Wednesday, July 13, 2022

by Alana LaBeaf

This week I’m focusing on an underused area of the library: books about U.S. women’s history. Since I spend a fair amount of my time reading reviews for adult nonfiction books, I want to highlight some interesting titles on this subject that were published over the last few years, and which were favorably reviewed. 

An unfortunate common thread between different waves of feminism has been an almost willful ignorance of the experiences of women of color. Recent years have seen multiple books that offer an intersectional approach. 

 We Were There: The Third World Women’s Alliance & the Second Wave by Patricia Romney
 

 Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World From the Tweets to the Streets by Feminista Jones

 Girl Gurl Guurl: On Womanhood and Belonging in the Age of Black Girl Magic by Kenya Hunt
 

 A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross

 

 Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption by Rafia Zakaria

 

 Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
 

 White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind by Koa Beck
 

 The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by Amia Srinivasan
 

 #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women edited by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale 

 

 The Trouble With White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism by Kyla Schuler


Alana LaBeaf is the Information and Outreach Services Coordinator for the Fond du Lac Public Library.