Gloria Steinem's Reading List
The author, most recently, of the memoir “My Life on the Road” says poetry has replaced novels in her reading. “If you poured water on a great poem, you would get a novel.”
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: Gloria Steinem (2015)
NYT By the Book column (2015-10-29).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Vinay Lal · Buy on Amazon
"I was knocked out by his title because it tells you right away how political history is."
Dorothy Dinnerstein · Buy on Amazon
Jack Weatherford · Buy on Amazon
Paula Gunn Allen · Buy on Amazon
Alice Walker · 1982 · Buy on Amazon
"It has all the philosophical depth of any great novel, yet because it uses the language of country people, translators in, say, China and Japan had to honor the language of their own country people."
Ayi Kwei Armah · Buy on Amazon
"He breaks all the rules of having individual characters and conversations, uses a storytelling voice, and shows the worst of history — yet still conveys suspense and hope."
Marge Piercy · Buy on Amazon
Robin Morgan · Buy on Amazon
Gloria Anzaldua · Buy on Amazon
Tina Fey · Buy on Amazon
Valerie Hudson · Buy on Amazon
"It proves that the most reliable predictor of whether a nation is violent within itself — or will use military violence against another nation — is not poverty, natural resources, religion or even degree of democracy; it's violence against females."
Sven Lindqvist · Buy on Amazon
"a brilliant tracing of the invention of racism in order to justify colonialism"
William Gaddis · Buy on Amazon
Favorite books (2022)
Favorite books recommended by Gloria Steinem, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/gloria-steinem-favorite-books/.
Source: radicalreads.com
Louisa May Alcott (also rec’d by Elizabeth Warren , Glennon Doyle , Gloria Steinem , Hillary Clinton , John Lennon, Maya Angelou & Shonda Rhimes ) · Buy on Amazon
Paula Gunn Allen · Buy on Amazon
"By teaching us lessons from the hundreds of advanced cultures that prospered on this North American continent…Allen helps us to see that patriarchy is neither universal nor inevitable, but the first step in normalizing hierarchy."
Gloria Anzaldua & Cherríe Moraga · Buy on Amazon
Ayi Kwei Armah · Buy on Amazon
"In the communal voice of a storyteller, this great Ghanaian novelist describes Africa before Arab and European invasions and slave-taking. He not only redefines history, but how history is told."
Margaret Atwood (also rec’d by Emma Watson ) · Buy on Amazon
"We’ve learned that Atwood’s novel should be read…as a warning about patriarchy and its control of reproduction as the underpinning of everything undemocratic."
Boston Women’s Health Book Collective · Buy on Amazon
"Since patriarchy is about controlling female bodies in order to control reproduction, this was and will always be basic."
Octavia Butler · Buy on Amazon
"If there is one thing scarier than a dystopian novel about the future, it’s one written in the past that has already begun to come true."
Truman Capote (also rec’d by Philip Seymour Hoffman ) · Buy on Amazon
Pat Conroy · Buy on Amazon
"It stands as a classic account of families whose structure is shaped by the rigid patriarchy around them."
Dorothy Dinnerstein (also rec’d by bell hooks ) · Buy on Amazon
"Enough to convince you that men raising children—and boys being raised to raise children, as girls are, whether either will choose to have children or not—is nothing less than the long term and only reliable path to peace."
Tina Fey (also rec’d by Annie Clark ) · Buy on Amazon
William Gaddis · Buy on Amazon
Mahatma Gandhi (also rec’d by Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X & Marina Abramovic ) · Buy on Amazon
"In the late 1950s, Steinem spent two years in India studying Mahatma Gandhi’s guiding principles, which she would later bring to her work in American feminism."
Paula J Giddings · Buy on Amazon
J udith Herman · Buy on Amazon
"From shell shock in World War I to childhood sexual abuse today, the reality of trauma has been denied. But as this indispensable book makes clear, ‘Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.'"
Valerie Hudson · Buy on Amazon
"All the many forms of violence against females have now added up to fewer females on earth than males. Since violence against females is the normalizer of all other forms of violence, this book is vital, from family life to foreign policy."
Ann Jones · Buy on Amazon
"A mind-blowing, sanity-saving, revolutionary book."
Maxine Hong Kingston · Buy on Amazon
"If a Chinese girl living in the back of a laundry in San Francisco can imagine herself as a woman warrior riding down from the hills of China to rescue her people, I can imagine myself off this island."
Vinay Lal · Buy on Amazon
"I was drawn to the author because he wrote about Gandhi as abandoning “masculine” leadership. Then I was knocked out by his title because it tells you right away how political history is."
Sven Lindqvist · Buy on Amazon
"Proves the high price we have paid—and continue to pay—for being limited to a version of world history seen mostly through the eyes of colonizers from a small area called Europe."
Mary McCarthy · Buy on Amazon
"The Group lasts because it is read or re-read as an indicator of change—or the lack of it."
Carson McCullers · Buy on Amazon
Danielle McGuire · Buy on Amazon
"For a decade before Rosa Parks began the Montgomery bus boycott, she had been protesting the rapes at bus stops of black women by white men. This book helps make the female half of the civil rights movement visible."
Robin Morgan · Buy on Amazon
"Though I plan to stay off desert islands, and live to be 100, this soon-to-be published book of poetry contains my favorite lines: ‘….It’s sweetness/ that turns leaving sour, joy that makes dying hard.'"
Robin Morgan · Buy on Amazon
"A key to understanding and uprooting terrorism in all its forms."
Robin Morgan · Buy on Amazon
Marge Piercy · Buy on Amazon
"[ Woman on the Edge of Time ] makes us feel both powerful enough and angry enough to do something about steering toward the more humane future."
Jack Weatherford · Buy on Amazon