Essential feminist books to read.

The Lie Tree is a cracking read. I hope she does a sequel. I would like to know what happened next to the surviving characters.

about womens roles in Victorian times but is a bit more nuanced that the usual fare. I especially enjoyed how the typical "gold digger" trope was dealt with.

Yes , that was interesting.

There is currently a beautiful hardback edition illustrated by Chris Riddell.

I recommend the website For Books' Sake, it's got a huge catalogue of feminist book reviews to inspire you!

The Lie Tree, Frances Hardinge.

Talks about womens roles in Victorian times but is a bit more nuanced that the usual fare. I especially enjoyed how the typical "gold digger" trope was dealt with.

Well, I've received duplicate copies of The Feminine Mystique & Heartbreak.
If any of you would like to take either of them send me a message.
Amazon are confused (and not keen to have them returned..)

Oh sorry, I see OP was asking for herself.

Also "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing

For an 11 year old?

Parts of "How to be a Woman" irritated me immensely. (Again, my memory serves me poorly so unable to be more specific.)

Possibly just enough irritation for me to reassess my belief that I was a liberal feminist. I am not.

Fat is a feminist issue, Susie Orbach.

If you are interested in biographies of feminists, I really enjoyed 'Romantic Outlaws: the Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley' by Charlotte Gordon.

For your DD, I wonder if she would be ready for 'How to be a Woman' by Caitlin Moran. I enjoyed this but found it slightly 'feminism lite', so it might be a good starting point?

I've heard good things about Delusions of Gender (mentioned above) and We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie but haven't read them yet.

Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman is an easy read and great book. I'm going to add some of these ideas to my Amazon wish list I think, I have found it hard to find good feminist books in the past.

Btw "The Trouble With Women" would be ideal for an 11 year old. Not exactly a long read though...
I must must must reread "The Handmaid's Tale"
I remember reading "The Women's Room" by Marilyn French in my 20s (though little of its content).
Also "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing.

Recent additions to my bookcase - still mostly unread:
"The Trouble With Women" Jack Fleming
"There's a Good Girl" Marine Grabrucker
"Heartbreak" Andrea Dworkin
"The Female Eunuch" (particularly as GG recently described it as a terrible book; I'm intrigued)
"The Feminine Mystique" Betty Friedan
:The Second Sex" (extracts from...) Simon de Beauvoir
"Backlash" Susan Faludi
"Delusions of Gender" Cordelia Fine
"Female Erasure" Ruth Barrett

Tbh I've only managed to read "The Trouble With Women" thus far. Lots of pictures; not too many tricky words.

I now bookmark (and save in my reading list folder on my phone) any books mentioned or recommended by many of the posters on here.

Check out the Bright Lite magazine
www.kickstarter.com/projects/71736074/bright-lite-magazine-for-girls-by-girls

DD is 11 and I've got her a subscription for Christmas.
For myself one of the first books I read that stuck with me was "The Cinderella Complex" by Collette Dowling.

Feminist books which made an impact and stayed with me - Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (didn't get on so well with Sex and Destiny, but I have a feeling I should re-read that with the benefit of being older and wiser), and Susan Faludi's Backlash.

As for your daughter - depends on what she's like. I read adult books from a very young age, if they grabbed me and I was interested. Some bits went way over my head, of course.

(FWIW I think even in my early twenties when I first read the Handmaid's Tale, I missed the central point: that the off-screen old school second wave mother was in fact a feminist hero, and her patronising dismissive daughter was the fool who'd passively taken her eye off the ball wrt women's rights till it was too late and she'd lost them. It hit me like a truck when I re-read it a few years ago, and now, as I watch Trump planning to strip American women of their reproductive rights starting January 21st 2017, after years of liberal feminists agonising over micro-aggressions and whether the most important think in the world is using choicy-choice feminism to defend people's sexual kinks rather than worrying about the gender pay gap, THT now reads like prophecy rather than fiction.)

11 is far too young for Margaret Atwood. The themes of her work are for adults. I doubt an 11 year old would like it anyway. Isn't there's loads of young adult fiction about that's feminist, like 'The Hunger Games '?