Must Reads For Women’s History Month
By: Giovanna Cicalese
With Women’s History Month having just ended, it’s more important than ever to consume what women are writing about the female experience. Lately, I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump but I’ve been making an effort to read more women-centered narratives, both fiction and nonfiction, this month.
When I’m reading fiction, I tend to look for books with multiple points of view where I can get a wide range of perspectives. One of the books that really caught my attention this month was Bernardine Evaristo’s novel Girl, Woman, Other. I have read this book before but I found myself gravitating back to it because of its in-depth and interconnected view of the lives of women.
The book travels between the viewpoints of 12 multicultural characters that are all connected in some way and each chapter is written through their own perspectives. Each character tells their own stories with family, love, sexuality, class, race, privilege, and generally what it means to live a life at the intersections of oppression.
Evaristo took care to craft a novel that highlights the life of modern-day women, to deliver their struggles and triumphs in a few short chapters. It’s such an important thing to have perspective, to be able to see everyone’s viewpoint when reading this book. I love finding new connections between the characters and delving into their lives.
Another fiction novel that has been on my mind this month is A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett. A great way to read multiple perspectives in the same book is to go for short stories and A Safe Girl to Love is a compilation of short stories that focuses on the lives of multiple trans women.
The 11 stories in the novel range in topics from loss, love, and cats as they span viewpoints from trans women all over the U.S. and Canada. This novel really hones in on personal growth and acts as a snippet-sized coming of age story for each character.
On the flipside of reading fiction by women, I’ve been making an effort to read more nonfiction narratives, which I’ll confess isn’t my favorite genre. However, after diving into nonfiction readings, I think that the best books are the ones that reject fluff and make their points clearly to grab the reader's attention.
One book that does this really well is We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. While this book is on the shorter side, (being that it’s an essay previously adapted from Adichie’s TEDxtalk of the same name) it is really impactful and opens a door into her other works, both fiction and nonfiction.
We Should All Be Feminists provides anecdotes from Adichie’s childhood growing up in Nigeria, where feminist was a word used to put women down. Adichie argues in her essay that “feminist” as a label should be embraced and not used to insult women; she also argues against society's structure of masculinity and femininity and that they need to be changed to reach equality.
Another great read to get deeper into feminist nonfiction is Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism. This book is a standout that tackles the discussion of societal issues and showcases how they disproportionately affect women—specifically women of color, poor women, and trans women. Kendall speaks out against the housing crisis, higher levels of harassment and assault, food insecurity, and a whole host of societal oppressions that affect women at large.
There are so many great books by and for women to read, and not just during Women’s History Month. This list is just a sample of books to introduce readers to women’s literature at large. Consider this an encouragement to read as many narratives as possible!