LIST: 10 Books About Women in Politics Everyone Should Read for Women's History Month
/By Kimberly Fain
1. A Heart in Politics: Jeanette Rankin and Patsy T. Mink by Sue Davidson (1994)
In A Heart in Politics, Sue Davidson skillfully draws parallels between the lives of legislators Jeanette Rankin and Patsy T. Mink. Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, in 1916. Mink was the first Asian-American elected to Congress, in 1964. Rankin was committed to women’s suffrage and peace, while Mink focused on civil rights and the environment. These women served in very different eras, and had very different journeys, but Davidson finds common themes in their trailblazing careers.
2. The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins – Social Security, Unemployment, Insurance, and the Minimum Wage by Kirsten Downey (2009)
Frances Perkins was the first female Cabinet member, serving as Secretary of Labor for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Using Perkins’ lengthy (and fascinating) oral history, interviews with family members, and archival records, biographer Kirsten Downey tells the remarkable story of Perkins’ significant contributions to building America as we now know it. Despite her comfortable upbringing, Perkins was relentlessly committed to helping those at the bottom. Perkins played an enormous role in building the social safety net—establishing such landmark programs as the minimum wage, social security, and unemployment insurance.
3. No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington by Condoleezza Rice (2011)
Condoleeza Rice was an academic at Stanford who theorized about world diplomacy before she arrived on the national political stage and started doing it. This well-known Republican is best known for her for her role as George W. Bush’s chief advisor on national security, including the administration’s response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Although much of that response has not aged well – the Iraq War being at the top of that list -- Rice insists in this memoir that she always had the nation’s best interest at heart. No Higher Honor offers an introspective look at what occurred behind the White House’s doors, on subjects ranging from the Middle East to India to Russia. At a time when divisions between conservative and liberal politicians loom large, No Higher Honor serves as reminder that along with some really large differences, there have always been strands of common ground.
4. Hard Choices: A Memoir by Hillary Rodham Clinton (2014)
Hard Choices is centered on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s role as President Obama’s Secretary of State. Clinton rose to fame as First Lady to the 42nd United States President, of course, but it was her trailblazing accomplishments as Senator from New York and then as Secretary of State that established her as a formidable historical figure well outside of her husband’s shadow. Although Clinton did not become President, her legacy remains historic, in areas ranging from the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden to the rights of women worldwide. This book was written before her 2016 Presidential run, but that race, even though unsuccessful, gave her an even larger platform from which to speak out about threats to our democracy.
5. Fascism: A Warning by Madeline Albright (2019)
In Fascism, Madeline Albright issued an urgent warning to America to be alert to authoritarian threats. Having been born in wartime Europe, and fleeing to America as a child, Albright had personal experience with the dire consequences of ruthless dictators. In the Clinton Administration, she became the first woman Secretary of State, and learned firsthand the hard lessons she imparted in Fascism. In this New York Times bestselling book, published three years before her death, Albright gave clear-eyed advice on how to recognize fascism when it appears. Those warnings are more important than ever now, as our nation flirts with unraveling democracy and drifts toward authoritarianism.
6. The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris (2019)
Before becoming the first woman of African American and Asian descent to serve as Vice President, Harris was District Attorney for San Francisco, Attorney General of California, and then United States Senator – a classically American rise to power, for the daughter of a mother from India and a father from Jamaica. In this memoir, Harris shows how her unique background gives her a personal understanding of the challenges and stigmas immigrant families continue to face. She also demonstrates a can-do attitude and optimism that is more valuable than ever as national and international politics turn increasingly dark.
7. AOC: The Fearless Rise and Powerful Resonance of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by Lynda Lopez (2020)
In AOC, editor Lopez published a collection of writers who discuss the impact of U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As a politician of Puerto Rican descent, Ocasio-Cortez joins a distinguished line of activists descended from that storied island who have fought for change throughout history. Rebecca Traister discusses why men are often threatened by her; Erin Aubry Kaplan explores how she is a political disrupter against the status quo; and Nathan J. Robinson explains her political stance as a Democratic Socialist. In a time when human rights are eroding, AOC offers an insightful look at a politician who is not afraid to take bold stands.
8. Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America by Keisha N. Blain (2021)
Keisha N. Blain, a distinguished African-American historian at Brown University, presents Fannie Lou Hamer’s extraordinary life in Until I Am Free. In this mixed-genre book — part social commentary, biography, and intellectual history —readers are confronted with Hamer’s activism and legacy of social justice in all of its gritty glory. As a Southerner from Mississippi, she recognized and confronted the deep racial strife in America drawing on her own deep experience with it. Although Hamer never held office, she made more history than most people who did, notably with her role as vice chair of the Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, where she and her anti-segregationist allies made history by disrupting the party’s method of selecting delegates. In Until I Am Free, Blain draws lessons from Hamer’s life on how her contemporary successors can continue the battle.
9. The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chin by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (2023)
In The Vice President’s Wife, the award-winning Amrita Chakrabarti Myers tells the true tale of Julia Ann Chinn, the enslaved woman whose common-law husband Richard Mentor Johnson, a Kentucky politician, went on to serve – after her death -- as Vice President under Martin Van Buren. Chinn worked on his plantation in a supervisory role, and her husband trusted her enough to manage his estate while he was away. Because slaves were deemed to be property of their owners, Chinn had no legal right to her own personhood. Nonetheless, by overseeing Johnson’s slave labor force, she controlled the destiny of others. Although she was no longer alive when Johnson ran for Vice President, his political opponents used the marriage against him. With The Vice President’s Wife, Myers finds lessons about America’s centuries long perception of race, gender, and politics in a very surprising story.
10. Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics by Anastasia C. Curwood (2023)
Anastasia C. Curwood examines the life of Shirley Chisholm, the “unbossed and unbought” Brooklyn politician who was the first African-American woman to serve in Congress. As Curwood notes, Chisholm’s intersectionality went beyond being Black and a woman – she also had roots in Barbados, and frequently traveled between Brooklyn and the island in her childhood. All of this gave Chisholm vast stores of knowledge and empathy, which she wielded on behalf of her constituents, many of whom were among the nation’s most marginalized. It is a compelling life story, and a reminder, as hope seems in ever shorter supply, that women like Chisholm accomplished great things against even longer odds.
Kimberly Fain, Ph.D., J.D., teaches at Texas Southern University. She is the editor of African American Literature Anthology: Slavery, Liberation, and Resistance, and the author of Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the Movies and Colson Whitehead: The Postracial Voice of Contemporary Literature
