New month. New reading list. To kick off Women’s History Month, fill your shelves — and mind — with witty wisdom and leadership know-how from these Latina and Black women leaders, thinkers, and revolutionaries
To get you started, we’ve curated a list of books by cultural icons like Michelle Obama and Stacey Abrams. We also included a repository of how-to guides to support you in navigating the workplace, society, and even yourself.
1. Becoming, Michelle Obama
The biography of our most iconic FLOTUS, Michelle Obama, tops almost every Women’s History Month book list. Becoming reads with sage-like wisdom, as told by an inspiring and caring sister figure. Obama’s experiences throughout her impressive career, her journey through motherhood, her time as a campaign trailblazer, and on being thrust into the spotlight as the first Black First Lady of the United States of America, offer prominent lessons for every reader.
2. Unbound, Tarana Burke
Tarana Burke will be forever known as the leader of the Me Too movement — one of the most significant social movements of the present day. But before she created a phrase and vehicle to empower millions of women and femmes, she had to learn how to empower herself.
In Unbound, Burke reflects on her own story, unraveling the moments she faced as a victim and now a survivor of sexual violence. By owning her journey, Burke began to find her voice — which led her to empower millions of other women to find and own their voice.
3. The Likability Trap: How to Break Free and Succeed as You Are, Alicia Menendez
Have you ever been told you’re too much or, maybe, that you’re not assertive enough? Have you been given the impression that you need to be more likable?
MSNBC anchor and award-winning journalist Alecia Menendez outlines how likability is a trap used to regulate the voice and power of women making moves within their industries and circles. Rather than encouraging likability, Menendez challenges us to question our engagement with it.
4. Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual, Luvvie Ajayi Jones
Why does it take an incredible amount of energy to go after the things we want? Luvvie Ajayi Jones speaks to the power of fear and how it hinders us from achieving — or even allowing ourselves to actualize — our most potent potential and dreams. As a professional troublemaker, Jones explores anecdotes from her own life and uses them to shed light on how, through self-talk and focus, we can chat with our demons and slowly navigate the hindrances toward the life we dream of.
5. Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons, by Julia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
What is the state of the world’s most influential women leaders? That is the question Nigerian economist and Director General of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, set out to discover alongside former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Using proprietary research alongside trending studies, Okonjo-Iweala and Gillard examine the leadership pathways for powerful women and lessons learned on the way to the top. The book’s featured women leaders include Hillary Clinton, Theresa May, Joyce Banda, Erna Solberg, and Jacinda Ardern.
6. For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez
The experience of navigating a space in the body of a Black or Brown woman includes the constant navigation of systemic and institutional racism and sexism. The mental and emotional cost of this taxing and often isolating experience is what Rodriquez seeks to normalize in For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts. Through her fierce yet warm prose, Rodriguez gives Brown girls the tools to navigate the gaslighting that many Latinas, Black women, and women of color experience daily.
7. Women who Run with Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés
This classic novel is a cornerstone of any women’s psychology course and has long been a hallmark book for wellness, mental, and health practitioners worldwide. Estes’s work is influential in how seamlessly she connects readers to her Wild Woman — the intuitive, fearless, and visionary self, untamed by a society that forces us to be contained and controlled. Drawing on mythology, Estes first tells, then interprets, the power of women in folklore, both familiar and removed. But always, she finds a way to harness the truth of each woman’s agency, self-awareness, and knowing.
8. Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Real Change, Stacey Abrams
This is so much more than a book about politics. Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia State House Representative, political voting-rights activist, lawyer, and yes, even a romance novelist, has spent her life leading from the outside.
Abrams spent her career as a multi-hyphenate, blazing multiple career trajectories in politics, law, entrepreneurship, and creative writing. She coordinated the most prolific and successful counter-attack to red-lining in modern history. Abrams’s book will not only leave you inspired, but it will also mobilize you to embrace your greatest truths.