Best of
Feminism

1999

Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species


Sarah Blaffer Hrdy - 1999
    But is it? In this provocative, groundbreaking book, renowned anthropologist (and mother) Sarah Blaffer Hrdy shares a radical new vision of motherhood and its crucial role in human evolution.Hrdy strips away stereotypes and gender-biased myths to demonstrate that traditional views of maternal behavior are essentially wishful thinking codified as objective observation. As Hrdy argues, far from being "selfless," successful primate mothers have always combined nurturing with ambition, mother love with sexual love, ambivalence with devotion. In fact all mothers, in the struggle to guarantee both their own survival and that of their offspring, deal nimbly with competing demands and conflicting strategies.In her nuanced, stunningly original interpretation of the relationships between mothers and fathers, mothers and babies, and mothers and their social groups, Hrdy offers not only a revolutionary new meaning to motherhood but an important new understanding of human evolution. Written with grace and clarity, suffused with the wisdom of a long and distinguished career, Mother Nature is a profound contribution to our understanding of who we are as a species--and why we have become this way.

Women


Annie Leibovitz - 1999
    "Each of these pictures must stand on its own," Susan Sontag writes in the essay that accompanies the portraits. "But the ensemble says, So this what women are now -- as different, as varied, as heroic, as forlorn, as conventional, as unconventional as this."

The World's Wife


Carol Ann Duffy - 1999
     It's you I love, perfect man, Greek God, my own; but I know you'll go, betray me, strayfrom home.So better by far for me if you were stone.—from "Medusa"Stunningly original and haunting, the voices of Mrs. Midas, Queen Kong, and Frau Freud, to say nothing of the Devil's Wife herself, startle us with their wit, imagination, and incisiveness in this collection of poems written from the perspectives of the wives, sisters, or girlfriends of famous—and infamous—male personages. Carol Ann Duffy is a master at drawing on myth and history, then subverting them in a vivid and surprising way to create poems that have the pull of the past and the crack of the contemporary.

Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Transform Their Relationship with Food Through Myths, Metaphors, and Storytelling


Anita Johnston - 1999
    By weaving practical insights and exercises through a rich tapestry of multicultural myths, ancient legends, and folktales, Anita Johnston helps the millions of women preoccupied with their weight discover and address the issues behind their negative attitudes toward food.

Woman: An Intimate Geography


Natalie Angier - 1999
    Angier takes readers on a mesmerizing tour of female anatomy and physiology that explores everything from organs to orgasm, and delves into topics such as exercise, menopause, and the mysterious properties of breast milk.A self-proclaimed "scientific fantasia of womanhood." Woman ultimately challenges widely accepted Darwinian-based gender stereotypes. Angier shows how cultural biases have influenced research in evolutionary psychology (the study of the biological bases of behavior) and consequently led to dubious conclusions about "female nature." such as the idea that women are innately monogamous while men are natural philanderers.But Angier doesn't just point fingers; she offers optimistic alternatives and transcends feminist polemics with an enlightened subversiveness that makes for a joyful, fresh vision of womanhood. Woman is a seminal work that will endure as an essential read for anyone intersted in how biology affects who we are as women, as men, and as human beings.

All About Love: New Visions


bell hooks - 1999
    In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks's life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, All About Love is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.

From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i


Haunani-Kay Trask - 1999
    This 1999 revised work includes material that builds on issues and concerns raised in the first edition: Native Hawaiian student organizing at the University of Hawai'i; the master plan of the Native Hawaiian self-governing organization Ka Lahui Hawai'i and its platform on the four political arenas of sovereignty; the 1989 Hawai'i declaration of the Hawai'i ecumenical coalition on tourism; and a typology on racism and imperialism. Brief introductions to each of the previously published essays brings them up to date and situates them in the current Native Hawaiian rights discussion.

The Complete Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist


Diane DiMassa - 1999
    Hothead Paisan, the over-caffeinated, media-crazed psychotic lesbian "with scary hair and a fetish for guns, grenades, mallets, and sharp objects, " returns for more search-and-destroy missions and preventative homicides A cult favorite, The Complete Collection combines Hothead Paisan and Revenge of Hothead Paisan with new strips in a single volume for the first time.

Deal with It!: A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain, and Life as a Gurl


Esther Drill - 1999
    It's a resource to help you learn about, laugh about, and figure out the stuff you go through on your way through life. It won't tell you what to do, because you'll need to decide that for yourself. But whether you're wondering about your body, your feelings or your changing relationships with the people around you, this book provides accurate information and outlines your options. Hilarious illustrations point out the humor in even the sorriest situations. And with hundreds of excerpts from real-girl conversations on the gURL.com website, you can see for real that whatever you're going through, you're not alone. This book is for anyone who needs to know what it means to be a girl -- from those on the edge of their teens to those who are way past them but still reeling from the trauma.

To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America - A History


Lillian Faderman - 1999
    Lillian Faderman persuasively argues that their lesbianism may in fact have facilitated their accomplishments. A book of impeccable research and compelling readability, TO BELIEVE IN WOMEN will be a source of enlightenment for all, and for many a singular source of pride.

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess


Starhawk - 1999
    This bestselling classic is both an unparalleled reference on the practices and philosophies of Witchcraft and a guide to the life-affirming ways in which readers can turn to the Goddess to deepen their sense of personal pride, develop their inner power, and integrate mind, body, and spirit. Starhawk's brilliant, comprehensive overview of the growth, suppression, and modern-day re-emergence of Wicca as a Goddess-worshipping religion has left an indelible mark on the feminist spiritual consciousness.In a new introduction, Starhawk reveals the ways in which Goddess religion and the practice of ritual have adapted and developed over the last twenty years, and she reflects on the ways in which these changes have influenced and enhanced her original ideas. In the face of an ever-changing world, this invaluable spiritual guidebook is more relevant than ever.

The Living Goddesses


Marija Gimbutas - 1999
    Marija Gimbutas wrote and taught with rare clarity in her original—and originally shocking—interpretation of prehistoric European civilization. Gimbutas flew in the face of contemporary archaeology when she reconstructed goddess-centered cultures that predated historic patriarchal cultures by many thousands of years.This volume, which was close to completion at the time of her death, contains the distillation of her studies, combined with new discoveries, insights, and analysis. Editor Miriam Robbins Dexter has added introductory and concluding remarks, summaries, and annotations. The first part of the book is an accessible, beautifully illustrated summation of all Gimbutas's earlier work on "Old European" religion, together with her ideas on the roles of males and females in ancient matrilineal cultures. The second part of the book brings her knowledge to bear on what we know of the goddesses today—those who, in many places and in many forms, live on.

Sex and Social Justice


Martha C. Nussbaum - 1999
    Offering an internationalism informed by development economics and empirical detail, many essays take their start from the experiences of women in developing countries. Nussbaum argues for a universal account of human capacity and need, while emphasizing the essential role of knowledge of local circumstance. Further chapters take on the pursuit of social justice in the sexual sphere, exploring the issue of equal rights for lesbians and gay men. Nussbaum's arguments are shaped by her work on Aristotle and the Stoics and by the modern liberal thinkers Kant and Mill. She contends that the liberal tradition of political thought holds rich resources for addressing violations of human dignity on the grounds of sex or sexuality, provided the tradition transforms itself by responsiveness to arguments concerning the social shaping of preferences and desires. She challenges liberalism to extend its tradition of equal concern to women, always keeping both agency and choice as goals. With great perception, she combines her radical feminist critique of sex relations with an interest in the possibilities of trust, sympathy, and understanding.Sex and Social Justice will interest a wide readership because of the public importance of the topics Nussbaum addresses and the generous insight she shows in dealing with these issues. Brought together for this timely collection, these essays, extensively revised where previously published, offer incisive political reflections by one of our most important living philosophers.

The Terrorists of Irustan


Louise Marley - 1999
    In this brilliant novel from the author of Sing the Light, a talented medicant defies the rule of men -- and changes the lives of every woman on the planet.

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down


Joan Morgan - 1999
    When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost is a decidedly intimate look into the life of the modern black woman: a complex world where feminists often have not-so-clandestine affairs with the most sexist of men; where women who treasure their independence often prefer men who pick up the tab; where the deluge of babymothers and babyfathers reminds black women, who long for marriage, that traditional nuclear families are a reality for less than 40 percent of the African-American population; and where black women are forced to make sense of a world where "truth is no longer black and white but subtle, intriguing shades of gray." Morgan ushers in a voice that, like hiphop - the cultural movement that defines her generation - samples and layers many voices, and injects its sensibilities into the old and flips it into something new, provocative, and powerful.

For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer


Chana Kai Lee - 1999
    The powerful story of Fannie Lou Hamer, who grew up among "the poorest of the poor" in rural Mississippi and became a national figure in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective


Kelly Brown Douglas - 1999
    Douglas examines the function of sexuality in White culture and the denigration and exploitation of Black sexuality through a discussion of White cultural myths, stereotypes, laws and customs concerning Black women and men. Part Two studies how Blacks have responded to sexual myths and stereotypes by retreating into silence on the subject of sexuality. In this section, Douglas discusses the function and role of sexuality in the Black church and community, homophobia/heterosexuality and how Black sexuality is portrayed in Black fictional literature. Finally, she explores the importance of sexuality and sexual discourse to the Christian theological mandate and to Black churches.

remembered rapture: the writer at work


bell hooks - 1999
    Born and raised in the rural South, hooks learned early the power of the written word and the importance of speaking her mind. Her passion for words is the heartbeat of this collection of essays. Remembered Rapture celebrates literacy, the joys of reading and writing, and the lasting power of the book. Once again, these essays reveal bell hooks's wide-ranging intellectual scope; she is a universal writer addressing readers and writers everywhere.

Stravinsky's Lunch


Drusilla Modjeska - 1999
    Modjeska's book investigates the life patterns of women artists, most of whom have been unable to manage such a neat compartmentalization of daily life and creativity. "Stravinsky's Lunch" tells the stories of two extraordinary women, both born close to the turn of the century in Australia and both destined to make important contributions to Australian painting. Stella Bowen went to London to make her career, then became a bohemian and the longtime mistress of Ford Madox Ford. Grace Cossington Smith, a spinster who never strayed far from her childhood home on the outskirts of Sydney, became one of the first Australian modernists. Their distinctive stories speak volumes about how love, art, and life intersect.Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Millionth Circle: How to Change Ourselves and the World. The Essential Guide to Women's Circles


Jean Shinoda Bolen - 1999
    Jean Shinoda Bolen, a writer, analyst, and teacher who has long been a leader in the women's empowerment movement. Written in poetic language that invites the readers to use intuition and draw upon their psychological and spiritual insights, The Millionth Circle will be the tool and inspiration women can use to create new circles or deepen and transform existing circles into vehicles of societal and psychospiritual change.

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony


Geoffrey C. Ward - 1999
    Anthony were two heroic women who vastly bettered the lives of a majority of American citizens. For more than fifty years they led the public battle to secure for women the most basic civil rights and helped establish a movement that would revolutionize American society. Yet despite the importance of their work and they impact they made on our history, a century and a half later, they have been almost forgotten.Stanton and Anthony were close friends, partners, and allies, but judging from their backgrounds they would seem an unlikely pair. Stanton was born into the prominent Livingston clan in New York, grew up wealthy, educated, and sociable, married and had a large family of her own. Anthony, raised in a devout Quaker environment, worked to support herself her whole life, elected to remain single, and devoted herself to progressive causes, initially Temperance, then Abolition. They were nearly total opposites in their personalities and attributes, yet complemented each other's strengths perfectly. Stanton was a gifted writer and radical thinker, full of fervor and radical ideas but pinned down by her reponsibilities as wife and mother, while Anthony, a tireless and single-minded tactician, was eager for action, undaunted by the terrible difficulties she faced. As Stanton put it, "I forged the thunderbolts, she fired them." The relationship between these two extraordinary women and its effect on the development of the suffrage movement are richly depicted by Ward and Burns, and in the accompanying essays by Ellen Carol Dubois, Ann D. Gordon, and Martha Saxton. We also see Stanton and Anthony's interactions with major figures of the time, from Frederick Douglass and John Brown to Lucretia Mott and Victoria Woodhull. Enhanced by a wonderful array of black-and-white and color illustrations, Not For Ourselves Alone is a vivid and inspiring portrait of two of the most fascinating, and important, characters in American history.

Masculinities


Raewyn W. Connell - 1999
    Exploring themes such as global gender relations and the practical uses of masculinity research, this text looks at the implications for the field, particularly with regard to understanding current world issues.

The Goddess Path: Myths, Invocations, and Rituals


Patricia Monaghan - 1999
    Think of this book as a signpost on your spiritual travels, designed to help you nurture your own connection to the goddess and share in her boundless wisdom. Call her into your life with beautiful and ancient invocations. Create your own rituals to honor the lessons she has to teach. As you ponder life-changing questions and venture on brave new experiments, you fan the divine spark into flame--and, in that fire, you are transformed.The Goddess Path includes myths, symbols, feast days, ancient invocations, and suggestions for connecting with the following goddesses for these purposes and more:-Amaterasu for clarity -Aphrodite for passion -Artemis for protection -Athena for strength -Brigid for survival -The Cailleach for power -Demeter and Persephone for initiation -Gaia for abundance -Hathor for affection -Hera for dignity -Inanna for inner strength -Isis for restorative love -Kali for freedom -Kuan-Yin for mercy -The Maenads for ecstasy -The Muses for inspiration -Oshun for healing love -Paivatar for release -Pomona for joy -Asule and Saules Meita for family healthMonaghan, a faculty member at DePaul University, is a leader of the contemporary goddess movement. In The Goddess Path, she presents a means to work with the goddess, using ancient and modern techniques that will thrill and amaze you. For new levels of peace, joy, and increased closeness to the Divine, get The Goddess Path.

Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Arts Histories (Revisions, Critical Studies in the History and Theory of Art)


Griselda Pollock - 1999
    In this major book, Griselda Pollock engages boldly in the culture wars over `what is the canon?` and `what difference can feminism make?` Do we simply reject the all-male line-up and satisfy our need for ideal egos with an all women litany of artistic heroines? Or is the question a chance to resist the phallocentric binary and allow the ambiguities and complexities of desire - subjectivity and sexuality - to shape the readings of art that constantly displace the present gender demarcations?

Unbending Gender


Joan C. Williams - 1999
    Concerned by what she finds--young women who flatly refuse to identify themselves as feminists and working-class and minority women who feel the movement hasn't addressed the issues that dominate their daily lives--she outlines a new vision of feminism that calls for workplaces focused on the needs of families and, in divorce cases, recognition of the value of family work and its impact on women's earning power. Williams shows that workplaces are designed around men's bodies and life patterns in ways that discriminate against women, and that the work/family system that results is terrible for men, worse for women, and worst of all for children. She proposes a set of practical policies and legal initiatives to reorganize the two realms of work in employment and households--so that men and women can lead healthier and more productive personal and work lives. Williams introduces a new 'reconstructive' feminism that places class, race, and gender conflicts among women at center stage. Her solution is an inclusive, family-friendly feminism that supports both mothers and fathers as caregivers and as workers.

Devouring Frida: The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo


Margaret A. Lindauer - 1999
    Her images were splashed across billboards magazine ads, and postcards; fashion designers copied the so-called "Frida" look in hairstyles and dress; and "Fridamania" even extended to T-shirts, jewelry, and nail polish. Margaret A. Lindauer argues that this mass market assimilation of Kahlo's identity has consistently detracted from appreciation of her work, leading instead to narrow interpretations based on "an entrenched narrative of suffering." While she agrees that Kahlo's political and feminist activism, her stormy marriage to fellow artist Diego Reviera, and the tragic reality of a progressively debilitated body did represent a biography colored by emotional and physical upheaval, she questions an "author-equals-the-work" critical tradition that assumes a: one-to-one association of life events to the meaning of a painting." In kahlo's case, Lindauer says, such assumptions created a devouring mythology, an iconization that separates us from rather than leads us to the real significance of the oeuvre. Accompanied by 26 illustrations and deep analysis of Kahlo's central themes, this provocative, semiotic study recontextualizes an important figure in art history at the same time it addresses key questions about the language of interpretation, the nature of veneration, and the truths within self-representation.

Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction


Jane Rendell - 1999
    Carefully structured and with numerous introductory essays, it guides the reader through theoretical and multi-disciplinary texts to direct considerations of gender in relation to particular architectural sites, projects and ideas. This collection marks a seminal point in gender and architecture, both summarizing core debates and pointing toward new directions and discussions for the future.

Representing Women


Linda Nochlin - 1999
    This text brings together Linda Nochlin's most important and pioneering writings on the subject, as she considers work by Miller, Delacroix, Courbet, Degas, Seurat, Cassatt and Kollwitz, among many others. In her partly autobiographical, extended introduction, she argues for the honest virtues of an art history which rejects methodological assumptions, and for art historians who investigate the work before their eyes while focusing on its subject matter, informed by a sensitivity to its feminist spirit.

How Like a Leaf: An Interview with Donna Haraway


Donna J. Haraway - 1999
    How Like a Leaf will be a welcome inside view of the author's thought.

The Womans Book of Dreams: Dreaming as a Spiritual Practice


Connie Kaplan - 1999
    Explains how women's dreams are unique, describes the thirteen kinds of dreams, and offers suggestions for directing one's own dreams.

Assembling the Shepherd


Tessa Rumsey - 1999
    Tessa Rumsey uses words in ways that defy summary and synonym in poetry that challenges the boundaries of common dualities--city and desert, heaven and earth, waking and dreaming, violence and harmony, destruction and regeneration, recollecting and forecasting. She attempts to move beyond these natural contrasts in her poetry, and beyond point of view to create a collection that offers an elemental glimpse of the fragmented yet interconnected world we live in.Throughout the book, familiar themes are seen again and again, undergoing subtle metamorphosis: the seasonal solstice, the sundial, the planets, the Sphinx--as Rumsey invites us beneath the surface of her words.

Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising


Jean Kilbourne - 1999
    Discusses the advertising establishment, revealing what advertisers know about human nature and how they exploit it to make a profit.

Eden Built by Eves: The Culture of Women's Music Festivals


Bonnie J. Morris - 1999
    Now Dr. Bonnie J. Morris takes readers on an breathtaking insider's journey through 25 years of this cultural phenomenon. From Michigan to Mississippi, Eden Built by Eves is a splendidly full archive of festival herstory: conflicts, scandals, new music, rain, sun work, family, joy. What does festival culture mean to the audiences, artists, and activists who loyally return each year? A vibrant and soaring tribute to the work of thousands of women, this volume brims with candid backstage interview with festival performers and produces, moving testimony, and often hilarious anecdotes from "festiegoers." A plethora of photographs, articles, comic strips, illustrations, and excerpts from festival literature provide a thorough explanation of the music, relationships, and issues that have shaped an entire generation of lesbian memories in America. With affection, intensive research, and the experience of a lifetime attending festivals, Morris has created a stunning and important contribution to both musical and women's history.

Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics


Joy James - 1999
    Joy James charts new territory by synthesizing theories of social movements with cultural and identity politics. She brings into the spotlight images of black female agency and intellectualism in radical and anti-radical political contexts, challenging us to rethink our understanding of the changing African presence in American culture. From a comparative look at Ida B. Wells, Ella Baker, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur to analyses of the black woman in white cinema and the black man in feminist coalitions, she focuses attention on the invisible or the forgotten. James convincingly demonstrates how images of powerful women are either consigned to oblivion or transformed into icons robbed of intellectual power. Shadowboxing honors and analyzes the work of black activists and intellectuals and redefines the sharp divide between intellectual work and political movements.

Fifty Black Women Who Changed America


Amy Alexander - 1999
    Celebrates the lives of black women who have influenced and changed the course of history in America, including Harriet Tubman, Oprah Winfrey, Rosa Parks, Ella Fitzgerald, and Alice Walker.

The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry: 1967–2000


Peggy O'Brien - 1999
    By offering generous selections from the poetry of nine women writers, this anthology not only can correct this oversight but also can earn for these poets the startled attention and ongoing affection of a wider American readership.

A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey


Merle Feld - 1999
    From the experiences of early childhood, to the spiritual awakening of a secular adolescent encountering Jewish tradition, to the alternately funny and searing tales of new-found independence, early married life, young motherhood, and midlife, Feld comments with remarkable honesty and clarity on the many stages of spiritual and artistic exploration and growth. Overarching all these accounts is the picture of how the cycle of the Jewish calendar year comes to provide an ever-renewing source of sustenance for the author's deepening spiritual expression.

Imagine a Woman in Love With Herself: Embracing Your Wisdom and Wholeness


Patricia Lynn Reilly - 1999
    The book empowers women to move from selfloathing to selflove, from selfcriticism to selfcelebration. Each stanza of the poem is followed by a series of womanaffirming reflections and meditations to carry you into your day...into your life. The "Imagine a Woman" poem has circled the globe, inspiring books, screenplays, videos, life transitions, professional portfolios, ministries, coaching practices, relationships, virtual communities, social networks, and organizational missions. This year Imagine a Woman International is celebrating the poem's 15th year anniversary with a new website and new programs and opportunities for personal growth and professional enhancement.

Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II


Maureen Honey - 1999
    This sea of white faces left for posterity images such as Rosie the Riveter, obscuring the contributions that African American women made to the war effort. In Bitter Fruit, Maureen Honey corrects this distorted picture of women's roles in World War II by collecting photos, essays, fiction, and poetry by and about black women from the four leading African American periodicals of the war period: Negro Digest, The Crisis, Opportunity, and Negro Story.Mostly appearing for the first time since their original publication, the materials in Bitter Fruit feature black women operating technical machinery, working in army uniforms, entertaining audiences, and pursuing a college education. The articles praise the women's accomplishments as pioneers working toward racial equality; the fiction and poetry depict female characters in roles other than domestic servants and give voice to the bitterness arising from discrimination that many women felt. With these various images, Honey masterfully presents the roots of the postwar civil rights movement and the leading roles black women played in it.Containing works from eighty writers, this anthology includes forty African American women authors, most of whose work has not been published since the war. Of particular note are poems and short stories anthologized for the first time, including Ann Petry's first story, Octavia Wynbush's last work of fiction, and three poems by Harlem Renaissance writer Georgia Douglas Johnson. Uniting these various writers was their desire to write in the midst of a worldwide military conflict with dramatic potential for ending segregation and opening doors for women at home.Traditional anthologies of African American literature jump from the Harlem Renaissance to the 1960s with little or no reference to the decades between those periods. Bitter Fruit not only illuminates the literature of these decades but also presents an image of black women as community activists that undercuts gender stereotypes of the era. As Honey concludes in her introduction, "African American women found an empowered voice during the war, one that anticipates the fruit of their wartime effort to break silence, to challenge limits, and to change forever the terms of their lives."

Mother of Bliss: =Anandamay=i M=a


Lisa Lassell Hallstrom - 1999
    Lisa Hallstrom paints a vivid portrait of this extraordinary woman, her ideas, and her continuing influence. In the process, the author sheds new light on important themes of Hindu religious life, including the centrality of the guru, the influence of living saints, and the apparent paradox of the worship of the divine feminine and the status of Hindu women.

Readings for Diversity and Social Justice: An Anthology on Racism, Sexism, Anti-Semitism, Heterosexism, Classism, and Ableism


Maurianne Adams - 1999
    The reader contains a mix of short personal and theoretical essays as well as entries designed to challenge students to take action to end oppressive behavior and to affirm diversity and racial justice.(For the original version of chapter 48, please refer to: Herek, Gregory, "Heterosexism and Homophobia," in Textbook of Homosexuality and Mental Health, ed. Robert Cavaj and Terry S. Stein, 1996, American Psychiatric Press, pp. pp. 101-113.)

Against the Wind


Dorothee Sölle - 1999
    Born in 1929 in Cologne, Germany, she was a young girl during the war years and the Holocaust. She studied classical philology and philosophy, then theology and literature. Her 1972 dissertation at the University of Cologne explored connections of literature and theology since the Enlightenment. Among the most widely read theologians of our time, she has pioneered in political, feminist, and liberation theologies.

Don't Think, Smile!: Notes on a Decade of Denial


Ellen Willis - 1999
    In keeping with the mass media's glib assumption that a phenomenal increase in wealth for a minority meant genuine national prosperity, the 1990s saw an astounding refusal, on both the left and right, to question received wisdom or engage in substantive deliberation. Turning her acute eye to the decade's defining moments-imbroglios like those surrounding the O. J. Simpson trial, The Bell Curve, Monica-gate, and the Million Man March-Ellen Willis reveals the mindlessness behind the noise. Arguing that we suffer from a lack of true freedom, she demands that we radically rethink our country and ourselves to create a society in which we can fully enjoy life.

Shower of Gold: Girls and Women in the Stories of India


Uma Krishnaswami - 1999
    They are nurturing and fierce, powerful and fragile, troubled and triumphant as they each seek their own path.

Speak the Language of Healing: Living With Breast Cancer Without Going to War


Susan Kuner - 1999
    What drew them together was their dismay over the traditional vocabulary of the medical establishment that "attacks" the healing process as if it were a war and their search for emotional balance and spiritual anchors. Through their personal stories, they develop a new framework for the stages of illness and an accompanying language with which to discuss it. Instead of addressing illness as combat with victims and survivors, theirs is a language of relationship, spirit, and integration.

Working the Ruins: Feminist Poststructural Theory and Methods in Education


E. St. Pierre - 1999
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader


Janet Price - 1999
    Its wide range of contributions locate the important historical developments, interdisciplinary perspectives, and key discourses that have shaped this dynamic area of feminist theory.

Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations


Karma Lekshe Tsomo - 1999
    Buddhist Women Across Cultures documents both women's struggle for religious equality in Asian Buddhist cultures as well as the process of creating Buddhist feminist identity across national and ethnic boundaries as Buddhism gains attention in the West. The book contributes significantly to an understanding of women and religion in both Western and non-Western cultures.[Contributors include Paula Arai, Cait Collins, Lorna Devaraja, Beata Grant, Rita Gross, Theja Gunawardhana, Elizabeth Harris, Anne Klein, Sarah Pinto, Dharmacharini Sanghadevi, Sara Shneiderman, Haeju Sunim (Ho-Ryeaon Jeon), Senarat Wijayasundara, and Janice D. Willis.]

Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonne


R. Ward Bissell - 1999
    Applying a rigorous methodology, this profusely illustrated study with interpretative text and catalogue raisonn� embeds Gentileschi's pictorially and emotionally compelling pictures within the actual sociocultural contexts in and for which they were created.The interpretive text analyzes key pictures and primary literary evidence to reveal the sweep of Artemisia's oeuvre, chart her travels, define her standing with artists and patrons of the period, investigate the links between her financial situations and the artistic decisions that she made, and assess the validity of proposals regarding her activity as a still-life painter, her access to professional organizations, her level of literacy, and the nature of her subject matter. Exploring the question of the interrelationships among Gentileschi's gender and experiences as a woman, the state of her psyche, and her art, the text also confronts--and often challenges--the widely embraced feminist interpretation of her pictures.Many of the conclusions in the text are supported by an extensive register of archival documents and by the very core of the study: the first and only catalogue raisonn� of Artemisia's autograph works, each of the fifty-seven pictures exhaustively investigated as to basic factual information, condition and color, iconography, history, documentation and dating, existing copies, and bibliography. Catalogues of misattributed and lost paintings complete this comprehensive volume.

In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele


Lynn E. Roller - 1999
    Her cult was particularly prominent in central Anatolia (modern Turkey), and spread from there through the Greek and Roman world. She was an enormously popular figure, attracting devotion from common people and potentates alike. This book is the first comprehensive assembly and discussion of the entire extant evidence concerning the worship of the Phrygian Mother Goddess, from her earliest appearance in the prehistoric record to the early centuries of the Roman Empire.Lynn E. Roller presents and analyzes literary, historiographic, and archaeological data with equal acuity and flair. While previous studies have tended to emphasize the more outrageous aspects of the Mother Goddess's cult, such as her orgiastic rituals and the eunuch priests who attended her, this book places a special focus on Cybele's position in Anatolia and the ways in which the identity of the goddess changed as her cult was transmitted to Greece and Rome. Roller gives a detailed account of the growth, spread, and evolution of her cult, her ceremonies, and her meaning for her adherents.This book will introduce students of Classical antiquity to many aspects of the Great Mother which have been previously unexamined, and will interest anyone who has ever been piqued by curiosity about the Mother Goddess of the ancient Western world.

Sexual Generations: Star Trek: The Next Generation and Gender


Robin Roberts - 1999
    By having aliens or sexually neutral beings enact female dominance or passivity, experience pregnancy or maternity, or suffer rape or abortion, Star Trek provides viewers with a new perspective on these experiences and an antidote to explicit and implicit cultural biases.   Roberts maintains that the relevance of Star Trek: The Next Generation to feminist issues accounts as no other factor can for the program's huge following of female fans. The incisive and innovative readings in Sexual Generations provide food for thought about how the final frontier can clarify pressing questions of our own space and time.

The Book of Women's Sermons: Hearing God in Each Other's Voices


E. Lee Hancock - 1999
    Many of these writings are inspired by Scripture and others grew out of the authors' individual searches for God. While traditionally women have played marginal roles in church leadership, this collection shows that in today's world the voices of religion increasingly are feminine. Here are Kathleen Norris, Lauren Artress, Joan E. Hemenway, Alice Walker and others, lifting their voices to heaven and, as Barbara Bedway writes, building 'bridges to God.'" --Chicago Tribune

Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America


Hazel V. Carby - 1999
    This book brings together her most important and influential essays, ranging over such topics as the necessity for racially diverse school curricula, the construction of literary canons, Zora Neale Hurston’s portraits of “the Folk,” C.L.R. James and Trinidadian nationalism and black women blues artists, and the necessity for racially diverse school curricula.Carby’s analyses of diverse aspects of contemporary culture are invariably sharp and provocative, her political insights shrewd and often against the grain. A powerful intervention, Culture in Babylon will become a standard reference point in future debates over race, ethnicity and gender.

Tricking and Tripping: Prostitution in the Era of AIDS


Claire E. Sterk - 1999
    

Queen Silver: The Godless Girl


Wendy McElroy - 1999
    A child prodigy and the daughter of famed socialist activist Grace Vern Silver, founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Queen Silver was the subject of Cecil B. De Mille's film The Godless Girl. She matured to become an international feminist, atheist, and socialist, living a remarkable and inspiring life, of which few feminists today are aware.Queen Silver: The Godless Girl is a fiery and profound biography of one of America's most amazing feminist thinkers, a woman who remained an active advocate of intellectual independence to the moment of her death in 1998 at the age of 86. Prolific feminist writer Wendy McElroy sympathetically chronicles the life of Queen Silver from personal interviews with her friends, published reports, letters, and a vast library of the family's personal papers. What emerges is a life like none other. A well-known thinker by the time she was 11-years-old, giving speeches titled "Pioneers of Freethought," "The Rights of Children," and "Science and the Workers," Queen challenged three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan to a debate on evolution (he declined); organized an atheist group at her high school; and left home at 15 to marry a doctor three-times her age, which later became the source of a highly publicized divorce.As a teenager, Queen once served as a defense lawyer for her mother and won. She founded the scholarly and well-reviewed Queen Silver Magazine, and overcame personal tragedy and political persecution during World War I's red scare. Queen worked as an extra in movies directed by D.W. Griffith, attended violent and controversial meetings of the IWW, and went into hiding at the advent of McCarthyism. In her later years, Queen received many freethought awards, remained active in the American Civil Liberties Union, and campaigned hard for public libraries.McElroy tells a complete story by profiling Queen's mother, lecturer and feminist writer Grace Vern Silver, whose struggles for justice in the IWW found her running for Congress, and whose personal education motivated her to inspire the genius in her daughter.

The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity: A Bilingual Anthology


Shirley Kaufman - 1999
    The Dutch, French, German, and Italian volumes represent their respective countries; the Hispanic volume includes poems from the many Spanish-speaking nations; and the Hebrew volume encompasses writing in Hebrew from around the world. The poems are presented in their original languages alongside English translations. Each volume includes an introduction, placing the poetry in historical and aesthetic perspective, and full biographical and bibliographical notes on the poets.

The Broom Closet: Secret Meanings of Domesticity in Postfeminist Novels by Louise Erdrich, Mary Gordon, Toni Morrison, Marge Piercy, Jane Smiley, and Amy Tan


Jeannette Batz Cooperman - 1999
    Mary Gordon, Toni Morrison, Marge Piercy, Jane Smiley, and Amy Tan. By juxtaposing the novels and their authors' lives with general social and historical context, the book outlines the many ways domestic ritual continues to shape women's consciousness - and either foil or reflect women's creativity.

A View Across the Valley: Short Stories by Women from Wales, 1850-1950


Jane Aaron - 1999
    It travels from the industrial communities of the south to the hinterlands of the rural west and the border country of east Wales, and from different epochs in modern history to a medieval and mythological Wales. The majority of the stories included have never been republished since their first appearance in print, including one by novelist Gwyneth Vaughan that has never before appeared in print. Other contributors include Allen Raine, Dorothy Edwards, Hilda Vaughan, Brenda Chamberlain, and Margiad Evans.

Making Women Pay: The Hidden Costs of Fetal Rights


Rachel Roth - 1999
    Government and corporate policies to define and enforce fetal rights have become commonplace. These developments affect all women--pregnant or not--because women are considered potentially pregnant for much of their lives. In her powerful and important book, Rachel Roth brings a new perspective to the debate over fetal rights. She clearly delineates the threat to women's equality posed by the new concept of maternal-fetal conflict, an idea central to the fetal rights movement in which women and fetuses are seen as having interests that are diametrically opposed. Roth begins by placing fetal rights politics in historical and comparative context and by tracing the emergence of the notion of fetal rights. Against a backdrop of gripping stories about actual women, she reviews the difficulties fetal rights claims create for women in the areas of employment, health care, and drug and alcohol regulation. She looks at court cases and state legislation over a period of two decades beginning in 1973, the year of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Her exhaustive research shows how judicial decisions and public policies that grant fetuses rights tend to displace women as claimants, as recipients of needed services, and ultimately as citizens. When a corporation, medical authority, or the state asserts or accepts rights claims on behalf of a fetus, the usual justification involves improving the chance of a healthy birth. This strategy, Roth persuasively argues, is not necessary to achieve the goal of a healthy birth, is often counterproductive to it, and always undermines women's equal standing.

Saved from Silence: Finding Women's Voice in Preaching


Mary Donovan Turner - 1999
    This book looks at the metaphor of voice, how women are moving to voice from silence, and how individuals can make themselves heard by those who don't want to hear.

Ani Difranco - Little Plastic Castle


Ani DiFranco - 1999
    Our matching folio features the title track hit single and 11 others from this enduring & self-sufficient folk/punk/alternative artist: As Is * Deep Dish * Fuel * Glass House * Gravel * Independence Day * Loom * Pixie * Pulse * Swan Dive * Two Little Girls. Also includes an introduction, a biography, and a listing (with album covers) of her releases on Righteous Babe Records.

Her Words


Burleigh Muten - 1999
    The 140 poems chosen for this anthology span the ages, from the hymns to the goddess Inanna through biblical verses about Sophia and the works of the sixth century poet Sappho to the poetry of twentieth-century authors: Janine Canan, Lucille Clifton, May Sarton, Diane di Prima, Susan Griffin, Patricia Monaghan, Starhawk, Alma Luz Villanueva, and many others. To amplify the cyclical, circular time inherent in women's spirituality, "Her Words" intersperses the works of ancient and modern poets. This nonlinear arrangement highlights the powerful connections modern poets are making with ancient archetypes (Eve, Lilith, Demeter, Kali, and others), validating the natural seasons of women's lives as maidens, mothers, and crones.

Notable Women of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century


Barbara Bennett Peterson - 1999
    The collaborative effort of nearly 100 China scholars from around the world, this unique one-volume reference provides 89 in-depth biographies of important Chinese women from the fifth century B.C.E to the early twentieth century.

We Are Coming: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women


Shirley Wilson Logan - 1999
    She analyzes not only speeches but also editorials, essays, and letters.Logan first focuses on the prophetic oratory of Maria Stewart, the first American-born black woman to speak publicly. Turning to Frances Harper, she considers speeches that argue for common interests between divergent communities. And she demonstrates that central to the antilynching rhetoric of Ida Wells is the concept of "presence," or the tactic of enhancing certain selected elements of the presentation.In her discussion of Fannie Barrier Williams and Anna Cooper, Logan shows that when speaking to white club women and black clergymen, both Williams and Cooper employ what Kenneth Burke called identification. To analyze the rhetoric of Victoria Matthews, she applies Carolyn Miller's modification of Lloyd Bitzer's concept of the rhetorical situation.Logan also examines the discourse of women associated with the black Baptist women's movement and those participating in college-affiliated conferences.The book includes an appendix with little-known speeches and essays by Anna Julia Cooper, Selena Sloan Butler, Lucy Wilmot Smith, Mary V. Cook, Adella Hunt Logan, Victoria Earle Matthews, Lucy C. Laney, and Georgia Swift King.

Fighting to Become Americans: Assimilation and the Trouble Between Jewish Women and Jewish Men


Riv-Ellen Prell - 1999
    Her plated gold jewelry with paste stones reveals its cheapness by its very extravagance.This description of a ghetto girl was printed in the American Jewish News in 1918, but with slight variation it might easily be mistaken for a description of our current pernicious and pejorative stereotype of Jewish womanhood, the JAP. What are the origins of these stereotypes? And even more important, why would an American ethnic group use racist terms to describe itself? Riv-Ellen Prell asks these compelling questions as she observes how deeply anti-Semitic stereotypes infuse Jewish men's and women's views of one another in this history of Jewish acculturation in the twentieth century.

Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics


Traci C. West - 1999
    West, a black feminist Christian ethicist, situates spiritual matters within a discussion of the psycho-social impact of intimate assault against African American women.Distinctive for its treatment of the role of the church in response to violence against African American women, the book identifies specific social mechanisms which contribute to the reproduction of intimate violence. West insists that cultural beliefs as well as institutional practices must be altered if we are to combat the reproduction of violence, and suggests methods of resistance which can be utilized by victim-survivors, those in the helping professions, and the church.Interrogating the dynamics of black women's experiences of emotional and spiritual trauma through the diverse disciplines of psychology, sociology, and theology, this important work will be of interest and practical use to those in women's studies, African American studies, Christian ethics, feminist and womanist theology, women's health, family counseling, and pastoral care.

The Women's Liberation Movement in America


Kathleen C. Berkeley - 1999
    This introduction to the movement provides not only a narrative overview, but a also wealth of ready-reference materials, including 13 lengthy biographical profiles of key figures, a broad selection of 15 primary source documents, a glossary of terms, and a useful annotated bibliography. The women's liberation movement was an outgrowth of earlier waves of feminism, including the women's suffrage movement that gained women the right to vote in 1920. In a succession of chronologically organized chapters, Berkeley tells the tumultuous story of the movement from its historical roots through the present.Berkeley examines the background of the modern movement in the early 20th century, by detailing the stirrings and development of the movement in the 1960s, analyzing the key issues that defined the feminist agenda in the 1970s, and chronicling the growing backlash against feminism that reached its peak in the 1980s. An epilogue offers an assessment of the impact of the movement on American society and the direction feminism may take in the 21st century. This narrative history and ready-reference guide to the movement will aid students in understanding this important movement in American life.

Feminism and the Biological Body


Lynda Birke - 1999
    However, the renewed focus, while certainly welcome, seems to always end at the corporeal surface. While recent sociological and feminist theory has made important claims about the process of cultural inscription on the body, and about the cultural representation of the body, what actually appears in this new theory seems to be, ironically, disembodied. If this newly theorized form has interiority, it is one that is explained predominantly through psychoanalysis. The physiological processes remain a mystery to be explained, if at all, only in the esoteric language of biomedicine.As a trained biologist, Lynda Birke was frustrated by the gap between feminist cultural analysis and her own scientific background. In this book, she seeks to bridge this gap using ideas in anatomy and physiology to develop the feminist view that the biological body is socially and culturally constructed. Birke rejects the assumption that bodily function is somehow fixed and unchanging, claiming that biology offers more than just a deterministic narrative of how nature works. Feminism and the Biological Body brings natural science and feminist theory together and suggests that we need a new politics that includes, rather than denies, our flesh.

Feminist Debates: Issues of Theory and Political Practice


Valerie Bryson - 1999
    By disentangling questions of style and strategy from more profound disagreements, Bryson points the way to more effective forms of feminist political practice. Feminist Debates provides analysis of the situation of women in western societies, and examines women's participation in the workplace, the changing structure of the family, the extent of male violence against women, the development of reproductive technology, the political representation of women, and the role of the law in maintaining and challenging gender inequalities. Clear and balanced in its assessment of various problems and perspectives, Feminist Debates: Issues of Theory and Political Practice offers an essential guide to contemporary feminist thinking and practice.

Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700-1775


Rebecca Larson - 1999
    Some of these women circulated throughout British North America; others crossed the Atlantic to deliver their inspired messages. In this public role, they preached in courthouses, meeting houses, and private homes, to audiences of men and women, to Quakers and to those of other faiths, to Native Americans and to slaves.Utilizing the Quakers' rich archival sources, as well as colonial newspapers and diaries, Rebecca Larson reconstructs the activities of these women. She offers striking insights into the ways their public, authoritative role affected the formation of their identities, their families, and their society. Extensively researched and compellingly written, Daughters of Light enriches our understanding of religion and women's lives in colonial America.