So You Want to be a Feminist? Where To Start with Feminist Literature

Evie Robinson

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Feminist. It’s a well known term, but it means something different to everyone.

Each individual’s relationship to feminism is totally complex, nuanced and unique. And there are thousands of books you can read, in order to better develop your own conceptions of feminism. If you’re a little unsure of whether to begin with feminist literature, here are a few of my favourites.

Essays and identity: Virginia Woolf and Audre Lorde

A rite of passage for any budding feminist is the work of Virginia Woolf. Her seminal essay A Room of One’s Own, published in 1929, uses the image of a solitary writing room to illustrate the importance of economic and creative freedom for women.

“Talk about leaving a legacy.”

Woolf’s novels are also incredible ways into accessing the female psyche, at a time when war was changing perceptions of the world. Her famous female characters in To the Lighthouse, The Waves and Mrs Dalloway all exhibit the sense that the tide was changing. Through reading Woolf, I found myself connecting to a time in history that was radically different to ours. Yet some of the ideas she coined about women’s freedom nearly a century ago are those we are still fighting for in the present day. Talk about leaving a legacy.

Not long after I became interested in feminism, I discovered Audre Lorde. Her poetry and essays explore expressions of black female identity, often critiquing the underlying racism of the feminist movement. Sister Outsider, a collection of speeches and essays, explores the multiplicity of Lorde’s identity as a woman, and her process of reconciling these facets: Woman of Colour, Queer woman, poet, activist, mother, survivor of cancer, and feminist. Lorde’s voice is one that has been pivotal in the journeys of many feminists, including mine.

Fiction: My three favourite feminist novels

Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other is a celebratory amalgamation of perspectives from twelve female characters, mostly Women of Colour and queer women, living in London. Evaristo sheds light on the experiences of women across a broad time span, navigating through sexist and patriarchal structures, trying to break through doors and barriers. She celebrates what it means to be a woman, and ways that women can find strength in communities. Her Booker Prize winning novel was probably my favourite read of 2020.

“Plath wove her biographical experiences into the fabric of her novel”

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, is another work that explores female experiences of the city in particular, this time set in New York. Focusing on the depiction of mental health and illness, Plath unpacks the effects of sexism faced by young women fighting to break into the writing industry. Despite reading the novel over fifty years after its publication, I found Plath’s story incredibly relatable, as a young woman and aspiring writer. Plath committed a revolutionary act of tackling mental illness in literary form, at a time when the issue was deeply taboo and stigmatised (though to an extent, this is still the case today). As a woman who suffered with mental illness which ultimately led to her suicide, Plath wove her biographical experiences into the fabric of her novel, making for a heart-breaking exploration of a woman’s descent mental instability.

A darker tale of female oppression, Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a fictional, dystopian society in which women are viewed and valued solely on the basis of their reproductive abilities. Women are classified in a hierarchical system, with the novel’s protagonist Offred (Of-fred, as in, property of the male ‘commander’ she lives with), falling into the category of handmaids: women forced to act as surrogate mothers on behalf of higher-class married women.

“Atwood has become a symbol of feminist achievement in the literary world.”

Offred’s narrative is told entirely in the first-person, and the very process of storytelling becomes a vital act of resistance, and a way of maintaining hope. The novel sparked huge debates in the U.S about the issue of abortion and the state of female reproductive rights, particularly at the height of the Trump administration. The novel was succeeded by its sequel, The Testaments, as well as the popular TV series made by Channel 4, now in the midst of its fifth series. It’s safe to say that Atwood has become a symbol of feminist achievement in the literary world.

Contemporary changes: Recent reads and recommendations

Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism, is an extended essay highlighting the ways in which the current feminist movement is failing. Arguing that basic human needs are inherently feminist issues, Kendall expresses her raw anger about the way in which issues facing larger groups of women, including hunger, maternal and mental health, and equality of education, are not the issues at the forefront of the feminist agenda.

“For feminism to be successful, it has to be inclusive.”

Feminism for the 99%, a collaborative manifesto written by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser, and published in 2018, considers similar ideas to those of Mikki Kendall, about how issues affecting the majority of women are excluded from discourses dominated by a white, middle-class feminists. Housing, poverty, healthcare and climate change are issues that affect women around the world, but they simply are not the things that mainstream feminists are talking about. Both of these books were instrumental in my understanding of the disparities present within feminist discourses: the movement is a lot more complex than it might appear.

This collection of recommendations is by no means exhaustive (and I struggled to choose which texts to squeeze into the constraints of this article). Reading feminist literature has no boundaries: for every text you read, you are certain to find another five off the back of it. As someone who has spent the past few years hungry to learn more everyday about feminism, its complexities and its manifestations, my best advice is to be conscious about and critical of what you are reading. Think about the failings of the book as well as the strengths: what stories does it shed light on, and whose voice is it amplifying? For feminism to be successful, it has to be inclusive. And education is the most powerful tool for that.

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Featured image courtesy of Lindsey LaMont on Unsplash. Image licence can be found here. No changes were made to this image.