Feminist Literature: 5 Haunting Pieces You Have to Read

So you wanna learn more about feminism, or maybe you already have a solid knowledge of feminist ideology but find it interesting. I have always considered myself a feminist, but that word has so much meaning and so much stigma, and it's hard to truly understand what feminism represents. Here are 5 books that changed how I view the world and my life.

1. My Body by Emily Ratajowski.

TW: Abuse and violence

This is one of my FAVORITE books of all time, and I could probably rant about it for hours if you let me. I really adore activist books that let the story spell out the message, instead of trying to preach their version of the truth to people, and that´s why a lot of famous feminist books didn´t resonate with me the way this one did. Emrata did it better because she isn´t trying to push any sort of truth on people. She never once tried to portray the female experience as anything simplistic but instead lays out her facts, feelings, and opinions as exactly what they are: subjective but wholly telling and oddly relatable.

Image Credit: Kira Auf Der Heide from Unsplash

Book description:

¨Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age twenty-one, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture’s commodification of women is the subject of this book.

My Body is a profoundly personal exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power, of men's treatment of women and women's rationalizations for accepting that treatment. These essays chronicle moments from Ratajkowski’s life while investigating the culture’s fetishization of girls and female beauty, its obsession with and contempt for women’s sexuality, the perverse dynamics of the fashion and film industries, and the gray area between consent and abuse. Nuanced, fierce, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a writer brimming with courage and intelligence.¨

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Take the Quiz: Which Literary Fiction Should You Read Next?

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Life of The Party by Olivia Gatwood

TW: Murder, violence

This was the kind of book that just leaves you speechless, another one of those that is too busy spelling out the information to tell you what to think. But I promise you, you will leave a different person than you once were. Filled with anger, rage, and confusion, Olivia spins us a list of vignettes about her childhood that will make you question everything. Written in verse, the simplicity somehow makes it more emotionally rich- and even if you aren’t usually a poetry fan, I promise you that this story is anything but boring, and is generalized enough that it isn't overly autobiographical or falsely deep.

Book Description: “A dazzling debut collection of raw and explosive poems about growing up in a sexist, sensationalized world, from a thrilling new feminist voice.

i’m a good girl, bad girl, dream girl, sad girl

girl next door sunbathing in the driveway

i wanna be them all at once, i wanna be

all the girls I’ve ever loved

—from “Girl”

Lauded for the power of her writing and having attracted an online fan base of millions for her extraordinary spoken-word performances, Olivia Gatwood now weaves together her own coming-of-age with an investigation into our culture’s romanticization of violence against women. At times blistering and riotous, at times soulful and exuberant, Life of the Party explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. Gatwood asks, How does a girl grow into a woman in a world racked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim? In precise, searing language, she illustrates [this]”

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Girls With Sharp Sticks by Suzanne Young

A sci-fi, dystopian book that is oddly metaphorical in a horrifying kind of way. At first, this seems like a normal society. The girls attend a boarding school that is tended to by teachers, doctors.. and the Guardian. Slowly, we start to learn more and more about her lifestyle, her so-called caretakers.. and that she is absolutely, 100% not safe.

Book description: “Some of the prettiest flowers have the sharpest thorns.

The Girls of Innovations Academy are beautiful and well-behaved—it says so on their report cards. Under the watchful gaze of their Guardian, they receive a well-rounded education that promises to make them better. Obedient girls, free from arrogance or defiance. Free from troublesome opinions or individual interests.

But the girls’ carefully controlled existence may not be quite as it appears. As Mena and her friends uncover the dark secrets of what’s actually happening there—and who they really are—the girls of Innovations Academy will learn to fight back.”

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Don´t Think, Dear by Alice Robb

A nonfiction research project examining the gender stereotypes and misogynistic culture of ballet, this book tells us a lot about our world, regardless of whether you’re a pro dancer or can barely stand on one foot. I left with a completely new perspective, and loved it, but be aware that this is pretty information dense, and may be boring if you aren’t into nonfiction.

Book description:

“Expertly choreographed and long overdue, this is the nuanced reckoning ballet needs, ballerinas deserve, and all feminists should note." - Oprah Daily An incisive exploration of ballet’s role in the modern world, told through the experience of the author and her classmates at the most elite ballet school in the the School of American Ballet. Growing up, Alice Robb dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. But by age fifteen, she had to face the reality that she would never meet the impossibly high standards of the hyper-competitive ballet world. After she quit, she tried to avoid ballet—only to realize, years later, that she was still haunted by the lessons she had absorbed in the mirror-lined studios of Lincoln Center, and that they had served her well in the wider world. The traits ballet takes to an extreme—stoicism, silence, submission—are valued in girls and women everywhere. Profound, nuanced, and passionately researched, Don’t Think, Dear is Robb’s excavation of her adolescent years as a dancer and an exploration of how those days informed her life for years to come. As she grapples with the pressure she faced as a student at the School of American Ballet, she investigates the fates of her former classmates as well. From sweet and innocent Emily, whose body was deemed thin enough only when she was too ill to eat, to precocious and talented Meiying, who was thrilled to be cast as the young star of the Nutcracker but dismayed to see Asians stereotyped onstage, and Lily, who won the carrot they had all been chasing—an apprenticeship with the New York City Ballet—only to spend her first season dancing eight shows a week on a broken foot. Theirs are stories of heartbreak and resilience, of reinvention and regret. Along the way, Robb weaves in the myths of famous ballet personalities past and present, from the groundbreaking Misty Copeland, who rose from poverty to become an icon of American ballet, to the blind diva Alicia Alonso, who used the heat of the spotlights and the vibrations of the music to navigate space onstage. By examining the psyche of a dancer, Don’t Think, Dear grapples with the contradictions and challenges of being a woman today.”

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Image Credit: El S from Unsplash

Little Girls in Pretty Boxes by Joan Ryan

Well.. that was.. disturbing. No, I’m not kidding, I’ll never look at sports the same way again. By exposing the deadly pressure put on young figure skaters and gymnastics, more to do with [censored] appeal and child exploitation than the actual sports, and the devastating, yet concealed consequences of it, Joan introduces us to a world that most of us can’t begin to imagine, yet it is the norm for so many young girls today. The culture of silence, as well as the terribly strong desire to succeed in a world and a body that wasn’t built for what you want, create a place in which safety is an illusion and the adults in power are not held responsible for the inevitable consequences.

“From starvation diets and debilitating injuries to the brutal tactics of tyrannical gymnastics guru Bela Karolyi, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes portrays the horrors endured by girls at the hands of their coaches and sometimes their own families. An acclaimed expose that has already helped reform Olympic sports—now updated to reflect the latest developments in women's gymnastics and figure skating—it continues to plead for sanity, safety, and an end to our national obsession: winning at any cost.”

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