Staff Picks: Recommendations from the OIT Library

"I'd rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all."

This is a collection of essays that make it clear that it’s okay to be messy, to hold conflicting opinions, to do things that don’t follow the party line, to question and be confused and STILL be a feminist. This book is full of one woman's thoughts on a wide range of contemporary American issues, political and cultural, with the basic theme of how feminism can confound and inspire.

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

Elizabeth Bennett is born into a society where women are viewed as property, first of their father, and then of their husband. While it is a love story, Pride and Prejudice also explores the importance of knowing who you are, and remaining true to your principles, ending with a heroine who is complex, intelligent, and wholly her own person.

...And I a smiling woman
I am only thirty.
And like that cat I have nine times to die...
(from "Lady Lazarus")

TW: Death and Suicide

Sylvia Plath's last collection of poetry, published nearly two years after her death. At the same time breathtakingly beautiful and brutally honest and raw. Plath's melodic writing allows for her suffering to become a work of art.

"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."

The world is divided into three totalitarian states. Total control, elimination of all human values, and attempts to survive in a world full of hatred. Can you change the system and not lose your own individuality?

"The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst."

It's 1939 Nazi Germany, and Liesel is searching for the meaning of life through books. A beautiful, riveting story about simple acts of kindness in a world filled with horrors.

"Out of the huts of history's shame / I rise / Up from a past that's rooted in pain / I rise"

From reflections on African American life, to the revolutionary celebrations of womanhood, this complete collection of poetry's honors Maya Angelou's remarkable life.

If you enjoy sci-fi and world building, as well as complex characters, this book is for you. And it's now a movie!

Paradise Lost is a different side of the biblical story of Adam and Eve, with focus on Lucifer himself. This book is about the differences between good and bad, letting us decide who was right.

A poetry collection discussing society and the human condition. A beautifully written commentary on police brutality, the afterlife, and mortality.