It’s nearly impossible to talk about transformation [as a woman] in current times without the answer looking like a 21st-century feminist manifesto, or at least a reckoning of someone who is strongly inclined to act and think in the best interests of [being] one, where maintaining one’s own self is an act of resistance and the act itself a radical thought. Although I do enjoy, and have been moved by, classics by [male] writers like John Steinbeck (East of Eden) and the horror precedent [in terms of popularity] Dracula by Bram Stoker, it is naturally women writers I have found myself being morphed most by.

Here’s a list of books – fiction, nonfiction and poetry – that make up my s(h)elf.

1. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head: Poems by Warsan Shire

“Mama, I made it out of your home alive, raised by the voices in my head.”
Award-winning Somali-British poet Warsan Shire (who also has writing credits on Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’) charts a striking journey of a young girl “stumbling” into womanhood, raised without a nurturing guide, navigating fraught family and cultural dynamics. This collection of poems elicited a visceral reaction to femininity – particularly pious femininity – that I have otherwise felt wary of approaching even as an adult woman. Warsan Shire confronts the existence of girlhood and womanhood as someone who was raised Muslim and continues to come of age under the rules and conditions that religion perpetuates with a child’s curiosity, a teenager’s defiance, and a bit of resentment (especially in regards to her mother and grandmother) that comes with acceptance. Coming across this collection felt like coming across an older sister’s journal, one that serves both a warning and a token of solidarity.

2. The Vegetarian by Han Kang

My first foray into East Asian Literature, and one that proved seminary to my growing interest in both translated fiction and unconventional female protagonists. Yeonghye finds her relationship with her family, her husband and her body changing once she decides to turn vegetarian. (Interestingly, the novel and original Korean text allude to veganism instead of vegetarianism since she also gives up dairy and eggs but, like her family, the emphasis is placed on her going “meatless”.) A powerful rumination on womanhood, sex, and familial and social roles. This book is a little hard to swallow for those who do not do well with perverse or graphic themes.

3. The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

If you’ve ever felt lonely in a crowded room, or are one to spend better time with art (books, movies, hobbies etc) than people, this one’s for you. Part memoir, part art study and cultural criticism, Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City tackles urban loneliness through the lives of four iconic NYC artists (Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Henry Darger, and David Wojnarowicz – all of whom channeled their loneliness into creativity).

I read this during the pandemic, a period when everyone was trying to create something out of either their loneliness or an abundance of time, and have not been the same since.

4. Poems (1962-2020) by Louise Glück

This one is brutal yet tender. If there ever was someone who could jolt your soul awake and then pull you right into a warm embrace, it would have to be Louise Glück. There are many poets out there who deal with themes of loss and grief, but none with a tone as “disaffected and angry” as Glück’s. I’m recommending the particular Penguin Modern Classics version because it has both Averno (a reworking of the Persephone myth) and Firstborn, which are my favourite poem collections by her. Readers drawn to Mary Oliver and Margaret Atwood may feel a similar affinity with the poems of this Nobel Laureate.

5. Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Respectfully, this is a novel about an Elizabethan “party boy” who suddenly finds himself in a woman’s body and continues…to…party…as a party boy would; except that he’s now a woman. So…a party girl. This is essentially a classic “party girl novel”: transgressive and empowering and very silly. Comme des garçons, as they say! Except, you know, girls can do it just as well.

6. Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

A collection of short stories that are equally stylish (and fun) yet profound. This book is like your favourite single auntie – one every woman in her twenties needs to read for its assuring idiosyncrasies and as an act of judgement-free indulgence.

An important one to look out for: ‘What Is Seized’. A short story about a daughter who, while caring for her dying mother, realises that her mother’s failures and deprivations both share a common source: her otherwise charming, artistic father who has been a cruel husband to her. “What is beautiful is seized” is a rhythmic phrase throughout the short story. It alludes to the human nature to want to seize beautiful things, how doing so leads to them being ceased, while our tendency to only seize the beautiful parts of something (memories, relationships and people) often blinds us to crueler realities.

The short yet poignant text delivers a lesson about parents’ relationship to each other and how it affects their kids, that one inevitably confronts as one grows older. In a generation that is very quickly and rightfully coming to terms with generational trauma and unwilling to perpetuate its violence any further, ‘What Is Seized’ may serve as a reflective cue – as it did for me.

7. Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector

Unconventional and unfiltered – Agua Viva [Stream of Life] is a formless, stream-of-consciousness novel that meditates on life and the passing of time. Once you read your first Lispector, there is no going back. Although it stresses me out recommending this as anyone’s first from her (as opposed to some of her other dreamy but “manageable” works), it’s the one that’s moved me the most. I think she’s an expert at capturing the inner lives of women with an intensity that is both hypnotic and immediate, making it more intimate. For me, this also wins the award for the most experimental and rewarding novel.

As well, if you enjoy living in Lispector-land (her brain) but would like a little less vibes and more anecdotal structure, then I would also recommend getting Too Much of Life, her journal-entry/crónica (newspaper) styled ruminations on life.

8. Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estés

A cult feminist classic that I strongly believe will find you at the right time – but if you want to pre-empt both your frontal lobe development and Saturn return, go ahead and get this. An exploration of the wild woman archetype across various myths and fairytales, one that will help you connect to your most primal self. Or just a really fun read overall for women, history buffs, and folklore fans alike.

9. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

I found this book at an uncertain but joyful time of my life – navigating days similar to the protagonist’s in the book and enjoying a job that no one else understood, sheltered from much else. It felt only natural, then, that I became so attached to it and deeply moved by it. There is a certain bluntness to Japanese female protagonists (and authors) that cannot be credited to the oversimplification of prose that one mistakes with a translation job. This quirk, where the protagonist beats around no bushes in their narration yet appears somewhat aloof in the canon, is unfettering in a patriarchal culture that is very much like ours. Sayaka Murata is an expert at such aware but oddball characters and this is one of my favourites from her. Fun fact: Granta published a new version of this book right around the time I quit said job. Felt full circle.

10. Beloved by Toni Morrison

Safe to say this book is where my love for Southern Gothic, horror, and magical realism began. Beloved is a haunting story of motherhood, loss, generational trauma and the enduring horrors of memory. It shaped my perception of horror as a tool for exploring grief and the many ways terrible things can be expressed with empathy than sympathy (something that modern horror books and visual media fail to achieve).

11. Good Girl by Aria Aber

A more recent addition, and my favourites from 2025, is Good Girl. Nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the novel explores community, grief and art, through the story of an Afghan girl in Germany, who “parties” her life away and gets entangled with an older artist. As a Pathan girl myself, raised under relatively stricter rules, there’s an incredibly resonant instance in the book: the protagonist is banished to her room and finds a striking parallel between an Afghan girl and Kafka’s Gregor Samsa. The girl tells the reader, “On a molecular level, I believed, I comprehended what he wrote, even why he turned Gregor into a giant bug. Who would understand the perils of a man trapped in his childhood room in unhuman form more than an Afghan girl trying to live?”

In a culture where a girl is made to feel like she has maybe a quarter of a man’s ownership on the world and her surroundings, where her mobility is scarce and most oft limited to four walls, the protagonist’s navigation of a “freer” life was both a transformative visceral treat and something that made me feel seen in the literary canon. Raw, unabashed in its portrayal of shame, and filled with gluttony and longing, Good Girl is a brilliant tale of identity, belonging, love and abuse.

12. Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar

Martyr! is a poet’s novel; a raw look at grief, identity and how we spend our entire lives searching for meaning in faith, art, ourselves and others. It was my favourite from 2024 and one I could not stop talking people’s ears off about. Cyrus is one of those protagonists you may severely dislike, due to his paradoxical narration of self-importance and self-deprecation, coupled with his self-destructive habits. Regardless, he is a beautiful exhibit of how if you take enough jabs at yourself, you might just split yourself open. Not like a wound, but a lock, a cocoon, maybe even a ripe fruit.

This book is a very urgent recommendation for anyone trying to find “purpose” in life or their craft.

13. Arrangements in Blue by Amy Key

“Is it possible life without romantic love isn’t so bad? An essential memoir about building life on your own terms” is the blurb that drew me to this book. The concept of self love and living a life without romance wasn’t a radical thought to me to begin with. However, having read all about love (Bell Hooks), Conversations on Love (Natasha Lunn), and, consequently, Essays in Love (Alain De Boton), finding a book that explored and celebrated the prospect of creating a life of love without romantic love was intriguing. And Empowering. Using Joni Mitchell’s album Blue as her guiding star, Amy Key explores what it means to create a home, navigate motherhood, and define personal milestones beyond socio-cultural expectations. She explores the limits and potential of selfcare and self-friendship, confronting the painful feelings we are usually too ashamed to acknowledge with unflinching honesty.

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These books did not transform me into a new self. Instead, they helped me examine the self I was already carrying. They taught me that transformation is rarely immediate or linear; more often, it is intimate, recursive, and molded by what we choose to keep, resist, or unlearn. This s(h)elf – built from borrowed lives – is not a gateway to becoming, but a reckoning. Each book marks a stage when something shifted; a fear recognised and defeated, a desire vocalised, a brave and compassionate thought manifested. Where maintaining the self is an act of resistance, this s(h)elf is the home where that resistance lives.