Reading stories about women, both real and fictional, who take their lives into their own hands and embody individuality and strength is an empowering experience. These are some of my favorite books with leading female characters who stand up for themselves and for what they believe in in times of adversity, especially when being passive would have been the easier choice.
1. "Pride and Prejudice" - Jane Austen
Elizabeth Bennet is arguably one of the most iconic heroines of English literature: independent, intelligent, confident and fierce, she follows her intuition and isn’t afraid to admit when she’s made a mistake. Pride and Prejudice details her experience dealing with courtship in the Regency Era and her complicated relationship with mysterious Mr. Darcy.
2. "Speak" - Laurie Halse Anderson
Speak is written from the perspective of a girl who was raped at a high school party and is shamed by her class because she called the police that night. She describes her experience learning to break her silence while still having to face the man who attacked her at school.
3. "The Handmaid’s Tale" - Margret Atwood
In dystopian New England, fertile women are forced to become “handmaids” to wealthy men and bear their children. Handmaid Offred plots to fight this dysfunctional system and recover the family she lost before the revolution.
4. "Girl in Translation" - Jean Kwok
Kimberly moves from Hong Kong to Brooklyn with her mother, and together the two of them face degrading factory work and horrendous living conditions in hopes of someday living a better life.
5. "The Help" - Kathryn Stockett
In 1960’s Jackson, Mississippi, a young journalist works together with African American maids to write a book containing stories of racial prejudice and mistreatment from the maids’ lives. It’s an empowering story of women setting aside their differences to radically change society.
6. "In the Time of the Butterflies" - Julia Alvarez
This is the story of the Mirabal sisters, four real women who fought against the Trujillo dictatorship in the 1960’s Dominican Republic. Julia Alvarez records the sisters’ experiences through fictionalized diary entries and accounts from their lives as they face oppression, prison, and worse to fight for their country’s freedom.
7. "Calling Me Home" - Julie Kibler
Headstrong Isabelle fell in love with an African American boy back in Kentucky in the 1930’s, despite resistance from her overbearing parents and the rest of society. Now in her 80’s, Isabelle has asked her hairdresser to take a spontaneous road trip to Arlington with her without an explanation. Together, the women uncover Isabelle’s past and look to the future for closure.
8. "Girl, Stolen" - April Henry
A sixteen-year-old girl is accidentally kidnapped when a thief steals the car that she was sleeping in. Left blind after a recent car accident, she has to find a way to escape without being able to see the world around her.
9. "The Invention of Wings" - Sue Monk Kidd
In Charlotte, North Caroline in the early 1800’s, a slave girl and the slave-owner's daughter become friends; as they grow up, one girl’s story of fighting for women’s equality is told parallel to the other’s perilous quest for freedom.
10. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" - Maya Angelou
In her autobiography of her childhood, Angelou writes about being faced with one adversity after another, from when she was left by her parents to be raised by her grandmother in Arkansas to becoming a teen mother. Angelou is the ultimate strong-willed woman who doesn’t let life get in the way of her goals to achieve greatness.
