policy leaders, poets, and organizers, treating climate action as leadership, grief, and collective imagination.

Hil Malatino rethinks care labor, mutual aid, exhaustion, and survival from the standpoint of trans communities.

Sarah Jaquette Ray writes for the climate generation about anxiety, burnout, action, and resilience, bringing emotional labor into climate education.

The courage to escape the cage of 'good woman' and 'good mother' and live according to one's own truth. A soulful memoir by an author who overcame years of addiction and a painful marriage to find true love and freedom, empowering women worldwide.

Starting from trans airport screening and disability justice, Sasha Costanza-Chock argues for design led by affected communities, placing benefit, ownership, and accountability above expert good intentions.

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.

Suraj Yengde combines personal narrative and social analysis to show caste not as India’s past, but as power still operating in education, love, labor, and diaspora.

Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators connects punishment, gender, race, and community safety, strengthening FemRes coverage of abolition feminism and transformative justice.

A profound and philosophical guide to reclaiming our attention in an era where our focus is commodified and efficiency is seen as the ultimate value. Odell explores how 'doing nothing' can be a radical act of resistance, leading to deeper connections with our local environments, communities, and ourselves.

Through treaties, dispossession, food and water, sacred sites, and Standing Rock, Dina Gilio-Whitaker rebuilds environmental justice around Indigenous sovereignty.

A shocking exposé into how the world is designed for men as the 'default,' systematically ignoring women's data. Spanning healthcare, technology, urban planning, and economics, Caroline Criado Perez reveals how invisible data bias seriously impacts women's health, safety, and lives.

Emily L. Thuma reconstructs the anticarceral politics developed from the 1970s into the early 1980s by criminalized women and Black, queer, prisoner, and psychiatric-survivor organizers.

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

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.

Susan Burton’s lived account connects trauma, the drug war, repeated incarceration, and reentry, then turns recovery into care and political work led by formerly incarcerated women.

'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.

A landmark collection by survivors, organizers, and community workers asking how social justice movements can confront intimate violence and build accountability without relying on police and prisons.

Liberating 'motherhood' from middle-class privilege to reconstruct it as the most radical practice of social transformation. A groundbreaking anthology on love, survival, and collective liberation by women of color, queer people, the poor, and low-wage caregivers.

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.

An oral-history account of Indigenous women’s participation in the Zapatista movement and their unfinished struggle to transform political leadership, domestic life, land, health, and education.

Naomi Klein argues that climate crisis is not a single environmental issue but a challenge to market ideology, fossil capital, and extractivism.

The moving memoir of the girl who fought for her right to education and survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban at age fifteen. A powerful record of life in Pakistan's Swat Valley, family bonds, and the courage of an individual standing against extremist oppression.

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.

Based on 500 Dalit women’s narratives across four Indian states, this study shows how gendered violence enforces caste, class, land, and political power - and follows survivors into exclusionary justice institutions.

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.

An edited collection on social justice, citizenship, and democratizing struggles led by women in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Bama replaces the solitary heroine with a collective life of Dalit women, making labor, violence, laughter, language, and intergenerational memory the substance of grassroots feminism.

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.

Cynthia Cockburn follows women’s antiwar networks across several conflicts, tracing how nationalism, masculinity, racism, and empire make war while examining peace activism’s own contradictions.

Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California connects punishment, gender, race, and community safety, strengthening FemRes coverage of abolition feminism and transformative justice.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and Durgabai Vyam reclaim labor, technique, and knowledge devalued by caste in a form accessible to younger readers.

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

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 large anthology of radical visions for transformation that extends bridge-building feminist politics across difference.

An edited volume on women's participation in revolutionary, leftist, and radical politics across 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.

Cynthia Cockburn studies women’s cooperation across Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, and Bosnia-Hercegovina to understand gender, nationalism, and democratic difference.

This landmark anthology grounds African feminist politics in struggles over land, work, food, health, citizenship, and state power across ten national contexts.

A comparative account of women's grassroots activism in Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, and Chile.

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.

A comparative study of women's movement participation, democratization, and political change in Latin America.

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.

This early collection records ecofeminism emerging between ecology movements, feminism, and women’s spirituality, including tensions later revised by intersectional critique.

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.

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.