Manifesta | Jennifer Baumgardner & Amy Richards

Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (10th Anniversary Edition)

418 pages | Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Today, people of all genders strive to uphold the goals of feminism and proudly embrace the term, but the movement itself is often beset with confusion and questions. Does personal empowerment happen at the expense of politics? Is feminism for the few--or does it speak to the many as they bump up against daily injustices? What does it mean to say "the future is female"?

In 2000, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards's Manifesta set out to chronicle the feminism of their generation. They brilliantly revealed the snags in various hubs of the movement--from antipathy to the term itself to the hyped hatred of feminism's imperfect spokespeople--and showed that these snags had not imperiled the feminist cause. The book went on to inspire a new generation of readers and has become a classic of contemporary feminist literature.