The fight for women’s rights is ongoing. From participating in movements such as abolition, temperance, and other social reforms, women have consistently stood up for what was right.
In the more than 100 years since the 19th Amendment was ratified, women have continued advocating for their civil rights and condemning society’s unfair treatment of them in many ways. We’ve compiled seven nonfiction and fiction titles that describe the past and present experiences of women as they examine, critique, or discuss the circumstances impacting their lives and how they can overcome them.
Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert
Sophie Gilbert is a London-based entertainment staff writer at The Atlantic, but her full-length work is also something to behold. Published on April 29, Girl on Girl is what critics at Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, respectively, called “a tour de force of cultural criticism” and “essential.”
This highly anticipated nonfiction title tracks trends that emerged during the late 1990s and early 2000s, a time when materialism and power clashed with customs of misogyny and prejudice against women. Gilbert condemns the discriminatory environment in pop culture that has influenced society into the early twenty-first century and even the world we live in today.
Girls Play Dead: Acts of Self-Preservation by Jen Percy
Jen Percy is another writer whose experience spans genres and publications. As a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, she’s written book reviews, cover stories, and features. Her book, Girls Play Dead, which was published at the beginning of the year, is narrative nonfiction that explores womanhood from the view of survival.
Drawing on her own experience with sexual assault, Percy unwraps the experiences that have shaped her girlhood and why people “freeze” in harrowing situations. Her writing examines strategies women have used to survive suffering and abuse, attempting to understand how people get trapped in unimaginable circumstances. This work explores the strength it takes for women to escape, critiquing the prevalent myth of “fight or flight.”
Orange Wine by Esperanza Hope Snyder
Born and raised in Colombia, this author of four books of poetry, two plays, and a children’s book lives and breathes literature. She has founded an independent publishing company called Somondoco Press and created and directed the Sotto Voce Poetry Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. For her next venture, her forthcoming novel, Orange Wine, will be published by Bindery Books in September 2025.
Set in early twentieth-century Colombia, this novel explores the process of turning oranges into wine. The main character, Inés de la Rota, is forced to reinvent her life following an astonishing betrayal. During a time when the Catholic Church wields total power over women, Inés navigates the varying aspects of her identity, and her disparate choices each have consequences.
Sweet Fury by Sash Bischoff
Prince University alumna Sash Bischoff has been known mostly for her work as a director on and off Broadway. After growing up as an actor, she worked on numerous shows over the years. Then, Bischoff hit the literary scene this year with her debut novel, Sweet Fury, which sees a famous couple preparing to film a feminist adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night.
When movie star Lila Crayne goes to therapy to harness her past trauma for the role, it soon causes her to emotionally unravel, and her therapist, Jonah, is there to put the pieces back together. Things aren’t quite as they seem, though, and the novel becomes what author Lisa Genova calls a “tale of feminist revenge.” Bischoff’s work, which readers have dubbed “deeply eloquent prose,” evaluates the misogyny entrenched in American society.
Loveable: A Memoir: One Woman’s Path from Good to Free by Amber Rae
Author of the bestselling self-help book Choose Wonder Over Worry, Amber Rae’s writing has reached millions and been featured in The New York Times, SELF, and Forbes. Up for release in August, Loveable chronicles the process of uncovering one’s true identity as a woman.
Rae discusses her raw and intimate experiences of falling in love with another man while married. She writes of confronting the idea of being a “good” wife based on society’s expectations, which is in contrast to what she truly wants. Author Jillian Turecki labeled this latest work “the permission slip we all need.”
All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us about Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today by Elizabeth Comen, M.D.
Gender-based discrimination has pervaded numerous aspects of women’s lives. This topic has been discussed widely in multiple realms, including the medical field. Dr. Elizabeth Comen, an oncologist, tackles the subject in her 2024 nonfiction work, All in Her Head.
This Goodreads Choice Award nominee undresses the medical history of women and the perspectives that have shaped their treatment, especially oversights. Comen empowers women to understand their bodies and campaign for care that is fair, diligent, and culturally-competent, doing away with historical discriminations.
One Step Forward by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
After a childhood filled with a love for writing, followed by several degrees in children’s literature, Marcie Flinchum Atkins declared herself a writer. In the years since, she’s written everything from poetry to nonfiction to fiction.
In this novel in verse, Atkins crafts a well-researched historical fiction novel about the youngest American suffragist. Matilda Young joined the radical protest movement, inspired by her older sister’s involvement in the fight for suffrage. One Step Forward details Matilda’s process of stepping into action. Set during World War I, it reveals the, at times underrepresented, intensity of the movement, highlighting the courage, trials, and tribulations women faced at this time.
For women, to be free of oppression is to be liberated from both visible and invisible restrictions that limit their identities as people, sisters, friends, daughters, mothers, and more. These books underscore the physical and mental burdens women have endured in society, the events and circumstances that caused them, and how they can continue the fight for their rights socially, legally, and personally.
For more on books representing women’s history, click here.
Find these books on our Author’s Corner Spotlight: Female Authors booklist on Bookshop!
