In December 1977, the United Nations proclaimed March 8 as the annual celebration of “International Women’s Day” (IWD). Ten years later, the United States Congress designated the entire month of March as “Women’s History Month.” These observances are meant to recognize the contributions that women have made to society. At the same time, these have been used to bring attention to the fight for women's rights and highlight women's concerns, which is in keeping with IWD's roots in suffragette and labor movements around the world. Almost five decades later, women are still far from achieving equality; they continue to combat gender disparities, face violence and other abuses, and shoulder responsibilities both in the domestic and public spheres.
To highlight women’s achievements as well as to increase awareness of women’s issues globally, the brief for the International & Area Studies (IAS) Department’s winter reading list was works by women authors, preferably writing about women but not popular fiction. The following 39 titles range from biographies and memoirs to anthologies and literary works to scholarly monographs, and their authors–activists, journalists, playwrights, poets, academics, and more–bring varied expertise and perspectives. We hope that these titles capture and bring greater understanding of the sheer diversity and complexity of women's experiences around the world.
The list is organized alphabetically by country, territory, or region. Click on the linked titles to access the books through the UCLA Library.
Africa
African Women: Early History to the 21st Century (2017) by Kathleen E. Sheldon
“African women's history is a topic as vast as the continent itself, embracing an array of societies in over fifty countries with different geographies, social customs, religions, and historical situations. In African Women: Early History to the 21st Century, Kathleen Sheldon masterfully delivers a comprehensive study of this expansive story from before the time of records to the present day.” (Publisher’s description)
Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa (2020) by Nwando Achebe
“An unapologetically African-centered monograph that reveals physical and spiritual forms and systems of female power and leadership in African cultures. Nwando Achebe’s unparalleled study documents elite females, female principles [sic], and female spiritual entities across the African continent, from the ancient past to the present. Achebe breaks from Western perspectives, research methods . . . to demonstrate the critical importance of distinctly African source materials and world views to any comprehensible African history.” (Publisher’s description)
Argentina
Mafalda: A Social and Political History of Latin America's Global Comic (2019) by Isabella Cosse; translated from the Spanish by Laura Pérez Carrara
"Readers all over the world have loved the comic Mafalda, primarily because of the sharp wit and rebellious nature of its title character—a four-year-old girl who is wise beyond her years. Analyzing Mafalda’s vast appeal and how the comic reflects generational conflicts, gender, modernization, the Cold War, authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and much more, Cosse demonstrates the unexpected power of humor to shape revolution and resistance." (Publisher’s description)
Armenia
Musa Dagh Girl: Daughter of Armenian Genocide Survivors (2011) by Virginia Matosian Apelian
In this memoir, Apelian, daughter of Armenian genocide survivors, traces key points in Armenian history and reflects on how her life was affected by the Armenian genocide.
Baltic States
Peeling Potatoes, Painting Pictures: Women Artists in Post-Soviet Russia, Estonia, and Latvia: The First Decade (2001) by Renee Baigell and Matthew Baigell
“How do women artists in Russia, Estonia, and Latvia view themselves in the post-Soviet era? . . . Having conducted over sixty interviews between 1995 and 1998, Renee Baigell and Matthew Baigell explore in this volume these women’s seemingly second-class status, the difficulties of pursuing an art career in a male-dominated society, and the attitudes—often hostile—of their male counterparts toward feminist concerns.” (Publisher's description)
Bangladesh
Reshaping the Holy: Democracy, Development, and Muslim Women in Bangladesh (2008) by Elora Shehabuddin
“Through extensive field research, Elora Shehabuddin explores the profound implications of women's political and social mobilization for reshaping Islam. Specifically, she examines the lives of Muslim women in Bangladesh who have become increasingly mobilized by the activities of predominantly secular NGOs, yet who desire to retain, reclaim, and reshape-rather than reject-their faith.” (Publisher’s description)
Belarus
The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II (2017) by Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
"This book is a confession, a document and a record of people's memory. More than 200 women speak in it, describing how young girls, who dreamed of becoming brides, became soldiers in 1941. More than 500,000 Soviet women participated on a par with men in the Second World War, the most terrible war of the 20th century.” (Google Books)
Cambodia
I Tried Not to Cry: The Journeys of Ten Cambodian Refugee Women (2015) by Niborom Young
To commemorate the 1993 centennial celebration of women’s suffrage in New Zealand, Niborom Young collected oral histories from ten Cambodian women refugees of varying ages and backgrounds. She later transcribed and translated the recordings into English and put their stories in this book.
Central Asia
Changing Status of Women in Central Asia: Comparative Study of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (2017) by Mukta Tanwar
“The present book critically observes the status of women in Central Asia after [the] 1990's. The effects of Soviet legacy in the present context are also analyzed at extent. In [the] contemporary transition period, they are facing many problems including revival of religion, new democratic political order, capitalist economic system and traditional social system. These new changes have both negative and positive effects over the lives of women .” (Amazon)
Czech Republic
Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 (2012) by Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward
"Drawing on her own memory, her parents’ written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly-available documents, former US Secretary of State and New York Times bestselling author Madeleine Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring. Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind, a journey with universal lessons that is simultaneously a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history." (Publisher's description)
Eastern Africa
Women Writing Africa: the Eastern Region (2007) edited by Amandina Lihamba, Fulata L. Moyo, M.M. Mulokozi, Naomi L. Shitemi, and Saïda Yahya-Othman
“In the 1960s, the five countries represented—Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia—achieved independence. Women were integral parts to these resistance struggles and later during the process of national development. This pioneering work of cultural reclamation, more than a decade in preparation, collects more than one hundred texts dating back to 1711, each introduced with short notes, highlighting women's historic but often forgotten contributions.” (Publisher’s description)
Egypt
Politics of Piety: the Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (2005) by Saba Mahmood
“Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. . . . Not only is this book a sensitive ethnography of a critical but largely ignored dimension of the Islamic revival, it is also an unflinching critique of the secular-liberal principles by which some people hold such movements to account.” (Publisher’s description)
France
King Kong théorie (2006) by Virginie Despentes
In this brutal feminist manifesto, Despentes challenges prevailing notions about sex and gender. She draws from her personal experience to discuss topics such as rape, sex work, and pornography.
Guam
Placental Politics: CHamoru Women, White Womanhood, and Indigeneity under U.S. Colonialism in Guam (2020) by Christine Taitano DeLisle
U.S. imperialism brought many white American women, mostly navy wives, to Guam from 1898 to World War II, and Indigenous CHamoru women interacted with them in health care, childcare, and education settings. Without abandoning their Indigenous beliefs and practices, the CHamoru used these relationships to acquire new types of social and political capital, a strategy DeLisle calls placental politics.
India
Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India (2010) by Kalyani Devaki Menon
"Based on fieldwork with women in several Hindu nationalist organizations, Menon explores how these activists use gendered constructions of religion, history, national insecurity, and social responsibility to recruit individuals from a variety of backgrounds. She argues that Hindu nationalism's willingness to accommodate dissonance is central to understanding the popularity of the movement." (Publisher’s description)
Israel
If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir (2017) by Ilana Kurshan
"At the age of 27, alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce, Ilana Kurshan joined the world s largest book club, learning daf yomi, Hebrew for 'daily page' of the Talmud, a book of rabbinic teachings spanning about 600 years and the basis for all codes of Jewish law. . . . This memoir is a tale of heartache and humor, of love and loss, of marriage and motherhood, and of learning to put one foot in front of the other by turning page after page." (Publisher's description)
The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East (2014) by Caroline B. Glick
"A manifesto that exposes the flaws in the two-state policy of the United States toward Israel and the Palestinians and offers a direct and powerful call for Israeli sovereignty in the region. . . . The Israeli Solution offers an alternative path to stability in the Middle East based on Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria."
Women's Minyan (2006) by Naomi Ragen
"Women's Minyan is a play about a Haredi woman fleeing from her adulterous and abusive husband. She finds that he has manipulated the rabbinical courts to deprive her of the right to see or speak to her twelve children. The story is based on a true incident." (Wikipedia)
Kiribati and Fiji
Sweat and Salt Water: Selected Works (2021) by Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa; compiled and edited by Katerina Teaiwa, April K. Henderson, and Terence Wesley-Smith
“This volume features a selection of Teaiwa’s scholarly and creative contributions . . . [and] honors her legacy in various scholarly fields, including Pacific studies, Indigenous studies, literary studies, security studies, and gender studies, and on topics ranging from militarism and tourism to politics and pedagogy. It also includes examples of Teaiwa’s poems.” (Publisher’s description)
Laos
The Feminization of Modernity: A Case Study of Women Migrant Workers in a Lao Garment Factory (2019) by Latdavone Khamphouvong
In its bid for modernization and development, Laos switched from an agricultural and subsistence-based economy to one based on commodity production, which led to the migration of young women, particularly ethnic minorities, to the city to work as factory workers. This book looks at the economic transition and migration patterns, as well as the urban lifestyles of these women.
Mexico
La noche de Tlatelolco: testimonios de historia oral (1971) by Elena Poniatowska; Massacre in Mexico (1991) translated from the Spanish by Helen R. Lane
“During the 1968 Olympic games in Mexico City, 10,000 students gathered in a residential area called Tlatelolco to peacefully protest their nation's one-party government and lack of political freedom. In response, the police and the military cold-bloodedly shot and bayoneted to death an estimated 325 unarmed Mexican youths. Poniatowska's massive chronicle provides a gripping and heartbreaking account of the massacre.” (Publisher’s description)
Netherlands
The Tree and the Vine (2020) by Dola de Jong; translated from the Dutch by Kristen Gehrman
“This courageous early work of lesbian fiction (1951) tells the gripping story of two women torn between desires and taboos in the years leading up to the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam.” (Publisher’s description)
Norway
Om muser og menn (2019) by Marta Breen
“How eccentric can a woman be before she is written off as crazy? Not so much, concludes Marta Breen . . . Based on her own life as a writer and debater, Marta Breen discusses the story of women in public, and writes about the eternal struggle to acquire her own space.” (Publisher’s description)
Pakistan
We Are All Revolutionaries Here: Militarism, Political Islam and Gender in Pakistan (2017) by Aneela Zeb Babar
"The individuals in these pages span over two decades (1988-2008) of Pakistan’s tryst with a difficult history, trying to decipher the convoluted equation of militarism, political Islam and gender politics." (Publisher’s description)
Palestine
Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory (2011) by Fatma Kassem
“Palestinian Women is the first book to examine and document the experiences and historical narrative of ordinary Palestinian women who witnessed the events of 1948 and became involuntary citizens of the State of Israel. Told in their own words, the women's experiences serve as a window for examining the complex intersections of gender, nationalism and citizenship amidst ongoing violent political conflict.” (Publisher's description)
Papua New Guinea
Engendering Objects: Dynamics of Barkcloth and Gender Among the Maisin of Papua New Guinea (2013) by Anna-Karina Hermkens
This “explores social and cultural dynamics among Maisin people in Collingwood Bay . . . through the lens of material culture. Focusing upon the visually stimulating decorated barkcloths . . . used as male and female garments, gifts, and commodities, it explores . . . how barkcloth, as an object made by women, engenders people’s identities, such as gender, personhood, clan and tribe, through its manufacturing and use.” (Publisher’s description)
Peru
Most Scandalous Woman: Magda Portal and the Dream of Revolution in Peru (2017) by Myrna Ivonne Wallace Fuentes
“In 1926 a young Peruvian woman picked up a gun, wrested her infant daughter from her husband, and liberated herself from the constraints of a patriarchal society. Magda Portal, a poet and journalist, would become one of Latin America’s most successful and controversial politicians. This comprehensive and richly nuanced biography chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of this prominent twentieth-century revolutionary within the broader history of leftist movements, gender politics, and literary modernism in Latin America.” (Publisher’s description)
Poland
Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (2005) by Shana Penn
"This important book explores one of the most pivotal periods in Polish history and deals with a topic nearly everyone else overlooked. Shana Penn's study begins with a simple question I wish I had thought more about myself: once the leadership of Solidarity had been arrested during the 1981 military coup, who kept the movement alive over the following months and years? The answer will surprise you . . ." (Praise from Lech Walesa, former President of Poland and winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize)
Russia
Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva (2015) by Rosemary Sullivan
"The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history’s most monstrous dictators—her father, Josef Stalin." (Publisher's description)
South Asian Diaspora
Contemporary Diasporic South Asian Women's Fiction: Gender, Narration and Globalisation (2016) by Ruvani Ranasinha
“This book is the first comparative analysis of a new generation of diasporic Anglophone South Asian women novelists including Kiran Desai, Tahmima Anam, Monica Ali, Kamila Shamsie and Jhumpa Lahiri from a feminist perspective. It charts the significant changes these writers have produced in postcolonial and contemporary women's fiction since the late 1990s.” (Publisher’s description)
Southeast Asian Diaspora
Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora (2014) edited by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan Duong, Mariam B. Lam, and Kathy L. Nguyen
“Pairing image and text, Troubling Borders showcases creative writing and visual artworks by sixty-one women of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Thai, and Filipino ancestry. The collection features compelling storytelling that troubles the borders of categorization and reflects the multilayered experience of Southeast Asian women.” (Publisher’s description)
Switzerland
Tauben fliegen auf: Roman (2010) by Melinda Nadj Abonji; Fly Away, Pigeon (2014) translated from the German by Tess Lewis
“With tough-minded nostalgia and compassionate realism, Fly Away, Pigeon illustrates how much pain and loss even the most successful immigrant stories contain. It is a work that is intensely local, while grounded in the histories and cultures of two distinctive communities.” (Publisher’s description)
Syria
Creating Consent in Ba'thist Syria: Women and Welfare in a Totalitarian State (2016) by Esther Meininghaus
“Esther Meininghaus offers new insights into how the Syrian Ba'thist regimes attempted to move beyond mere satisfaction with the compliance of the citizenry and to consolidate their rule amongst the local population. . . . Based on archival material, interviews and statistics, Creating Consent in Ba'thist Syria will shed new light on mass organisations as a crucial institution of Ba'thist state building and, more broadly, the construction of the Asad regimes.” (Publisher’s description)
Timor-Leste
Women and the Politics of Gender in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste (2017) edited by Sara Niner
“This book presents a wide-ranging overview of the position of women in Timor-Leste, 15 years after the country secured its independence. It considers the role of women in Timor-Leste’s history, explores their role in the present day economy and politics, and discusses their contribution to culture and society.” (Publisher’s description)
Tunisia
Women, Gender, and the Palace Households in Ottoman Tunisia (2013) by Amy Aisen Kallander
“In this first in-depth study of the ruling family of Tunisia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Kallander investigates the palace as a site of familial and political significance. Through extensive archival research, she elucidates the domestic economy of the palace as well as the changing relationship between the ruling family of Tunis and the government, thus revealing how the private space of the palace mirrored the public political space.” (Publisher’s description)
Ukraine
The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (2012) by Oksana Zabuzhko
"While researching a story, journalist Daryna unearths a worn photograph of Olena Dovgan, a member of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army killed in 1947 by Stalin's secret police. Intrigued, Daryna sets out to make a documentary about the extraordinary woman—and unwittingly opens a door to the past that will change the course of the future." (Publisher's description)
United States
The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir (2010) by Leslie Marmon Silko
"Silko combines memoir with family history and observations on the creatures and desert landscapes that command her attention and inform her vision of the world. Ambitious in scope and full of wonderfully plainspoken and evocative lyricism, The Turquoise Ledge is both an exploration of Silko's experience and a moving and deeply personal contemplation of the enormous spiritual power of the natural world." (Publisher’s description)
Vanuatu
Sista, Stanap Strong!: A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (2021) edited by Mikaela Nyman and Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen
This is an anthology of writings by three generations of Vanuatuan women, most of whom are Ni-Vanuatu or Indigenous Vanuatuan. It includes poems, fiction, essays, memoirs, and songs, some of which talk about racism, colonialism, misogyny, and sexism.
Western Africa
What Gender is Motherhood?: Changing Yorùbá Ideals of Power, Procreation, and Identity in the Age of Modernity (2016) by Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí
"There is significant religious and linguistic evidence that Yorùbá society was not gendered in its original form . . . [Oyewùmí] applies the finding of a non-gendered ontology to the institution of Ifa, the most important endogenous system of knowledge in Yorùbá culture, and explores how gender is implicated in interpretations of the knowledge system, as social and ritual practice, and as a cultural institution in a changing world." (Publisher's description)
About the International & Area Studies Department
The UCLA Library’s International & Area Studies (IAS) Department supports the UCLA community by cultivating research-level collections in a variety of subjects, formats, and languages and providing specialized research services. IAS staff consists of:
- Alena Aissing, Librarian/Curator for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies
- Jade Alburo, Librarian/Curator for Southeast Asian Studies and Pacific Islands Studies
- Sohaib Baig, Librarian/Curator for Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Islamic Studies
- Ruby Bell-Gam, Librarian/Curator for African Studies and International Development Studies; IAS Interim Coordinator
- Alice Hunt, Library Assistant for Slavic/Eastern European Studies and Southeast Asian/Pacific Studies
- Diane Mizrachi, Librarian/Curator for Jewish and Israel Studies
- Tula Orum, Library Assistant for African Studies and Latin American Studies
- Jennifer Osorio, Interim Librarian/Curator for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Iberian Studies, and Ethnic Studies
- Gissel Rios, Selection and Outreach Support Assistant
- Shannon Tanhayi Ahari, Librarian/Curator for Western European Studies and Classics
About the IAS Reading Lists
Since early 2021, IAS has been producing reading lists on a quarterly basis. The IAS Outreach Team (Jade Alburo, Tula Orum, Gissel Rios, Shannon Tanhayi Ahari) usually selects the themes and specifies the criteria, and IAS librarians and staff provide the selections and descriptions. These lists are intended to showcase the global works collected by IAS librarians and are meant to be shared. If you have suggestions for themes or have questions or remarks, please contact us at IAS@library.ucla.edu.
Credits: Post created and formatted by: Gissel Rios | Introduction by: Gissel Rios, Jade Alburo | Reading list selections and descriptions by: IAS librarians and staff | Edited by: Jade Alburo