

Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountGift memberships
Gift audiobooks to anyone in the world from the comfort of your home. You choose the membership (3, 6, or 12 months/credits), your gift recipient picks their own audiobooks, and local bookstores is supported by your purchase.
Start gifting
Women and Other Monsters
Bookseller recommendation
“Women and Other Monsters is a fresh and invigorating reflection of ancient mythology, gender, and the modern world. Zimmerman re-examines eleven monstrous women of Greek mythology (the Siren, the Hydra, the Fates, Medusa, etc) and applies her findings to not only her own life experiences, but to the world at large. The result is part memoir, part literary analysis, and part manifesto. Fresh and feminist AF, Women and Other Monsters will gut punch you with its realness, its relatability, and its monstrousness.”
Kelly,
Mysterious Galaxy Books
Bookseller recommendation
“Excellent read for any feminist or would-be feminist.”
Tiffany,
Leaves Book and Tea Shop
Bookseller recommendation
“A perfect introduction to Women’s Studies using familiar and recognized pieces of western mythology. Moyen strikes a perfect balance allowing Zimmerman’s self deprecating humor and keen critical voice to come through. If you enjoy the retelling of story or the surprise of a different perspective, you will love Women and Other Monsters.”
Charity,
Schuler Books
A fresh cultural analysis of female monsters from Greek mythology, and an invitation for all women to reclaim these stories as inspiration for a more wild, more “monstrous” version of feminism
The folklore that has shaped our dominant culture teems with frightening female creatures. In our language, in our stories (many written by men), we underline the idea that women who step out of bounds—who are angry or greedy or ambitious, who are overtly sexual or not sexy enough—aren’t just outside the norm. They’re unnatural. Monstrous. But maybe, the traits we’ve been told make us dangerous and undesirable are actually our greatest strengths.
Through fresh analysis of 11 female monsters, including Medusa, the Harpies, the Furies, and the Sphinx, Jess Zimmerman takes us on an illuminating feminist journey through mythology. She guides women (and others) to reexamine their relationships with traits like hunger, anger, ugliness, and ambition, teaching readers to embrace a new image of the female hero: one that looks a lot like a monster, with the agency and power to match.
Often, women try to avoid the feeling of monstrousness, of being grotesquely alien, by tamping down those qualities that we’re told fall outside the bounds of natural femininity. But monsters also get to do what other female characters—damsels, love interests, and even most heroines—do not. Monsters get to be complete, unrestrained, and larger than life. Today, women are becoming increasingly aware of the ways rules and socially constructed expectations have diminished us. After seeing where compliance gets us—harassed, shut out, and ruled by predators—women have never been more ready to become repellent, fearsome, and ravenous.
Jess Zimmerman is the editor in chief of Electric Literature. Her essays, fiction, opinion pieces, and prose poetry have appeared in publications including Vice, Slate, The Cut, the Washington Post, The Guardian, and the New Republic. She lives in Brooklyn. Connect with her @j_zimms.