Feminist literature

In the 15th century, Christine de Pizan wrote The Book of the City of Ladies which combats prejudices and enhances the importance of women in society.

In Western feminist literary scholarship, studies such as Dale Spender's Mothers of the Novel (1986) and Jane Spencer's The Rise of the Woman Novelist (1986) were ground-breaking in their insistence that women have always been writing.

A Room of One's Own (1929) by Virginia Woolf, is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.

[1][3][4] Most genres and subgenres have undergone a similar analysis, so literary studies have entered new territories such as the "female gothic"[5] or women's science fiction.

According to Elyce Rae Helford, "Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice.

[7] Notable texts of this kind are Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Joanna Russ' The Female Man (1970), Octavia Butler's Kindred (1979), and Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale (1985).

For example, Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings was extremely influential, as it represented the specific racism and sexism experienced by black women growing up in the United States.