Recommended Reads

In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong. Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, and commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, she uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong’s Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers.

As a child, Tarana Burke reeled from her sexual assault, believing she was responsible. Unable to confess her experience for fear of shattering her family, her soul split in two between the curious, well-informed intellectual and the shame-ridden victim who blamed herself. Tarana fought to reunite her fractured self through organizing, pursuing justice, and supporting Black and brown girls. In sharing her path toward healing and saying "me too," Tarana reaches out a hand to help all on their journeys.

This powerful novel transports readers to the breathtaking world of Out of Africa—1920s Kenya—and reveals the extraordinary adventures of Beryl Markham, a woman before her time. Headstrong young Beryl becomes caught up in a passionate love triangle with the irresistible safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and the writer Baroness Karen Blixen. Brave and audacious and contradictory, Beryl must conquer her own heart to embrace her true destiny: to fly.

A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately Silvia Vasquez-Lavado was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest. But Silvia didn’t go alone. She gathered a group of young female survivors and led them to base camp alongside her. 

Elizabeth Blackwell's intelligence and intensity made her the first woman in American to receive an M.D. in 1849. She was soon joined in her iconic achievement by her younger sister, Emily, who was actually the more brilliant physician. Together the Blackwells founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, the first hospital staffed entirely by women. Both sisters were tenacious and visionary, but their convictions did not always align with the emergence of women’s rights—or with each other. 

From the chaos of campaign strategy sessions to the intensity of debate prep under relentless scrutiny and the private moments that rarely make headlines, Kamala Harris offers an unfiltered look at the pressures, triumphs, and heartbreaks of a history-defining race for President of the United States. With behind-the-scenes details and a voice that is both intimate and urgent, this is a chronicle of resilience, leadership, and the high stakes of democracy in action.

This novel reimagines the life of Martha Ballard, real-life midwife, healer, and diarist. When the Kennebec River freezes in1789, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Her record soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. Although Selma went on to become a celebrated Hollywood actress and model, she could never quite shake the periods of darkness that overtook her, and she secretly drank to escape. Over the course of this memoir, Selma lays bare her life filled with brutal violence, passionate love, true friendship, the gift of motherhood, and, finally, the surprising salvation of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis.
 

In this comprehensive, revelatory biography, historian Jane Sherron De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, and her meticulous jurisprudence. At the heart of her story is her Jewish background, specifically the concept of tikkun olam, the Hebrew injunction to “repair the world,” with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II.

Based on a true story, this novel relates the rise and downfall of Hannah Elias, one of the richest black women in America in the late 1800s. A murder and a case of mistaken identity brings the police to Hannah Elias' mansion on Central Park West. Born in Philadelphia, Hannah slips on a new identity before relocating to New York City to become as rich as a robber baron through her wise investments. The murder investigation brings to light Elias' African-American background. When this truth is revealed, Mrs. Elias finds herself alone, ensnared in a scandalous trial, and accused of stealing her fortune from whites.
 

Merle Oberon made history when she was announced as a nominee for the Best Actress Oscar in 1936. Her nomination for "The Dark Angel" marked the first time the Academy recognized a performer of color. Oberon, born to a South Asian mother and white father in India, broke through a racial barrier-but no one knew it since she was "passing" for white. Against the backdrop of Hollywood's racially exclusionary Golden Age and the United States's hostile immigration policy towards South Asians in the twentieth century, Oberon rose to the highest echelons of the film-world elite, all while keeping a secret that could have destroyed her career.

In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day in order to protest the climate crisis. No One Is Too Small to Make A Difference brings you Greta in her own words, for the first time. Her actions sparked a global movement, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Her book is a rallying cry for why we must all wake up and fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless we feel. 

Inspired by trailblazer Forugh Farrokhzad's verse, letters, films, and interviews--and including original translations of her poems--this haunting novel uses the lens of fiction to capture the tenacity, spirit, and conflicting desires of a brave woman who represents the birth of feminism in Iran--and who continues to inspire generations of women around the world.
 

As a child, Isabelle Allende watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” Isabel became determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have. As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote “with a knife between our teeth” about women’s issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime and knows where, and what, feminism needs to be next.

Now in paperback—the intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States, featuring a new introduction by Michelle Obama, a letter from the author to her younger self, and a book club guide with 20 discussion questions and a 5-question Q&A
 
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WATCH THE EMMY-NOMINATED NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS

Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. In her memoir, the former First Lady invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address.