Book Excerpt

Book excerpts from the works of prominent feminist authors.

Making the Invisible Visible: How Misogyny Is Driving Rising Political Violence

PUBLISHED 12/4/2025 by

We have seen a rise in political assassinations and assassination attempts, along with violent extremist attacks that have ticked upward for years. Mass casualty plots in the U.S. have increased by over 2,000 percent since the 1990s, leading to the deaths or grievous injury of thousands of people in shootings at schools, grocery stores, theaters, parades, concerts, houses of worship and more.

In the search for explanations, the public and policy discourse is most often swept up in heated debates about far-left or far-right ideologies.

But the data shows that the biggest and clearest predictor of mass shootings, across ideologies, sits somewhere else: in rising gendered grievances, patriarchal backlash, and the perpetrators’ histories of gender-based violence and misogyny.

Novel ‘Truth Is’ Shows What It Really Takes for a Teen to Get an Abortion in 2025

PUBLISHED 11/22/2025 by

Truth Is is a pro-choice novel in every sense of the phrase. Truth’s choice to move forward with an abortion is made early on in the novel and the majority of the book focuses on her life and her choices after her decision.

I hope that years from now, a student picks up this book and reads about the challenges that the book’s main character Truth faces and goes, “Is that really how it was back then?”

For adults who engage with Truth’s story, I want us to consider the limitations we sometimes unknowingly put on young people. I want us to consider the heights young people could reach if they were granted opportunities and community support, the way Truth ultimately does in the novel.

‘DILF (Did I Leave Feminism?)’ Is a New Transmasculine Manifesto

PUBLISHED 10/21/2025 by

An excerpt from Jude Ellison S. Doyle’s new book, DILF (Did I Leave Feminism?), out Oct. 21:

Transmasculine people are one of feminism’s biggest blind spots. No one knows quite what to do with us, so it’s easier to pretend we’re not there. Books on “male feminism” or “feminist men” mostly teach men how to be allies to women’s struggle—the idea that there might be men who actually experience pregnancy, or abortion, or being cat-called or sexually harassed or pay-gapped or any of the other things we traditionally call “women’s issues” is not accounted for. Books on trans feminism understandably stress the importance of feminism for trans women—which is important, what with them being women and all—but do tend to reinforce the assumption that feminism is just for girls.

Twenty-Five Years of Mifepristone: How Activists Brought the Abortion Pill to America and Changed Reproductive Health Forever

PUBLISHED 9/25/2025 by

At the urging of antiabortion advocates and politicians, and based on a flawed and biased report put out by an antiabortion group, the Trump administration announced the launch of a new review of mifepristone—despite 100 peer-reviewed scientific studies proving the safety and efficacy of these medications and safe use by over 7.5 million U.S. women.

On the 25th anniversary of FDA approval of mifepristone, reproductive rights supporters are celebrating the creative, determined and courageous advocates who brought this medication to market.

One organization that played a critical role in bringing mifepristone, known as RU-486, to the United States was the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF)—today the publisher of Ms.

The Purse Is More Than a Fashion Statement. It’s a Historical and Social Signifier.

PUBLISHED 8/4/2025 by

Americans have long used items of apparel such as hats and shoes to express aspirations, amplify differences and alleviate anxieties, but only the purse—with its cavernous, pocketed interior—has also provided marginalized people with much-needed space, privacy and power.

The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse—out Aug. 4—examines how a variety of bags and purses became meaningful for Americans often ignored in studies of fashion and whose possessions are largely left out of museum artifact collections. It asks how one seemingly ordinary object became so ubiquitous, unpacking how and why it became almost exclusively linked to women.

Forget East Coast Cool—Joan Didion Was a California Woman

PUBLISHED 7/29/2025 by

An excerpt of The World According to Joan Didion, by Evelyn McDonnell, out July 29:

In a little-known 1978 speech, Joan Didion wrestled with the meaning of womanhood, feminism and identity in her home state of California.

Didion wrote, “I realized that I have been writing about the California woman all my adult life, that what it means to be a California woman has been a great question to me—the California woman has been—if not exactly my subject—at least quite certainly my material.”

Being a woman in a long line of mothers of courage, in community with other women, and a link in a chain to future women was intrinsic to Joan Didion’s identity.

The ‘Subway Shirt’: How Young Women Are Dressing to Deflect Unwanted Attention

PUBLISHED 5/19/2025 by

An excerpt from Sexy Selfie Nation: Standing Up for Yourself in Today’s Toxic, Sexist Culture, in which Leora Tanenbaum offers an incisive exploration of why many young women wear body-revealing outfits and share sexy selfies and what these choices say about our toxic, sexist culture:

“As temperatures in New York City climbed, young women faced a dilemma: They wanted to wear summery tank tops and miniskirts but were concerned that as they traveled around the city, especially on the subway, they would be met with predatory stares, harassing, ‘Hey baby, won’t you give me a smile?’ comments, and even unwanted touches and gropes.

“And so, being resourceful New York women, they hatched a solution: the ‘subway shirt’—an oversized, shapeless shirt one slips over her ‘real’ outfit.”

Motherhood’s Dirty Secret? Sometimes It Feels Like Hate.

PUBLISHED 5/8/2025 by

Mothering is traditionally expressed in terms of extremes: The mother is imagined as either all giving, tender and devoted … or its opposite: mean, selfish and self-serving.

Social media generally mirrors this trend and divides mothering between something that is achievable in all its wonder and selflessness, or an experience that is continually dismal.

It is both.

No Room to Pump, No Room for Error: One Mother’s Fight to Feed Her Baby at Work

PUBLISHED 5/8/2025 by

Could a system that was more responsive to parents’ needs improve their relationships, their children’s lives, even their sense of self? I began to report on that question and my book, Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey Through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries, is the result. It follows four women—from the U.S., Japan, Kenya and Finland, who all had babies around New Year 2022—through their first year of motherhood, to draw an intimate portrait of their lives and compare the support they received.

Read an excerpt from the book about one new mother’s experience in Kenya, where laws promise breastfeeding protections but workplaces often ignore them.

Trump’s $20 Problem: What Harriet Tubman’s Absence Tells Us About Power and Prejudice

PUBLISHED 4/22/2025 by

An excerpt from Jill Elaine Hasday’s latest book, We the Men:

“From the start, women mobilizing for equality have endeavored to enrich and expand America’s dominant stories about itself. But attempts to focus public memory on women have repeatedly faced determined and protracted opposition, for generations and to the present day. 

“Consider the opposition to placing Harriet Tubman’s image on the $20 bill.”