Best of
Feminism

1985

Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals


Luisah Teish - 1985
    A Marvelous Blend of Memoir, Folk Wisdom, and Afro-American Beliefs.Actress, storyteller, and priestess Luisah Teish dramatically re-creates centuries-old African-American traditions with music, memoir, and folk wisdom.

The Handmaid's Tale


Margaret Atwood - 1985
    She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now . . . Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.

Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement


Whitney Chadwick - 1985
    This pioneering book stands as the most comprehensive treatment of the lives, ideas and art works of the remarkable group of women who were an essential part of the Surrealist movement.

The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English


Sandra M. Gilbert - 1985
    The text also contains 11 complete works such as Oroonoko, Jane Eyre, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, The Awakening and Caryl Churchill's play, Top Girls.

Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South


Deborah Gray White - 1985
    This new edition of Ar'n't I a Woman? reviews and updates the scholarship on slave women and the slave family, exploring new ways of understanding the intersection of race and gender and comparing the myths that stereotyped female slaves with the realities of their lives. Above all, this groundbreaking study shows us how black women experienced freedom in the Reconstruction South — their heroic struggle to gain their rights, hold their families together, resist economic and sexual oppression, and maintain their sense of womanhood against all odds.

The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980


Elaine Showalter - 1985
    A vital counter-interpretation of madness in women, showing how it is often a consequence of, rather than a deviation from, the traditional female role.

Heart Of The Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain


Beverley Bryan - 1985
    This book records what life is like for the Black women in Britain: grandmothers drawn to the promise of the 'mother country' in the 1950s talk of a different reality; young girls describe how their aspirations at school are largely ignored; working women tell of their commitments to families, jobs, communities. Along with stories of struggles here is Black women's celebration of their culture and their struggle to create a new social order in this country.

Women Who Love Too Much: When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He'll Change


Robin Norwood - 1985
    Therapist Robin Norwood describes loving too much as a pattern of thoughts and behaviour which certain women develop as a response to problems from childhood.

Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions


Josephine Donovan - 1985
    It chronicles a renaissance of feminist theory through the so-called third wave of the present day, which follows significant "waves" of earlier periods: the fifteenth through early eighteenth centuries as well as the more widely recognized nineteenth century; and the 1960s through the 80s.

The Moths and Other Stories


Helena María Viramontes - 1985
    THE MOTHS AND OTHER STORIES, Helena Maria Viramontes' stories exploring women's struggles to overcome the dictates of family, culture, and church, is in a new edition. Prejudice and the social and economic status of Chicanos often form the backdrop for these haunting stories, but their central, unifying theme deals with the social and cultural values which shape women's lives and which they struggle against with varying degrees of success.

Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals


Marilyn French - 1985
    This examination of the nature and effects of power draws on the wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, political science, law, and theology--to investigate the sources of patriarchy

Sandino's Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle


Margaret Randall - 1985
    Together, these experienced, undeterred Nicaraguan women offer powerful clues about a truly revolutionary and democratizing feminism."––Adrienne Rich"If it were not for writers like Margaret, how would women around the world find each other when there is such an institutional effort to keep us apart and silent? Here Margaret brings us the voice of Sandino's daughters, honoring his hat and wearing their own, wiser now, having been part of political and personal revolution."––Holly Near "Powerful, moving, and challenging. Everyone interested in decency and justice will want to read Sandino's Daughters Revisited."––Blanche Wiesen Cook Sandino's Daughters, Margaret Randall's conversations with Nicaraguan women in their struggle against the dictator Somoza in 1979, brought the lives of a group of extraordinary female revolutionaries to the American and world public. The book remains a landmark. Now, a decade later, Randall returns to interview many of the same women and others. In Sandino's Daughters Revisited, they speak of their lives during and since the Sandinista administration, the ways in which the revolution made them strong––and also held them back. Ironically, the 1990 defeat of the Sandinistas at the ballot box has given Sandinista women greater freedom to express their feelings and ideas. Randall interviewed these outspoken women from all walks of life: working-class Diana Espinoza, head bookkeeper of a employee-owned factory; Daisy Zamora, a vice minister of culture under the Sandinistas; and Vidaluz Meneses, daughter of a Somozan official, who ties her revolutionary ideals to her Catholicism. The voices of these women, along with nine others, lead us to recognize both the failed promises and continuing attraction of the Sandinista movement for women. This is a moving account of the relationship between feminism and revolution as it is expressed in the daily lives of Nicaraguan women.

I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities


Audre Lorde - 1985
    The internationally acclaimed author challenges homophobia as a divisive force, particularly among Black women.

A Woman to Blame: The Kerry Babies Case


Nell McCafferty - 1985
    Subsequently she confessed to the murder, by stabbing, of another baby. All of the scientific evidence showed that she could not have had this second baby. The police nevertheless, insisted on charging her and, after the charges were dropped, continued to insist that she had given birth to twins conceived of two different men. A public tribunal of inquiry was called to examine the behaviour of the police and their handling of the case. The police, in defence of themselves and in justification of ""confessions"" obtained, called a succession of male experts on the medical, social and moral roman catholic fibre of Joanne Hayes. Her married lover detailed the times, places and manner of her love making. Using the ""twins"" theory as a springboard, the question was posed and debated ""Did she love this man or what was he and other men prepared to do with her?"" After six months of daily discussion among the men, the judge declared ""There were times when we all believed she had twins."" The treatment of Joanne Hayes, who stood accused of no crime, was a model for Irish male attitudes to woman. She was caught up in a time of rapid social change between two Irelands, an earlier Ireland in which the Catholic Church had held a moral monopoly and a new liberal and secular Ireland.

On Call: Political Essays


June Jordan - 1985
    

There's a Good Girl: Gender Stereotyping in the First Three Years of Life, a Diary


Marianne Grabrucker - 1985
    First published ten years ago and now available with a new afterword by the author and her daughter, the diary of the author's first three years of motherhood, which charts her attempts to raise her daughter in a non-sexist way.

Significant Sisters: The Grassroots Of Active Feminism, 1839-1939


Margaret Forster - 1985
    Significant Sisters traces the lives of eight women, each of whom pioneered vital changes in the spheres of law, education, the professions, morals or politics; each forcing her own brand of feminism, yet making a lasting difference to women’s lives.

Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman


Nicole Loraux - 1985
    Her glory was to have no glory. In Greek tragedy, however, women die violently and, through violence, master their own fate. It is a genre that delights in blurring the formal frontier between masculine and feminine. Through the subtlety of her reading of these powerful and ambiguous texts, Nicole Loraux elicits an array of insights into Greek attitudes toward death, sexuality, and gender.

The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgement


Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza - 1985
    Schussler Fiorenza's volume, reissued here with a new Epilogue, has served to reorient understanding of the Bible's most controverted book.

The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writing by Italian American Women


Helen Barolini - 1985
    The volume features: prose, poetry, one play and a large section of fiction.

God's Fierce Whimsy: Christian Feminism and Theological Education


Mud Flower Collective - 1985
    Here is the written record of seven feminists' commitment to practice what they preach.

Mothers on Trial


Phyllis Chesler - 1985
    It is essential reading for anyone concerned, either personally or professionally, with custody rights.

With the Power of Each Breath: A Disabled Women's Anthology


Susan E. Browne - 1985
    Includes fifty-five essays by women with physical, emotional, and learning disabilities, relating their experiences with their disabilities and society, and their feelings about themselves.

Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach


Suzanne J. Kessler - 1985
    Valuable for its insights into gender, its extensive treatment of transsexualism, and its ethnomethodological approach, Gender reviews and critiques data from biology, anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

As a Blackwoman, Poems 1982-1985


Maud Sulter - 1985
    

Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form


Marina Warner - 1985
    Drawing on the evidence of public art, especially sculpture, and painting, poetry, and classical mythology, she ranges over the allegorical presence of the woman in the Western tradition with a sharply observant eye and a piquant and engaging style.

Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly


Joan Kelly - 1985
    These posthumous essays by Joan Kelly, a founder of women's studies, represent a profound synthesis of feminist theory and historical analysis and require a realignment of perspectives on women in society from the Middle Ages to the present.