There are many books that have inspired me, some fiction, some nonfiction.  Following is a small sampling, I will add to this list as time goes by.  These are not in order of the most impactful except for the first two

Our Bodies Ourselves, by the Boston Women's Health Collective--a book written by women for women.  I received a copy of this book as a teen and gave a copy to my own daughter.  I will keep a copy of this book on my shelf for the rest of my life.

The Childless Revolution: What It Means to be Childless Today  by Madelyn Cain, written when Cain's own daughter was a teen.  This book inspired me to ask the question, What if my daughter felt ambivalent or was unable to achieve motherhood?  Would she feel judged, criticized, left out?  

Living the Life Unexpected:12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Future Without Children by Jody Day, Founder of Gateway Women, an organization that provides support for women who expected motherhood but didn't find it.  Jody offers workshops, life coaching, a wonderful web of support. http://gateway-women.com/   

The Awakening by Kate Chopin (written 1899)--about a woman who follows life's "scripts," then awakens as if from a dream, and she feels that she has been living a life she didn't consciously choose. She went along with societal expectations and finds that a big part of who she is has been suppressed.  My favorite quote, "She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which we appear before the world."

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, with my favorite quote, "Prejudices are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education. They grow there firm as weeds among stones."

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, published 1962. Carson (a biologist) predicted future springtimes devoid of the chirps of birds due to pesticide use. This quote is perhaps most startling: “A quarter century ago, cancer in children was considered a medical rarity.” — Sadly, Carson herself died of cancer in 1964; she didn’t live to see the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency - the creation of which came about due to her work.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown (1970). No other book comes close to the reality of those who lived in North America when the Europeans arrived. My mother read this book when it came out (I was but a girl). When I finally read it, I was astonished by the interviews contained in this book — both testimonies of the “white man” and the indigenous peoples. In 2022, when I met a Navajo man at Four Corners (where UT, CO, AZ & NM meet), I brought up the book and he quipped, “I read that book when I was 10.” Note that I make a habit of talking, respectfully, to people while traveling. This is how we learn. By meeting people where they are - figuratively and often literally.

Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation, Edited by Philip Cafaro and Eileen Crist.  Chapter 6, "How a Plethora of People Produce a Paucity of Wildlife," talks of a world where polar bears are drowning or starving because the polar ice is melting, and orangutans are endangered because the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra are being razed, and asks: When will the Earth's natural resources run out?  Although extinction is a natural phenomenon at a rate of 1 to 5 species per year, our current rate is dozens PER DAY. Chapter 13 is "Nulliparity & a Cruel Hoax Revisited" by ecologist Stephanie Mills, the "notorious nonmother" (her words) who declared in her 1969 college commencement address that the best thing she could do for the Earth was to not have children. Mills influenced the title for my book's final chapter, "The Vanishing Conversation," when she expressed that women have spoken of their ambivalence toward motherhood throughout history, but their voices keep vanishing. You can re-discover many of those voices in my book, The Female Assumption.