Hi Piscataway, I’m Alli! I’m a page at Westergard and I just completed my Master’s in Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers New Brunswick. I love to connect my interests: libraries, pop culture, and feminism, so I’m here to share some recommendations for feminist ebooks and audiobooks we have available at Piscataway Public Library! All of these are available currently via eLibrary NJ or hoopla, so you can read or listen at home.
Ask: Building Consent Culture by Kitty Stryker
An anthology edited by Kitty Stryker, this modern text consults various viewpoints on the topic of consent. Contributors include activists, journalists, and authors on topics ranging from romance to teaching children to Role-Playing games. This book is a response to the culture we live in and looks to a future with a consent culture. Also available as an ebook.
Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay
In Gay’s modern-classic collection essays, she details through pieces about pop culture and modern politics her transition to embracing being a ‘bad feminist’. Also available as a digital audiobook and ebook.
The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor (digital audiobook)
Taylor reminds us in this powerful book that our bodies are our own, moving beyond oppressive ideals of how bodies should be to aim toward “radical self-love”.
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper
Rutgers-New Brunswick’s own Dr. Brittney Cooper shares a collection of essays about Black feminism in pop culture, her own experiences in the South, and more, moving past feeling guilty about anger and toward seeing the power in her rage. Also available as an ebook.
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Chronically ill Chloe wants to “get a life” and looks to her neighbor Red to help her learn to “be bad”. Feminist disabled romance! Also available as a digital audiobook and ebook.
feminism is for everybody by bell hooks (digital audiobook)
This book is a classic from one of the most iconic Black feminists in the current moment. A must-read for those new to OR well-versed in feminism.
Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer (ebook)
A scholarly text regarding crip theory and disabled feminist theories, this book shows how presents and futures can and do look different for people with disabilities and/or ‘crips’. While scholarly, this text is more accessible than most and is one of my personal favorites I cannot recommend it highly enough for folks interested in feminism, antiracism, LGBTQ+ and disability activism.
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein (digital audiobook)
Performance artist, playwright, and activist Bornstein updated and revised her original release from the 1990s in this 2016 edition of Gender Outlaw. Playing with notions of gender and sexuality, Bornstein also plays with notions of narrative flow itself as she investigates gender.
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (ebook)
In this short but powerful read, Taylor pairs the original Combahee River Collective statement—credited with being an original document for what we now understand as intersectionality—with contextual essays and interviews with members of the original Combahee River Collective. Also available as a digital audiobook.
Kindred by Octavia Butler
In this 1979 novel, Black female protagonist Dana continues to be transported from her time in L.A. to a plantation in Maryland pre-Civil War. Afro-futurist icon Butler does not shy from the tragedy of American plantation slavery or the feelings of contemporary (in the 70s) Black women and their relationship to their ancestors. It is a potentially rough read- there is lots of violence- but its message seems eternally necessary. Also available as a digital audiobook and an ebook.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (ebook)
This novel- now a Hulu adaptation- by bestselling author Ng follows a single mother and teenage daughter who rent a house apartment from a rule-following family in a status-quo-heavy suburb. Also available as an ebook and as a digital audiobook.
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock (audiobook)
Mock’s first memoir about growing up as a trans girl is an easy-to-read, educational, and heartwarming piece. I consider this piece fundamental to my own feminist understandings. Also available as a digital audiobook.
The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente, Annie Wu (audiobook)
The title is a play on ‘fridged’ or mistreated female characters in superhero comic stories. This novel subverts and explores the themes of women and heroism by telling the stories of 6 women in a superhero-verse. Also available as a digital audiobook.
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” and activist who wrote fundamental pieces of theoretical work as well as memoirs, biography, and poetry. Sister Outsider is one collection of her poetry. Also available as a digital audiobook.