8 Must-Reads on the Menstrual Movement
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”
-Margaret Fuller
Here are eight of our favorite books that will inspire you to fight for menstrual equality and end period poverty.
PERIOD founder and Harvard College student Nadya Okamoto offers a manifesto on menstruation and why we can no longer silence those who bleed--and how to engage in youth activism.
Period Power aims to explain what menstruation is, shed light on the stigmas and resulting biases, and create a strategy to end the silence and prompt conversation about periods.
2. It’s Only Blood: Shattering the Taboo of Menstruation
By Anna Dahlqvist
Across the world, 2 billion people experience menstruation, yet menstruation is seen as a mark of shame.
In It's Only Blood Anna Dahlqvist tells the shocking but always moving stories of why and how people from Sweden to Bangladesh, from the United States to Uganda, are fighting back against the shame.
3. Period. End of Sentence.: A New Chapter in the Fight for Menstrual Justice
By Anita Diamant
This book outlines the challenges facing those who menstruate worldwide and the solutions championed by a new generation of body positive activists, innovators and public figures.
Fearless, revolutionary, and fascinating, Period. End of Sentence. is an essential read for anyone interested in empowering women, girls, and others around the world.
4. Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity
By Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
Menstruation is no longer something to whisper about. Jennifer Weiss-Wolf shares her firsthand account in the fight for "period equity" and introduces readers to the everyday people who are making change happen.
Seemingly overnight, a movement has emerged to address the centrality of menstruation in relation to core issues of gender equality and equity.
5. Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation
By Elissa Stein and Susan Kim
Flow spans its fascinating, occasionally wacky and sometimes downright scary story: from mikvahs (ritual cleansing baths) to menopause, hysteria to hysterectomies—not to mention the Pill, cramps, the history of underwear, and the movie about puberty they showed you in 5th grade.
As irreverent as it is informative, Flow eradicates the stigma placed on it for centuries.
6. It’s About Bloody Time. Period.
By Emma Barnett
At a time when women around the world are raising their voices in the fight for equality, there is still one taboo where there remains a deafening silence: periods.
Period. will be an agenda-setting manifesto to remove the stigma and myths continuing to surround the female body.
Bold, unapologetic and a crusade to ignite conversation, this is a book for every woman – and man – everywhere.
7. The Period Passport: Conquering Period Poverty
By Chaste Christopher Inegbedion and Yetunde Oluwafunmilayo Tola
One may be tempted to ask, ‘Why exactly should boys be educated on menstruation?’ The more they know, the better they can empathize with and understand the women in their lives.
The Period Passport is a call to action to the concerned parts of ourselves, parts that could be instruments of change in solving one of the biggest problems menstruating individuals face today.
8. New Blood: Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation
By Chris Bobel
New Blood offers a fresh interdisciplinary look at feminism-in-flux. Chris Bobel shows how a little-known yet enduring force in the feminist health, environmental, and consumer rights movements reveals a complicated story of continuity and change within the women's movement.
With verve and conviction, Bobel illuminates today's feminism-on-the-ground--indisputably vibrant, contentious, and ever-dynamic.
