Your Syllabus For: Second Wave Feminism

Continuing off of last week, this week's syllabus is for Second Wave Feminism. Second Wave feminism is generally thought to have begun in the 1960s and go on into the early 1990s. For the sake of this list, I'm cutting it off at 1990. Thirty years doesn't sound like a lot, when compared to the last one, I know, but during this time there was a huge boom in feminist lit so there's a lot to cover. I can tell you right now, not everything is on this list. There probably will be some that I miss.

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

Often seen as a book that helped jump start second wave feminism. This one is a good one read if you're trying to understand where baby boomer feminists are coming from, because chances are high that this influenced a lot of their thinking.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Sexual Politics by Kate Millet

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

And honestly pretty much all her other things, including her fabulous poem Phenomenal Women

The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer

Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century by Boston Women's Health Book Collective

The Black Woman: An Anthology by various authors

On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978 by Adrienne Rich

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

Woman Hating by Andrea Dworkin

The Women's Room by Marilyn French

Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach

Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller

The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution by Shulamith Firestone

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks

Honestly, read all of bell hooks' books.

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ

This book is sadly still very relevant today as I see people do these steps Russ talks about all the time. Especially when it comes to talking about YA or romance.

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by various authors

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Expert's Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

Some books about the Second Wave Feminist era that weren't necessarily published during this time:

My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem

The Essential Ellen Willis by Ellen Willis

The Essential Feminist Reader by various authors

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig