Sep 29

shes on edge | Women Focused Reads

The women focused reading list is curated by Liz and Nadia the founders of 'shes on edge', a women's surf and skate collective based in Charleston, South Carolina. The organization is dedicated to building community through meet-ups, events and hosting an annual fundraiser to raise awareness around women's health and reproductive rights.

Books On Water Women

Swell: A Sailing Surfer’s Voyage of Awakening, by Captain Liz Clark

True surfers understand that surfing is not a sport, a hobby or even a lifestyle. Instead, it is a path, a constantly evolving journey that directs where you go, how you live, and who you are. In stories overflowing with epic waves and at the whim of the weather, Liz captures her voyage in gripping detail, telling tales of self awareness, solitude, connection to the earth, and really great surf spots.

The Deep, Rivers Solomon

The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society—and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award nominated song "The Deep" from Daveed Diggs' rap group Clipping.

Women and Water: Stories of Adventure, Self-Discovery, and Connection in and on the Water, by Gale Straub, Noel Russell, Hailey Hirst

This inspiring collection combines breathtaking photography with powerful narratives from women who swim, surf, kayak, study glaciers, advocate for water conservation, carry forward their ancestral fishing traditions, and more. Collected by the team at She Explores, a media company and community that celebrates women in the outdoors, these first-person stories explore themes of independence, strength, healing, and self-discovery in nature.

The Island of Sea Women, by Lisa See

Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women follows Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls from very different backgrounds, as they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective. After hundreds of dives and years of friendship, forces outside their control will push their relationship to the breaking point.

The Female Body

Vagina Oscura: An Anatomical Voyage, by Rachel E. Gross

The Latin term for the female genitalia, pudendum, means “parts for which you should be ashamed.” Until 1651, ovaries were called female testicles. The fallopian tubes are named for a man. Named, claimed, and shamed: Welcome to the story of the female body, as penned by men.

Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion, by Gabrielle Stanley Blair

In Ejaculate Responsibly, Gabrielle Blair offers a provocative reframing of the abortion issue in post-Roe America. In a series of 28 brief arguments, she deftly makes the case for moving the abortion debate away from controlling and legislating women’s bodies and instead directs the focus on men’s lack of accountability in preventing unwanted pregnancies. Highly readable, accessible, funny, and unflinching.

Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life, by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D.

An essential exploration of why and how women’s sexuality works—based on groundbreaking research and brain science—that will radically transform your sex life into one filled with confidence and joy.

Feminists in Motion

Stop Telling Women to Smile: Stories of Street Harassment and How We're Taking Back Our Power, by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Every day, all over the world, women are catcalled and denigrated simply for walking down the street. Boys will be boys, women have been told for generations, ignore it, shrug it off, take it as a compliment. But the harassment has real consequences for women: in the fear it instills and the shame they are made to feel.

Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life, by Ali Wong

Ali Wong's heartfelt and hilarious letters to her daughters (the two she put to work while they were still in utero), covering everything they need to know in life, like the unpleasant details of dating, how to be a working mom in a male-dominated profession, and how she trapped their dad.

I'm Glad My Mom Died, by Jannette McCurdy

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, by Grady Hendrix

Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend

Becoming, by Michelle Obama

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare

Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy's Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love, by Tori Dunlap

Tori founded Her First $100K to teach women to overcome the unique obstacles standing in the way of their financial freedom. In Financial Feminist, she distills the principles of her shame- and judgment-free approach to paying off debt, figuring out your value categories to spend mindfully, saving money without monk-like deprivation, and investing in order to spend your retirement tanning in Tulum.

The Panic Years: Dates, Doubts, and the Mother of All Decisions by Nell Frizzell

The Panic Years: something between adolescence and menopause, a personal crisis, a transformation. Raw, hilarious and beguilingly honest, Nell Frizzell's account of her panic years is both an arm around the shoulder and a campaign to start a conversation. This affects us all - women, men, mothers, children, partners, friends, colleagues - so it's time we started talking about it with a little more candor.

Before the War: On Marriage, Hierarchy, and Our Matriarchal Origins by Elisha Daeva

The book Before War will change how its readers look at the world — by exposing the female roots of Western civilization. It draws on the evidence from anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, primatology, and the shocking new genetics data, to tell the story of Western civilization.

Social Justice and Racial Equity, & The Black Female Experience

The Hate You Give, by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Children of The Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi

In a world where magic has disappeared and maji have been slaughtered by a ruthless king, a girl named Zélie joins forces with the Princess Amari and embarks on a quest to restore magic and to strike back against the forces that have been oppressing the lands of Orïsha.

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot, by Mikki Kendall

Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues.

Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America, by Ibi Zoboi (editor)

Black Enough is a star-studded anthology edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi that will delve into the closeted thoughts, hidden experiences, and daily struggles of black teens across the country. From a spectrum of backgrounds—urban and rural, wealthy and poor, mixed race, immigrants, and more—Black Enough showcases diversity within diversity.

The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

A Song Below Water, by Bethany C. Morrow

Tavia is already at odds with the world, forced to keep her siren identity under wraps in a society that wants to keep her kind under lock and key. Nevermind she's also stuck in Portland, Oregon, a city with only a handful of black folk and even fewer of those with magical powers. At least she has her bestie Effie by her side as they tackle high school drama, family secrets, and unrequited crushes.

Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams

Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.

Liz’s Top Picks

Swell: A Sailing Surfer’s Voyage of Awakening, by Captain Liz Clark

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma,

by Bessel van der Kolk

In The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity.

Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.

Nadia’s Top Picks

What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing,

by Bruce D. Perry, Oprah Winfrey

Our earliest experiences shape our lives far down the road, and What Happened to You? provides powerful scientific and emotional insights into the behavioral patterns so many of us struggle to understand.

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi

A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Verity, by Colleen Hoover

Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish.

Liz Wolfe is a Pennsyltucky Pisces who made her way down to the Edge of America, Folly Beach, in 2016 and has been surfing, writing, and advocating for more ladies in the water ever since. @lm.wolfe

Nadia Klincewicz is a full time sexuality educator, part time surf instructor in Charleston, SC.

Likes: yogurt, her longboard, the morning time. Dislikes: sand in her bed, racism, coffee. @naut_nadia

shes on edge @shes_on_edge

shes on edge: website

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