Find recommendations for books on women's lives, using fiction to highlight different cultures and times including ancient, modern, and even fantasy. These books are great for reading groups especially those interested in women's lives and women's history.
1. The Awakening
by Kate Chopin, Margo Culley (editor). Norton edition with biographical and context details.Published first in 1899, this short story features a young mother moving from conformity to exploring new possibilities. It was shocking and ground-breaking for its time. This particular edition includes essays on the importance of the story.
2. Braided Lives
by Marge Piercy.A new edition (September 2013) of Piercy's classic on the lives of two cousins reacting to the changes in society in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
3. The Summer Before the Dark
by Doris Lessing.Nobel Literature Prize winner Lessing on a woman's journey to independence and recognition of her aging.
4. The Color Purple
by Alice Walker.Walker's classic of a woman transcending her abuse is paired here with a later fantastical story of woman's journey.
5. A Reckoning
by May Sarton.Laura Spelman discovers that she must wrap up her life -- "reckon" -- by giving up what is not essential and find real connections.
6. The Gate to Women's Country
by Sheri Tepper.Tepper's fantasy dystopia -- about women ruling in their own country, apart from the men who continually are waging war against each other -- is not necessarily what it seems. Pondering the extremes of women's and men's roles, Tepper's novel is about less extreme realities in our own world.
7. The Trojan Women
in "Euripides II: Hecuba/Andromache/the Trojan Women/Ion." by Euripides, Richmond Lattimore (editor).A play originally produced during the Peloponnesian War in 415 B.C.E., the setting of the Trojan War is used to make commentary on what happens to women in war made by men. As a Greek tragedy focused on the fates of the Trojan women at the hands of Greek, the empathy created was powerful in its time, and continues to be popular (and powerful) in our own time.
8. Spring Moon: A Novel of China
by Bette Bao Lord.What was life like for a woman in China at the end of a more traditional time and the beginning of the modern world?
