These aren’t just books for women in their 20s. They’re amazing books for all readers. But they resonate well with twenty-somethings. Being in your twenties is wild: You have to figure out who you are, how to be an adult, and how to earn a living, all at once. It’s a lot.
Sometimes, the right book comes along, and we glimpse a whole new way of being in the world. Or we discover new reasons to laugh at ourselves and feel less alone. These books make great gifts for women in their 20s — or gifts for yourself.
In Acne: A Memoir, Laura Chinn tells hilarious stories that will make you laugh uncontrollably while also breaking your heart. “This is not a sad book,” she tells us, early on, but you will probably cry, towards the end, when her beloved brother dies from cancer. Despite all the tragedy, hardship, economic uncertainty, and casual misogyny and sexual assault — or perhaps because of it — Chinn finds the true humor in life’s calamities. Despite the title, this is not a book about acne (although Chinn did suffer from it, for years, and also suffered from the alarming side effects of the commonly-prescribed Accutane). This book is about healing from the message women receive from the world — the message that you are an object. In the book, Chinn gradually discovers that she is a person — with all the complex needs that humanity entails — and she deserves healing and happiness.
This is a perfect book for anyone of any age who appreciates heartfelt stories about life and loss (and drugs, sex, and dancing).
In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy doesn’t reduce anything to the simple sentiment expressed in the title. Everything is more complex than that. The book begins with a harrowing scene at her mother’s deathbed, when McCurdy, a former child star, believes the piece of good news that will wake her mother from her coma is that she has reached her goal weight. McCurdy, a former child star who gained fame on Nickelodeon, has tried to stop her body from maturing, at her mother’s urging, by practicing “calorie restriction” — also known as anorexia — with her mom. Anorexia turns to bulimia and self-loathing. Obsessive-compulsive disorder rears its head. But nothing is that simple. Thanks to brilliant writing and interiority, we see the true needs behind these complicated diseases. And we see that nothing is as simple as the word “recovery” might make it seem.
McCurdy doesn’t pull any punches (as you might have gathered, from the title). But nothing is gratuitous — it’s simply the real, raw account of what can happen to someone who is denied the benefits and protections (and growth) we normally associate with childhood.
This book is perfect for any woman who has ever had complicated thoughts about food, or her parents, or herself. So basically, it’s a great read for any woman ever.
This book by Michelle Obama is a joy to read, but it will also inspire women in their 20s, many of whom are just beginning to grapple with the idea of balancing a successful career with having a family.
Ms. Obama isn’t just a national icon. She’s also an incredible writer. This book is relayed with the tone of a friend telling stories over tea. You might almost forget she’s the former first lady who took the world by storm. She navigates her career, fertility treatments, motherhood, and her father’s death with grace, wisdom, and compassion. And, of course, she reluctantly enters the stage of national politics.
This is the perfect book for women in their 20s who want to change the world — or simply better understand this national hero.
This novel by Rona Jaffe is probably the oldest book on this list. It was published in 1958. But the issues of sexism and identity will resonate just as sharply with readers today — especially young women who have recently graduated and entered the working world.
The main characters in this book are in their early twenties in New York City. Although “sexual harassment” wasn’t a term that existed yet, the women face plenty of it at the office of the publishing company where they work. (They also navigate female friendships and less-friendly workplace relationships, the themes of which will ring true for many readers as well.)
The protagonist, Caroline, is 20 when the book begins. She’s recovering from a heartbreak and a broken-off engagement. Another woman in the office wants to be an actress; another is a working single mother. None of them have enough money. As they learn about power dynamics (and sometimes contemplate relationships with older men), their goals and their sense of self — and their ideas about what’s possible, and what’s desirable — begin to change. We also sense the power of female friendships, of talking with other women about the things our mothers’ generation didn’t talk about.
The author, Jaffe, was 26 when this novel was published. She wrote it for other women in their 20s, so they wouldn’t feel so alone. This would be a perfect book for a 20 year old woman, but its themes can resonate with women of all ages, at any point in their careers.
This book by Cheryl Strayed will resonate with women in their 20s who have faced major hardships. In this memoir, readers travel with Strayed, whose lack of backpacking experience doesn’t stop her from setting off to through-hike the Pacific Crest Trail alone.
Strayed is a gripping travel companion, and the reader gradually discovers how she decided on this journey to find herself — and how she came to be so lost. We learn that her mother, who was the “love of her life,” has died young, sending the twenty-something Strayed into a spiral of grief, addiction, and self-destructive behavior.
On the trail, she confronts her past and her pain. As she faces new on-trail obstacles, she finds her own inner strength once again. By the time she completes the journey, she has re-made herself, once again, into the woman her mother raised. She’s ready to go back into the world and build her new life.
This book can help women see unconventional ways to find themselves, heal themselves, and build a whole new life after trauma.
This novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an incredible read that sheds light on racism, society, and culture. And it’s no surprise that it would cover weighty topics: Adichie holds advanced degrees in African History, among other disciplines.
The author’s personal story — of how she came to America to attend university, after growing up in Nigeria — is the foundation of this fictional novel. (Adichie has said the narrator’s experiences are largely based on her own.) Maybe that’s why the characters and dialogue feel so real.
And while it explores the universal themes that affect all of us in our twenties — finding love, finding ourselves — it’s also hyper-specific. It dissects different cultures (in the US, Nigeria, and Britain) without satirizing them. After reading it, you may feel more worldly and informed, but you’ll also have a new sense of how identity is forged — a crucial theme for all of us in our 20s.
This book by Tara Westover details her life as the seventh child of her survivalist Mormon parents in rural Idaho. Although she recounts a childhood of abuse and trauma, it’s a hopeful tale: Westover decides to go to school, a choice that drives her to leave the valley where she was raised. It’s a choice that alienates her family, yet helps her build a life of her own.
Westover overcame nearly insurmountable challenges, teaching herself enough to attend college despite never having gone to high school (or any school). She questions the oddities of religious life without condemning them. Even in writing about her abusers, she is even-handed, recognizing the fallibility of memory.
This memoir is perfect for young women with troubling memories, or anyone who refuses to be defined by what they were taught as a child. You’ll be shocked by her tale of a wild family prepping for the “end of days.” But in Westover, everyone can find inspiration.
This novel by Isabel Allende is renowned and recommended to readers of all ages. It follows three generations of family members in an unnamed Latin American country, which is clearly based on Chile, where the author grew up.
It’s an intergenerational saga, with all the births, deaths, and love affairs you’d expect, and with a hint of Allende’s signature magical realism. (She is one of the best-known and most beloved authors in the genre of magical realism, as well as Latin American literature, and this novel launched her career.)
You’ll be immersed in the personal lives of the family members, and the conversations in their homes, but you’ll also learn a lot about a Latin American dictatorship. (Allende is well-qualified to cover this; she’s related to a former Chilean president.) Despite their political leanings, she treats all her characters with three-dimensional humanity. You might find more empathy for opponents in your own political disagreements, after reading this novel.
This book by Lulu Miller, a contributor to NPR’s “Radiolab” podcast, is ostensibly a biography of an eccentric scientist named David Starr Jordan, who died almost a century ago. But it’s also so much more. Between scenes of scientific inquiry and intrigue, we start to discover why Miller became so obsessed with this one scientist and his mission of naming and categorizing species.
Miller quietly weaves her own story into a larger story about evolutionary science. You almost don’t see it coming. You may gasp when she quietly relays her mental health crisis, between scenes about fish specimens.
This is not to say that you’ll be reading about science while simply waiting for more tidbits about her own life. Miller has actually made the story of this long-dead scientist absolutely fascinating. But it’s more fascinating to figure out how she’ll answer the question that has plagued her since childhood, when she was told by her scientist father that the universe was essentially meaningless. She discovers meaning and much more by the end of the book. I don’t want to give any spoilers away, but this book would be great for anyone struggling with self-doubt, self-harm, or navigating their own sexuality.
This collection of essays by Chloe Caldwell explores the struggles experienced by one woman in her twenties. They are particular to her life but will resonate with many twenty-somethings. She moves back home, recovers from addiction, works a low-wage job in a shop, and battles cystic acne.
Even her essay about cystic acne is told with self-deprecating hilarity. (If you’re facing a similar struggle, you could also check out our article about trying CBD oil for acne.) Of course, not every moment of this book is hilarious. Caldwell doesn’t shy away from the lows and uglier parts of trying to find our way. But by the end, we realize they’re all part of the journey. Someday, we’ll look back on the choices we made in our twenties with empathy. Maybe we, like Caldwell, will find reasons to laugh.
This heartbreaking memoir shouldn’t need to exist. Chanel Miller wouldn’t have to exhort us to “know her name,” if she hadn’t first been known in the press as “Emily Doe,” the anonymous victim who was sexually assaulted while drunk and unconscious on the Stanford Campus.
Miller decided to press charges against her assailant, Brock Turner, and was forced to undergo a lot of public humiliation during the trial. (A lot of people rallied behind Turner, bemoaning the bright future he was losing due to these allegations.)
Miller’s public story was an antecedent to the MeToo movement. But in this beautifully written book, readers witness her inner struggle. We learn how pain can be transformed into art, and how healing takes unending work.
This book by Susan Burton, an editor at NPR’s “This American Life,” recounts her anxiety-ridden adolescence and her twenties. This period of her life was secretly dominated by her eating disorder.
Burton accurately captures the ways the world can make girls focus on their bodies, often at the expense of their sanity and growth. She explains the dark desperation that accompanies eating disorders.
But like most good memoirs, she doesn’t give us any easy answers. Readers may sense what drove her to this disorder, and how she began to emerge, decades later, physically healthy and mentally healing. In her raw emotions, we sense that her healing journey continues today.
Experts note that eating disorders are not just a teen problem. These problems affect many women into adulthood. This memoir can help young women, who have troubled relationships with food themselves, start to feel less alone.
This book by Sheila Heti is what the author calls a “novel from life.” It is not a memoir, exactly, but part of the burgeoning genre of auto-fiction. The characters are clearly based on her actual friends, a group of artists living in Toronto.
This book is not rich in high-stakes drama or plot, but that’s sort of the point. It’s perfect for someone in her twenties, asking questions about life while experiencing the banality of day-to-day life. The narrator goes shopping, hangs out with friends, drinks, and has casual sex, like a lot of twenty-somethings. But she also asks questions about what makes good art, and of course, the title question: How should a person be? It’s a question a lot of us ask in our twenties. Of course, Heti doesn’t land on any hard-and-fast answers, but in asking the question throughout her daily life, we glimpse new ways of asking it in our own lives, too.
This book by the Irish author Sally Rooney explores an intense female friendship between two young women who, in high school, were lovers. Now their romance has ended, but their friendship, with its jealousy and power dynamics, and closeness, could resemble a youthful romance in many ways.
When the girls, Frances and Bobbi, meet a successful married woman in her 30s, their relationship starts to take a turn — especially when one of them is drawn to the woman’s husband. In this novel of adultery, Rooney reflects on how self-delusion can plague young women on their quest for self-knowledge. These young women navigate careers, pride, and betrayal through their complex relationship with an older married couple.
This book is perfect for anyone who loves to banter about life’s deepest mysteries with their friends — or for anyone whose life has taken a turn towards a kind of complexity they never contemplated.
Valenti may be best known for her feminist responses to moments in pop culture, often published in the Guardian. In this book, however, she steps away from topical takes in order to tell her own story.
The narrative crystallizes around her treatment by men, and how it influenced her thinking and way of being in the world. She wrote the book to answer a question: “Who would I be if I didn’t live in a world that hated women?”
Critics may wish that this book had a more cohesive structure because it sometimes feels like a litany of traumatic events. But many women may find Valenti’s anecdotes familiar. This book can prompt a reader to unearth similar moments from her own memory. It’s particularly valuable for women in their twenties because it focuses on moments from Valenti’s youth, when the world started to perceive her merely as a sex object. (She was 12.)
This can make for uncomfortable reading. But finding commonalities with other women can help young women discover their strength and resilience. It can help us demand a better world, and wonder (like Valenti did) who we could be in that world.
This book by comedian Whitney Cummings will make you laugh, but it can also help you heal. It will resonate particularly well with anyone who has been in co-dependent relationships or struggled with eating disorders and other problems with body image.
It didn’t occur to Cummings to seek professional therapy until she was in her early thirties. With the help of a trained therapist, she was able to process her memories of sexual violence and early familial trauma. Of course, all her tales of struggle are leavened by her deflective humor (a protective stance she adopted early in life).
Cummings is an incredibly gifted comedian, and this book is hilarious. But it’s not just about the laughs. You’ll also learn about a profound healing journey, and you may think differently about certain issues. Although some aspects of this book aren’t tailor-made for women in their 20s (like egg-freezing, for example), women under 30 will still love this book. The litany of men Cummings dated in her 20s will make any 20-something laugh and feel seen, too.
These essays by Roxane Gay will make you think about being a woman in the 21st century in a new light. You may agree with the author; you may not. But that’s not really the point. These essays ask questions. They will make you question certain things in pop culture: How problematic is “Fifty Shades of Gray?” How about catchy pop music like “Blurred Lines?”
They’ll also help you have more empathy for other women, including those in the public eye. It’s impossible to be a perfect feminist, Gay explains. Today, while more people are embracing intersectional feminism (which is more inclusive of minorities and other marginalized people), it can be hard to express your original thoughts about issues like, say, the Me Too movement, without being slandered for not being feminist or inclusive enough.
But being a “bad” feminist, perhaps, is better than not considering these issues at all. If you’re ready for a deep consideration of complex issues facing women today, read this book.
This book by Ottessa Moshfegh tells a story of desperation and alienation. The twenty-something narrator’s shallowness and emptiness are not the results of her parents’ recent deaths; her parents, too, were distant and cruel, she recalls.
She feels nothing, and she wants to feel an even greater nothing. Her only passion is sleeping. She mixes a dizzying array of pharmaceuticals to give her a solid, dreamless sleep. After quitting her job at a New York City art gallery to focus on her sleep, she has an idea: To sleep a wonderful chemically-induced sleep for a year. (She plans to spend a few hours, here and there, in a semi-awake stupor, and then go back to sleep.)
This may sound like it’s lacking the plot for a novel, and that’s sort of the point. We enter the narrator’s world of emptiness building on emptiness, her only retort to a world that’s too delusionally upbeat. She’s convinced that after her year of sleep, she’ll wake up reborn.
Rebirth and reinvention are common themes of our twenties. Though we may not try to induce a year of sleep, we can all understand the longing to curl up and take a break from the world. Grab this book when you want to take a break. You’ll be absorbed into Moshfegh’s brilliant mind. It will not put you to sleep. The unsettling ending may, in fact, jolt you awake.
This book by Tina Fey would be a great gift for anyone who’s pursuing a career in a male-dominated field. Or anyone who loves Tina Fey. (Which is basically everyone, right?) Or just anyone who loves to laugh, and who appreciates one of the best comedic voices of a generation.
Fey’s voice may feel familiar to anyone who loved the TV show 30 Rock. She’s hilariously self-deprecating, much like her character on the show, Liz Lemon. In the book, she recounts anecdotes and characters from her life, mixed with a bunch of jokes and observations. The book can inspire you while also making you laugh out loud. It also addresses many of the questions that arise for young women — like how to balance career ambition with other goals, and how to overcome rejection. A lot of rejection. Some of the funniest tales in the book are about her pursuit of boys who were not interested in her.
Even when she talks about her successes, her voice is imbued with humility. And humor. A lot of humor.
This novel by Barbara Kingsolver follows the wife and four daughters of an evangelical Baptist missionary who moves his family to the Congo in 1959. The novel follows the women for three decades as they try to heal from tragedy and reconstruct their family and their beliefs.
This beautiful book would be perfect for anyone contemplating the mysteries of God, the damage wrought by colonialism, or an economic system that only benefits the few.
This book by Lisa Brennan-Jobs is about growing up as the daughter of the tech icon and Apple founder Steve Jobs. But it’s also about the more universal themes common to memoirs: growing up, finding yourself, and reckoning with the lingering impacts of your upbringing.
Brennan-Jobs is unsparing in her depictions of conversations and events with her father, who was often cruel. But she loved him. And she basked in the glow of his fame, relishing the rare times when he did deign to acknowledge her.
In our twenties, we often begin to piece together how our lives unfolded; how we went from being children to suddenly being adults. Brennan-Jobs does this with grace and literary talent. You’ll be astounded by her (and her mother’s) resilience in the face of difficulty. Brennan-Jobs endows all her characters, including her father, with three-dimensional humanity. By the end of the book, she better understands who she is. That’s something we can all aspire to in our twenties, and this book might help give you new insights into how to do that.
This book by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a beautiful paean to the natural world and her Native American ancestors. Reading this collection of essays may make you feel like you’re meditating in a mossy forest or receiving gifts from the sky.
But it’s not all about mysticism. Kimmerer is also a professor and a conventionally-trained botanist. But just because she knows the Latin names of plant species doesn’t mean she won’t also tell you about their role in ancient legends, or their place in the culture of gratitude and gift-giving she has seen in Native American tribes like hers.
You may begin to see the natural world the way Kimmerer sees it, full of messages and gifts, waiting for us to interact responsibly with it. You may be more likely to strike up a mutually beneficial relationship with the land outside your front door. (Even if that just means starting a garden.) Kimmerer can help us view our space in the world — and our responsibilities to one another — through a different lens.
This is a great book for a 20-something woman who loves plants, or who works in academia, as Kimmerer does.
Maybe it’s odd, in a list of books for women in their 20s, to include this book by Trevor Noah, which is clearly by (and about) a man. But this book is simply too good for anyone to miss out on reading, regardless of their age or gender. Trevor Noah’s observations about the harrowing absurdity of apartheid illuminate the enduring damage and absurdity of racism itself.
Born an interracial child in apartheid South Africa, Trevor Noah managed to survive and avoid imprisonment (narrowly). His early survival depended on the quick thinking and fierce intelligence of his single mother. As he grew older, and had to fend for himself, he learned several languages, along with the savvy day-by-day, hour-by-hour business skills of an entrepreneur, DJ, and distributor of pirated CDs.
This may be a book about a man, but it’s a fascinating, enjoyable, transformative read for anyone. And by the end of the book, it’s clear who Trevor Noah’s hero is: his mom.
This book by Elizabeth Gilbert has become a best-seller, a movie, and a cultural meme. It was devoured and discussed at length by women in the early 2000s.
As with anything that becomes an instant cultural phenomenon, there was a fair amount of backlash. The book has been criticized as out-of-touch, self-indulgent, and tone-deaf. (The premise, traveling around three countries in search of spiritual enlightenment, is out of reach for most women.) The memoir has largely been dismissed by more serious intellectuals and feminists.
At the risk of sounding mainstream and basic, let me defend this book. First of all, it’s a fun read. Gilbert is funny and warm, and she shares intimate details of her ups and downs. When the book begins, she’s 31, which, at the time I read it (in my twenties), sounded worldly and impossibly far away. When she realizes she’s unhappy in her marriage, she decides to get a divorce, and her solo adventures begin.
Even if the reader isn’t in an unhappy marriage herself, she can be inspired by how Gilbert begins a process of listening to her own inner voice and trusting herself. The reader can begin to sense how being alone might not be terrifying. It might, in fact, be liberating.
That’s a pretty valuable lesson to learn in your 20s, even if the book does embody a sense of privilege. If you’re looking for a more woke read, check out some of the other books on this list.
This book by Meaghan O’Connell would be great for anyone who became a mother in their twenties, whether they intended to or not. When the author found herself unexpectedly pregnant at 29, she worried about her career, her stability, her body, and more. As a mother, of course, she grappled with the guilt of caring about these things.
She also struggled with a traumatic birth experience followed by a year of postpartum depression. But she writes about it all unflinchingly.
What if we told women the truth about motherhood? This book asks. And this book does exactly that. And in the end — once she recovers from severe depression, and finds some career balance — it’s wonderful.
Looking for other gifts for first-time moms? Check out our guide to the best gifts for new moms.
This book by Andrew Ridker stands out on this list because it’s actually not written by a woman. And the main character isn’t even female. However, it’s a novel about a family, and the adult daughter (a woman in her 20s) becomes a leading character by the end of the book.
But she has a bit of a rough start. She alienates people with her moral superiority and posturing. This attitude might be familiar among the “extremely online” and people who spend a lot of their time on Twitter (who are often in their 20s). This novel pierces through this sort of “virtue signalling” to ask the age-old questions about what constitutes a good and moral life. Each member of the family seeks the answers differently, but this novel helps us think about those questions — which resonate in our twenties and well beyond — while devouring a fun, comedic novel about a dysfunctional family.
This book by Audre Lorde is beloved by feminists who love Audre Lorde. Many Lorde readers will start by reading one of her other books, like Sister Outsider, but turn to this “biomythography” for more context on Lorde’s life.
Audre Lorde grew up in 1930s Harlem and became an icon. She’s a self-described “black lesbian feminist warrior poet,” and was one of the foundational voices on intersectional feminism. Anyone interested in intersectional feminism today would be interested in learning more about her, and reading this book is a great way to do that.
This list of books for women in their 20s may surprise you. It's heavy on memoirs, and light on classic literature. It's perfect for twenty-somethings who want to expand their ideas about what's possible in their lives.
