Fourth-Wave Feminist Dystopias

“The Handmaid’s Tale” initially came out in the 1980s, but has seen a resurgence in popularity thanks to the Hulu adaptation (which updated the story to address more fourth-wave feminist concerns). Margaret Atwood’s work is one of the biggest inspirations for the latest wave of feminist dystopias. Find out why the red robes of the handmaids have become so iconic.

One of the most acclaimed novels of 2017, this brilliant novel retells the story of Joan of Arc in a techno-futuristic world where a small group of humans fights to survive extinction.

Hillary Jordan’s novel is the perfect mix of “The Scarlet Letter” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.” An exhilarating examination of the controversial and polarizing topic of abortion and just punishment.

Maggie Shen King’s much buzzed-about debut imagines a not-so-distant future where China’s current one-child policy leads to many repressive policies in an attempt to correct the excessive gender imbalance. Brilliantly balances its incisive takes about many tough issues.

“In contrast to [‘An Excess Male’ and ‘The Book of the Unnamed Midwife’], Pakistani writer Bina Shah’s [book] approaches gender roles from a South Asian perspective, imagining a future city in which generations of gender selection, war, and disease have drastically reduced the population of WOMEN in proportion to men. Shah uses this scenario to point a magnifying glass at modern cultural practices like veiling, gender seclusion, and reproductive control, placing them in a future when female scarcity has replaced religious authority as an excuse for male control,” according to Ross Johnson, who made a list of books to read after “The Handmaid’s Tale” for Barnes & Noble’s blog.

In a near-future America, the punishments for defying authority include vaporization and re-education camps via time travel to the past. A teenage girl, Adriane, is sent back to Wisconsin in 1959 to show how this time period, so wistfully remembered by many in current-day America, was oppressive for women and other minority groups. A chilling and pointed commentary from the prolific Joyce Carol Oates.

Incredibly imaginative, this thrilling and suspenseful tale of a bee — yes, an actual bee — who dares to differ from her kind is a spectacularly wrought tale, with as much to say about human nature as hive mentalities.