Book picks similar to
Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist by Hazel V. Carby
feminism
non-fiction
literary-criticism
ethnic-studies
Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence
Jody Miller - 2008
Wright Mills AwardDraws a vivid picture of the race and gender inequalities that harm young African American women in poor urban communitiesMuch has been written about the challenges that face urban African American young men, but less is said about the harsh realities for African American young women in disadvantaged communities. Sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating violence, and even gang rape are not uncommon experiences. In Getting Played, sociologist Jody Miller presents a compelling picture of this dire social problem and explores how inextricably, and tragically, linked violence is to their daily lives in poor urban neighborhoods.Drawing from richly textured interviews with adolescent girls and boys, Miller brings a keen eye to the troubling realities of a world infused with danger and gender-based violence. These girls are isolated, ignored, and often victimized by those considered family and friends. Community institutions such as the police and schools that are meant to protect them often turn a blind eye, leaving girls to fend for themselves. Miller draws a vivid picture of the race and gender inequalities that harm these communities--and how these result in deeply and dangerously engrained beliefs about gender that teach youths to see such violence--rather than the result of broader social inequalities--as deserved due to individual girls' flawed characters, i.e., she deserved it.Through Miller's careful analysis of these engaging, often unsettling stories, Getting Played shows us not only how these young women are victimized, but how, despite vastly inadequate social support and opportunities, they struggle to navigate this dangerous terrain.
Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America
Laura Kipnis - 1996
First published in 1996, Bound and Gagged opens with the chilling case of Daniel DePew, a man convicted—in the first computer bulletin board entrapment case—of conspiring to make a snuff film and sentenced to thirty-three years in prison for merely trading kinky fantasies with two undercover cops.Using this textbook example of social hysteria as a springboard, Kipnis argues that criminalizing fantasy—even perverse and unacceptable fantasy—has dire social consequences. Exploring the entire spectrum of pornography, she declares that porn isn’t just about gender and that fantasy doesn’t necessarily constitute intent. She reveals Larry Flynt’s Hustler to be one of the most politically outspoken and class-antagonistic magazine in the country and shows how fetishes such as fat admiration challenge our aesthetic prejudices and socially sanctioned disgust. Kipnis demonstrates that the porn industry—whose multibillion-dollar annual revenues rival those of the three major television networks combined—know precisely how to tap into our culture’s deepest anxieties and desires, and that this knowledge, more than all the naked bodies, is what guarantees its vast popularity.Bound and Gagged challenges our most basic assumptions about America’s relationship with pornography and questions what the calls to eliminate it are really attempting to protect.
The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions
Paula Gunn Allen - 1986
This pioneering work, first published in 1986, documents the continuing vitality of American Indian traditions and the crucial role of women in those traditions.
Fat Is a Feminist Issue
Susie Orbach - 1978
Reflecting on our increasingly diet and body-obsessed society, Susie Orbach's new introduction explains how generations of women and girls are growing up absorbing the eating anxieties around them. In an age where women want to be sexy, nurturing, domestic goddesses, confident at work, and feminine too, the twenty-first-century woman is poorly armed for survival. Never before has the Fat Is A Feminist Issue revolution been more in need of revival.Exploring our love/hate relationship with food, Susie Orbach describes how fat is about so much more than food. It is a response to our social situation; the way we are seen by others and ourselves. Too often food is a source of anguish, as are our bodies. But Fat Is A Feminist Issue discusses how we can turn food into a friend and find ways to accept ourselves for who and how we are. Following the step-by-step guide, and you too can put an end to food anxieties and dieting.
Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings
Susan M. Shaw - 2001
Chapter introductions provide background information on each chapter's topic, including explanations of key concepts and ideas and references to the subsequent reading selections. The anthology also offers numerous pedagogical features designed to engage students in active learning.
Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women
Kate Manne - 2020
Ranging widely across the culture, from Harvey Weinstein and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings to “Cat Person” and the political misfortunes of Elizabeth Warren, Manne’s book shows how privileged men’s sense of entitlement—to sex, yes, but more insidiously to admiration, care, bodily autonomy, knowledge, and power—is a pervasive social problem with often devastating consequences.In clear, lucid prose, Manne argues that male entitlement can explain a wide array of phenomena, from mansplaining and the undertreatment of women’s pain to mass shootings by incels and the seemingly intractable notion that women are “unelectable.” Moreover, Manne implicates each of us in toxic masculinity: It’s not just a product of a few bad actors; it’s something we all perpetuate, conditioned as we are by the social and cultural mores of our time. The only way to combat it, she says, is to expose the flaws in our default modes of thought while enabling women to take up space, say their piece, and muster resistance to the entitled attitudes of the men around them.With wit and intellectual fierceness, Manne sheds new light on gender and power and offers a vision of a world in which women are just as entitled as men to our collective care and concern.
Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues
Catharine A. MacKinnon - 2006
Exposing the consequences and significance of the systematic maltreatment of women, and its systemic condonation, this book takes us into the heart of the international law of conflict to ask - and reveal - why the international community can rally against terrorists' violence, but not against violence against women.