More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Find books written by women, largely about women and other underrepresented communities.
Each year, I review my monthly Reads for the Rest of Us lists and choose my favorite books of the year. It is such a wonderful challenge to narrow them down. I read so many books I enjoy, but there are always those that rise to the top, the ones I won’t—or can’t—forget.
Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni Jr.—poet, writer, feminist and civil rights activist and educator—has died. Born June 7, 1943 , Giovanni was the author of more than 25 books and subject of the award-winning 2023 documentary Going to Mars.
A poem written in her honor:
“Nikki Giovanni,
Black poetic angel extraordinaire
who wrote to us
and for us;
gave us Black folk,
and the world,
a legacy of words
that exuded courage:
words of truthtelling
words of Black magic
words of inspiration
words of your life
words of your vision
words of love
for us,
your global Black community.”
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.
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.
In her new book, Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win, Jessica Valenti argues that abortion is not in fact as controversial as abortion ban lawmakers would like their constituents to believe. As noted on the back of Abortion, 81 percent don’t want government regulation of abortion or pregnancy at all.
A week before the election, Valenti, feminist reporter and founder of ‘Abortion, Every Day,’ sat down for a conversation about her new book with moderator True North Research’s Ansev Demirhan, also in conversation with Karen Thompson of Pregnancy Justice; and Anoushka Chander, youth activist and host of the Ms. magazine podcast, The Z Factor.
Ms. spoke with Bedera about her research for her newly released book, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence, and how Title IX has fared in the 52 years since its passage.
Her findings are appalling.
“The average college expels just one perpetrator of sexual assault every three years.
“One of the administrators … told me that he hesitated to consider something as rape unless it involved ‘a stranger jumping out of the bushes.’ Survivors’ experiences were consistently misunderstood and minimized.”
What do Ronald Reagan, Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, and the occult have in common? In this excerpt from her forthcoming book, Reproductive Rites: The Real-Life Witches and Witch Hunts in the Centuries-Long Fight for Abortion, author Sophia Saint Thomas explores the unconventional and contradictory beliefs of prominent anti-choice politicians from the Reagan administration.
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.