The most recommended books about prostitution

After not being able to find a publisher in the early 1900s, Josie Washburn self-published her memoir. In The Underworld Sewer, Josie not only describes her life as a prostitute and madam, but she also debunks the notion at the time that women became prostitutes to “satisfy their own unnatural lusts.” Josie wanted to educate the public about the true horrors and plight of the unfortunate women who had to resort to prostitution to survive and, ultimately, to motivate the public to effect change. Her memoir is as much a scathing commentary on society’s double standards as it is an account of her life as a demi-mondaine.

As a young woman, the protagonists of feminist fiction offered me bold heroines with more than a bit of oomph who weren’t afraid to get it wrong sometimes. Having completed a degree in literary fiction, desperate for something fun and frivolous, I stumbled upon Fanny Hackabout Jones. A foundling brought up by British aristocrats, she is forced to flee and seek her fortune, encountering witches, highwaymen, prostitutes, and pirates. This unashamed sexy romp presents as pulp fiction, but it’s thoroughly researched and informative, and has something to say about women and their role in society, then and now.  A real treat of a book.

I haven’t recovered yet from the way Hartman recovers the lives of young Black women through historical photographs. The images were made to rob these women of their individuality, make them fit “types,” letting them say Nothing about themselves.

But Hartman writes like she’s talking to them, and they’re wonderful. She messes with categories used by authorities who thought they “knew” these women by their transgressions. I was utterly transfixed by how she imagined these women’s lives and loves in the ordinary stairways and back alleys they called home.

The photos are gorgeous. You could talk about them for days and still have more to think about—like how when it comes to women being framed for doing something wrong, maybe Nothing has changed.

My Life Now is a pivotal book that should be in everyone's library who is working to combat sex trafficking.

I am dumbfounded by the rampant sexual abuse quietly and deviously going on all around us. Mary's book sheds light on all aspects of child sexual abuse - how it can happen, why it happens, and why children are in "survival mode" and don't remember the abuse sometimes until decades later.

Mary Knight also produced a documentary I recommend called Mothers and Molestation: A Film about Child Abuse.

The definitive sociological examination of prostitution in contemporary Hong Kong, Yeeshan Yang spent one year – out of plain curiosity – alongside the city’s sex workers, listening to their stories of how they arrived there, how they spend their days/nights, and what becomes of them when they leave the trade. These humanizing case studies provide separate yet occasionally intersecting profiles of female streetwalkers and club hostesses, as well as male prossies and pimps, and their sometimes sad, sometimes funny, tales of the world’s oldest profession in the Orient. Whispers and Moans was also adapted (by Yang) into a 2007 film by the famed Cat-III Hong Kong director Herman Yau.

This is a thoroughly researched story about the late 19th-century sex trafficking of young Jewish women from Russian shtetls to Argentina.

Kidnapped women violently raped and forced into prostitution are obviously disturbing topics, but Carner masterfully handles this with insight and empathy. The book follows the charismatic main character from age 14 through age 22 as she moves from powerlessness and hopelessness to strength and bravery.

This book taught me so much I didn’t know about the women working in theatre in Edwardian Britain, particularly behind the scenes. They were by and large the antidote to the (male) actor-managers who ruled the roost over the West End at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. They were responsible for introducing Ibsen in his original form to cautious London audiences, and for creating something called the Actress’ Franchise League, which I’d never heard of before. It’s a broadly-researched book and very easy to read. 

The forthright honesty and the audacity of Nora Simms, narrator of Erika Mailman’s Woman of Ill Fame, is stunning and nearly as compelling as the murder mystery at the center of the novel. Set in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, the novel takes us into the city’s bordellos, which, like the rest of the state, have been infected by a get rich quick at any cost ethos. The cost for many of Nora’s colleagues is high. Women of ill-fame are being killed, one by one, and only Nora is capable and willing to wade through layers of deception to discover the identity of the killer and to save her own life. 

Nora is not your typical damsel in distress and that might be why I love this book so much. She’s not a “good” woman, by society's standards, but she is one of the most surprising… show more.

I read this book when I was looking for inspiration on pirate romance. Instead, Captain Valoree Ainsley’s debacles with her rascal crew, set up the dynamic between Captain Foley and her crew in Windfall. I loved the humor of this book and would highly recommend it for a fun and romantic read. 

Who would have thought that late-nineteenth-century Poles’ preoccupation with the problem of prostitution could reveal so much about the Polish mindset? Concerns over the sex industry arose during a period of rapid change when there was no Polish state. Poles voiced their concerns about their nation’s future—and their womenfolk. A historian at the height of her powers, Keely Stauter-Halsted skillfully shows how debates on prostitution and an obsession with the bodies of impoverished women reflected a variety of visions of a future Poland.