A fascinating book by Tatler’s Gen.T honouree and CEO of women’s healthcare company OM, Anca Griffiths, and doctors Alyson J. McGregor, MD and Marjorie Jenkins, MD, exposes the issues present in the global health marketplace that negatively impact women, and considers the ways women can be empowered to take back control of their health.

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One of 2023’s bestsellers, R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface is a satirical fiction on cultural appropriation. Through the point of view of June Hayward, an unlikable main character who stole the unreleased work of Athena Liu, a Chinese American writing prodigy, this book brilliantly explores questions of diversity and racism.

Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page released a poignant memoir in June 2023, Pageboy. The brutally honest biography takes the reader through the remarkable career of the Hollywood actor—and the fears and obstacles he faced in his transition journey. The memoir shows the power of seizing control of our own narrative, and the importance of peer support. 

Can we love the work of artists such as French Polish Roman Polanski, Spanish painter Pablo Picasso or other male creatives who have been exposed as sexual abusers? Should we? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? The New York Times essayist and writer Claire Dererer explores our relationship with artists, from Michael Jackson to Woody Allen in a book that is part memoir, part essay. It opens up a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.

To this day, being born with Down Syndrome is the equivalent of a life sentence for many people. But Ellie Goldstein—the first model with Down’s Syndrome to have been featured on a Vogue cover, as well as in ad campaigns by brands such as Gucci Beauty and Adidas—is here to change society’s bias against people who have this genetic condition. In her biography, co-written with her mother, she shares her journey, her heartbreaks and victories, as well as her fight for representation of disabled people in the entertainment industry.

Britney Spears’ highly anticipated memoir, The Woman in Me, was released in October 2023. According to the book’s blurb, it highlights “the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms”—a right Spears did not possess in the 2000s, as the pop singer was living under a conservatorship, from which she was freed in June 2021. This memoir, written with humour, is a moving story about the “Queen of Pop”, and her relationship with fame, freedom, motherhood and misrepresentation in the media.

Released along with her Netflix documentary, Love, Pamela is an attempt by Anderson to re-contextualise her relationship with the media. In the book, she opens up about how she survived abuse as a minor, and how she lived her life as a woman, a lover and a mother, all the while being hyper-sexualised by the crowds. 

When should I have a child? Should I quit my job? As issues regarding money and relationships can get intertwined in our lives, professor Myra Strober and social innovation leader Abby Davisson decided to offer a guide to navigate life’s most consequential decisions using research-based insights road-tested in a popular Stanford University course. 

Part treatise and part deliberation, Mollie Jean de Dieu’s book seeks to lift the stigma around talking about emotional wellness at work. The book provides personal stories on the subject, definitions and steps that companies can take to create more emotionally inclusive workplaces. Emotional Inclusion reveals how it’s possible to have a transformative impact on employees’ emotional wellness and productivity.

In her latest book, Amy Edmondson explores the concept of failure, and questions its status as a counterpoint to success. Through vivid, real-life stories from business, pop culture, history and other fields, she illustrates how we and our organisations can embrace human fallibility, learn exactly when failure is our friend, and prevent most of it when it is not.

In Flowers of Fire, former Seoul correspondent for media platform AFP Hawon Jung draws on her on-the-ground reporting and interviews with many women who became activists and leaders of the South Korean #MeToo movement. The book takes the reader into the trenches of this fight for gender equality: from activists on the street to prosecutors.

A History of Women in 101 Objects tells the neglected history through everyday, intimate objects. From sixteenth century glass sex toys to radium-laced chocolate, this book shows that the past has always been as complicated and fascinating as the women that peopled it.

An Indian Tamil born in Rangoon, Myanmar, Cartner recounts her unusual childhood, the Mandalay bombing of 1942, her coming of age at the end of the British occupation of the subcontinent, and her remarkable experiences as a doctor and as a woman following India’s independence, in both India and, later, 1960s England. Beginning with the extraordinary experiences of her grandfather who became a doctor against all the odds, and her mother, an ardent woman in many ways ahead of her time, the book is deeply revealing of Indian women’s struggles, exposing the conflicts between adhering to traditional customs and individual fulfilment.

Banned from the sport she loved because she was labelled “different”, Olympic runner Caster Semenya tells the full story of gender-based discrimination in the sports world in her book The Race to be Myself. From her rural beginnings and crushing victories on the racing track to the accusations and falsehoods spread about her in the press, this memoir is a testimony for anyone who has been forced to stop doing what they love.

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