This March marks forty years since the first official celebration of Women's History Week in 1981. While it is, and should be, impossible to ignore the voices, achievements, and experiences of women at all times of year, we continue to take this month to celebrate and honor their history. At the library, we're highlighting books and films that articulate these experiences (though one reading list can hardly touch the tip of the iceberg). Explore this list for histories, social commentaries, memoirs and biographies, poetry, plays, and novels both new and classic that celebrate, empower, and convey the joys and hardships of being a woman. There are so many unique perspectives on the struggles and triumphs of women. I'm currently relishing Writing Wild: women poets, ramblers, and mavericks who shape how we see the natural world, Kathryn Aalto's collection of biographical sketches about woman who have had strong relationships with nature and thus affected our relationship with and understandings of it.
Click on the links to request items through our catalog, and please share with us any books or other art forms you've discovered that feel particularly relevant this month.
Fiction
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
The Power, Naomi Alderman
Conjure Women, Afia Atakora
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Only Woman in the Room, Marie Benedict
The Girls in the Picture, Melanie Benjamin
The Girls, Emma Cline
Song of a Captive Bird, Jazmin Darznik
The Lions of Fifth Avenue, Fiona Davis
The Gilded Hour, Sarah Donati
America’s First Daughter, Stephanie Dray
Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo
The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls, Anissa Gray
The Once and Future Witches, Alix E. Harrow
A Thousand Ships, Natalie Haynes
Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly
Circe, Madeline Miller
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
The Farm, Joanne Ramos
A Woman is No Man, Etaf Rum
The Daughters of Erietown, Connie Schulz
Kopp Sisters on the March, Amy Stewart
Women Talking, Miriam Toews
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
The Female Persuasion, Meg Wolitzer
Red Clocks, Leni Zumas
Poetry and Plays
Blessing the Boats: new and selected poems, 1998-2000, Lucille Clifton
The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler
Ain’t I A Woman?: a book of women’s poetry from around the world, ed. Illona Linthwaite
Undersong: chosen poems, old and new, Audre Lorde
Poems from the Women’s Movement, ed. Honor Moore
Ariel: poems, Sylvia Plath
Diving into the Wreck: poems, 1971-1972, Adrienne Rich
Selected Poems of Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton
Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: new poems, Alice Walker
Memoir and Biography
Home work: a memoir of my Hollywood years, Julie Andrews
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
Letter to My Daughter, Maya Angelou
Notorious RBG: the life and times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik
Red Comet: the short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath, Heather Clark
Living History, Hilary Rodham Clinton
True North: a memoir, Jill Ker Conway
Revolutionary Heart: the life of Clarina Nichols and the pioneering crusade for women’s rights, Diane Eickhoff
Bossypants, Tina Fey
Janis: her life and music, Holly George-Warren
My Own Words, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Without a map: a memoir, Meredith Hall
The Truths We Hold: an American journey, Kamala Harris
My Life, My Love, My Legacy, Coretta Scott King
In the Dream House: a memoir, Carmen Maria Machado
Eleanor, David Michaelis
Know My Name, Chanel Miller
Becoming, Michele Obama
Know Your Power: a message to America’s daughters, Nancy Pelosi
My Beloved World, Sonia Sotomayor
My Life on the Road, Gloria Steinem
Sex Object: a memoir, Jessica Valenti
Other Nonfiction
Together We Rise: behind the scenes at the protest heard round the world, the Women’s March organizers and Condé Nast
Writing Wild: women poets, ramblers, and mavericks who shape how we see the natural world, Kathryn Aalto
Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
When Women Invented Television: the untold story of the female powerhouses who pioneered the way we watch today, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
When Everything Changed: the amazing journey of American women from 1960 to the present, Gail Collins
Women’s Words, Women’s Stories: an American daybook, ed. Lois Stiles Edgerly
Why We Cook: women on food, identity, and connection, Lindsay Gardner
The Moment of Lift: how empowering women changes the world, Melinda Gates
Women’s Letters: American from the Revolutionary War to the present, ed. Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler
Sister Citizen: shame, stereotypes, and Black women in America, Melissa V. Harris-Perry
The Genius of Women: from overlooked to changing the world, Janice Kaplan
More Than Petticoats: remarkable Maine women, Kate Kennedy
Mother is a Verb: an unconventional history, Sarah Knott
Sister Outsider: essays and speeches, Audre Lorde
Highway of Tears: a true story of racism, indifference, and the pursuit of justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, Jessica McDiarmid
D-Day Girls: the spies who armed the resistance, sabotaged the Nazis, and helped win World War II, Sarah Rose
Hidden Figures: the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race, Margot Lee Shetterly
The glass universe: how the ladies of the Harvard Observatory took the measure of the stars, Dava Sobel
Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Gloria Steinem
Good and Mad: the revolutionary power of women’s anger, Rebecca Traister
The Three Mothers: how the mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin shaped a nation, Anna Malaika Tubbs
Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
The Woman’s Hour: the great fight to win the vote, Elaine F. Weiss
The Agitators: three friends who fought for abolition and women’s rights, Dorothy Wickenden
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf