Funny, passionate, and compelling prose on what it means to be queer and happy about it in a world that is still arguing about what it means to be queer.

    The essays are addressed to everyone interested in the roots of the colonized woman's reality. Castillo introduces the term Xicanisma in a passionate call for a politically active, socially committed Chicana feminism. In "A Countryless Woman, " Castillo outlines the experience of the brown woman in a racist society that recognizes race relations mostly as a black and white dilemma. Essays on the Watsonville strike, the early Chicano movement, and the roots of machismo illustrate the extent to which women still struggle against male dominance. Other essays suggest strategies for opposing the suppression of women's spirituality and sexuality by institutionalized religion and the state. These challenging essays will be a provocative guide for those who envision a new future for women as we face a new century.

    Bryan Cholfin

    Depicting the role of the anima—she who animates and gives meaning to a man's life—this tale teaches the lifesaving importance of distinguishing between the light and dark animas. In Lying with the Heavenly Woman, acclaimed author Robert A. Johnson discusses the manifestations of the anima and other feminine archetypes in men's lives and illuminates men's relationship to femininity through myths, stories, and anecdotes.With insight and clarity, Johnson shows that the consequences of failing to differentiate between the various feminine elements present in every man's personality can range from mid-life crisis to incest and suicide—and reveals that properly recognizing these vital elements can allow a man to find meaning within himself and fulfillment in his relationships with others.

    Award-winning journalist Jan Goodwin traveled through ten Islamic countries and interviewed hundreds of Muslim women, from professionals to peasants, from royalty to rebels. The result is an unforgettable journey into a world where women are confined, isolated, even killed for the sake of a "code of honor" created and zealously enforced by men.Price of Honor brings to life a world in which women have become pawns in a bitter power game, and gives readers a provocative look inside Muslim society today--in their own words.

    While much has been written on feminism and therapy, this bold book breaks new ground by making explicit and coherent the theoretical underpinnings of feminist therapy.Building on the revolutionary work of feminist scholars who have described how women employ strategies of knowing the world in a manner distinct from men, Laura S. Brown, noted for her pioneering work in the field of ethics and boundaries, shows how these insights should reshape the very nature of the therapeutic encounter. Therapy must be understood as an opportunity to help clients see the relationships between their behavior and the patriarchal society in which we are all embedded. Viewed in this light, feminist therapy affords both practitioner and client a chance to subvert the system in which women’s lives have been devalued.With meticulous care, the author examines key features of the therapeutic encounter with a feminist lens: the power of the therapist; assessment and diagnosis; the nature of change; the ethics of practice; and differences in race, class, and sexual identity. She constructs a vision of therapy that helps the client develop a sense of entitlement to satisfying and equal relationships outside the therapist’s office. She proposes that clients need help finding their “mother tongue” and retelling their story in a language freed from the patriarchal notions that have shaped and limited their experience. Her vision of therapy considers the dilemmas faced by feminist therapists who must work within a mental health system that is inherently sexist and use its flawed or problematic tools for testing and treatment.This powerful vision of feminist therapy is grounded throughout with case examples that illustrate how a dialogue between therapist and client can be healing, subversive, and transformative all at once.

    The result was a groundbreaking book in which she brought the disturbing statistics to life with skill and flair of an experienced journalist. Orenstein plumbs the minds of both boys and girls who have learned to equate masculinity with opportunity and assertiveness, and femininity with reserve and restraint. She demonstrates the cost of this insidious lesson, by taking us into the lives of real young women who are struggling with eating disorders, sexual harassment, and declining academic achievement, especially in math and science. Peggy Orenstein's SchoolGirls is a classic that belongs on the shelf with the work of Carol Gilligan, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, and Mary Pipher. It continues to be read by all who care about how our schools and our society teach girls to shortchange themselves.

    Part coming-of-age story, part mind-altering manifesto on gender and sexuality, coming directly to you from the life experiences of a transgender woman, Gender Outlaw breaks all the rules and leaves the reader forever changed.26 black-and-white illustrations.

    Lubell's artistic and literary sources support the argument that from the earliest moments of civilization, humans have respected and revered female sexual energy, graphically symbolized in the vulva, as an indispensable force in the balance of nature. Over the ages, the images of Baubo and her sisters assumed deviant and disturbing forms, but the basic lines of her legend and its visual manifestations were not completely obscured. Nor, as this book will show, has Baubo's essential power been destroyed even in our own age.

    Beth Brant put this collection of essays, talks and theory together to convey the message that words are sacred because they come from a place of mystery and give meaning and existence to life.

    Providing both a chronicle of the radical sex movement in the United States, as well as the definitive opinions of America's most consistent and trenchant sexual critic, Public Sex is must-read material for anyone interested in sexual practices, feminism, censorship, or simply the art of the political essay.

    CIRCLE OF SONG is designed as a resource book for musicians, teachers, educators and anyone interested in sharing song, dance and ritual.

    the forgotten victims of nazism, [gays] and [lesbians] were targeted for persecution and extermination, Their fate is studied in this disturbing [history] ,with archive material from east germany which remained lost until the fall of the Berlin Wal

    She identifies the household as a primary site for the construction of power relations and compares the extent to which gender inequalities are revealed in different approaches to the concept of the family unit. The book assesses the inadequacies of the poverty line as a measuring tool and provides a critical overview of an issue that has been fiercely contested by feminists: population control. While feminists themselves have no unanimous view of the meaning of “reproductive choice,” Kabeer argues that it is imperative for them to take a lead in the construction of population policy.

    This collection includes writings by new voices, as well as by Alice Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maxine Hong Kingston, Louise Erdrich, Paule Marshall, Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Leslie Marmon Silko, Maya Angelou, Rita Dove, June Jordan, Lucille Clifton, Ntozake Shange, Nikki Giovanni, and others.

    With the instant success of her two novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), she became a bright light in New York's literary firmament. But her meteoric rise was followed by a surprising fall: In 1930 she was accused of plagiarizing a short story, and after 1933 she disappeared from both the literary and African-American worlds of New York. She lived the rest of her life--more than three decades--out of the public eye, working primarily as a nurse. In a remarkable achievement, Thadious Davis has penetrated the fog of mystery that has surrounded Larsen to present a detailed and fascinating account of the life and work of this gifted, determined, yet vulnerable artist.In addition to unraveling the details of Larsen's personal life, Davis deftly situates the writer within the broader politics and aesthetics of the Harlem Renaissance and analyzes her life and work in terms of the current literature on race and gender. This book, with the prodigious amount of new material and insights that Davis provides, is a landmark in African-American literary history and criticism.

    Analyzing data from the psychoanalyst’s couch to the hidden history of wet nursing, psychologist Shari L. Thurer wends her way from the Stone Age to the age of Hillary Rodham Clinton, painting a vivid, often frightening picture of life for mothers and children in a time when their roles were constructed by men. Along the way, she debunks myth after myth—exposing the not-so-golden ages of Classical Greece and the Italian Renaissance, and revealing the pervasive ideal of Dr. Spock’s selfless, stay-at-home mother as the historical aberration it actually was. A work of impassioned scholarship and astonishing range, The Myths of Motherhood does nothing less than recast our conception of good mothering.

    Urgent and significant issues are explored including coming out to one's parents, transgenderism and coping with the loss of a loved one to AIDS. Features work by Susie Bright, Michelle Tea, Alvin Orloff and more.

    Declamation was an exhilarating art form for the Greeks and bilingual Romans of the Second Sophistic movement, and its best practitioners would travel the empire performing in front of enraptured audiences. The mastery of rhetoric marked the transition to manhood for all aristocratic citizens and remained crucial to a man's social standing. In treating rhetoric as a process of self-presentation in a face-to-face society, Gleason analyzes the deportment and writings of the two Sophists--Favorinus, a eunuch, and Polemo, a man who met conventional gender expectations--to suggest the ways character and gender were perceived.Physiognomical texts of the era show how intently men scrutinized one another for minute signs of gender deviance in such features as gait, gesture, facial expression, and voice. Rhetoricians trained to develop these traits in a masculine fashion. Examining the successful career of Favorinus, whose high-pitched voice and florid presentation contrasted sharply with the traditionalist style of Polemo, Gleason shows, however, that ideal masculine behavior was not a monolithic abstraction. In a highly accessible study treating the semiotics of deportment and the medical, cultural, and moral issues surrounding rhetorical activity, she explores the possibilities of self-presentation in the search for recognition as a speaker and a man.

    She shows how writings by Margaret Cavendish, Frances Burney, Virginia Woolf, and others reconceive the meanings of femininity in relation to such apparent oppositions as travel/home, other/self, and foreign/domestic.

     Outrageous Practices, a highly acclaimed best-seller newly available in paperback, chronicles the history of a prejudiced health care establishment and shows how the current system remains captive to male-dominated medicine and research. The book examines how gender discrimination manifests itself in hospitals, physicians's and psychiatrists's offices, medical schools, research labs, government health-related agencies, and biomedical and pharmaceutical industries.KEY POINTS:o New paperback edition of a powerful book about gender bias in the medical establishment.o New preface by authors brings the issues up-to-date.

    

    Wells offers an intimate look at the hopes, thoughts and day-to-day life of the young woman who would later become the celebrated civil rights activist and antilynching crusader.

    This revised and updated edition of "the most critically acclaimed book" (Publishers Weekly) on domestic violence includes new information on the effect of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, examines resources on the Internet, and details what you can do to help stop battering.