Bidisha's Book Recommendations (Updated for 2021)

Want to know what books Bidisha recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Bidisha's favorite book recommendations of all time.

What We Talk About When We Talk about Rape

Sohaila Abdulali | 4.51

In the tradition of Rebecca Solnit, a beautifully written, deeply intelligent, searingly honest—and ultimately hopeful—examination of sexual assault and the global discourse on rape told through the perspective of a survivor, writer, counselor, and activist.

Sohaila Abdulali was gang-raped as a seventeen-year-old in Mumbai. Indignant at the silence on the issue in India, she wrote an article for an Indian women’s magazine questioning how we perceive rape and rape victims. Thirty years later her story went viral in the wake of the 2012 fatal gang rape in Delhi and the global outcry... more

Recommended by Bidisha, and 1 others.

BidishaThis is a powerful and necessary book for the #MeToo era. (Source)

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Living a Feminist Life

Sara Ahmed | 4.47

In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique—often by naming and calling attention to problems—and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions—such as forming support systems—to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.

‘From the moment I received Sara Ahmed's new work, Living a Feminist Life, I couldn't put it down. It's such a brilliant, witty, visionary new way to think about feminist theory. Everyone should read this book. It offers amazing new ways of knowing and talking about feminist theory and practice. And, it is also delightful, funny, and as the song says, ‘your love has lifted me higher.’ Ahmed lifts us higher.’ — bell hooks

‘I read Living a Feminist Life with a deep sense of recognition. This is a book that feminists will find illuminating—acutely painful at times, but mostly profoundly insightful. Written in Sara Ahmed's trademark evocative style whereby concepts, experiences, words, ideas, structures, and bodies are examined thoroughly from all possible angles, the book documents what it means to understand and lay claim to living everyday life as a feminist. Analytic gems like ‘sweaty concepts’ and ‘feminist killjoy’ are peppered throughout, causing the reader to pause and reflect—stopping us in our tracks, making the act of reading a ‘sensational’ one, thus enacting theory in the flesh. A beautifully written, smartly provocative book that belongs on our shelves, in our classrooms, and in our daughters' hands.’ — Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity

Sara Ahmed is a feminist wrter, scholar, and activist. She is the author of Willful Subjects, On Being Included, The Promise of Happiness, and Queer Phenomenology, all also published by Duke University Press. less

Recommended by Bidisha, and 1 others.

BidishaIt goes well beyond polemic and has a literary slant which makes it extremely compelling in its contemplation of what it means, not just to believe in equality, but to live an ethical and principled feminist existence. (Source)

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Pimp State

Sex, Money and the Future of Equality

Kat Banyard | 4.09

Never before have prostitution, strip clubs and pornography been as profitable, widely used or embedded in mainstream culture as they are today. How society should respond to the rise of the sex trade is shaping up to be one of the Twenty-First Century's big questions. Should it be legal to pay for sex? Isn't it a woman's choice whether she strips for money? Could online porn warping the attitudes of a generation of boys?

An increasingly popular set of answers maintains that prostitution is just work, porn is fantasy, demand is inevitable; so fully legalise the sex trade and it can...

Recommended by Bidisha, and 1 others.

BidishaThis clear, well-researched study shows how the sexual exploitation industry has become normalised across the UK. (Source)

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Pornland

How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality

Gail Dines | 4.15

Professor Gail Dines has written about and researched the porn industry for over two decades. She attends industry conferences, interviews producers and performers, and speaks to hundreds of men and women each year about their experience with porn. Students and educators describe her work as "life changing."

In Pornland—the culmination of her life's work—Dines takes an unflinching look at porn and its affect on our lives. Astonishingly, the average age of first viewing porn is now 11.5 years for boys, and with the advent of the Internet, it's no surprise that young people... more

Recommended by Bidisha, and 1 others.

BidishaHer study of the effects of porn culture is devastating, powerful and extremely relatable. It’s an essential read —and we need it like never before. (Source)

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Rage Becomes Her

The Power of Women's Anger

Soraya Chemaly | 4.53

A transformative book urging twenty-first century-women to embrace their anger and harness it as a tool for lasting personal and societal change.

Women are angry, and it isn’t hard to figure out why.

We are underpaid and overworked. Too sensitive, or not sensitive enough. Too dowdy or too made-up. Too big or too thin. Sluts or prudes. We are harassed, told we are asking for it, and asked if it would kill us to smile. Yes, yes it would.

Contrary to the rhetoric of popular “self-help” and an entire lifetime of being told otherwise, our rage is one of the... more

Recommended by Abir Ghattas, April Wensel, Feminist Next Door, and 4 others.

Abir GhattasThat moment when @schemaly likes your posts! @Jafrasha & I started #HammamTalks a women talk-show inspired by Soraya Chemaly's work and her great book "Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger". https://t.co/D5PFRdfvMR (Source)

April WenselCompassion can be fierce! Women’s anger can be a powerful force for good. “Anger is the emotion that best protects us against danger, unfairness, and injustice…” For more on this, check out @GreaterGoodSC’s article about the book Rage Becomes Her. https://t.co/SIwBbm7mmF (Source)

Feminist Next Door@sheologian @LucieGarciaP Fantastic book @schemaly (Source)

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Bidisha's Top Book Recommendations

What We Talk About When We Talk about Rape

Living a Feminist Life

Pimp State

Pornland

Rage Becomes Her

Don't have time to read Bidisha's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.