The author, most recently, of the memoir “My Life on the Road” says poetry has replaced novels in her reading. “If you poured water on a great poem, you would get a novel.”

What books are currently on your night stand?

“The History of History,” by Vinay Lal. I was drawn to the author because he wrote about Gandhi as abandoning “masculine” leadership. Then I was knocked out by his title because it tells you right away how political history is. Traveling around this country for 40 years, I’ve begun to realize how deprived we are by beginning our history only when Europeans showed up. Older cultures here were far more advanced in agriculture, medicine and what we’ve begun to call biomimicry — and certainly democracy since they inspired the structure of our Constitution. If they had inspired its content, we would have included women and excluded slavery. You might say that much of what we want now once was here. Another book back again on this tall pile is “The Mermaid and the Minotaur,” by Dorothy Dinnerstein — who explains that men raising children will return us from “masculine” to human. If anybody reading this is curious about what we haven’t been taught, you could also start with “Indian Givers,” by Jack Weatherford, and “The Sacred Hoop,” by Paula Gunn Allen.

What are your favorite novels?

About this country, “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker. It has all the philosophical depth of any great novel, yet because it uses the language of country people, translators in, say, China and Japan had to honor the language of their own country people. One true thing creates change wherever it goes. Of world novels, I love “Two Thousand Seasons,” by Ayi Kwei Armah, from Ghana. He breaks all the rules of having individual characters and conversations, uses a storytelling voice, and shows the worst of history — yet still conveys suspense and hope. I also treasure “Woman on the Edge of Time,” by Marge Piercy, for offering a choice of futures.

And whom do you consider specifically to be the best contemporary feminist writers?

Best is comparative; unique is the point. Think of bell hooks, Robin Morgan, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich, Catharine MacKinnon, Ann Jones, Lynn Nottage, Jo Freeman, Anne Lamott, Angela Davis, Diana E. H. Russell, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Naomi Klein, Patricia Williams, Barbara Ehrenreich, Kimberle Crenshaw, Nick Kristof, Rebecca Traister, Charles Blow, Roxane Gay, Katha Pollitt, Suzanne Braun Levine, Courtney Martin, Michael Kimmel, Salamishah Tillet, Amy Richards, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Rebecca Solnit, Michelle Goldberg, Lena Dunham — and more. Plus many we have lost, from Audre Lorde and Andrea Dworkin to Marilyn French.