Necessities of Life

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law: Poems, 1954-1962 by Adrienne Rich (1963)

Featuring important early works like the title poem, “Antinous, The Diaries,” “The Afterwake,” “A Marriage in the 'Sixties,” and “Prospective Immigrants Please Note,” this is the first collection to explicitly express Rich's feminist beliefs and activism.

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich (1973)

Rich’s most influential and important poetry collection, this includes notable poems like the title poem, “The Phenomenology of Anger,” “Translations,” and “Rape.” This collection won the National Book Award for Poetry alongside Allen Ginsberg.

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich (1976)

This controversial and influential collection of essays focuses on feminist thought and activist writing. In this book, Rich reexamines her life as a woman and mother while analyzing gendered stereotypes and assumptions, the relationship between reproduction and women, and the limitations of a patriarchal society.

“Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence“ by Adrienne Rich (1980)

This essay, later collected in Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985, argues that heterosexuality is an institutional construct, challenging lesbian invisibility in literary criticism. Rich hoped to inspire straight feminists to examine heterosexuality as a political institution that disempowers women. In this essay, she coins the term "lesbian continuum," which gained traction within feminist theory.

“Power” by Audre Lorde (1978)

In this poem, Lorde, another feminist and activist poet writing in the confessional genre as a Black woman in America, recounts the true story of a police shooting of a young Black boy. The poem reacts to the murder and the murderer’s later acquittal, examining language’s limitations to describe life.