LibGuides: Feminism: Books, Manifestos and Speeches

Books, Manifestos and Speeches

Essentials
Anthologies

The following is a list of important, influential and sometimes controversial feminist works that have influenced feminism in the United States from the 18th to the 21st century.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft; Charles W. Hagelman (Editor)
Publication Date: 1792
seminal English-language feminist work, was published in England. Challenging the notion that women exist only to please men, she proposed that women and men be given equal opportunities in education, work, and politics.
Declaration of Rights and Senitments by Women's Rights Convention - Seneca Falls, NY
Publication Date: 1848
When Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a Seneca Falls housewife and mother of three sons, sat down with the Quaker and abolitionist women, and decided that these wrongs should be made into rights. They called for a Convention, open to the public, to be held in Seneca Falls at the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, July 19th and 20th, 1848. There they presented a Declaration of Sentiments, based on the language and content of the Declaration of Independence. Stating that "all men and women are created equal," they demanded equal rights for women, including - a radical idea - the right to vote. An estimate 300 people attended the Convention; the document was ratified and was signed by 68 women and 32 men, including Frederick Douglas and Lucretia Mott
Ain't I a Woman by Truth, Sojourner / Sojourner Truth Project
Publication Date: 1851
"Ain't I a Woman?" is a speech, delivered extemporaneously, by Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), born into slavery in New York State. Some time after gaining her freedom in 1827, she became a well known anti-slavery speaker. Her speech was delivered at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, and did not originally have a title. This site, The Sojourner Truth Project, places the original transcription of the speech by journalist, Marius Robinson, with the better known version published 12 years later by Frances Gage in the New York Independent.
A room of one's own by Woolfe, Virginia
Call Number: Main Stacks PN471 .W6
Publication Date: 1929
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister: a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. But if only she had found the means to create, urges Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, Virginia Woolf takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give a voice to those who have none. Her message is simple: A woman must have a fixed income and a room of her own in order to have the freedom to create.
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir; Constance Borde (Translator); Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (Translator)
Publication Date: 1946
Simone de Beauvoir's essential masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of "woman," and a revolutionary exploration of inequality and otherness. Unabridged in English for the first time, this long-awaited edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir's pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as when it was first published, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Publication Date: 1963
Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of “the problem that has no name”: the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women’s confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives
Sexual Politics by Kate Millett; Catharine MacKinnon (Foreword by); Rebecca Mead (Afterword by)
Publication Date: 1970
A sensation upon its publication in 1970, Sexual Politics documents the subjugation of women in great literature and art. Kate Millett's analysis targets four revered authors--D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, and Jean Genet--and builds a damning profile of literature's patriarchal myths and their extension into psychology, philosophy, and politics. Her eloquence and popular examples taught a generation to recognize inequities masquerading as nature and proved the value of feminist critique in all facets of life. This new edition features the scholar Catharine A. MacKinnon and the New Yorker correspondent Rebecca Mead on the importance of Millett's work to challenging the complacency that sidelines feminism.
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
Publication Date: 1971
Germaine Greer takes aim at the subject of women: their cultural history, their psychological development, and their relationship to men. And what she puts forward as her central thesis is the original and provocative idea that as wives, employees, mothers, and lovers, women are not only still in bondage to men, but are deformed by them--made into eunuchs.
The Combahee River Collective Statement by by Combahee River Collective
Publication Date: 1977
The Combahee River Collective was a group founded in 1974 by Black feminists and lesbians. It is named for the river where 750 slaves escaped to freedom in 1863 in an action led by Harriet Tubman. In its statement, the collective argues for a politics rooted in the specific experiences of Black women. In so doing, the collective asserts that although they shared political goals with feminists, socialists, and Black freedom movements, they took issue with some of their politics because those movements were often unable to view race, class, gender, and heterosexist oppression simultaneously rather than separately.
Gyn-Ecology by Mary Daly
Publication Date: 1979
Gyn/Ecology argues that western culture reduces women to object status and that this, in turn, destroys women both mentally and physically. She argues that western society is not merely patriarchal in its organization, but that reality itself (by which she means, language, experience, and consciousness) is patriarchal and that feminism cannot succeed unless it addresses this basic fact.
Ain't I a Woman by bell hooks
Publication Date: 1981
Taking it's title from the 1863 famous speech by Sojourner Truth, this classic work of feminist scholarship, examines the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman's involvement with feminism, hooks attempts to move us beyond racist and sexist assumptions. The result is nothing short of groundbreaking, giving this book a critical place on every feminist scholar's bookshelf.
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens by Alice Walker
Publication Date: 1983
In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walker speaks out as a black woman, writer, mother, and feminist. Among the thirty-six pieces are essays about other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring childhood injury and her daughter's healing words.
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Publication Date: 1984
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women by Donna Jeanne Haraway
Publication Date: 1990
"Simians, Cyborgs and Women" is a powerful collection of ten essays written between 1978 and 1989. Although on the surface, simians, cyborgs and women may seem an odd threesome, Haraway describes their profound link as "creatures" which have had a great destabilizing place in Western evolutionary technology and biology. Throughout this book, Haraway analyzes accounts, narratives, and stories of the creation of nature, living organisms, and cyborgs. At once a social reality and a science fiction, the cyborg--a hybrid of organism and machine--represents transgressed boundaries and intense fusions of the nature/culture split. By providing an escape from rigid dualisms, the cyborg exists in a post-gender world, and as such holds immense possibilities for modern feminists.
Gender Trouble by Judith P. Butler
Publication Date: 1999
One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler's Gender Troubleis as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent.
Sexing the Body by Anne Fausto-Sterling
Publication Date: 2000
Why do some people prefer heterosexual love while others fancy the same sex? Is sexual identity biologically determined or a product of convention? In this brilliant and provocative book, the acclaimed author of Myths of Gender argues that even the most fundamental knowledge about sex is shaped by the culture in which scientific knowledge is produced. Drawing on astonishing real-life cases and a probing analysis of centuries of scientific research, Fausto-Sterling demonstrates how scientists have historically politicized the body. In lively and impassioned prose, she breaks down three key dualisms - sex/gender, nature/nurture, and real/constructed - and asserts that individuals born as mixtures of male and female exist as one of five natural human variants and, as such, should not be forced to compromise their differences to fit a flawed societal definition of normality.
Intersectionality As Critical Social Theory by Patricia Hill Collins
Publication Date: 2019
In Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory Patricia Hill Collins offers a set of analytical tools for those wishing to develop intersectionality's capability to theorize social inequality in ways that would facilitate social change. While intersectionality helps shed light on contemporary social issues, Collins notes that it has yet to reach its full potential as a critical social theory. She contends that for intersectionality to fully realize its power, its practitioners must critically reflect on its assumptions, epistemologies, and methods. She places intersectionality in dialog with several theoretical traditions--from the Frankfurt school to black feminist thought--to sharpen its definition and foreground its singular critical purchase, thereby providing a capacious interrogation into intersectionality's potential to reshape the world.
Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria
Publication Date: 2022
Upper-middle-class white women have long been heralded as "experts" on feminism. They have presided over multinational feminist organizations and written much of what we consider the feminist canon, espousing sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity, all while branding the language of the movement itself in whiteness and speaking over Black and Brown women in an effort to uphold privilege and perceived cultural superiority. An American Muslim woman, attorney, and political philosopher, Rafia Zakaria champions a reconstruction of feminism in Against White Feminism, centering women of color in this transformative overview and counter-manifesto to white feminism's global, long-standing affinity with colonial, patriarchal, and white supremacist ideals.

Anthologies and collections of essays are useful for putting feminist literature, theories, and movements in context.

Africana Womanism by Clenora Hudson-Weems First published in 1993, this is a new edition of the classic text in which Clenora Hudson-Weems sets out a paradigm for women of African descent. Examining the status, struggles and experiences of the Africana woman forced into exile in Europe, Latin America, the United States or at Home in Africa, the theory outlines the experience of Africana women as unique and separate from that of some other women of color, and, of course, from white women. Differentiating itself from the problematic theories of Western feminisms, Africana Womanism allows an establishment of cultural identity and relationship directly to ancestry and land. This new edition includes five new chapters as well as an evolution of the classic Africana womanist paradigm, to that of Africana-Melanated Womanism. It shows how race, class and gender must be prioritized in the fight against every day racial dominance. Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves offers a new term and paradigm for women of African descent. A family-centered concept, prioritizing race, class and gender, it offers eighteen features of the Africana womanist (self-namer, self-definer, family-centered, genuine in sisterhood, strong, in concert with male in the liberation struggle, whole, authentic, flexible role player, respected, recognized, spiritual, male compatible, respectful of elders, adaptable, ambitious, mothering, nurturing), applying them to characters in novels by Hurston, Bâ, Marshall, Morrison and McMillan. It evolves from Africana Womanism to Africana-Melanated Womanism. This is an important work and essential reading for researchers and students in women and gender studies, Africana studies, African-American studies, literary studies and cultural studies, particularly with the emergence of family centrality (community and collective engagement), the very cornerstone of Africana Womanism since its inception.
The Essential Feminist Reader by Estelle Freedman (Editor)
Feminist Manifestos: A Global Documentary Reader by Weiss, Penny A., (Editor) A wide-reaching collection of groundbreaking feminist documents from around the world Feminist Manifestos is an unprecedented collection of 150 documents from feminist organizations and gatherings in over 50 countries over the course of three centuries. In the first book of its kind, the manifestos are shown to contain feminist theory and recommend actions for change, and also to expand our very conceptions of feminist thought and activism.
The Feminist Papers by Alice S. Rossi (Editor)
Feminist Postcolonial Theory by Reina Lewis (Editor); Sara Mills (Editor)
The Future Is Feminist by Mallory Farrugia (Editor); Jessica Valenti (Introduction by)
The Gender Reader by Evelyn Ashton-Jones; Gary A. Olson
Seeking the Beloved Community by Joy James; Beverly Guy-Sheftall (Foreword by)
This Bridge Called My Back by Cherríe Moraga (Editor); Gloria Anzaldúa (Editor); Johnetta Tinker (Illustrator); Toni Cade Bambara (Foreword by)
Well-Read Black Girl by Glory Edim NOMINATED FOR AN NAACP IMAGE AWARD * An inspiring collection of essays by black women writers, curated by the founder of the popular book club Well-Read Black Girl, on the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature. "Yes, Well-Read Black Girl is as good as it sounds. . . . [Glory Edim] gathers an all-star cast of contributors--among them Lynn Nottage, Jesmyn Ward, and Gabourey Sidibe."--O: The Oprah Magazine Remember that moment when you first encountered a character who seemed to be written just for you? That feeling of belonging remains with readers the rest of their lives--but not everyone regularly sees themselves in the pages of a book. In this timely anthology, Glory Edim brings together original essays by some of our best black women writers to shine a light on how important it is that we all--regardless of gender, race, religion, or ability--have the opportunity to find ourselves in literature. Contributors include Jesmyn Ward (Sing, Unburied, Sing), Lynn Nottage (Sweat), Jacqueline Woodson (Another Brooklyn), Gabourey Sidibe (This Is Just My Face), Morgan Jerkins (This Will Be My Undoing), Tayari Jones (An American Marriage), Rebecca Walker (Black, White and Jewish), and Barbara Smith (Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology) Whether it's learning about the complexities of femalehood from Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, finding a new type of love in The Color Purple, or using mythology to craft an alternative black future, the subjects of each essay remind us why we turn to books in times of both struggle and relaxation. As she has done with her book club-turned-online community Well-Read Black Girl, in this anthology Glory Edim has created a space in which black women's writing and knowledge and life experiences are lifted up, to be shared with all readers who value the power of a story to help us understand the world and ourselves. Praise for Well-Read Black Girl "Each essay can be read as a dispatch from the vast and wonderfully complex location that is black girlhood and womanhood. . . . They present literary encounters that may at times seem private and ordinary--hours spent in the children's section of a public library or in a college classroom--but are no less monumental in their impact."--The Washington Post "A wonderful collection of essays."--Essence

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedias - online and in print form - are useful places to begin research and discover sources of information.

Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender by Carol R. Ember (Editor); Melvin Ember (Editor)
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Online
The central aim of this encyclopedia is to give the reader a comparative perspective on issues involving conceptions of gender, gender differences, gender roles, relationships between the genders, and sexuality. The encyclopedia is divided into two volumes: Topics and Cultures. The combination of topical overviews and varying cultural portraits is what makes this encyclopedia a unique reference work for students, researchers and teachers interested in gender studies and cross-cultural variation in sex and gender. It deserves a place in the library of every university and every social science and health department. Contents:- Glossary. Cultural Conceptions of Gender. Gender Roles, Status, and Institutions. Sexuality and Male-Female Interaction. Sex and Gender in the World's Cultures. Culture Name Index. Subject Index.
New Dictionary of the History of Ideas by Maryanne Cline Horowitz
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Online
"From abolitionism to Zionism, this encyclopedia clarifies the intellectual history of more than 750 complex ideas of concern to people today. Like its classic predecessor, the Dictionary of the History of Ideas (1973), this new set covers core Western ideas, while expanding its coverage to include the 'global perspectives and gender-inclusive' concepts that have evolved in the past 30 years. Reader's guides, cross-references, sidebars, and an index aid the reader in understanding the way ideas combine with other ideas."--"Reference that rocks," American Libraries, May 2005.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History by Bonnie G. Smith (Editor)
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History captures the experiences of women throughout world history in a comprehensive, 4-volume work. Although there has been extensive research on women in history by region, no text or reference work has comprehensively covered the role women haveplayed throughout world history.The past thirty years have seen an explosion of research and effort to present the experiences and contributions of women not only in the Western world but across the globe. Historians have investigated womens daily lives in virtually every region and have researched the leadership roles women havefilled across time and region. They have found and demonstrated that there is virtually no historical, social, or demographic change in which women have not been involved and by which their lives have not been affected. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History benefits greatly from these efforts and experiences, and illuminates how women worldwide have influenced and been influenced by these historical, social, and demographic changes.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Website
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy organizes scholars from around the world in philosophy and related disciplines to create and maintain an up-to-date reference work. The entry on Feminist Philosophy provides a scholarly overview of the development of western feminism and covers approaches, interventions and topics in feminist thought.
The Women's Movement Today by Leslie L. Heywood
The second wave of feminism of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan has given way to the dynamic next generation, the third wave, now 15 years old. The Women's Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism introduces the third wave's key issues, members, visions, writings, and more--with essay entries on abortion to zines, with the Riotgrrrl group Bikini Kill, cyberspace, National Girls and Women in Sports Day, queer theory, and activist/writer Rebecca Walker in between. The scope of the more than 200 encyclopedia entries is multidisciplinary and multicultural, inclusive of diverse gender orientations and sexualities, with a focus primarily on the movement in the United States. The Primary Documents volume showcases a wide variety of writings from some of the leading third wavers.

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