Internationally-recognized author Margaret Atwood’s The MaddAddam Trilogy comprises her three works Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013). Like many of her other works, Atwood describes these stories as speculative fiction. Each story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where a deadly, genetically-engineered pandemic has led to an apocalypse that few survived. Although this trilogy has an admittedly more subdued ecofeminist focus than other books on this list, the protagonists struggles to survive in a world that has been ravaged by horrifying consequences of human manipulation of and disregard for nature create a narrative with an underlying warning that The New York Times essayist Sven Birkerts likens to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. 

Ruth Ozeki’s debut novel My Year of Meats (1998) is a cross-cultural tale that follows the stories of Jane Tagaki-Little and Akiko Ueno as they navigate the impact of an American meat-exporting business and the meat-promoting television show that the business sponsors, My American Wife!. The story links the American meat industry, global capitalism, sex and gender, and artmaking to tell a story about two women who struggle to exist freely under gender stereotypes and the social restrictions of a country enamored with unsustainable Western business models. The year of its publication, My Year of Meats received the Kirayama Prize for Literature of the Pacific Rim.

Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms (1994) is a beautiful and tragic story of five generations of Native American women fighting to save their way of life as the government plans to build dams in the land of the women’s ancestors, threatening their livelihood. The story is told through the point of view of 17-year-old Angel Iron, who reunites with her family after growing up between foster homes. The narrative draws clear and powerful connections between family, community, livelihood, and the surrounding environment while discussing the devastating effects of American colonization with its destruction of nature and indigenous communities. 

Nectar in a Sieve (1954) follows the story of Rukmani, a woman who reflects on her life from the time she wed her husband Nathan at age twelve. The story itself brings to mind Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle with its emphasis on working conditions and labor unions. The book tells of hardships and challenges caused by environmental disasters and external economic factors, revealing the problems that it can create not exclusively for, but especially for, women, given that the story is told from Rukmani’s perspective. Rukmani is forced to make sacrifices as her family’s matriarch as capitalism, urban development, and environmental challenges transform a land that had previously supported Rukmani’s family. 

Prodigal Summer (2000) is a novel about a community of people living in Appalachia, Virginia. As each of the narrators grow and learn to deal with love, loss, and their own experiences with their ecological surroundings, it becomes clear that each of the characters, just like all creatures, are connected to each other and to their surroundings. The book primarily follows the overlapping lives of Deanna, Lusa, and Garnett, whose solitary lives quickly become interwoven to tell this critically acclaimed story. 

For anyone who is a fanatical about autobiographical stories, this might be your next read. Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement, describes her journey from a young girl in a rural Kenyan village during British colonization to professor and eventually activist with an overseas education in an independent Kenya. In Unbowed: A Memoir (2006), Wangari Maathai shares how she challenged corrupt governments and traditional expectations of womanhood; she devoted herself to political activism, feminism, and environmentalism. 

Future Home of the Living God: A Novel (2017) is another dystopian work that falls within the speculative fiction genre. Author Louise Erdrich comments on a world where evolution has stopped. Evolution no longer progresses and has instead began regressing, causing mass panic over the possibility of the end of the human race. The story is told from the first-person perspective of Cedar Hawk Songmaker, a pregnant Ojibwe woman who is fighting for the safety of herself and her unborn child in a society that is devoid of both reproductive freedom and of faith in and respect for the natural world. 

Kaine Agary’s novel Yellow-Yellow (2006), the prize-winning title for the 2008 Nigeria Prize for Literature, tells the story of a young Greek-Nigerian woman named Zilayefa who relocates to the city of Port Harcourt after an oil spill destroys her village. The story demonstrates how ideas of domination are frequently characterized both by environmental degradation and by male power. Zilayefa is forced to confront these realities as she is thrust into a new life in a new city, where she struggles with her sense of identity and the social implications of how she is perceived by those around her.

Last year world-renowned ecofeminist Vandana Shiva published her memoir, Terra Viva: My Life in a Biodiversity of Movements (2022). In it, Dr. Shiva shares about her most memorable campaigns and about her memories of her childhood in a post-partition India. Through the reflections of her campaigns and childhood experiences, Dr. Shiva tells her story of how her own life has been impacted by the surrounding environment, education, and her adult intellectual pursuits, and offers her own insight on the social and environmental challenges that the global community faces in a post-COVID pandemic world. 

Finishing off our list is another dystopian novel that The Guardian describes as “a dazzling debut.” Diane Cook’s The New Wilderness (2020) explores a world that has been devastated by climate change. In order to save her daughter, who is sick and dying from all of the pollution, Bea is forced to volunteer to live in the Wilderness State, the last bit of untouched land. Bea, her daughter, and eighteen others agree to act in an experiment to see if humans can exist in nature without modern technology and without destroying the land. The New Wilderness is a thought-provoking piece that  considers the human contempt for the environment and tells an emotional story of motherhood in a world that humans have driven life out of.