Comics and Graphic Novels for Women’s History Month

Celebrate Women’s History Month with graphic novels about women, their experiences, and their contributions to history, culture, and society.

Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World, book cover

Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Pénélope Bagieu

Throughout history and across the globe, one characteristic connects the daring women of Brazen: their indomitable spirit. Against overwhelming adversity, these remarkable women raised their voices and changed history.

With her one-of-a-kind wit and dazzling drawings, celebrated graphic novelist Pénélope Bagieu profiles the lives of these feisty female role models, some world-famous, some little known. From Nellie Bly to Mae Jemison or Josephine Baker to Naziq al-Abid, the stories in this comic biography are sure to inspire the next generation of rebel ladies.


Photographic the Life of Graciela Iturbide, book cover

Photographic the Life of Graciela Iturbide by Isabel Quintero

Graciela Iturbide was born in México City in 1942, the oldest of 13 children. When tragedy struck Iturbide as a young mother, she turned to photography for solace and understanding. From then on Iturbide embarked on a photographic journey that has taken her throughout her native México, from the Sonora Desert to Juchitán to Frida Kahlo’s bathroom, to the United States, India, and beyond. Photographic is a symbolic, poetic, and deeply personal graphic biography of this iconic photographer. Iturbide's journey will excite readers of all ages as well as budding photographers, who will be inspired by her resolve, talent, and curiosity.


Becoming RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Journey to Justice, book cover

Becoming RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Journey to Justice. by Debbie Levy

Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a modern feminist icon—a leader in the fight for equal treatment of girls and women in society and the workplace. She blazed trails to the peaks of the male-centric worlds of education and law, where women had rarely risen before.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has often said that true and lasting change in society and law is accomplished slowly, one step at a time. This is how she has evolved, too. Step by step, the shy little girl became a child who questioned unfairness, who became a student who persisted despite obstacles, who became an advocate who resisted injustice, who became a judge who revered the rule of law, who became…RBG.


Femme Magnifique, book cover

Femme Magnifique

Fifty female trailblazers of yesterday and today each get a 4-color sequential tribute in Femme Magnifique. This collection features 3-page short stories about women from the arenas of pop music, politics, art, and science. From astronauts and archaeologists to muckrakers and mathematicians, Femme Magnifique will stimulate and educate. Part mini biopic, part personal inspiration, this collection also features new material including a foreword, behind-the-scenes process pages, and more!


Georgia O'Keefe, book cover

Georgia O'Keefe by María Herreros

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), the American artist known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes, was one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. During her lifetime, which spanned almost a century, she became widely recognized for her enormous contribution to modern art. Drawing mainly from O’Keeffe’s letters, which are depicted in this biography, artist María Herreros delves into O’Keeffe’s deepest self: a tireless traveler, a nature lover, a strong and emancipated woman who carved her own determined path through life and did it her way.


Displacement, book cover

Displacement by Kiku Hughes

A teenager is pulled back in time to witness her grandmother's experiences in World War II-era Japanese internment camps in Displacement, a historical graphic novel from Kiku Hughes.

Kiku is on vacation in San Francisco when suddenly she finds herself displaced to the 1940s Japanese-American internment camp that her late grandmother, Ernestina, was forcibly relocated to during World War II.

These displacements keep occurring until Kiku finds herself "stuck" back in time. Living alongside her young grandmother and other Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, Kiku gets the education she never received in history class. She witnesses the lives of Japanese-Americans who were denied their civil liberties and suffered greatly, but managed to cultivate community and commit acts of resistance in order to survive.

Kiku Hughes weaves a riveting, bittersweet tale that highlights the intergenerational impact and power of memory.


Josephine Baker, book cover

Josephine Baker. by Jose-Louis Bocquet

Paris, 1925. Over the course of a single evening, the Mississippi-born dancer Josephine Baker (1906–1975) becomes the darling of the Roaring Twenties. Some audience members in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées are scandalized by the African American’s performance in La Revue Nègre, but the city’s discerning cultural figures—among them Picasso and Cocteau—are enchanted by her exotic, bold, and uninhibited style. When her adopted country grants her citizenship in 1939, Baker sees her fame as a means of helping the French Resistance. She takes advantage of her globe-trotting lifestyle to pass on messages and gather information. A decade later, installed in a palatial 15th century château, she adopts 12 children from different ethnic backgrounds. Josephine Baker paints a glorious portrait of a spirited, principled, and thoroughly modern woman.



More Great Reads

Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights , book cover
Astronauts Women on the Final Frontier, book cover
Credo, book cover
Wake the Hidden History of Women-led Slave Revolts, book cover
Groundbreaking Women, book cover
The Center for Cartoon Studies Presents Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller, book cover
Noisemakers, book cover
El Deaf, book cover
Spinning, book cover
Edmonia Lewis, book cover
Cub, book cover
The Best That We Could Do, book cover
I Was Their American Dream, book cover
Hot Comb, book cover
Are You My Mother?, book cover
Patience & Esther, book cover
Woman Rebel the Margaret Sanger Story, book cover