I KNOW WE ALL learn in different ways, and books are no substitute for all-five-senses experience. But in case you are as helped as I am by what my friend Ginny Corsi, a New York activist in the financial world, calls “bibliotherapy,” I wanted to leave you with some heartfelt suggestions. These are all books that I’ve found mind-opening myself or that I’ve witnessed as rescuing for others. All offer the self-confirmation of seeing shared experience on the page, some provide literal help with self-therapy and rescue, others contain facts and authoritative opinions we may need to stand up for what we think and feel, some open windows on new worlds and possibilities—and many do all of that and more. Not all are inclusive in their pronouns and vision of a reader’s identity, but all offer ideas and information that are inclusive.
I haven’t divided them up by constituency, partly because there was no room to be truly representative, but more important, because these are books we all should read. Usually, the less powerful know more about the powerful than vice versa—women know more about men, people of color know more about white people, lesbians and gay men know more about the heterosexual world, and so on. It’s an imbalance that diminishes visibility for the first group and human possibilities for the second. According to a 1990 study conducted by the National Commission on Working Women, for instance, there are as many extraterrestrial aliens on television as there are Hispanic and Asian women and men. Several books here will show just how culturally deprived that makes everybody else. On other fronts, men may discover the self-rescuing and history-changing possibilities of raising children when they read The Mermaid and the Minotaur, and many readers may find they’re reinventing wheels that have existed in our backyards for centuries when they read books by and about Native Americans. I’ve also included childrearing books, in this case less for parents than to help us become nurturing parents and advocates for our own child within: to understand what we missed, and to restore it.
Finally, I haven’t confined myself to books currently in stores, so some of these may have to be ordered or found in libraries—perhaps your interest will bring them back into print, as they deserve—and I’ve only added a phrase of description when the title doesn’t fully explain why it was included. And remember, this listing of nonfiction is a diverse and tantalizing sampler. Each book will lead you to many more.
(See also Meditation Guide)
Alyson, Sasha, editor. Young, Gay and Proud. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1985. (A basic guide: coming out, health care, finding support groups.)
Bass, Ellen, and Laura Davis. The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. New York: Perennial Library/Harper & Row, 1988. (An analysis and a personal workbook.)
Brightman, Alan. Ordinary Moments. Syracuse, New York: Human Policy Press, 1985. (Eight personal stories of women and men living full lives with physical handicaps.)
Brownmiller, Susan. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. New York: Bantam Books, 1975.
Chernin, Kim. The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness. New York: Harper Colophon, 1982.
Crewdson, John. By Silence Betrayed: Sexual Abuse of Children in America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988. (A journalist’s overview of the abuse of male and female children, with chapters on legal recourse, therapy, and prevention.)
Davis, Laura. Allies in Healing: When the Person You Love Was Sexually Abused as a Child. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.
Dworkin, Andrea. Woman Hating. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974. (From footbinding to pornography, the lethal results of negating the “feminine.” Also see anything else by this author.)
Finlayson, Judith. Season of Renewal: A Journal for Women Moving Beyond the Loss of Love. New York: Crown, 1993. (A journal-keeping workbook for ending a love relationship.)
Forward, Susan. Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.
Gilligan, Carol, Nona P. Lyons, and Trudy J. Hanmer. Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990. (Female strengths “going underground” with adolescence—and what to do about it.)
Hemphill, Essex, editor. Brother to Brother. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991. (Self-affirming writings by gay African-American men.)
Hochschild, Arlie. The Second Shift. New York: Avon Books, 1989. (A study of two-career couples that lets women know it’s impossible to “do it all.”)
Jack, Dana Crowley. Silencing the Self: Women and Depression. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Jones, Ann, and Susan Schechter. When Love Goes Wrong: What to Do When You Can’t Do Anything Right. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. (Self-rescue during and after a controlling relationship.)
Kasl, Charlotte Davis. Women, Sex, and Addiction: A Search for Love and Power. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989.
Kunjufu, Jawanza. Developing Positive Images and Discipline in Black Children. Chicago: African American Images, 1984.
Liedloff, Jean. The Continuum Concept: Allowing Human Nature to Work Successfully. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1991. (Modern childrearing and alienation from nature as a source of violence and pandemic pathology, and how to return to ancient, natural ways.)
Madhubuti, Haki. Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? Chicago: Third World Press, 1990. (Healing the wounds of racism and strengthening the bonds between African-American women, men, and children.)
Martin, Del. Battered Wives. San Francisco: Volcano Press, 1981, revised edition. (The pioneering book on this issue.)
Masterson, James F. The Search for the Real Self: Unmasking Personality Disorders of Our Age. New York: Free Press/Macmillan, 1988. (Narcissism as the false and inflated self, from adolescence through adulthood, with therapeutic suggestions.)
Miller, Alice. For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childrearing and the Roots of Violence, with a new preface by the author. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990. (And any other books by this author.)
Missildine, W. Hugh. Your Inner Child of the Past. New York: Pocket Books, 1963. (Common excesses of childrearing, the patterns that result in adulthood, and simple self-therapies.)
Napier, Nancy. Getting Through the Day: Strategies for Adults Hurt as Children. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. (A practical guide that explains dissociation and other discoveries.)
NiCarthy, Genny. Getting Free. Seattle, Washington: Seal Press, 1986. (A practical and inspirational guide for victims of domestic violence.)
Olsen, Tillie. Silences. New York: A Laurel/Seymour Lawrence Book, 1978. (Moving, classic expression of creative working-class women without time or resources to create.)
Orbach, Susie. Fat Is a Feminist Issue: A Self-Help Guide for Compulsive Eaters. New York: Berkley Books, 1990. (A classic on the politics of women’s overeating.)
Pharr, Suzanne. Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism. Little Rock, Arkansas: Chardon Press, 1988. (Everyday and far-reaching effects of falsifying one’s true sexuality, and strategies for eliminating homophobia.)
Pogrebin, Letty Cottin. Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America. New York: Crown, 1991.
Sanford, Linda T., and Mary Ellen Donovan. Women & Self-Esteem: Understanding and Improving the Way We Think and Feel About Ourselves. New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984. (An overview of women’s self-esteem problems, with remedial exercises.)
Saxton, Marsha, and Florence Howe, editors. With Wings: An Anthology of Literature By and About Women with Disabilities. New York: The Feminist Press, 1987.
Schaef, Anne Wilson. Co-dependence: Misunderstood—Mistreated. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986. (Expands the definition; a co-dependent as a well-socialized woman.)
Snodgrass, Jon, editor. For Men Against Sexism: A Book of Readings. Albion, California: Times Change Press, 1977. (A pioneering anthology.)
Stallibrass, Alison. The Self-Respecting Child. New York: Warner Books, 1979. (Especially good about early need to explore physical abilities.)
Wisechild, Louise M., editor. She Who Was Lost Is Remembered: Healing from Incest Through Creativity. Seattle: The Seal Press, 1991.
Asian Women. Berkeley, California: Berkeley Asian American Studies, 1973. (A now-classic anthology by contemporary women.)
Chesler, Phyllis. Women and Madness. New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1989. (A basic critique of gender-bound definitions of sanity and madness, with an updated introduction by the author.)
Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991. (A 1940s history records the U.S. campaign against indigenous cultures.)
Dworkin, Andrea. Right-Wing Women. New York: Coward-McCann, 1983. (Why women may choose safety over self-respect.)
Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deirdre English. For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women. New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1978.
Faderman, Lillian. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: William Morrow, 1981. Also see her Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Crown, 1991. (Documents the current media bias. Imagine the problems for future historians.)
Feig, Konnilyn G. Hitler’s Death Camps: The Sanity of Madness. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981. (The facts of genocide—including Ravensbruck, a women-only camp where medical “experimenting” was most common.)
French, Marilyn. The War Against Women. New York: Summit Books, 1992. (By the author of The Women’s Room, a short book that summarizes what’s wrong for the female half of the world.)
Geok-lin Lim, Shirley, and Mayumi Tsutakawa, editors. The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women’s Anthology. Corvallis, Oregon: Calyx Books, 1988.
Grahn, Judy. Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.
Greven, Philip. Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse. New York: Knopf, 1991. (Distortions of American history and character by four centuries of punished children.)
Harding, Sandra. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1991. (Rethinking the premises of knowledge itself.)
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Jean Fagin Yellin, editor. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Katz, William Loren. Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage. New York: Atheneum, 1986.
Katz, William Loren. Breaking the Chains: African-American Slave Resistance. New York: Atheneum, 1990.
Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. (The changeover from “prehistory”—that is, prepatriarchy.)
Leghorn, Lisa, and Katherine Parker. Women’s Worth: Sexual Economics and the World of Women. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.
McAllister, Pam. This River of Courage: Generations of Women’s Resistance and Action. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1991. (Women’s nonviolent actions, from Egypt of 1300 B.C.E. to the present.)
Mernissi, Fatima. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1991.
Miller, Jean Baker. Toward a New Psychology of Women. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.
Minnich, Elizabeth Kamarck. Transforming Knowledge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990. (The biased assumptions underlying traditional scholarship.)
Moraga, Cherrie, and Gloria Anzaldua. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1983. (Poems, essays, personal fragments: politics from the heart.)
Morgan, Robin, editor. Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women’s Movement Anthology. New York: Anchor/Double-day, 1984. (Essays by and on the female half of sixty-seven countries, plus herstory, mythography, and statistics. Invaluable.)
Plaskow, Judith. Standing Again at Sinai. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. (Fills in the silences of women in Judaic tradition.)
Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: Bantam Books, 1986.
Riley, Glenda. Divorce: An American Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. (Divorce since the Puritans.)
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Under-developed Africa. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1982.
Rothschild, Joan, editor. Machina ex Dea: Feminist Perspectives on Technology. New York: Pergamon Press, Athene Series, 1983.
Rush, Florence. The Best-Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980.
Salmonson, Jessica Amanda. The Encyclopedia of Amazons. New York: Paragon House, 1991. (A cross-cultural reference on women warriors from antiquity to modern times.)
Schiebinger, Londa. The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Sjoo, Monica, and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987. (One of the few books on prepatriarchal religions that includes their African origins.)
Smith, Barbara, editor. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1983. (A now-classic anthology, with many diverse personal voices, and “The Combahee River Collective Statement” on the origins and beliefs of contemporary black feminism.)
Spender, Dale. Men’s Studies Modified: The Impact of Feminism on the Academic Disciplines. New York: Pergamon Press, Athene Series, 1987. (An introduction to changed premises in many fields.)
Swirski, Barbara, and Marilyn P. Safir. Calling the Equality Bluff: Women in Israel. New York: Macmillan, 1991. (Wide-ranging essays on life in Israel focused on secular Jewish women, including religious, Arab, and Oriental women.)
Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989. (The full sweep of Asian immigration—with a human face.)
Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. (A history of the Latin invasion of America.)
Washington, Mary Helen. Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women 1860–1960. New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1987.
Weatherford, Jack. Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988. (From the origins of the U.S. Constitution in the Iroquois League to old wisdom for new ecology.)
Williams, Patricia J. The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991. (How racial and sexual bias has been encoded in U.S. laws and values.)
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Perennial Library/Harper & Row, 1980.
Zuckermen, Harriet, Jonathan R. Cole, and John T. Bruer, editors. The Outer Circle: Women in the Scientific Community. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.
Allen, Paula Gunn. Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman’s Sourcebook. Boston: Beacon Press, 1991. (Stories of many civilizations.)
Allen, Robert L., and Herb Boyd, editors. Brotherman: An Anthology of Writings by and about Black Men. New York: Ballantine, 1993.
Anderson, Sherry Ruth, and Patricia Hopkins. The Feminine Face of God: The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women. New York: Bantam Books, 1991. (Spirituality from the true self unmediated by religion, as experienced by diverse contemporary women.)
Anzaldua, Gloria, editor. Borderland/La Frontera: The New Meztiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press, 1991. (Essays, fiction, and poetry by a range of Latina women, anthologized by one of the creators of This Bridge Called My Back—and a worthy successor.)
Asian Women United of California. Making Waves. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. (An anthology of new voices and future directions.)
A Basic Call to Consciousness. Rooseveltown, New York: Akwesasne Notes/Mohawk Nation, 1978. (A pamphlet of position papers addressed to the Western world and presented by the Iroquois Confederacy to United Nations in 1977: part of an international movement among indigenous cultures.)
Bracey, Hyler, Jack Rosenblum, Aubrey Sanford, Roy Trueblood. Managing from the Heart. New York: Delacorte Press, 1990. (A step-by-step parable of how an insecure, dictatorial manager became a nurturing and productive one: for anyone who is, or has, a boss.)
Brown, Melanie. Attaining Personal Greatness: One Book for Life. New York: William Morrow, 1987. (Inspiring personal stories, new connections on a we-can-do-anything theme.)
Buzan, Tony. Use Both Sides of Your Brain. New York: Dutton, 1983. (A workbook.)
Calyx Editorial Collective. Women and Aging: An Anthology by Women. Corvallis, Oregon: Calyx Books, 1986. (Diverse voices, with vision and humor.)
Capra, Fritjof. The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. New York: Bantam Books, revised edition, 1984.
Cousins, Norman. Head First: The Biology of Hope. New York: Dutton, 1989.
Dinnerstein, Dorothy. The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. (How men raising children as much as women do could change inequality, the inevitability of war, and human nature.)
Edwards, Audrey, and Dr. Craig K. Polite. Children of the Dreams: The Psychology of Black Success. New York: Doubleday, 1992. (Interviews with forty-one successful African-American women and men on their empowerment through positive racial identity.)
Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. (Using a prepatriarchal past to create a partnership future.)
Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. Women Who Run with the Wolves. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992. (Multicultural myths and stories to evoke a true self “civilized” into an endangered species.)
Feuerstein, Georg. Sacred Sexuality: Living the Vision of the Erotic Spirit. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1992.
Finlayson, Judith. A Book of One’s Own: A Journal for Women in Search of Themselves. New York: Crown, 1993. (A journal-keeping workbook to help in finding one’s authentic voice.)
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983. (Women’s culturally different standards of ethics.)
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Boston: Shambhala, 1986.
Hagan, Kay Leigh. Internal Affairs: A Journal-keeping Workbook for Self-Intimacy. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990. For Fugitive Information, her quarterly essays on such subjects as a feminist critique of co-dependency (and for a good example of self-publishing), write to Escapadia Press, P.O. Box 5298, Atlanta, Georgia 30307.
Haraway, Donna. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Toward a Recognition of Androgyny. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973. (Possibilities of wholeness.)
Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books, 1992. (A new understanding of links between the trauma men suffer in public wars and the trauma suffered by women in private ones gives new hope for recovery to both.)
Imber-Black, Evan, and Janine Roberts. Rituals for Our Times: Celebrating, Healing, and Changing Our Lives and Our Relationships. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. (Restoring meaning in old traditions, and creating new ones that fit our lives and families.)
Kivel, Paul. Men’s Work: How to Stop the Violence That Tears Our Lives Apart. Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden Educational Materials, 1992. (Personal, commonsense guide, with group discussion subjects, by cofounder of Oakland Men’s Project.)
Klepfisz, Irena. Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches, and Diatribes. Portland, Oregon: Eighth Mountain Press, 1990. (A rabbinical love of ideas in a lesbian feminist head.)
Kohn, Alfie. No Contest: The Case Against Competition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
Lippard, Lucy R. Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990. (Out of museums and into everyday life: art as a way of expressing complex identities.)
London, Peter. No More Secondhand Art: Awakening the Artist Within. Boston: Shambhala, 1989.
McGaa, Ed, Eagle Man. Mother Earth Spirituality: Native American Paths to Healing Ourselves and Our World. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990. (A primer of spiritual and communal concepts and practices.)
MacKinnon, Catharine A. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Miedzian, Myriam. Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence. New York: Doubleday, 1991. (Societal origins of a mystique that punishes both men and women—and how to change.)
Morgan, Robin. Anatomy of Freedom: Feminism, Physics, and Global Politics. New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1984.
Ostrander, Sheila, and Lynn Schroeder. Super-Learning. New York: Delacorte/Confucian Press, 1979.
Pifer, Alan, and Lydia Bronte, editors. Our Aging Society: Paradox and Promise. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986.
Rico, Gabrielle Lusser. Writing the Natural Way: Using Right Brain Techniques to Release Your Expressive Powers. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
Schechter, Susan. Women and Male Violence. Boston: South End Press, 1982. (History and resources of the antiviolence movement, but also analysis and agenda for the future.)
Shepard, Paul. Nature and Madness. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1982. (Failed self-development as a cause of destructiveness toward nature.)
Shuman, Sandra G. Source Imagery: Releasing the Power of Your Creativity. New York: Doubleday, 1989. (Art-making to find our unique image—with a brief section on writing.)
Slater, Philip. A Dream Deferred: America’s Discontent and the Search for a Democratic Ideal. Boston: Beacon Press, 1991. (Taking on the authoritarianism mindset.)
Stoltenberg, John. Refusing to Be a Man. New York: Penguin USA/Meredian, 1990. (A visionary view that leaves masculinity behind.)
Tompkins, Peter, and Christopher Bird. The Secret Life of Plants. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. (An amazing compendium of studies on the intelligence of plant life.)
Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1983. (You’ll be a better person when you finish these womanist essays—or anything else by this author.)
Walker, Barbara G. The Crone: Women of Age, Wisdom, and Power. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985.
Waring, Marilyn. If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. (An international, practical, visionary plan for attributing value to women’s unpaid labor and to the environment.)