The best books for remembering you’re 100% that bitch

Imagine a world in which women are suddenly and unequivocally given the power to control their own fates and finally be seen as powerful in their own right. In this book, that’s exactly what happens when girls and women across the globe suddenly gain the ability to shoot electric currents out of their hands. 

I loved this book because it masterfully explores the question at the heart of the modern uptick in widespread misogyny: what would happen if women had the power to subjugate men the way men have done to them? Some of the women in her story want revenge, but others just want to be able to go to the grocery store at night without fearing for their lives. 

In The Power, Alderman brilliantly breaks up the monolith of women and explores the many facets of modern female disempowerment and the multitude of ways we each learn to grapple with our experience in the face of an increasingly dangerous world for girls and women.

We’ve all experienced that unnerving moment when someone (usually a man) tells us to calm down when every inch of our body screams, “This is not okay!” In this book, the author argues that female rage is and always has been one of the most powerful forces for necessary change, and it’s one that the patriarchy works hard to tamp down.

I loved the way this author worked to convey the message that women are rightfully enraged by the injustices they experience on a day-to-day basis and rather than covering up that rage or calling it sadness or generally working to ignore it, we should channel it into doing all we can to effect change in the world around us.

I loved this book because it reminded me that anger is an important messenger, alerting me when an injustice has been committed and urging me to take action.

Before America Fererra’s monologue in The Barbie Movie, Rage Becomes Her is a manifesto of the uniquely feminine experience of always being both too much and not enough, of being forced to choose between one’s own self-respect and something like respect from the people in charge, and of the rage that accompanies such a predicament.

When my husband left me, I was distraught and confused. I had done all I could to force myself into the box he built for me, to be the perfect wife and mother, and he still left. In the middle of my spiral of hurt and self-hate, a friend recommended this book to me, and I devoured it in a matter of days. 

In Untamed, Glennon—who also did all she could to be the perfect wife and mother before her ex-husband engaged in a string of affairs—argues for women to stop killing and abandoning themselves to win the love and appreciation of other people (especially men) and to instead claim their own power and live the life that they want to live.

This was the first book I ever read that argued, in no unclear language, that women have the right and responsibility—as all people do—to stand up and walk away from situations and people and jobs and relationships and family members that hurt them.

Through a series of stories and memories—often involving her kids and her wife and exploring her past addictions—Doyle brings readers under her wing and advises them, like a loving auntie, to do everything in their power to protect, honor, and celebrate their own inner children.

If you, like me, were forced to read Homer’s Odyssey in high school, you may recall the famous story about the witch Circe, who turned Homer’s sailors into pigs. And you may have felt as I did: slay, queen. If so, then Circe, Madeline Miller’s sophomore novel, is the book for you. 

In Circe, Miller expounds on the scant details we have on the life of Circe—who, like so many women in mythology and literature only existed as side character in the main male character’s storyline—producing a sweeping, moving narrative of female empowerment.

I loved this book because I could see so much of myself in this story—from Circe as the unwanted child to Circe the rebellious young woman to Circe the sensualized siren to Circe the broken-hearted muse. In all the phases of her life, Circe learns to find her own way in a world that does all it can to entrap her and blame her for the wrongs committed against her.

I couldn’t put this book down and found myself alternately cheering and weeping at the sheer beauty of Miller’s writing style. 

In the summer of 2019, my world began to crumble, and this book was the catalyst for the earthquake I desperately needed.

When I picked it up, I was on the tail end of a failing marriage, but I didn’t know it yet. All I knew was that I needed to figure out who I was outside of the trauma narrative I had told about my story, again and again. And I needed to stop feeling like a victim in my own story. 
If you need a swift kick in the rear-end, this book is the one for you. With insightful and encouraging, but direct, prose, Kipp invites you to take a careful look at who you are and what values you truly hold, dispute your best intentions. I thought I knew who I was and what I wanted, but I didn’t feel empowered to make those dreams a reality until I read this book.

Across forty days, Kipp invites you to take off your own blinders and see the ways in which you are inadvertently tripping yourself up and holding yourself back from your potential, and it’s not always a comfortable experience, but a necessary one. I would not have become who I am today—and I love who I am today—without reading this book.