Best of
Feminism

1977

Woman at Point Zero


Nawal El Saadawi - 1977
    Society's retribution for her act of defiance - death - she welcomes as the only way she can finally be free.

The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing In The Seventies and Eighties


Combahee River Collective - 1977
    An essential piece of feminist theory and Black/womanist feminism.

This Sex Which is Not One


Luce Irigaray - 1977
    In eleven acute and widely ranging essays, Irigaray reconsiders the question of female sexuality in a variety of contexts that are relevant to current discussion of feminist theory and practice. Among the topics she treats are the implications of the thought of Freud and Lacan for understanding womanhood and articulating feminine discourse; classic views on the significance of the difference between male and female sex organs; and the experience of erotic pleasure in men and women. She also takes up explicitly the question of economic exploitation of women; in an astute reading of Marx she shows that the subjection of woman has been institutionalized by her reduction to an object of economic exchange. Throughout Irigaray seeks to dispute and displace male-centered structures of language and thought through a challenging writing practice that takes a first step toward a woman's discourse, a discourse that would put an end to Western culture's enduring phallocentrism. Makin more direct and accessible the subversive challenge of Speculum of the Other Woman, this volume--skillfully translated by Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke--will be essential reading for anyone seriously concerned with contemporary feminist issues.

Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying


Adrienne Rich - 1977
    

The Women's Room


Marilyn French - 1977
    A biting social commentary on an emotional world gone silently haywire, The Women's Room is a modern classic that offers piercing insight into the social norms accepted so blindly and revered so completely. Marilyn French questions those accepted norms and poignantly portrays the hopeful believers looking for new truths.

Egalia's Daughters: A Satire of the Sexes


Gerd Brantenberg - 1977
    This re-telling of the prototypical coming-of age novel will have readers laughing out loud and wondering who should prevail: poor Petronius, who wants more than anything to cruise the oceans as a seawom; or his powerful and protective mother Director Bram, who rules her family with an authoritarian righteousness. But for better or for worse, as the masculist party begins to organize and protest, the landscape of Egalia threatens to change forever. More than just a humorous romp, Egalia's Daughters poses the provocative question of whether the culprit in gender subjugation is gender itself or power-no matter who wields it.

Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties


Sara Davidson - 1977
    Sara Davidson follows the three—Susie, Tasha, and Sara herself—from their first meeting in 1962, through the events that "radicalized" them in unexpected ways in the decade after the years in Berkeley. Susie navigates through the Free Speech Movement and the early women's movement in Berkeley, and Tasha enters the trendy New York art and society scene. Sara, a journalist, travels the country reporting on the stories of the sixties.The private lives that Davidson reconstructs are set against the public background of the time. Figures such as Timothy Leary, Mario Savio, Tom Hayden, and Joan Baez are here, as are the many young people who sought alternatives to "the establishment" through whatever means seemed worth exploring: radical politics, meditation, drugs, group sex, or dropping out. Davidson's honest and detailed chronicle reveals the hopes, confusion, and disillusionment of a generation whose rites of passage defined one of the most contentious decades of this century.

Philosophy of Woman: An Anthology of Classic to Current Concepts


Mary Briody Mahowald - 1977
    It is just right for my Philosophy of Woman course." --Ann Ferguson, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Selected Writings


Aleksandra Kollontai - 1977
    Her Selected Writings discuss the social democratic movement before the First World War, the history of the Russian women’s movement, and the debate between “feminist” and “socialist” women; the effects of the war on European socialism; the revolutions; the part played by women in the revolutionary events; the early manifestations of bureaucracy and Kollontai’s role as spokeswoman for the “workers’ opposition”; and morality, sexual politics, the family, and prostitution. It also includes writings from her later life as a Soviet official. Each section is introduced by a commentary in which Alix Holt explains the background and critically sets Kollontai’s unique lifework in its historical and biographical contexts, demonstrating both its necessary limitations and its extraordinary range.

Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century


Barbara Welter - 1977
    Tight spine, clear crisp pages, no writing, no spine creases, smokefree.

Working It Out: 23 Women Writers, Artists, Scientists, and Scholars Talk about Their Lives and Work


Sara RuddickC. Sears - 1977
    23 Women Writers, Artists, Scientists, and Scholars Talk About Their Lives and Work by Sara Ruddick (Editor), J. Green (Contributor), A. Walker (Contributor), T. Olsen (Contributor), Pamela Daniels (Editor), M. Young (Contributor), Adrienne Rich (Contributor), M. Thornton (Contributor) , C. Sears (Contributor), N.V. Mengel (Contributor), C.R. Stimpson (Contributor), E.F. Keller (Contributor), M. Schapiro (Contributor), C. Gilbert (Contributor), M. Stevens (Contributor), D.G. Michener (Contributor), V. Valian (Contributor), C.Y. Yu (Contributor), A. Lasoff (Contributor), K.K. Hamod (Contributor), A. Rorty (Contributor), N. Weisstein (Contributor)

The Main Enemy: A Materialist Analysis Of Women's Oppression


Christine Delphy - 1977
    

Apostles Into Terrorists: Women And The Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II


Vera Broido - 1977
    

Chicana Feminist


Martha P. Cotera - 1977
    Essays such as “Our Feminist Heritage” (1973) documented historical Mexican and Mexican American women activists to challenge the notion that feminism was foreign to Mexican American culture. Another essay, “Feminism as We See It” (1972), inspired by the difficulties she faced working with the largely white, middle-class Texas Women's Political Caucus, outlined the differences between Anglo feminists and Chicana feminists while also highlighting their similar political goals. Cotera's critical, politically astute, and often humorous commentary on the topics of feminism, gender roles, coalition politics, and public policy have been germane to contemporary Chicana feminist thought.Read more: Martha Cotera Biography - (b. 1938), Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations http://www.jrank.org/cultures/pages/3...

Emergence


Cynthia MacAdams - 1977