"Read together, the reflections of the Nobel women reveal a range of ideas about what literature can do and a sense of a practitioner's responsibility to these ideas. While the lectures vary widely in content-from Lessing's and Gordimer's concrete political lessons to Szymborska's larger abstract musings to fables personal (Müller) and universal (Morrison)-each contains observations that are at once totally complex and recognizably true." - Jessi Haley
Behind a Mask is one of the thrillers, mysteries, and sensational works Louisa May Alcott published under the pen name A.M. Bernard. It was first published in 1866, and then re-published in 1975 by scholar, rare book dealer, and biographer Madeleine B. Stern. Further readership and analysis of the novella has helped expand understanding of Alcott's work and interests. The story subverts expectations around gender performance, class, and heroism as it follows Jean Muir, a down-on-her-luck actress who disguises herself as a young governess and infiltrates a wealthy family.
The first open source book by women about cryptocurrency and cypherpunk pioneers. It includes a great array of international contributions from bitcoin developers and users, crypto entrepreneurs and community educators. The collection highlights the diversity of people involved with cypherpunk technology, meaning in their own ways they are all using privacy-enhancing technology to promote social change. And yet their motivations and circumstances are all wildly different. The tool enables self-sovereign financial choices, akin to independent birth control or career choices. For women brave enough to trust themselves, the world may now appear ripe for a new type of revolution.
"Cita Press’ An Immortal Book: Selected Writings by Sui Sin Far brings together autobiographical essays and short stories from different periods in Eaton’s career, showcasing her range as a storyteller, thinker, and stylist. Revered for her contributions to Asian American and Asian Canadian literature, Sui Sin Far is also a key figure in early women’s journalism, literature, and feminism. A master at developing characters and rendering place, she grappled with themes of identity, race, class, gender, sexuality, and politics in ways that still resonate today."
Download our reading companion, "The Divine Right of Learning," for more background on Sui Sin Far, the history behind the stories, and reflections from writing and scholars working to recover Sui Sin Far's legacy.
Mary Shelley wrote Mathilda from 1819-1820, shortly after her novel Frankenstein was an immediate popular hit--but it wasn't published until more than a century later. Narrated by a young woman on her deathbed, the novella explores grief, despair, and redemption. Despite its deployment of familiar Gothic themes like suicide, incest, and a woman withering away, its framing is frequently read as a feminist reclamation of the genre.
“To have [Zitkála-Šá’s] work collected here now speaks to the tenacity of her spirit, her insistence on being heard across generations. Speaking of herself, of her world, she teaches us how to be now.” –Erin Marie Lynch, foreword
Planted in a Strange Earth: Selected Writings by Zitkála-Šá brings together fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by one of the most influential yet underappreciated activist-artists of the twentieth century. Zitkála-Šá (also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, 1876-1938) spent her early years on the Yankton Indian Reservation before becoming a pupil, teacher, and reluctant poster child of the Indian boarding school system. Her first national publications marked a definitive break with the oppressive ideas behind her education, and her early fame as a musician and writer evolved into a decades-long political career fighting for Native rights.
The collection focuses on the author’s writing on assimilationist projects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and their impact within Native communities and individuals. Zitkála-Šá’s voice is lyrical, bold and fresh–even over 100 years after initial publication. Her writing captures the intense beauty and pain of growing up and explores what it means to forge an identity in the face of cultural erasure. These are essential feminist texts that dig into the cruel tensions of an era through the eyes of an author who spent a lifetime “actively testing the chains which tightly bound [her] individuality like a mummy for burial.”
Designer Kassie John created a special zine for this collection that readers can download, print, and fold into a free mini-book at home (complete with a coloring page illustration of Zitkála-Šá!).
Family curses, demonic doppelgangers, lingering loss, and redemption--Gaskell's 1856 gothic ghost story presents a suspenseful tale with a feminist frame. The anchor to the story is Irish servant Bridget FitzGerald, whose power and fierce pain drives the story's conflict and, ultimately, its resolution, influencing the fates of entire families and towns.
"This story is not about a bygone society’s oppressive strictures, but, rather, about its piecemeal accommodation of subversive actions and vehement passions." - Krithika Varagur
"The Old Maid" is the second novella in Wharton's 1924 quartet Old New York; each story in the collection represents a decade in "Old New York" society from the 1840s to the 1870s. In this novella (originally subtitled "The Fifties"), Delia and Charlotte conspire to raise Charlotte's secret daughter without activating suspicion within their exacting, closed social circle. Wharton expertly digs into her characters and the social contradictions they exploit to protect their family in a story that is as biting as it is tender and, at times, triumphant. Playwright Zoë Akins won a Pulitzer Prize for her adaption of the book in 1935, and a film starring Bette Davis and directed by Edmund Goulding came out in 1939. We are thrilled to bring this book to new audiences with a free, open access edition available online to all readers with an internet connection.
"Passion’s necessity may be one of the lessons we can take from Chopin’s controversial text, but certainly it is not the only lesson. The novel emerged from obscurity like a different kind of storm: taking the literary world to new heights and awareness of what women writers could do." - Heather Ostman
Kate Chopin's 1899 novel tells the story of Edna Pontellier as she seeks to expand her life beyond the boundaries of Creole society and the restrictive expectations for wives and mothers. Called everything from "poison" to ""not altogether wholesome in its tendencies" upon publication, The Awakening is now recognized as a classic of feminist literature that also laid the stylistic foundation for modernist Southern fiction.
