20th Century Women List of Books Mentioned in the Movie
It’s 1979 in Santa Barbara. Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) is an impressionable teenager eager for experience and adventure. He’s forever at odds with his strong-willed mother (Annette Bening) who’s determined to understand who he is.
She enlists the help of Abbie (Greta Gerwig), their twenty-something year old ruby-haired housemate, and Julie (Elle Fanning), Jamie’s childhood friend and crush, to help him become a modern man.
Together, these three women, along with William (Billy Crudup) who epitomizes the essence of enlightened masculinity, teaches the lovelorn teen about heartbreak, sexuality, and feminism in an era of punk music and rebellion.
Book List:
Part of the shaping of Jamie’s identity in this emotionally piercing coming-of-age story comes from the books that Abbie gives him from her feminism studies.
And as we grow closer to the other characters, we find that what they read also plays a role in how they’ve come to experience the world and people around them.
Below are books listed throughout the film that Jamie, as well as other characters read in the course of 20th Century Women.
- Our Bodies Our Selves by Judy Norsigian (read by Jamie and Abbie)
- Sisterhood is powerful by Various Authors (read by Jamie and Abbie)–
- “The Politics of Orgasm” (essay) by Susan Lydon
- “It Hurts to be Alive and Obsolete: The Aging Woman” (essay) by Zoe Moss
- Watership Down by Richard Adams (read by Dorothea)
- Forever by Judy Blume (read by Julie)
- The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck (read by Julie)