Category
Feminism and Feminist Theory
Black Looks 2014
In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship―in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music,...
The Book Club for Troublesome Women is a historical fiction novel set in 1963 that follows four suburban Virginia housewives—Margaret, Viv, Bitsy, and Charlotte—who form an unexpected book club. Although on the surface they live the “American dream” with husbands, children, and comfortable homes,...
Communion 2002
Intimate, revealing, provocative, Communion challenges every woman to courageously claim the search for love as the heroic journey we must all choose to be truly free in a patriarchal culture. In her trademark commanding and lucid language, hooks explores the ways ideas about women and love were...
Jihye is an ordinary woman who has never been extraordinary. In her administrative job at the Academy, she silently tolerates office politics and the absurdities of Korean bureaucracy. Forever only one misplaced email away from career catastrophe, she effectively becomes a master of the silent...
A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a childhood friend, a new mother who wanted to know how to raise her baby girl to be a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie’s letter of response: fifteen invaluable suggestions—direct, wryly funny, and perceptive—for how to empower a...
Excavations 2024
On a remote archaeological site in Greece, the mythic home of the first Olympics, four women discover an unusual artifact. It’s a piece of history that definitely shouldn’t exist. And for the head archaeologist in charge, a relic himself, it means something’s gone horribly wrong.
Elise, Kara, Z,...
What is feminism? In this short, accessible primer, bell hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her characteristic clarity and directness, hooks encourages readers to see how feminism can touch and change their...
Feminist Theory 2014
When Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was first published in 1984, it was welcomed and praised by feminist thinkers who wanted a new vision. Even so, individual readers frequently found the theory "unsettling" or "provocative." Today, the blueprint for feminist movement presented in the book...
The Hop 2024
Kate Burns grows up wanting attention from her Ma, but her Ma wants only money and Kate learns how to get both. She and her childhood friend, Lacey, run kissing lessons for cash in the janitor’s closet of Fenbrook High, and just like that, they find themselves in the sex work industry.
From there,...
Ain't I a Woman 2014
A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining 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...
Nothing Serious 2025
Edie Walker’s life is not going as planned. At thirty-five, she feels stuck: in her career, in her love life, and in her tiny San Francisco studio apartment. It doesn’t help that her best friend, Peter Masterson, is basically the über successful male version of her—and she’s hopelessly, unrequitedly...
Mathematical genius Dr. Meg Brightwood has just completed her life’s work—a proof of a problem so impenetrable it’s nicknamed the Impossible Theorem. Reclusive and burdened by anxiety, Meg has long since been dismissed by academia. Now everyone wants to get their hands on what she alone...
Sisters of the Yam 2014
In Sisters of the Yam, bell hooks reflects on the ways in which the emotional health of black women has been and continues to be impacted by sexism and racism. Desiring to create a context where black females could both work on their individual efforts for self actualization while remaining...
A woman’s life is suddenly upended when her husband asks for a “pause” in their marriage, forcing her to leave her usual world and spend the summer in a small town surrounded by other women, many of them older and navigating their own forms of loss, memory, and reinvention.
As she settles into this...
In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities...
Yearning 2014
For bell hooks, the best cultural criticism sees no need to separate politics from the pleasure of reading. Yearning collects together some of hooks's classic and early pieces of cultural criticism from the '80s. Addressing topics like pedagogy, postmodernism, and politics, hooks examines a variety...
A woman’s life is suddenly upended when her husband asks for a “pause” in their marriage, forcing her to leave her usual world and spend the summer in a small town surrounded by other women, many of them older and navigating their own forms of loss, memory, and reinvention.
As she settles into this...
The Book Club for Troublesome Women April 22, 2025
The Book Club for Troublesome Women is a historical fiction novel set in 1963 that follows four suburban Virginia housewives—Margaret, Viv, Bitsy, and Charlotte—who form an unexpected book club. Although on the surface they live the “American dream” with husbands, children, and comfortable homes,...
Counterattacks at Thirty March 11, 2025
Jihye is an ordinary woman who has never been extraordinary. In her administrative job at the Academy, she silently tolerates office politics and the absurdities of Korean bureaucracy. Forever only one misplaced email away from career catastrophe, she effectively becomes a master of the silent...
Nothing Serious February 18, 2025
Edie Walker’s life is not going as planned. At thirty-five, she feels stuck: in her career, in her love life, and in her tiny San Francisco studio apartment. It doesn’t help that her best friend, Peter Masterson, is basically the über successful male version of her—and she’s hopelessly, unrequitedly...
The Hop December 10, 2024
Kate Burns grows up wanting attention from her Ma, but her Ma wants only money and Kate learns how to get both. She and her childhood friend, Lacey, run kissing lessons for cash in the janitor’s closet of Fenbrook High, and just like that, they find themselves in the sex work industry.
From there,...
Excavations May 14, 2024
On a remote archaeological site in Greece, the mythic home of the first Olympics, four women discover an unusual artifact. It’s a piece of history that definitely shouldn’t exist. And for the head archaeologist in charge, a relic himself, it means something’s gone horribly wrong.
Elise, Kara, Z,...
Principles of (E)motion January 9, 2024
Mathematical genius Dr. Meg Brightwood has just completed her life’s work—a proof of a problem so impenetrable it’s nicknamed the Impossible Theorem. Reclusive and burdened by anxiety, Meg has long since been dismissed by academia. Now everyone wants to get their hands on what she alone...
A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a childhood friend, a new mother who wanted to know how to raise her baby girl to be a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie’s letter of response: fifteen invaluable suggestions—direct, wryly funny, and perceptive—for how to empower a...
We Should All Be Feminists February 3, 2015
In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities...
Sisters of the Yam November 4, 2014
In Sisters of the Yam, bell hooks reflects on the ways in which the emotional health of black women has been and continues to be impacted by sexism and racism. Desiring to create a context where black females could both work on their individual efforts for self actualization while remaining...
Black Looks October 29, 2014
In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship―in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music,...
Yearning October 27, 2014
For bell hooks, the best cultural criticism sees no need to separate politics from the pleasure of reading. Yearning collects together some of hooks's classic and early pieces of cultural criticism from the '80s. Addressing topics like pedagogy, postmodernism, and politics, hooks examines a variety...
Ain't I a Woman October 14, 2014
A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining 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...
Feminist Theory October 1, 2014
When Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was first published in 1984, it was welcomed and praised by feminist thinkers who wanted a new vision. Even so, individual readers frequently found the theory "unsettling" or "provocative." Today, the blueprint for feminist movement presented in the book...
Feminism Is for Everybody September 26, 2014
What is feminism? In this short, accessible primer, bell hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her characteristic clarity and directness, hooks encourages readers to see how feminism can touch and change their...
The Summer Without Men April 26, 2011
A woman’s life is suddenly upended when her husband asks for a “pause” in their marriage, forcing her to leave her usual world and spend the summer in a small town surrounded by other women, many of them older and navigating their own forms of loss, memory, and reinvention.
As she settles into this...
Communion December 24, 2002
Intimate, revealing, provocative, Communion challenges every woman to courageously claim the search for love as the heroic journey we must all choose to be truly free in a patriarchal culture. In her trademark commanding and lucid language, hooks explores the ways ideas about women and love were...