Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?

    If Bagge had not already had a New York Times bestseller with his biography of Margaret Sanger, his newest biography, Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story, would seem to be an unfathomable pairing of author and subject. Yet through Bagge’s skilled cartooning, he turns what could be a rote biography into a bold and dazzling graphic novel, creating a story as brilliant as the life itself.Hurston challenged the norms of what was expected of an African American woman in early 20th century society. The fifth of eight kids from a Baptist family in Alabama, Hurston’s writing prowess blossomed at Howard University, and then Barnard College, where she was the sole black student. She arrived in NYC at the height of the Harlem Renaissance and quickly found herself surrounded by peers such as Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman.Hurston went on to become a noted folklorist and critically acclaimed novelist, including her most provocative work Their Eyes Were Watching God. Despite these landmark achievements, personal tragedies and shifting political winds in the midcentury rendered her almost forgotten by the end of her life. With admiration and respect, Bagge reconstructs her vivid life in resounding full-color.

    They had a violin player. They came from Portugal, Spain, and England. Their anarchy was poetic. Working with the iconic Rough Trade Records at its radical beginnings, they were the first group of punk women to actively call themselves feminists.In this short book—the first on The Raincoats—author Jenn Pelly tells the story of the group's audacious debut album, which Kurt Cobain once called “wonderfully classic scripture.” Pelly builds on rare archival materials and extensive interviews with members of The Raincoats, Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill, Hole, Scritti Politti, Gang of Four, and more. She draws formal inspiration from the collage-like The Raincoats itself to explore this album's magic, vulnerability, and strength.

    Her memoir tells the story of how, through sheer will, talent, and fearlessness, she forced herself into a male-dominated industry, became part of a movement that changed music, and inspired a generation of female rockers.After forming The Flowers of Romance with Sid Vicious in 1976, Albertine joined The Slits and made musical history in one of the first generations of punk bands. The Slits would go on to serve as an inspiration to future rockers, including Kurt Cobain, Carrie Brownstein, and the Riot Grrrl movement in the 1990s. This is the story of what it was like to be a girl at the height of punk: the sex, the drugs, the guys, the tours, and being part of a brilliant pioneering group of women making musical history. Albertine recounts helping define punk fashion, struggling to find her place among the boys, and her romance with Mick Jones, including her pregnancy and subsequent abortion. She also gives a candid account of what happened post-punk, beyond the break-up of The Slits in 1982, including a career in film, surviving cancer, and making music again, twenty-five years later.A truly remarkable memoir told in Viv’s frank, irreverent, and distinctive voice, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. is a raw, thrilling story of life on the frontier.

    Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008, then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock ’n’ roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out—a new language, something new under the sun. “Transmission” by Joy Division. “All I Could Do Was Cry” by Etta James and then Beyoncé. “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” first by the Teddy Bears and almost half a century later by Amy Winehouse. In Marcus’s hands these and other songs tell the story of the music, which is, at bottom, the story of the desire for freedom in all its unruly and liberating glory. Slipping the constraints of chronology, Marcus braids together past and present, holding up to the light the ways that these striking songs fall through time and circumstance, gaining momentum and meaning, astonishing us by upending our presumptions and prejudices. This book, by a founder of contemporary rock criticism—and its most gifted and incisive practitioner—is destined to become an enduring classic.

    In Pretty in Punk, Lauraine Leblanc examines what happens when girls ignore these cultural messages, parody ideas of beauty, and refuse to play the games of teenage femininity. She explores the origins and development of the punk subculture, the processes by which girls decide to “go punk,” patterns of resistance to gender norms, and tactics girls use to deal with violence and harassment.Pretty in Punk takes readers into the lives of girls living on the margins of contemporary culture. Drawing on interviews with 40 girls and women between the ages of 14-37, Leblanc examines the lives of her subjects, illuminating their forms of rebellion and survival. Pretty in Punk lets readers hear the voices of these women as they describe the ways their  constructions of femininity—from black lipstick to slamdancing—allow them to reject damaging cultural messages and build strong identities. The price they pay for resisting femininity can be steep—girls tell of parental rejection, school expulsion, institutionalization,  and harassment. Leblanc illuminates punk girls’ resistance to adversity, their triumphs over tough challenges, and their work to create individual identities in a masculine world.

    Telling the story of her family, growing up in California in the '60s and '70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir.Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and '90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music—paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means—and what happens when that identity dissolves.Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist.

    More than a journey through a turbulent time in American history, this is the story of a black woman's battle to define herself.

    In this riveting and timely memoir, the groundbreaking journalist unpacks lessons on race, identity, and success through her own journey, from navigating her way as the unstoppable child of an unlikely interracial marriage in small-town California to finding herself on the frontlines of a modern movement for the next generation of change makers. Welteroth moves beyond the headlines and highlight reels to share the profound lessons and struggles of being a barrier-breaker across so many intersections. As a young boss and often the only Black woman in the room, she’s had enough of the world telling her—and all women—they’re not enough. As she learns to rely on herself by looking both inward and upward, we’re ultimately reminded that we’re more than enough.

    history, Sojourner Truth sang, preached, and debated at camp meetings across the country, led by her devotion to the antislavery movement and her ardent pursuit of women's rights. Born into slavery in 1797, Truth fled from bondage some 30 years later to become a powerful figure in the progressive movements reshaping American society.This remarkable narrative, first published in 1850, offers a rare glimpse into the little-documented world of Northern slavery. Truth recounts her life as a slave in rural New York, her separation from her family, her religious conversion, and her life as a traveling preacher during the 1840s. She also describes her work as a social reformer, counselor of former slaves, and sponsor of a black migration to the West.A spellbinding orator and implacable prophet, Truth mesmerized audiences with her tales of life in bondage and with her moving renditions of Methodist hymns and her own songs. Frederick Douglass described her message as a "strange compound of wit and wisdom, of wild enthusiasm, and flint-like common sense." This inspiring account of a black woman's struggles for racial and sexual equality is essential reading for students of American history, as well as for those interested in the continuing quest for equality of opportunity.

    Pioneers such as 1960s New Yorker columnist Ellen Willis and Jazz & Pop editor Patricia Kennealy-Morrison (better known, tellingly, for her marriage to rock icon Jim) are grouped with younger counterparts, from novelist Mary Gaitskill to cultural critic bell hooks in sections broken down loosely by topic. In "I Am the Band," female performers such as Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon, offer touring testimony; critic Jaan Uhelszki, meanwhile, finds herself onstage with Kiss, makeup and all, for a 1975 Creem magazine assignment. The latter instance points up one of the book's most fascinating aspects: in a rock-and-roll world where boys wear lipstick and girls increasingly get to make lots of noise, the effects of gender on both performer and listener are far from straightforward. Many of Rock She Wrote's strongest pieces? Joan Morgan's story on her love/hate relationship with Ice Cube's misogynist rap; Lori Twersky's musings on familiar images of the "female teenage audience" as screechy and sex-crazed?find their writers at the intersection of conflicting reactions to the subjects at hand. A remarkable collection, Rock She Wrote makes clear both the difference women writers have brought to music writing and the impossibility of any attempt to nail that difference down once and for all.

    Buckingham Palace is effectively an independent kingdom with its own rules and customs, now explained by Brian Hoey. Hundreds of anecdotes reveal the conditions in which the staff live and work and also their relationship with the Royals they serve.How does one get a job as personal footman to the Queen? Why does Prince Charles still have to send a note to her Page of the Backstairs requesting a meeting with his mother? How much do members of the household earn? Why does the Queen hate men in three-piece suits? Why are the Queen’s bedsheets six inches longer than Prince Philip’s? Why do her maids have to vacuum walking backwards? Why doesn’t the Queen allow square ice-cubes to be put in her drinks?

    . . shortly before he was arrested for indecent exposure, and whose work continues to be held at the vanguard of contemporary art.And it is the story of her work as a pornographic model and striptease artiste which challenged assumptions about morality, erotica and art.Art Sex Music is the wise, shocking and elegant autobiography of Cosey Fanni Tutti.

    Yet away from the spotlight, Alicia has grappled with private heartache―over the challenging and complex relationship with her father, the people-pleasing nature that characterized her early career, the loss of privacy surrounding her romantic relationships, and the oppressive expectations of female perfection.Since her rise to fame, Alicia’s public persona has belied a deep personal truth: she has spent years not fully recognizing or honoring her own worth. After withholding parts of herself for so long, she is at last exploring the questions that live at the heart of her story: Who am I, really? And once I discover that truth, how can I become brave enough to embrace it?More Myself is part autobiography, part narrative documentary. Alicia’s journey is revealed not only through her own candid recounting, but also through vivid recollections from those who have walked alongside her. The result is a 360-degree perspective on Alicia’s path―from her girlhood in Hell’s Kitchen and Harlem, to the process of self-discovery she’s still navigating.In More Myself, Alicia shares her quest for truth―about herself, her past, and her shift from sacrificing her spirit to celebrating her worth. With the raw honesty that epitomizes Alicia’s artistry, More Myself is at once a riveting account and a clarion call to readers: to define themselves in a world that rarely encourages a true and unique identity.

    Through her fierce op-eds in media outlets such as the New York Times, Glamour, and Hollywood Reporter and her work as a founder of the Time’s Up organization, Tamblyn has tackled subjects including discrimination, sexual assault, reproductive rights, and pay parity, among others.Now, Tamblyn examines the very paradigm our society is built on, pulling at the threads of the ingrained patriarchal and misogynistic fabric. Tamblyn presents her insightful and pointed take on the current state of feminism and expertly weaves together her own experiences and opinions with the larger movement. In her late twenties and early thirties, Tamblyn experienced a crisis of character and a gradual awakening–her own era of ignition–that enabled her to take back the power in her own life and find her own voice as a bold, outspoken, and respected advocate for women’s rights. Using the same galvanizing voice that helped her recent op-eds go viral, Tamblyn delivers an incisive call-to-arms that will capture the heart of the movement as it educates and inspires readers.