FP Staff List: KEEP YOUR BANS OFF OUR BOOKS

In 1982, the American Library Association (ALA) launched Banned Books Week as a response to a rise in book challenges in schools, bookstores, and libraries across the country. It’s a dangerous trend that continues as hundreds of books are removed from shelves each and every year. Banned Books Week aims to bring awareness to this censorship while celebrating and defending the ability for everyone to read, access information, and express ideas freely, while also bringing readers of all kinds from across communities together. 

Feminist Press has always stood against book bans and dared to publish books that challenge the status quo, uplifting ideas and voices too frequently suppressed by society. In honor of this year’s Banned Books Week (October 1-7, 2023), our team is highlighting some of our most beloved (and most challenged) backlist titles, as well as those published by other houses we admire.

THÉRÈSE AND ISABELLE

by Violette Leduc, translated by Sophie Lewis (Feminist Press)

Originally set to be published in France in 1954, Thérèse et Isabelle was withheld by its publisher over fears of scandal and obscenity convictions for its author, Violette Leduc. An outspoken lesbian writer and mentee of Simone de Beauvoir, Leduc didn’t live to see her novel finally take its rightful place among the canon of lesbian literature—it wasn’t until fifty years later that the book was finally published in its uncensored version, decades after her death in 1972. Translated to English and published by the Feminist Press in 2015, Thérèse and Isabelle follows the consuming love affair between two French girls at boarding school, written in urgent, languid, and lyrical prose.

—Nadine Santoro, Publicity and Events Coordinator 

GENDER QUEER

by Maia Kobabe (Oni Press)

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe is a beautifully illustrated graphic memoir charting Kobabe’s exploration of eir gender and sexuality from adolescence into adulthood. Last year, it was also the most banned book in the country. But, as Kobabe writes in a January 2023 essay for NPR, eir book’s impact extends far deeper than the conservative political backlash: “People told me they related to Gender Queer more than any other book they'd ever read. They told me it made them feel less alone. They told me they had shared the book with a parent, or a partner, or a friend, and it had opened up conversations they'd never been able to have before.

—Rachel Page, Development Coordinator and Production Editor

HOOD FEMINISM: NOTES FROM THE WOMEN THAT A MOVEMENT FORGOT

by Mikki Kendall (Viking)

“One of the most important books of the current moment” (Time) that’s been read by everyone from Gabrielle Union to Ibram X. Kendi, Samantha Irby to most recently Olivia Rodrigo. Hood Feminism is a searing collection of essays unafraid to point out the painful prejudice in today’s feminist movement, which too often prioritizes putting some individuals in a place of higher privilege while allowing others to continue to fall further behind. Investigating the ways race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with the role that gender plays in our lives, Kendall questions the ability for the movement to find solidarity, combining criticism and personal experience into a fierce, ferocious call to action.

—Rachel Gilman, Sales and Marketing Coordinator

BEIJING COMRADES

by Bei Tong, translated by Scott E. Meyers (Feminist Press)

Beijing Comrades is the story of a tumultuous love affair set against the sociopolitical unrest of late-eighties China. Due to its depiction of gay sexuality and its critique of the totalitarian government, it was originally published anonymously on an underground gay website within mainland China. This riveting and heartbreaking novel, circulated throughout China in 1998, quickly developed a cult following, and remains a central work of queer literature from the People's Republic of China.

—Lucia Brown, Director of Community Engagement

BELOVED

by Toni Morrison (Knopf)

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is the ultimate ghost story. It’s a novel about memory and history; about what sits in the gaps and silences in our speech; the presence of absences; how a haunting is a visitation and also a rupturing. It's a book that disintegrates the line between the living and the dead, and explodes this dichotomy we've been taught as truth.

—Alicia Lim, Executive and Program Assistant

NICKEL AND DIMED: ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA

by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books)

Nickel and Dimed still holds up, unfortunately for us, because not much has changed for American workers since Barbara Ehrenreich lived on minimum wage in the late nineties reporting for this book. Ehrenreich reports on her own experience and highlights the stories of the daily lives of the working poor in our country trying to survive exploitation and punishment in our capitalist reality. If you’re a fan of Sarah Jaffe’s more recent Work Won’t Love You Back and Kim Kelly’s Fight Like Hell, this book is a great classic to add to your TBR.

—Alicia Lim, Executive and Program Assistant

THE RAPE OF SITA

by Lindsay Collen (Feminist Press)

Lindsey Collen’s The Rape of Sita exemplifies the regressive nature of banned books since its censorship by local authority in the initial days after it was published. Charged in her native Mauritius with possible sacrilege and blasphemy, the stylistically radical novel emanates strength in the face of oppression both within its story and as a banned book. Inventive and intentionally evocative, Collen has created a poignant, enduring piece of literature that brings awareness to, and insight on, the reality that many face as victims of sexual assault.  With its case still pending, The Rape of Sita has garnered its status amongst the best works of African fiction with the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

—Alicia Garza, Apprentice

BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL

by Kathy Acker, introduction by Chris Kraus (Grove Press)

This surrealist, collage-style novel and cult classic immediately caused a stir upon publication nearly forty years ago. Its transgressive ideas around philosophy, politics, and sexuality established Kathy Acker as a preeminent voice in post-punk feminism. In more recent years, the book has also gathered fans among the likes of Lidia Yuknavitch and Jeanette Winterson.

—Rachel Gilman, Sales and Marketing Coordinator