The Alchemy of Race and Rights is an eloquent autobiographical essay in which the author reflects on the intersection of race, gender, and class. Using the tools of critical literary and legal theory, she sets out her views of contemporary popular culture and current events, from Howard Beach to homelessness, from Tawana Brawley to the law-school classroom, from civil rights to Oprah Winfrey, from Bernhard Goetz to Mary Beth Whitehead. She also traces the workings of "ordinary racism"--everyday occurrences, casual, unintended, banal perhaps, but mortifying. Taking up the metaphor of alchemy, Williams casts the law as a mythological text in which the powers of commerce and the Constitution, wealth and poverty, sanity and insanity, wage war across complex and overlapping boundaries of discourse. In deliberately transgressing such boundaries, she pursues a path toward racial justice that is, ultimately, transformative.Williams gets to the roots of racism not by finger-pointing but by much gentler methods. Her book is full of anecdote and witness, vivid characters known and observed, trenchant analysis of the law's shortcomings. Only by such an inquiry and such patient phenomenology can we understand racism. The book is deeply moving and not so, finally, just because racism is wrong--we all know that. What we don't know is how to unthink the process that allows racism to persist. This Williams enables us to see. The result is a testament of considerable beauty, a triumph of moral tactfulness. The result, as the title suggests, is magic.

    A portrayal of the reality behind the rhetoric, her essays also chronicle the consequences of these regimes: The Berlin Wall may have fallen, but ideology cannot be dismantled so quickly, and a lifetime lived in fear cannot be so easily forgotten.Many of the pieces focus on the intense connection Drakulic discovers between material things and the expression of one’s spirit, individuality, and femininity—an inevitable byproduct of a lifestyle that, through its rejection of capitalism and commoditization, ends up fetishizing both. She describes the moment one man was able, for the first time in his life, to eat a banana: He gobbled it down, skin and all, enthralled by its texture. Drakulic herself marvels at finding fresh strawberries in N.Y.C. in December, and the feel of the quality of the paper in an issue of Vogue.As Drakulic delves into the particular hardships facing women—who are not merely the victims of sexism, but of regimes that prevent them from having even the most basic material means by which to express themselves—she describes the desperate lengths to which they would go to find cosmetics or clothes that made them feel feminine in a society where such a feeling was regarded as a bourgeois affectation. There is small room for privacy in communal housing, and the banishment of many time-saving devices, combined with a focus on manual labor, meant women were slaves to domestic responsibility in a way that their Western peers would find unfathomable. From this vantage point, she provides a pointed critique of Western feminism as a movement borne out of privilege.How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed is a compelling, brilliant account of what it was really like to live under Communist rule and its inevitable repercussions.

    None linked internal and external change together in a seamless circle of cause and effect, effect and cause. She undertook to write such a book, and ended up transforming herself as well as others. The result of her external plus internal reflection is this bestselling and truly transforming book: part collection of personal stories from her own life and the lives of many others, part revolutionary guide to finding community and inspiration. Steinem finds role models in a very young and uncertain Gandhi as well as unlikely heroes from the streets to history. Revolution from Within addresses the core issues of self-authority and unjust external authority, and argues that the first is necessary to transform the second.

    A collection of stories by Sandra Cisneros, the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.The lovingly drawn characters of these stories give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border with tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.

    Nature as delight. Nature as mother and sister. Nature as victim. Nature as companion and reminder of what is wild in us all. Here, among more than a hundred poets and prose writers, are Diane Ackerman on the opium of sunsets; Ursula K. Le Guin envisioning an alternative world in which human beings are not estranged from their planet; and Julia Butterfly Hill on weathering a fierce storm in the redwood tree where she lived for more than two years. Here, too, are poems, essays, stories, and journal entries by Emily Dickinson, Alice Walker, Terry Tempest Williams, Willa Cather, Gretel Erlich, Adrienne Rich, and others—each offering a vivid, eloquent response to the natural world.This second edition of Sisters of the Earth is fully revised and updated with a new preface and nearly fifty new pieces, including new contributions by Louise Erdrich, Pam Houston, Zora Neale Hurston, Starhawk, Joy Williams, Kathleen Norris, Rita Dove, and Barbara Kingsolver.

    Sixteen performance artists discuss human sexuality, racism, sexism, and the ways in which art can be used to break down taboos and dogma.

    Highly recommended... " --Choice..". the book challenges assumptions and pushes historic and geographical boundaries that must be altered if women of all colors are to win the struggles thrust upon us by the 'new world order' of the 1990s." --New Directions for Women"This surely is a book for anyone trying to comprehend the ways sexism fuels racism in a post-colonial, post-Cold War world that remains dangerous for most women." --Cynthia H. Enloe..". provocative analyses of the simultaneous oppressions of race, class, gender and sexuality... a powerful collection." --Gloria Anzaldua..". propels third world feminist perspectives from the periphery to the cutting edge of feminist theory in the 1990s." --Aihwa Ong..". a carefully presented wealth of much-needed information." --Audre Lorde..". it is a significant book." --The Bloomsbury Review..". excellent... The nondoctrinaire approach to the Third World and to feminism in general is refreshing and compelling." --World Literature Today..". an excellent collection of essays examining 'Third World' feminism." --The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural TheoryThese essays document the debates, conflicts, and contradictions among those engaged in developing third world feminist theory and politics. Contributors: Evelyne Accad, M. Jacqui Alexander, Carmen Barroso, Cristina Bruschini, Rey Chow, Juanita Diaz-Cotto, Angela Gilliam, Faye V. Harrison, Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, Barbara Smith, Nayereh Tohidi, Lourdes Torres, Cheryl L. West, & Nellie Wong.

    Now, the book that reignited the feminist movement is back in a fifteenth anniversary edition, with a new preface by the author that brings backlash consciousness up to date. When it was first published, Backlash made headlines for puncturing such favorite media myths as the “infertility epidemic” and the “man shortage,” myths that defied statistical realities. These willfully fictitious media campaigns added up to an antifeminist backlash. Whatever progress feminism has recently made, Faludi’s words today seem prophetic. The media still love stories about stay-at-home moms and the “dangers” of women’s career ambitions; the glass ceiling is still low; women are still punished for wanting to succeed; basic reproductive rights are still hanging by a thread. The backlash clearly exists.With passion and precision, Faludi shows in her new preface how the creators of commercial culture distort feminist concepts to sell products while selling women downstream, how the feminist ethic of economic independence is twisted into the consumer ethic of buying power, and how the feminist quest for self-determination is warped into a self-centered quest for self-improvement. Backlash is a classic of feminism, an alarm bell for women of every generation, reminding us of the dangers that we still face.

    Courageous enough to create revolutionary change in their daily lives, Mujeres Libres mobilized over 20,000 women into an organized network to strive for community, education, and equality for women -during the Spanish Revolution. Martha Ackelsberg writes a comprehensive study of Mujeres Libres, intertwining interviews with the women themselves and analysis connecting them with modern feminist movements.Martha Ackelsberg is a professor of government and a member of the Women’s Studies Program Committee at Smith College, where she teaches courses in political theory, urban politics, political activism and feminist theory. She has contributed to a variety of anthologies on women’s political activism in the United States.

    Using journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, news accounts, novels, medical literature, and numerous interviews, she relates an often surprising narrative of lesbian life. "A key work...the point of reference from which all subsequent studies of 20th-century lesbian life in the United States will begin."—San Francisco Examiner.

    Creating a spiritual, progressive, feminist, and ultimately organic definition of Black intellectuality, they passionately discuss issues ranging in subject matter from theology and the Left, to contemporary music, film, and fashion.

    From the author of the classic Motherpeace – an inspiring and practical guide for awakening women's shamanic healing powers to heal ourselves and our planet.

    LGBT Studies. "CHICANA LESBIANS is a love poem, a bible, a dictionary, nothing so simple as a manifesto--this book is yet another reason to believe--to believe in the girls our mothers warned us about, brown girls, lesbians, making their own love poems, bibles, dictionaries, manifestoes, reasons to believe."--Dorothy Allison"When I was selling books at a Chicana conference, I noticed book buyers were literally afraid to touch this anthology. I say now what I said then, 'Don't be scared. Sexuality is not contagious, but ignorance is.' If you've ever been curious, been there, been voyeur, been tourist, or just plain under-informed, misinformed, or unaffirmed, here is a book to listen to and learn from."--Sandra Cisneros

    “. . . this is a major book . . . [McClary’s] achievement borders on the miraculous.” The Village Voice“No one will read these essays without thinking about and hearing music in new and interesting ways. Exciting reading for adventurous students and staid professionals.” Choice“Feminine Endings, a provocative ‘sexual politics’ of Western classical or art music, rocks conservative musicology at its core. No review can do justice to the wealth of ideas and possibilities [McClary’s] book presents. All music-lovers should read it, and cheer.” The Women’s Review of Books"McClary writes with a racy, vigorous, and consistently entertaining style. . . . What she has to say specifically about the music and the text is sharp, accurate, and telling; she hears what takes place musically with unusual sensitivity."-The New York Review of Books

    An invaluable new companion to the bestselling Sacred Path Cards, thising even more of the Native teachings to discover personal truths and one's path in life.

    600 illustrations.

    This critically acclaimed, graphic report on family violence reveals the lives of ordinary women-and the men who batter them.

    This book is Paris's contribution to imaginative feminism.

    First published ten years ago, this collection of 25 powerful stories from contributors both famous and ordinary, privileged and poor, provides often harrowing insights into what happens when women are denied the right to choose. Testimonials from teenagers, college students, overloaded young mothers, and even a retired male Marine put a human face on one of this country’s most controversial issues and offer passionate arguments for access to legal and safe abortions.

    Working first as aggressive political lobbyists in an era of progressive reform, the militants brought their struggle on into a period of war hysteria in which they developed an effective strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience as anti-government dissenters. Feminist militancy and readiness to resist authorities and break the law for women's rights developed gradually. Women militants, composed of a wide variety of intensely committed women, were not shy about critiquing male oppression and in turn, male authorities responded to the perceived threat of these unnatural 'iron-jawed' females. This study examines the nature of these militants, with biographical sketches, and their evolution from petitions to pickets to prison. Selected by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States as an outstanding book.

    In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Sherry Anderson and Patricia Hopkins show how many women have redefined spiritual beliefs and rediscovered their unique spiritual heritage - The Feminine Face of God.Anderson and Hopkins guide you through the sacred garden of:* Childhood - seedbed of life's sacred passage* Leaving home - finding your own inner authority* Relationships - new perspectives on intimacy* Spiritual practice - the importance of guidance and discipline* Sexuality - a wild card constantly cracking open the heart* and much more.

    This extraordinary body of literature and important documentary resource illuminates the lives of Indian women through 2,600 years of change and extends the historical understanding of literature, feminism, and the making of modern India. The biographical, critical, and bibliographical headnotes in both volumes, supported by an introduction which Anita Desai describes as “intellectually rigorous, challenging, and analytical,” place the writers and their selections within the context of Indian culture and history.Volume I: 600 B.C. to the Early Twentieth Century includes songs by Buddhist nuns, testimonies of medieval rebel poets and court historians, and the voices of more than 60 other writers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Among the diverse selections are a rare early essay by an untouchable woman; an account by the first feminist historian; and a selection from the first novel written in English by an Indian woman.

    Sandra Horley draws on over 20 years supporting abused women to provide an insight into the reality behind the mask of the charming man. The book's aim is to show women they are not alone and to help them walk away from the confusing, dangerous situation they find themselves in.'This book was a true revelation. Not only did I realise I was not alone but it helped make sense of what I had been experiencing and why. There is no other way to describe this book other than it made me strong enough to change my life' Sheryl Gascoigne'I have no doubt that Power and Control will show thousands of women that they are not alone and encourage them to take the first step' Cherie Booth, QC

    Among the topics she covers are: current and historical debates on the quality of disabled peoples lives; the way disability is represented within Western culture; institutionalization and independence; feminist research and community care; and the politics of the disability movement. She asserts that, for too long, non-disabled people have not only defined the experience of disability but have had control over disabled peoples lives. This important book has grown out of an emerging organization of disabled people who are part of a powerful new culture. Jenny Morris is the author of Encounters with Strangers: Feminism and Disability, Able Lives: Womens Experience of Paralysis, and Alone Together: Voices of Single Mothers.

    First of all because we women have been crying for two thousand years. So let's laugh now, even at ourselves" - Franca Rame"Set at the point where reality and ideology rub up against each other, [these] monologues are vivid, concise and entertaining comments on the female condition…comic-but-angry, raw-but-precise" - The Independent

    A leading feminist activist, author, and nationally known lecturer writes of her struggle to integrate a feminist head with a Jewish heart.

    Using an historical perspective, she analyzes the evidence for misogyny in different cultures and its effects on women. In a detailed examination of witchcraft - and the contradictory arguments that witchcraft was either evidence of misogyny or mental illness - Ussher sets the background for her investigation of women's madness from the Victorian era to the 20th century. She moves on to assess various critiques of the concept of madness, including those from sociologists, Marxists, the 1960s' anti-psychiatrists and feminists, and exposes their ultimate failure to explain or understand women's experience of what is called "madness". She surveys how and why women become "mad", or are labelled "mad" and conducts a critical analysis of the present forms of intervention from psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists. Finally, she suggests constructive alternatives which reconcile the needs of individual women with the needs of women as a group. Shortlisted for MIND Book of the Year 1991.

    

    It offers an alternative to traditional models of human development that define health and maturity in terms of separation and consistently define women as deficient. Written by leading clinicians and teachers from the Stone Center at Wellesley College, the book foregrounds women's meaning systems, values, and organization of experiences, which often revolve around relationships rather than the self. The authors set out basic relational principles and consider the implications for life challenges that many women face, as well as for psychotherapy.

    In one essay, taking off from ideas raised earlier by Zora Neale Hurston, Trinh considers with astonishment the search by Western "experts" for the hidden values of a person or culture, a process of legitimized voyeurism that, she argues, ultimately equates psychological conflicts with depth, while inner experience is reduced to mere personal feeling.When the Moon Waxes Red is an extended argument against reductive analyses, even those that appear politically adroit. Feminist struggle is heterogeneous. The multiply-hyphenated peoples of color are not simply placed in a duality between two cultural heritages; throughout, Trinh describes the predicament of having to live "a difference that has no name and too many names already." She argues for multicultural revision of knowledge so that a new politics can transform reality rather than merely ideologize it. By rewriting the always emerging, already distorted place of struggle, such work seeks to "beat the master at his own game."

    Winner of a 1992 Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction.

    Moreover, the symbols and meanings by which they represent procreation provide the means for understanding relationships between such seemingly disparate elements as the body, family, house, village, nation, this-world and other-world. Delaney points out that these symbols do not embellish reality; they provide the key to a particular conception of it, a conception that gives coherence to social life. The patterns revealed are not distinctly Turkish; they also comment on some of our own deeply-held assumptions and values about procreation.

    A feminist is a woman who does not allow anyone to think in her place."-from Hipparchia's ChoiceA work of rare insight and irreverence, Hipparchia's Choice boldly recasts the history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the post-Derrideans as one of masculine texts and male problems. The position of women, therefore, is less the result of a hypothetical "femininity" and more the fault of exclusion by men. Nevertheless, women have been and continue to be drawn to "the exercise of thought." So how does a female philosopher become a conceptually adventurous woman? Focusing on the work of Sartre and Beauvoir (specifically, his sexism and her relation to it), Mich�le Le Doeuff shows how women philosophers can reclaim a place for feminist concerns. Is The Second Sex a work of philosophy, and, if so, what can it teach us about the relation of philosophy to experience? Now with a new epilogue, Hipparchia's Choice points the way toward a discipline that is accountable to history, feminism, and society.

    Powerful worship services celebrating the women of the Hebrew Scriptures from the bestselling author of WomanPrayer, WomanSong.

    "Language and Sexual Difference" aims to introduce the innovative, radical, and challenging theories of French feminism to non-French speakers.

    

    

    Arguing that Islam is not uniform across Muslim societies and that women's roles in these societies cannot be understood simply by looking at texts and laws. The contributors focus, instead, on the effects of the political projects of states on the lives of women.

    A thorough analysis of AIDS issues for women.

    This depiction of players, argues Kristina Straub, greatly shaped public debates over what made women feminine and men masculine. Considering a wide range of literature by or about players--pamphlets, newspaper reports, theatrical histories, biographies, as well as the public correspondence between Alexander Pope and the famous actor Colley Cibber--she examines the formation of gender roles and sexual identities during a period crucial to modern thinking on these issues. Drawing from feminist-materialist and gay and lesbian theories and historiographies, Straub analyzes the complex development of spectacle and spectatorship as gendered concepts. She also reveals how national, racial, and class differences contributed to the subjection of players as professional spectacles and how images of race, class, and gender combined to create divisions between normal and deviant sexuality.

    The fact that it does--and in the United States a rape is reported every six minutes--indicates that we live in a rape-prone culture where rape or the threat of rape functions as a tool for enforcing sexual difference and hierarchy.Rape and Representation explores how cultural forms construct and reenforce social attitudes and behaviors that perpetuate sexual violence. The essays proceed from the observation that literature not only reflects but also contributes to what a society believes about itself.Fourteen essays by authors in the fields of English, American and African-American, German, African, Brazilian, Classical, and French literatures and film present a wide range of texts from different historical periods and cultures. Contributors demythologize patriarchal representation in literature and art in order to show how it makes rape seem natural and inevitable.Contributors include: the editors, John J. Winkler, Patricia Klindiest Joplin, Susan Winnett, Ellen Rooney, Copp'lia Kahn, Eileen Julien, Marta Peixoto, Kathryn Gravdal, Carla Freccero, Nellie V. McKay, Nancy A. Jones, and Froma I. Zeitlin. Their work raises pressing--and often difficult--questions for feminist criticism.

    However, this book demonstrates that the opposite is true: government has long been a major oppressor of women and their rights. Feminism is not a new political force; its origins can be traced back to the abolitionist movement before the Civil War. Fighting to end slavery, women became conscious of their own legal disabilities. From these anti-statist roots, the women's movement eventually divided over such issues as sex, the family, and war. McElroy's book traces individualist feminism from those early roots until the present day. Her research demonstrates that in vital issues from sex and birth control to business and science, government has been the real obstacle in preventing women from achieving personal freedom and equal rights. This book discusses such controversies as individualism and socialism in the feminist tradition, economic freedom and the role of women, and the contemporary differences between mainstream and individualist feminism. Through McElroy’s work and those of a distinguished group of contributors, this book issues a ringing call for women to recapture their individualist heritage.

    This book tells the story of that revolution through biographical portraits of four pioneering figures in the early institutions of psychoanalysis: Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, and Melanie Klein.

    These chilling, in-depth interviews into the minds of 15 sexual offenders make for compelling reading and help us to understand what is behind the horrifying crime of rape, whose statistics seem to grow each year.Author Biography: Sally Bordwell is a freelance writer and the author of four non-fiction books. She currently resides in Skokie, Illinois, where she is at work on a new screenplay involving the Russian Mafia.

    

    More than 80 historical and contemporary women of African descent are spotlighted in this volume of the Black Heroes series.

    Guggenheim Museum in 1989 is a comprehensive document of the artist's career. A complete collection of the artist's writings, up to and including her 1996 text for a monument in Erlauf, Austria, is accompanied by color photography of the entire range of Holzer's installations and projects.

    This book introduces the range of her writings, clarifying both their philosophical and historical context.

    Wajcman argues that the identification between men and machines is not immutable but is the result of ideological and cultural processes. She surveys sociological and feminist literature on technology, highlighting the male bias in the way technology is defined as well as developed.Over the last two decades feminists have identified men's monopoly on technology as an important source of their power, women's lack of technological skills as an important element in their dependence on men. During this period, women's efforts to control their fertility have extended from abortion and contraception to mobilizing around the new reproductive technologies. At the same time there has been a proliferation of new technologies in the home and in the workplace. The political struggles emerging around reproductive technology, as well as the technologies affecting domestic work, paid labor, and the built environment, are the focus of this book.

    This book presents a grass-roots view of the small steps and giant leaps that have changed laws and institutions as well as the prejudices and unspoken rules governing a woman's place in American society.

    In the first comprehensive study of these organizations, Hiltermann shows how local organizers provided basic services unavailable under military rule, while recruiting for the cause of Palestinian nationalism.

    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

    A unique and comprehensive encyclopedia of more than 1,000 valiant female combatants who have appeared in history, mythology, and literature from the dawn of history to the present day."An excellent piece of scholarly detective work...offers information not found in other reference sources"—Library Journal.

    Approaching knowledge as a social construct produced and validated through critical dialogue, she defines the knower in light of a conception of subjectivity based on a personal relational model. Code maps out the relevance of the particular people involved in knowing: their historical specificity, the kinds of relationships they have, the effects of social position and power on those relationships, and the ways in which knowledge can change both knower and known. In an exploration of the politics of knowledge that mainstream epistemologies sustain, she examines such issues as the function of knowledge in shaping institutions and the unequal distribution of cognitive resources.What Can She Know? will raise the level of debate concerning epistemological issues among philosophers, political and social scientists, and anyone interested in feminist theory.

    Spacks hailed it in The New York Times Book Review as provocative....thoughtfully argued, and certain to generate fresh social and literary understanding. Now Showalter--who also edited the influential New Feminist Criticism (for which the New York Times Book Review found cause to celebrate)--turns her critical insight to a wide range of American women authors in order to explore the diversity of our culture and question the concept of a single national literature or identity. After a lucid discussion of recent African-American, feminist, and post-colonial scholarship, Showalter provides provocative readings of classic and lesser-known women's writings. The focal points of this study are the delightful chapters on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, and Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Not only are Showalter's interpretations full of wit and subtlety--as when she compares Chopin's novel to a piece of music by the composer Chopin--but her imaginative invocation of these popular works makes us curious to rediscover them. The range of Sister's Choice is spectacular--from Alice Walker's The Color Purple (Celie's quilt provides Showalter's title--an allusion to the multiple destinies of American women) to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (which is compared to the popular Log Cabin pattern quilt of the 19th century). Along the way we find chapters on rewritings of Shakespeare's Tempest by American women, on the Female Gothic (from Anne Radcliffe to Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Joyce Carol Oates), on Harlem Renaissance writers such as Nella Larsen and Zora Neal Hurston (who died in a welfare home, only to have her work rediscovered decades later), even on the history of the patchwork quilt in literature and in women's lives, which ends with a moving description of the Names Project, the quilt which memorializes people who have died of AIDS. The broad scope of Sister's Choice (which is based on the prestigious Clarendon lectures from 1989) testifies to the multiplicity of cultures which make up the United States. In her approach to literary works, Elaine Showalter helps to envision a new map of America--one which charts the struggles, suffering, and enduring creativity of women's writing.