What books were on your high school English class syllabus? Maybe William Shakespeare’s historic plays like Romeo and Juliet and a A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Or perhaps you explored the great American classics of the lost generation like Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. While these are all essential reads, we chose to reimagine an ideal syllabus for young women all over the world in honor of International Day of the Girl. And we called upon some of our favorite writers and thinkers to help fill our list with the books that expanded their minds, taught them hard-won truths, and made them feel seen. Women like New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor, actress Josie Totah, and two of the 2020 presidential candidates.

Read on for the books that they’d love to see on the shelves of girls everywhere.

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