womens liberation and histories

The Riddles of the Sphinx

Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle

By: Anna Shechtman
Narrated by: Anna Shechtman
Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

Combining the soul-baring confessional of Brain on Fire and the addictive storytelling of The Queen’s Gambit, a renowned puzzle creator’s compulsively readable memoir and history of the crossword puzzle as an unexpected site of women’s work and feminist protest.The indisputable “queen of crosswords,” Anna Shechtman published her first New York... Read more

The Patriarchs

The Origins of Inequality

By: Angela Saini
Narrated by: Sohm Kapila
Length: 10 hours 24 minutes

For fans of Sapiens and The Dawn of Everything, a groundbreaking exploration of gendered oppression—its origins, its histories, our attempts to understand it, and our efforts to combat it

For centuries, societies have treated male domination as natural to the human species. But how would our understanding of gender inequality—our imagined past... Read more

Black Girl IRL

Life Between the Mess and the Magic

By: Gail Hamilton Azodo
Narrated by: Gail Hamilton Azodo
Length: 5 hours 35 minutes

Whatever happened to the regular Black girl?
The one who works a 9 to 5 or maybe owns her own business or is completing her master's. Or how about the
one who is figuring out how to be a good mom or wife or daughter? Or the one that's doing all of the above?
Hi, that's a lot of us. Black women are doing it all, and it's not just the Oprahs and... Read more

Who's Afraid of Gender?

By: Judith Butler
Narrated by: Judith Butler
Length: 11 hours 47 minutes

This program is read by the author.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Time, Elle, Kirkus, Literary Hub, The Millions, Electric Literature, and them.

"A profoundly urgent intervention.” —Naomi Klein

"A timely must-read for anyone actively invested in re-imagining collective futurity.” —Claudia Rankine

From a global icon, a bold, essential... Read more

Dead Weight

Essays on Hunger and Harm

By: Emmeline Clein
Narrated by: Karissa Vacker
Length: 11 hours 26 minutes

A personal and cultural look at the dark underbelly of Western beauty standards and the lethal culture of disordered eating they've wrought

"An authoritative, generous, and persuasive debut that I wish I could go back in time and gift to my teenage self.”—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood

“Electric with insight, and suffused with a strange,... Read more

Dinner on Monster Island

Essays

By: Tania De Rozario
Narrated by: Tania De Rozario
Length: 5 hours 24 minutes

In this unusual, engaging, and intimate collection of personal essays, Lambda Literary Award finalist Tania De Rozario recalls growing up as a queer, brown, fat girl in Singapore, blending memoir with elements of history, pop culture, horror films, and current events to explore the nature of monsters and what it means to be different.Tania De... Read more

He/She/They

How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters

By: Schuyler Bailar
Narrated by: Schuyler Bailar
Length: 11 hours 14 minutes

“In the face of overwhelming anti-trans rhetoric and legislation, trans activist and athlete Bailar (he switched from the female to male Harvard swim at the beginning of his remarkable collegiate career) counters misinformation with this incredible, well-researched (citations included) and compassionate resource (including moving anecdotes from... Read more

Thunder Song

Essays

By: Sasha LaPointe
Narrated by: Sasha LaPointe
Length: 5 hours 30 minutes

Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha taq?š?blu LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and... Read more

Black Women Taught Us

An Intimate History of Black Feminism

By: Jenn M. Jackson
Narrated by: Jenn M. Jackson
Length: 9 hours 54 minutes

A reclamation of essential history and a hopeful gesture toward a better political future, this is what listening to Black women looks like—from a professor of political science and columnist for Teen Vogue.

“Jenn M. Jackson is a beautiful writer and excellent scholar. In this book, they pay tribute to generations of Black women organizers and... Read more

Ride or Die

A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-Being of Black Women

By: Shanita Hubbard
Narrated by: Tovah Ott
Length: 3 hours 49 minutes

Cultural criticism and pop culture history intertwine in this important book, which dissects how hip hop has sidelined Black women's identity and emotional well-being.
  Do you have a “ride or die chick” in your life? A “ride or die chick” is a Black woman who holds down her family and community. She’s that friend or family member that you can... Read more

The Feminist Killjoy Handbook

The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way

By: Sara Ahmed
Narrated by: Sara Ahmed
Length: 9 hours 56 minutes

A renowned feminist thinker argues we need to get in the way of happiness, our own and other people’s, to build a more just world  Do you refuse to laugh at offensive jokes? Have you ever been accused of ruining dinner by pointing out your companion’s sexist comment? Are you often told to stop being so “woke”? If so, you might be a feminist... Read more

Butts

A Backstory

By: Heather Radke
Narrated by: Emily Tremaine
Length: 8 hours 13 minutes

“Butts is a delightfully engrossing piece of cultural history about one of our most talked (and joked) about body part. Read more

City of Incurable Women

By: Maud Casey
Narrated by: Hope Newhouse
Length: 2 hours 58 minutes

In a fusion of fact and fiction, nineteenth-century women institutionalized as hysterics reveal what history ignored“City of Incurable Women is a brilliant exploration of the type of female bodily and psychic pain once commonly diagnosed as hysteria—and the curiously hysterical response to it commonly exhibited by medical men. It is a novel of... Read more

Deep Care

The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open

By: Angela Hume
Narrated by: Tanya Eby
Length: 12 hours 45 minutes

Starting in the 1970s, small groups of feminist activists met regularly to study anatomy, practice pelvic exams on each other, and learn how to safely perform a procedure known as menstrual extraction, which can end a pregnancy, using equipment that can be easily bought and assembled at home. This "self-help" movement grew into a robust national... Read more

Body Work

The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

By: Melissa Febos
Narrated by: Melissa Febos
Length: 3 hours 35 minutes

“This book is both a self-reflection piece and a tender yet valiant meditation on the power of writing. Anyone that approaches their work through an autoethnographic lens would benefit from tools Febos so kindly lends to us in Body Work. Read more

Art Monsters

Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art

By: Lauren Elkin
Narrated by: Lauren Elkin
Length: 9 hours 37 minutes

Coming across the term "art monster" in Jenny Offill's 2014 novel Dept. of Speculation, Lauren Elkin was intrigued. What kinds of connections might there be between art and monstrosity, and how was it different when the artist in question was a woman?



Art Monsters is a landmark feminist intervention in the way we think about women's stories and... Read more

Eyeliner

A Cultural History

By: Zahra Hankir
Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
Length: 10 hours 55 minutes

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick

“Cosmetic, tool of rebellion, status signifier: Eyeliner has been all these and more. Moving through millenniums and across civilizations, Hankir gives the makeup its eye-opening due.” —The New York Times Book Review

“An impressive, rigorously researched, winding path through centuries and over... Read more

You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays

By: Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Louis Gates & Genevieve West
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 15 hours 19 minutes

Introduction by New York Times bestselling author Henry Louis Gates Jr. Spanning more than 35 years of work, the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism, and articles by the legendary author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an archivist and author.“One of the greatest... Read more

Lean on Me

A Politics of Radical Care

By: Lynne Segal
Narrated by: Brigid Lohrey
Length: 9 hours 56 minutes

Longtime feminist activist and writer Lynne Segal searches for hope in her own life and in the world around her, and finds it in our intimate commitments to each other and our shared collective engagements, the two being intertwined. Issues of care, intimacy, education, alongside meaningful work, and social engagement, lie at the core of our... Read more

Complaint!

By: Sara Ahmed
Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
Length: 14 hours 32 minutes

In Complaint! Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when... Read more