A New York Times Bestseller
A dynamic and strikingly relevant look at a feminist canon as expansive rather than definitive
A Penguin ClassicFor Roxane Gay, a feminist canon is subjective and always evolving. A feminist canon represents a long history of feminist scholarship, embraces skepticism, and invites robust discussion and debate. Selected writings by ancient, historic, and more recent feminist voices include Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Anna Julia Cooper, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Dorothy Allison, Leslie Feinberg, Eileen Myles, Mona Eltahawy, bell hooks, Sara Ahmed, Cherríe Moraga, Audre Lorde, The Guerrilla Girls, and many more. With an introduction, headnotes, and an inspired list of multimedia recommendations, Roxane Gay presents multicultural perspectives, ecofeminism, feminism and disability, feminist labor, gender perspectives, and Black feminism. Through the
Portable Feminist Reader, readers explore the state of American feminism, its successes and failures, and what feminism looks like in practice, as a complex, contradictory, personal and political, and ever-growing legacy of feminist thought.
"Roxane Gay edits The Portable Feminist Reader for Penguin Classics, an anthology of texts that are diverse in feminist thought, strikingly relevant, and dynamic. Sixty-five selections include ancient, historic, and more recent feminist voices. Traditional scholarship sits with personal essays and poetry. With insightful headnotes, Gay provides context for writings on multicultural perspectives, ecofeminism, feminism and disability, feminist labor, gender perspectives, Black feminism, and more. {She] invites readers to examine the state of feminism, what feminism looks like in practice, and its successes and failures, [and] to join in conversation with the long and growing line of historical and contemporary feminist thought, and to talk of canon-- which always remains complex and contradictory--as expansive rather than definitive"--