Best of
Womens-Studies

2001

Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970


Lynne Olson - 2001
    From the Montgomery bus boycott to the lunch counter sit-ins to the Freedom Rides, Lynne Olson skillfully tells the long-overlooked story of the extraordinary women who were among the most fearless, resourceful, and tenacious leaders of the civil rights movement. Freedom's Daughters includes portraits of more than sixty women—many until now forgotten and some never before written about—from key figures like Ida B. Wells, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ella Baker, and Septima Clark to some of the smaller players who represent the hundreds of women who each came forth to do her own small part and who together ultimately formed the mass movements that made the difference. Freedom's Daughters puts a human face on the civil rights struggle—and shows that that face was often female.

Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years


Diane di Prima - 2001
    Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a lifelong commitment to become a poet, first made when she was in high school. Immersing herself in Manhattan's early 1950s Bohemia, di Prima quickly emerged as a renowned poet, an influential editor, and a single mother at a time when this was unheard of. Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world.

She Flies Without Wings: How Horses Touch a Woman's Soul


Mary D. Midkiff - 2001
    Drawing from myth and literature, the author’s own experiences, and interviews with countless women, we learn, through women’s deeply personal stories, how horses enrich our lives and connect us to nature–making us readers of rhythm and invisible signs, helping us harness our youthful sexuality, sharing the “horsepower” we need to reach our dreams. And here we see how, for thousands of years, the deep kinship between women and horses has connected us to our most intimate feelings of delight, helped us learn to solve problems, and set our creativity free. From the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer to the fiction of Jane Austen to folktales from around the world, She Flies Without Wings uses great literature and myth to encompass a wide spectrum of beliefs and perspectives–and creates a true celebration of speed, air, and the spectacular animal that connects us with both.Filled with the moving lessons–-about sensuality, commitment, power, nurturance, and spirituality–women riders have known for centuries, written with a loving hand by an expert equestrian, She Flies Without Wings is an eloquent paean to a pairing that enlivened history, inspired literature, and continues to enchant us all.

A Practical Guide to Vibrational Medicine: Energy Healing and Spiritual Transformation


Richard Gerber - 2001
    A growing number of pioneering researchers embrace a new view of healing—one expounded by Dr. Richard Gerber in his groundbreaking bestseller, Vibrational Medicine.Now he shows how to put this new way of thinking into practical use, describing the role of consciousness and "thought forms," as well as the benefits of homeopathy, acupuncture, color and light healing, magneto biology, and other therapies. A traditionally trained physician, Dr. Gerber combines scientific evidence with traditional methods from the East and West to unlock our potential for healing ourselves.

Against Love Poetry: Poems


Eavan Boland - 2001
    The man and woman in these poems are husband and wife, custodians of ordinary, aging human love. They are not figures in a love poem. Time is their essential witness, and not their destroyer. A New York Times Notable Book and a Newsday Favorite Book of 2001.

Isis Magic: Cultivating a Relationship with the Goddess of 10,000 Names


M. Isidora Forrest - 2001
    Divine Mother, Mistress of Magic, Goddess of the Green Earth, Queen of the Mysteries, Goddess of Women and Sacred Sexuality, Lady of Hermetic Wisdom . . . "Isis Magic" begins with a fascinating history of this many-aspected Lady of the Ten Thousand Names. Then apply this information to a four-part initiatory journey through the "House of Isis" as you become Her Votary, Her Handmaiden or Servant, her Magician, and Her Prophetess or Prophet.  Through a series of exercises, meditations, and fully scripted rituals, you will be touched by the Heart of Isis and cultivate your relationship with this powerful, magical, and living Goddess. On a spiritual level, this process fosters spiritual growth and personal transformation. On a practical level, you will increase your magical and Priest/esscraft skills as you learn Isiac ways of healing, celebrating the seasons, honoring life passages, practicing divination, and more. Enter this four-part initiatory journey, and . . . • Learn how to "Open the Ways" to Isis • Powerfully connect with Her through special invocations, meditations, and prayers • Celebrate the seasonal rites in honor of the Isis of Nature • Express and heal deep sorrows through ritual • Learn what modern Priestesses and Priests have to say about their relationship with Isis. "Isis Magic" is complete, well researched, and deeply experiential. It is the perfect resource for the individual seeker, to inspire your circle or coven, or as a program of personal development for those called by Isis to be her Priestesses and Priests.

The Conspiracy to Destroy Black Women


Michael Porter - 2001
    This book presents a fresh perspective on the many facets of sexism experienced by African American women, addressing such issues as wage disparity, spousal abuse, and the rising rate of AIDS among black women. It also examines the roots of sexism among African American males, including the effect of gangster rap music on perceptions of black women, and offers strategies for change.

Goddesses in Older Women


Jean Shinoda Bolen - 2001
    When Bolen's earlier book Goddesses in Everywoman was first published, it became a surprise bestseller and an unexpected star in the womens' spirituality movement. Bolen viewed archetypal patterns from a Jungian-feminist point of view as they affected the first two phases of a woman's life. Now she has devoted an entire book to the third phase of a woman's life, that of a "green and juicy crone." Here again, the goddesses (Demeter, Artemis, Persephone etc,) as they would age are invoked as role models as well as some non-Western goddesses. All can add perspective and wisdom to any woman's Act III.

Queen for a Day: Selected And New Poems


Denise Duhamel - 2001
    The volume features poems from Duhamel's five previous collections, which include Smile!, The Star-Spangled Banner and Girl Soldier.

The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth


Laurel Thatcher Ulrich - 2001
    Under the singular and brilliant lens that Ulrich brings to this study, ordinary household goods--Indian baskets, spinning wheels, a chimneypiece, a cupboard, a niddy-noddy, bed coverings, silk embroidery, a pocketbook, a linen tablecloth, a coverlet and a rose blanket, and an unfinished stocking--provide the key to a transformed understanding of cultural encounter, frontier war, Revolutionary politics, international commerce, and early industrialization in America. We discover how ideas about cloth and clothing affected relations between English settlers and their Algonkian neighbors. We see how an English production system based on a clear division of labor—men doing the weaving and women the spinning--broke down in the colonial setting, becoming first marginalized, then feminized, then politicized, and how the new system both prepared the way for and was sustained by machine-powered spinning.Pulling these divergent threads together into a rich and revealing tapestry of --the age of homespun,--Ulrich demonstrates how ordinary objects reveal larger economic and social structures, and, in particular, how early Americans and their descendants made, used, sold, and saved textiles in order to assert identities, shape relationships, and create history.

The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing on the Green World


Linda Hogan - 2001
    Yet no previous book has attempted to bring together the rich literature this husbandry has inspired. This burgeoning collection amply addresses that lack, with more than three dozen selections of nonfiction and poetry. As in "Intimate Nature," their previous anthology on women and animals (edited with Deena Metzger), Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson illuminate their subject from a range of perspectives. Here are "curranderas "and craftswomen whose legacy of plant wisdom safeguards our connection to the green world; botanists and geneticists; and visionaries like Rachel Carson, who show us the world--and our power to protect or destroy it--in a blade of grass. Here are Zora Neale Hurston on voodoo herbs, Sharman Apt Russell on the perfume of plants, Annick Smith on huckleberries, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas on the Everglades' "river of grass," Isabel Allende on the language of flowers, Susan Orleans on "Orchid Fever," Diane Ackerman on the rain forest, and Kathleen Norris on "Dreaming of Trees." Here is an eloquent "ode to mold," a paean to mulch, an elegy for elders. Here is a book that celebrates an ancient and ongoing relationship in a new and appealing way.

Women of Discovery: A Celebration of Intrepid Women Who Explored the World


Milbry Polk - 2001
    Visionaries, adventurers, artists, and scientists, these women challenged the limitations, both physical and social, of their times and, in the face of formidable challenges, expanded the world's body of knowledge. Yet despite their extraordinary achievements, they have remained unknown and unsung for too long.No longer. The stories of more than eighty extraordinary explorers and adventurers are vividly recounted and stunningly illustrated in Women of Discovery. Here for the first time are gathered the tales of early voyagers, such as the valiant tenth-century Viking adventurer Unn the Deep Minded and seventeenth-century Spanish conquistadora Catalina de Erauso. Intrepid explorers like Mary Kingsley in Africa, Alexandra David-Neel in Tibet, and Freya Stark in the Middle East traveled fearlessly into the blank spaces on the map. Artist explorers, including the great botanical painter Anna Maria Sibylla Merian in Surinam, writer Zora Neale Hurston in Haiti, and photographer Ruth Robertson in South America, captured in their art the beauty and mystery of exotic lands. Many brave women have ventured into extreme environments to bring back knowledge, whether they were aviators like Amelia Earhart, mountaineers like Annie Smith Peck, or Arctic explorers like Irina and Valentina Kuznetsova. And the annals of science would be far poorer without the work of such women as primatologists Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, ethnobotanist Nicole Maxwell, and ichthyologist Eugenie Clark.This is truly a gathering of heroines, full of tales of courage, talent, intelligence, and sheer determination. With a foreword by renowned journalist Christiane Amanpour, Women of Discovery is a remarkable book, an achievement in its own right, and certain to thrill anyone captivated by the world-changing drama of exploration.

The Lady of Ten Thousand Names: Goddess Stories from Many Cultures


Burleigh Muten - 2001
    Mighty Isis struggles to save her beloved brother in Ancient Egypt, and White Buffalo Woman instructs the Sioux tribe on how to worship Mother Earth.

Dreaming Me


Janice Dean Willis - 2001
    Raised in a segregated Alabama mining camp, she eventually would become a renowned Indo-Tibetan scholar and professor of religion at Wesleyan University. Along the way, she took part in an armed takeover of a Cornell University building during a black student protest, marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Birmingham, and, ultimately, found peace within a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Hers is a deeply personal journey of racial and spiritual healing that "will move anyone who is compelled by the examined life." (Publishers Weekly, starred review) "Jan Willis's honest, lucid, mindful, and heartful account of her amazing life thus far, its struggles and woundings, its triumphs and joys, is certainly the roar of a lioness of truth-awakening, empowering, inspiring! Listen to it with pride and pleasure!" (Robert Thurman, author of Inner Revolution) "Willis writes frankly about family, race, spirituality, and finding grace among life's most difficult challenges. Dreaming Me is more honest and fascinating than anything I've read in a long time." (David Pesci, author of Amistad) "Intensely felt...highly personal...A moving story that aims to reconcile the experiences of faith and racism." (Kirkus Reviews)

Sifters: Native American Women's Lives


Theda Perdue - 2001
    From Pocahontas, a Powhatan woman of the seventeenth century, to Ada Deer, the Menominee woman who headed theBureau of Indian Affairs in the 1990s, the essays span four centuries. Each one recounts the experiences of women from vastly different cultural traditions--the hunting and gathering of Kumeyaay culture of Delfina Cuero, the pueblo society of San Ildefonso potter Maria Martinez, and the powerfulmatrilineal kinship system of Molly Brant's Mohawks. Contributors focus on the ways in which different women have fashioned lives that remain firmly rooted in their identity as Native women. Perdue's introductory essay ties together the themes running through the biographical sketches, including thecultural factors that have shaped the lives of Native women, particularly economic contributions, kinship, and belief, and the ways in which historical events, especially in United States Indian policy, have engendered change.

Yankee Doodle Gals: Women Pilots Of World War II


Amy Nathan - 2001
    military aircraft—the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of World War II. Although these pioneers were never allowed to fly in combat, they did fly in many essential wartime missions—some that the men didn't even want to take on.Through firsthand accounts, these women share their experiences as they test-fly newly repaired aircraft, drag banners behind their planes so male trainees can practice shooting moving targets (!), and ferry all kinds of aircraft from factories to military bases. Their courage, determination, and lively camaraderie make every page inspiring and surprising.Yankee Doodle Gals will give today's young people a new look at World War II and show them just how dramatically society has changed since then.

The Essential Handbook of Women's Spirituality


Barbara G. Walker - 2001
    This sold handbook, originally published as Women's Rituals, is re-packaged in a fresh format with a new introduction and bibliography from the author for a new generation. This is a core text for every woman interested in feminist spirituality and ritual. It is all here---from techniques, procedures, and rituals for individuals and groups. Among the many topics covered are: holidays, chants, making mandalas, rites of passage, the laws of the goddess, tools and rituals for invocations.

Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity


Ella L.J. Edmondson Bell - 2001
    Based on groundbreaking research that spanned eight years, Our Separate Ways compares and contrasts the experiences of 120 black and white female managers in the American business arena. In-depth histories bring to life the women's powerful and often difficult journeys from childhood to professional success, highlighting the roles that gender, race, and class played in their development.Although successful professional women come from widely diverse family backgrounds, educational experiences, and community values, they share a common assumption upon entering the workforce: I have a chance. Along the way, however, they discover that people question their authority, challenge their intelligence, and discount their ideas. And while gender is a common denominator among these women, race and class are often wedges between them.In Our Separate Ways, you will find candid discussions about stereotypes, learn how black women's early experiences affect their attitudes in the business world, become aware of how white women have--perhaps unwittingly--aligned themselves more often with white men than with black women, and see ways that our country continues to come to terms with diversity in all of its dimensions.Whether you are a human resources director wondering why you're having trouble retaining black women, a white female manager considering the role of race in your office, or a black female manager searching for perspectives, you will find fresh insights about how black and white women's struggles differ and encounter provocative ideas for creating a better workplace environment for everyone.

Jung: A Feminist Revision


Susan Rowland - 2001
    It combines an original student-friendly introduction to Jung, his life and work, his treatment of gender and the range of post-Jungian gender theory, with new research linking Jung to deconstruction, post-Freudian feminism, postmodernism, the sublime, and the postmodern body.Feminism has neglected Jung to its own detriment. While evaluating the reasons for this neglect, Jung: A Feminist Revision uses the diversity of feminist critical tools from historical analysis to poststructuralism. In a fresh and illuminating study, this book provides both a critique of Jung and demonstrates his positive potential for future feminisms. New theories are explored which develop relationships between the work of Jung and Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray, H�l�ne Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler. Particular attention is paid to the growth of post-Jungian studies of gender. This includes a cogent study of the tradition of Jungian feminism that looks to 'the feminine principle' and narratives of goddesses. Jungian 'goddess' feminism's enduring appeal is re-examined in the context of postmodern re-thinking of subjectivity and gender.The book proposes a re-orientation of Jungian studies in its relationship to feminism. The result is an accessible text that introduces Jung and sets out his relevance to contemporary feminisms.This book will be essential reading for undergraduates and postgraduates studying feminist theory, psychoanalytical theory, literature and psychology.

What's A Poor Girl To Do?: Prostitution In Mid Nineteenth Century America


Elizabeth A. Topping - 2001
    

The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women's Piety in Late Antiquity


Stephen J. Davis - 2001
    In examining the practices of Thecla's devotees in Asia Minor and Egypt, Stephen Davis shows that Thecla's cult was closely linked with communities of women as a means of empowerment.

Sacred Narratives


Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici - 2001
    Wife of Piero de' Medici and mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Tornabuoni exerted considerable influence on Florence's political and social affairs. She was also, as this volume illustrates, a gifted and prolific poet.This is the first major collection in any language of her extensive body of religious poems. Ranging from gentle lyrics on the Nativity to moving dialogues between a crucified Christ and the weeping sinner who kneels before him, the nine laudi (poems of praise) included here are among the few such poems known to have been written by a woman. Tornabuoni's five storie sacre, narrative poems based on the lives of biblical figures-three of whom, Judith, Susanna, and Esther, are Old Testament heroines-are virtually unique in their range and expressiveness. Together with Jane Tylus's substantial introduction, these poems offer us both a fascinating portrait of a highly educated and creative woman and a lively sense of cultural and social life in Renaissance Florence.

Earth Mother Magic: Ancient Spells for Modern Belles


Judika Illes - 2001
    Dozens of spells, recipes, and incantations to bring everything from money to that old boyfriend back into your life.

Sisters of the Academy: Emergent Black Women Scholars in Higher Education


Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela - 2001
    This is an issue of major concern nationally, for the Black community, and for leaders in higher education. The fifteen scholars who contribute to this volume trace the trajectory of Black women in education, with a particular focus on higher education. These scholars combine research and personal narratives to explore educational issues ranging from historical accounts of Black female teachers in the nineteenth century, to the challenges and triumphs of being an activist researcher at the turn of the twenty-first century. The essays in this volume address specific historical, social, cultural, political, and academic issues that affect Black women in the academy, and provide readers with tangible examples of how these scholars have transcended some of the challenges in their pursuit of academic excellence. While these essays do not claim to provide the "magic solution" or a "how-to-guide" to success in higher education, they do raise thought-provoking issues that are critical to the success of Black women in higher education. This book uncovers issues, and proposes remedies, which will be of vital interest for anyone concerned with diversity and equity in higher education. It celebrates emergent scholars of African descent, who have used the challenges they have encountered in their journeys through the academy to create opportunities for success.

Working Women of Early Modern Venice


Monica Chojnacka - 2001
    Rather than focusing exclusively on the women of noble or wealthy merchant families, Chojnacka explores the lives of women—unmarried, married, or widowed—who worked for a living and helped keep the city running through their labor, services, and products.Among Chojnacka's surprising findings is the degree to which these working women exercised control over their own lives. Many headed households and even owned their own homes; when necessary, they also took in and supported other women of their families. Some were self-employed, while others had jobs outside the home. They often moved freely about the city to conduct business, and they took legal action in the courts on their own behalf. On a daily basis, Venetian women worked, traveled, and contested obstacles in ways that made the city their own.