More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Spotlighting books that tell important feminist stories.
Each month, we provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.
I don’t know where this year went, but it was a tough one on many fronts. For better or for worse, here we are. Enjoy these 12 titles—then keep your eyes peeled for my Best of the Rest for 2024.
“Pills have become the frontline of the battle for abortion access,” writes professor and Ms. contributor editor Carrie N. Baker in her new book Abortion Pills: U.S. History and Politics—the first to offer a comprehensive history of abortion pills in the United States.
I hope, I hope. Until then, I read.
Reading makes me a better, kinder, more empathetic person. It helps me not to feel so alone and so discouraged. It counteracts the desperation and uncertainty I feel more often lately.
So, friends, here’s to reading. And here’s to hope. And here are the 20 soothing, motivating, educating, loving and ass-kicking books releasing this month that I recommend.
Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone recently released their co-authored book, Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve. In it, they offer a new perspective on the history of abortion and imagine a future where reproductive justice is realized.
Bracey Sherman and Mahone ask us to build a better future that begins with building community around abortion and reproductive freedom now.
Ms. sat down with Renee Bracey Sherman to discuss her new book, Liberating Abortion, the history of abortion and where we go from here.
An excerpt from Allison Raskin’s new book, I Do (I Think): Conversations About Marriage.
“This elevation of marriage is a problem for multiple reasons, because as we know well by this point in the chapter, not everyone has the same level of access to it—legally or financially. The fight for true marriage equality didn’t end with the federal legalization of same-sex marriage, and it is impossible to ignore the classist, ableist and patriarchal forces at play when it comes to who can get married easily and what those marriages end up looking like. “
In her recently released book, Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies and The Truths We Use to Win, Jessica Valenti details the future. But, her gift is not prophecy, but clarity of facts. She is clear that the question of abortion access is a question of personal autonomy. She is clear that conservatives are carefully crafting a world where women who have the audacity to want sex on their own terms must be punished by a pregnancy. She is clear that conservatives want to take personhood from a person with a uterus and assign it to the embryo or fetus within it.
As Valenti writes, it is those who would “force children to give birth … make devastated women carry dead and dying fetuses, and make women raped by men prove their attacks really happened before receiving health care” that are the problem.
Each month, we provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.
This month, our Ms. book editor recommends Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win by Jessica Valenti, Doll Seed by Michele Tracy Berger, Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery by Ana Lucia Araujo, and more.
Nico Lang’s American Teenager spans states and perspectives, interviewing transgender teenagers from all walks of life—a girl in Florida who’s trying to figure out who she is while helping support her family financially; a boy in Chicago who’s excitedly planning for his first year of college in a city far away; kids who’ve been advocates since the were in diapers; and kids who just want to live their lives, away from the limelight.
Ms. spoke with Lang about the current state of the anti-trans movement, why children are an oppressed class, and what it means to foreground trans joy in a moment when institutionalized anti-trans hate is at an all-time high.
Each month, we provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.
When Louisiana middle school librarian Amanda Jones spoke before the Livingston Parish Public Library board in July 2022, she knew some of her neighbors and friends would disagree with her anti-censorship and anti-book-ban testimony.
Nonetheless, Jones reported that she was blindsided by the well-organized campaign that followed her presentation and was shocked by the barrage of hateful comments that she’s received for more than two years. Among other things, Jones has been called a pedophile, pervert, pornographer and groomer, an experience she details in her newly-released memoir, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America .