Here are 100 books that Tomboy fans have personally recommended if you like
Tomboy.
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I’ve been an avid reader since I was a child, and my favorite protagonists are readers and writers. The Kansas tallgrass prairie horizons where I grew up fueled my imagination, and I wanted to write like the girls in my novels. I discovered Anne of Green Gables as a teen, and since then, I’ve researched, published, and presented on the book as a quixotic novel. As a creative writer, my own characters are often readers, writers, librarians, book club members, and anyone who loves a good tale. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I do each time I return to them.
I love this book because it has so many layers that appeal to me: a historical period, the challenges of growing up, and a young woman who dreams of being a writer.
As an author, Jo March’s writing aspirations spoke to me, although I think I saw a bit of me in each of the four March sisters. That breadth is what welcomes me as a reader each time I return to the novel. And—no spoilers—I still sometimes scratch my head over the twist in the romance plot that didn’t go as I anticipated when I first read the book!
Louisa May Alcott shares the innocence of girlhood in this classic coming of age story about four sisters-Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
In picturesque nineteenth-century New England, tomboyish Jo, beautiful Meg, fragile Beth, and romantic Amy are responsible for keeping a home while their father is off to war. At the same time, they must come to terms with their individual personalities-and make the transition from girlhood to womanhood. It can all be quite a challenge. But the March sisters, however different, are nurtured by their wise and beloved Marmee, bound by their love for each other and the feminine…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As a young girl, I thought I was a tomboy—or I wanted to be one, because the image of a “normal” girl was far too pink and frothy and shallow for my tastes. For me, being a tomboy was less about being boy-like than being unable to claim the markers of femininity. As a historian of women and girls, I wondered how young women saw their futures in this modernizing America, with its True Women and New Women and the opening of advanced education. Did tomboys grow into the rebels who changed the world? Or, like the tomboys in so many fictional stories, did they renounce their assertive sense of self upon marriage and motherhood?
I’ve assigned this graphic memoir to college students, given it to young nieces, and sent a copy to my mom. Prince tells the familiar story of being identified by others as a tomboy and struggling to understand what that means and whether or not she accepts the term. It’s funny, poignant, and smart.
Growing up, Liz Prince wasn't a girly girl, dressing in pink tutus or playing Pretty Pretty princess like the other girls in her neighborhood. But she wasn't exactly one of the guys either, as she quickly learned when her Little League baseball coach exiled her to the outfield instead of letting her take the pitcher's mound. Liz was somewhere in the middle, and Tomboy is the story of her struggle to find the place where she belonged. Tomboy is a graphic novel about refusing gender boundaries, yet unwittingly embracing gender stereotypes at the same time, and realizing later in life…
As a young girl, I thought I was a tomboy—or I wanted to be one, because the image of a “normal” girl was far too pink and frothy and shallow for my tastes. For me, being a tomboy was less about being boy-like than being unable to claim the markers of femininity. As a historian of women and girls, I wondered how young women saw their futures in this modernizing America, with its True Women and New Women and the opening of advanced education. Did tomboys grow into the rebels who changed the world? Or, like the tomboys in so many fictional stories, did they renounce their assertive sense of self upon marriage and motherhood?
Comedian Jessi Klein explores the nexus of American femininity and female masculinity in this hilarious memoir. I particularly love her pithy statements on how commercial culture sells a somewhat toxic form of femininity that can make even the most female-identified person reconsider their gender. She cuts to the heart of the tensions of growing up in a culture that places gender on a spectrum but continues to market it as an extreme binary.
Jessi Klein is not a girl's girl, or a woman's woman. Raised in Greenwich Village by parents who didn't notice if she wore the same pair of pants for months on end, she later learned that there were some essential lessons in femininity she'd been missing: how to get your butt to look like two round tennis balls (barre class); how to wait patiently for an engagement (get drunk by yourself at Logan Airport); and how to get over an ex in the age of Google (use the World Wide Web to discover everything about his new girlfriend). In this…
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
As a young girl, I thought I was a tomboy—or I wanted to be one, because the image of a “normal” girl was far too pink and frothy and shallow for my tastes. For me, being a tomboy was less about being boy-like than being unable to claim the markers of femininity. As a historian of women and girls, I wondered how young women saw their futures in this modernizing America, with its True Women and New Women and the opening of advanced education. Did tomboys grow into the rebels who changed the world? Or, like the tomboys in so many fictional stories, did they renounce their assertive sense of self upon marriage and motherhood?
Gilder’s memoir of growing up in the 1860s as a boyish girl will seem remarkably contemporary to those who equate nineteenth-century girls and women with corsets and overly important etiquette. Gilder writes about baseball, pranks, and various attempts to look like a boy, confirming an instinctual tomboy identity even at a time when females could not legally wear pants.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and…
I am a lifelong feminist and have spent my career and life advancing the status of women and girls. I have started two research centres in Canada–one on violence against women and one on women’s health. I continue to work as a researcher in sex and gender science, advocating for health solutions that also advance gender equity. I first questioned gender roles at age 7, when I was assigned dishwashing and my brother garbage management. I have always longed to understand gender injustices and issues such as violence against women, gender pay gaps, women’s rights, or lack thereof, and women’s activism, and these books have helped elucidate, inspire, activate, and challenge me.
This book takes you on a long tour through a pivotal decade in the emergence of the second wave of feminism in the United States of America via oral history, detailing actions, bios, and anecdotes of key figures. For the first time, I heard the ‘behind the scenes’ dynamics, interpersonal links, and public and private differences between many familiar figures such as Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisolm, and many, many other not-so-well-known but leading feminists.
This is a gripping account of determination, leading thinking, differences of opinion, and risky activism in the USA in a tricky decade for women, which had a profound effect on how second-wave feminism developed not only in America, but globally. I was gripped.
A comprehensive and engaging oral history of the decade that defined the feminist movement, including interviews with living icons and unsung heroes-from former Newsweek reporter and author of the "powerful and moving" (The New York Times) Witness to the Revolution.
For lovers of both Barbie and Gloria Steinem, The Movement is the first oral history of the decade that built the modern feminist movement. Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade, when women rejected…
As a writer, I’ve found that learning about other writers and their processes helps me. Over the years, I’ve devoured the memoirs and letters of writers like Madeleine L’Engle, Audre Lorde, and Zora Neal Hurston. In 2006, when I started a writing program for young people in my city, I brought these writers’ words to use as writing prompts. When I researched my book, Mightier Than the Sword, I read dozens of anthologies to find people who used writing to make a difference in their fields—science, art, politics, music, and sports. I will always be grateful for those anthologies—because they broadened my knowledge and introduced me to so many interesting people.
This book features 70 stories of women and nonbinary people who are making a difference in the world. I was delighted by the vast array of people covered in the book, which begins with a foreword by Canadian pop duo Tegan and Sara. Teens will be excited to find leaders from every part of society profiled in the book: performers, politicians, professors, and more. I could start name dropping, but I won’t—because it’s much more fun for you to dig into the book and be surprised by how many really famous people are working hard to change the world.
An inspiring and radical celebration of 70 women, girls, and nonbinary people who have changed—and are still changing—the world, from the Civil Rights Movement and Stonewall riots through Black Lives Matter and beyond.
With a radical and inclusive approach to history, Modern HERstory profiles and celebrates seventy women and nonbinary champions of progressive social change in a bold, colorful, illustrated format for all ages. Despite making huge contributions to the liberation movements of the last century and today, all of these trailblazers come from backgrounds and communities that are traditionally overlooked and under-celebrated: not just women, but people of color,…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
Valerie M. Hudson is a University Distinguished Professor and holds the George H.W. Bush Chair in the Department of International Affairs at The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, where she directs the Program on Women, Peace, and Security. Hudson was named to the list of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, and was recognized as Distinguished Scholar of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA/ISA) and awarded an inaugural Andrew Carnegie Fellowship as well as an inaugural Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Australian National University. She has been selected as the Distinguished Scholar Award recipient for 2022 by the Political Demography and Geography Section (PDG/ISA) of the International Studies Association.
This slim volume by the French philosopher is one I have read many times; nearly every sentence is underlined. Though not strictly about international affairs, it was Agacinski that first sparked in me the sight of the far horizon: diarchy as the political system that should obtain between men and women. Once you understand that the face of humanity is dual, not single, everything changes. Agacinski was one of the crucial voices that led to the adoption of party candidate parity as the law of the land in France.
Sylviane Agacinski has never shied away from controversy. Vilified by some-including many feminists-and celebrated by others as a pioneer of gender equality, she has galvanized the French political scene. Her articulation of the theory of "parity" helped inspire a law that went into effect in May 2000 requiring the country's political parties to fill 50 percent of the candidacies in every race with women. Sylviane Agacinski, according to The New Yorker, "is sometimes credited with making parite respectable." Agacinski begins with the notion that sexual difference should be affirmed rather than denied. Sex, Agacinski points out, is not a social,…
We are Witches. Real Witches, doing real magic, casting spells, and weaving webs. We are Amy Torok and Risa Dickens–the co-creators of the Missing Witches project, researching what it means to be a Witch. Together, we have put out almost 300 podcast episodes and published two books and an oracle deck of cards: Missing Witches: Recovering True Histories Of Feminist Magic, New Moon Magic: 13 Anti-capitalist Tools for Resistance and Re-enchantment, and The Missing Witches Deck of Oracles: Feminist Ancestor Magic for Meditations, Divination and Spellwork. Our first book appeared on VICE Magazine’s list: The Best Books for Starting an Occult Library.
We believe that words are spells and that writing down our thoughts, feelings, and ideas is a form of doing Magic. So we were thrilled to discover this book, co-edited by Tamiko Beyer, Destiny Hemphill, and Lisbeth White, a book that validates and reifies the magic of poetry.
This book opens a portal to discuss the ritual of writing, the radical imagination required for social justice, the alchemy of collaboration, and a slow revolution. We’re enamored with the collaborative nature of the book and how it illustrates that writing and poetry are not just kept for times of solitude but can be ritualized into a community-building praxis to change the world.
Poems, essays, and prompts to sing a new world into being--Queer & BIPOC perspectives on poetry as an insurgent ritual for manifesting liberation and reclaiming power.
Written for poets, spellcasters, and social justice witches, Poetry as Spellcasting reveals the ways poetry and ritual can, together, move us toward justice and transformation. It asks: If ritualized violence upholds white supremacy, what ritualized acts of liberation can be activated to subvert and reclaim power?
In essays from a diverse group of contributing poets, organizers, and ritual artists, Poetry as Spellcasting helps readers explore, play, and deepen their creativity and intuition as integral…
Photography has always been more than just images for me. I love capturing the moments that define a movement. I started out photographing punk bands, drawn to their raw creativity. Later, I shot Hollywood legends, but at the core, it was always about the same thing: artists fighting to make something that lasts. These stories feel like snapshots of a life I know well, and they bring me back to the packed punk club where everything started.
As someone who’s spent a career capturing moments, both on film and in digital, I’ve had a front-row seat to the way the internet has upended creative industries. At first, it seemed like a gift. Then, I watched artists lose control of their work, their rights, and their livelihoods. That’s why I decided to push back by founding The American Society for Collective Rights Licensing.
Reading this book felt like having someone finally call out the problem for what it is. It made me think about how much we’ve sacrificed in the name of “progress”.
In this sharp and witty book, long-time Silicon Valley observer and author Andrew Keen argues that, on balance, the Internet has had a disastrous impact on all our lives.
By tracing the history of the Internet, from its founding in the 1960s to the creation of the World Wide Web in 1989, through the waves of start-ups and the rise of the big data companies to the increasing attempts to monetize almost every human activity, Keen shows how the Web has had a deeply negative effect on our culture, economy and society.
Informed by Keen's own research and interviews, as…
I have always been fascinated with ideas and ideologies and how people can interpret the world differently. As a teenager I wanted to become an ethnographer, to travel the world and discover other cultures. Now I focus mostly on Europe and the US, but I always look to challenge myself by talking with people who hold opposing views. I am impressed by the revival of religious, nationalist, and conservative ideas in our current world and how they offer their own philosophy of the social order. That’s why I selected books that can help me see the world through the eyes of others.
This is my preferred book on this topic because it offers a pungent story of how pride and shame matter to our understanding of politics. Arlie Russell Hochschild already wrote another terrific book on Louisiana a few years ago, so I was really looking forward to this new one on the Appalachian post-industrial communities.
The way she describes small events of everyday life and how they influence voting patterns struck a chord with me. It tells us how politics at the grassroots level is, in fact, about making sense of the world around us and navigating difficulties, and it’s all about emotions and the way we deal with the question, “What about me?” It’s a superb book for deconstructing “high politics” and shows how far away people may feel from decisions made in Washington, DC.
In her first book since the widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author Arlie Russell Hochschild now ventures to Appalachia, uncovering the "pride paradox" that has given the right's appeals such resonance.
A 2024 New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick
For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a…
