My Own Story
Emmeline Pankhurst - 1914
Written at the onset of the First World War, My Own Story brings attention to Pankhurst's cause while defending her decision to cease activism until the end of the war. Notable for its descriptions of the British prison system, My Own Story is an invaluable document of a life dedicated to others, of a historical moment in which an oppressed group rose up to advocate for the simplest of demands: equality.Born in a politically active household, Emmeline Pankhurst was introduced to the women's suffrage movement at a young age. In 1903, she founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organization dedicated to the suffragette movement. As their speeches, rallies, and petitions failed to make headway, they turned to militant protest, and in 1908 Emmeline was arrested for attempting to enter Parliament to deliver a document to Prime Minister H.H. Asquith. Imprisoned for six weeks, she observed the horrifying conditions of prison life, including solitary confinement. This experience changed her outlook on the struggle for women's suffrage, and she increasingly saw imprisonment as a means of radical publicity. Over the next several years, she would be arrested seven times for rioting, destroying property, and assaulting police officers, and while in prison staged hunger strikes in order to gain the attention of the press and political establishment. My Own Story is a record of one woman's tireless advocacy for the sake of countless others.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Emmeline Pankhurst's My Own Story is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation
Eli Clare - 1999
. . . Using the language of the elemental world, he delineates a complex human intersection and transmutes cruelty into its opposite—a potent, lifegiving remedy.”—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun HomeFirst published in 1999, Exile & Pride established Eli Clare as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability. With this critical tenth-anniversary edition, the groundbreaking publication secures its position as essential to the history of queer and disability politics, and, through significant new material that boldly interrogates and advances the original text, to its future as well. Clare’s writing on his experiences as a genderqueer activist/writer with cerebral palsy permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation, and yet Exile & Pride is much too great in scope to be defined by even these two issues. Instead it offers an intersectional framework for understanding how our bodies actually experience the politics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the heart of Clare’s exploration of environmental destruction, white working-class identity, queer community, disabled sexuality, childhood sexual abuse, coalition politics, and his own gender transition is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible for everyone.Blending prose and theory, personal experience and political debate, anger and compassion, Exile & Pride provides a window into a world where our whole selves in all their complexity can be loved and accepted.An award-winning poet and essayist, Eli Clare is also the author of The Marrow’s Telling.
Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies
Pamela Des Barres - 2007
Consisting of Pamela Des Barres's revealing interviews with and profiles of other supergroupies, this book offers firsthand glimpses into the backstage world of rock stars and the women who loved them. The groupies—such as Miss Japan Beautiful, who taught Elvis how to dance; Cassandra Peterson (Mistress of the Dark), who tangled with Tom Jones in Sin City; Cynthia Plaster Caster, who redefined the art of Jimi Hendrix; and Miss B., who revealed Kurt Cobain’s penchant for lip gloss—tell tales that go well beyond an account of a one-night stand to become a part of music history.
Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate
Zoe Quinn - 2017
Surely these things would never happen to you.Zoe Quinn used to feel the same way. Zoe is a video game developer whose ex-boyfriend published a crazed blog post cobbled together from private information, half-truths, and outright fictions, along with a rallying cry to the online hordes to go after her. The hordes answered in the form of a so-called movement known as #gamergate--they hacked her accounts, stole nude photos of her, harassed her family, friends and colleagues, and threatened to rape and murder her. But instead of shrinking into silence as the online mobs wanted her to, she has raised her voice and speaks out against this vicious online culture and for making the internet a safer place for everyone.In the several years since #Gamergate started, Quinn has helped thousands of people with her advocacy and online abuse crisis resource Crash Override Network. From locking down individuals' personal accounts and information to working with tech companies and lawmakers alike to inform policy, she has firsthand knowledge about every angle of online abuse, what powerful institutions are (and aren't) doing about it, and how we can protect our digital spaces and selves--and now she wants to share that information with you.Crash Override offers an up close look inside the controversy, threats, and social and cultural battles that started in the far corners of the internet and have since permeated our online lives. Quinn uses her story--as target and as activist--to provide an accessible, personal, and human look at the ways the internet impacts our lives and culture. Through anecdotes from the eye of the storm to practical advice for keeping yourself and others safe online, Crash Override combines memoir, manifesto, and map to a better future for our online lives.
I'm Afraid of Men
Vivek Shraya - 2018
Throughout her life she's endured acts of cruelty and aggression for being too feminine as a boy and not feminine enough as a girl. In order to survive childhood, she had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As an adult, she makes daily compromises to steel herself against everything from verbal attacks to heartbreak.With raw honesty, Shraya delivers an important record of the cumulative damage caused by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, releasing trauma from a body that has always refused to assimilate. I'm Afraid of Men is a journey from camouflage to a riot of color and a blueprint for how we might cherish all that makes us different and conquer all that makes us afraid.
Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You
Sofie Hagen - 2019
In Happy Fat, comedian Sofie Hagen shares how she removed fatphobic influences from her daily life and found self-acceptance in a world where judgement and discrimination are rife.From shame and sex to airplane seats, love and getting stuck in public toilets, Sofie provides practical tips for readers – drawing wisdom from other Fat Liberation champions along the way.Part memoir, part social commentary, Happy Fat is a funny, angry and impassioned look at taking up space in a culture that is desperate to reduce.
The Book of Pride: LGBTQ Heroes Who Changed the World
Mason Funk - 2019
The 75 individuals featured in THE BOOK OF PRIDE—including marriage pioneer Evan Wolfson, trans icon Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Stonewall-era rabblerouser Mark Segal and legendary anti-DADT activist Grethe Cammermeyer—fought battles frequently under the threat of violence and persecution. By capturing these accounts, we honor an important chapter in American history and ensure that the story of the LGBTQ community is safeguarded for generations to come. The brave and determined activists celebrated in THE BOOK OF PRIDE inspire each of us to resist all forms of oppression with ferocity, and to do so with great pride.
Narrative of Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth - 1850
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.
As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl
John Colapinto - 2000
The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine—and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's—and one family's—amazing survival in the face of terrible odds.
Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Irin Carmon - 2015
But along the way, the feminist pioneer's searing dissents and steely strength have inspired millions. Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, created by the young lawyer who began the Internet sensation and an award-winning journalist, takes you behind the myth for an intimate, irreverent look at the justice's life and work. As America struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stays fierce. And if you don't know, now you know.
American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures
America Ferrera - 2018
Speaking Spanish at home, having Saturday-morning-salsa-dance-parties in the kitchen, and eating tamales alongside apple pie at Christmas never seemed at odds with her American identity. Still, she yearned to see that identity reflected in the larger American narrative. Now, in American Like Me, America invites thirty-one of her friends, peers, and heroes to share their stories about life between cultures. We know them as actors, comedians, athletes, politicians, artists, and writers. However, they are also immigrants, children or grandchildren of immigrants, indigenous people, or people who otherwise grew up with deep and personal connections to more than one culture. Each of them struggled to establish a sense of self, find belonging, and feel seen. And they call themselves American enthusiastically, reluctantly, or not at all. Ranging from the heartfelt to the hilarious, their stories shine a light on a quintessentially American experience and will appeal to anyone with a complicated relationship to family, culture, and growing up.
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein - 2021
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter — all with a new spin informed by history, politics, and the wisdom of Star Trek.One of the leading physicists of her generation, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is also one of fewer than one hundred Black American women to earn a PhD from a department of physics. Her vision of the cosmos is vibrant, buoyantly non-traditional, and grounded in Black feminist traditions.Prescod-Weinstein urges us to recognize how science, like most fields, is rife with racism, sexism, and other dehumanizing systems. She lays out a bold new approach to science and society that begins with the belief that we all have a fundamental right to know and love the night sky. The Disordered Cosmos dreams into existence a world that allows everyone to tap into humanity’s wealth of knowledge about the wonders of the universe.
The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture
Heather Mac Donald - 2018
Toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. Students emerge into the working world believing that human beings are defined by their skin color, gender, and sexual preference, and that oppression based on these characteristics is the American experience. Speech that challenges these campus orthodoxies is silenced with brute force.The Diversity Delusion argues that the root of this problem is the belief in America's endemic racism and sexism. Diversity commissars denounce meritocratic standards as discriminatory, enforce hiring quotas, and teach students and adults alike to think of themselves as perpetual victims. The Diversity Delusion calls for a return to the classical liberal pursuits of open-minded inquiry and expression, by which everyone can discover a common humanity.
Pelosi
Molly Ball - 2020
Ever since the Democrats took back the House in the 2018 midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi has led the opposition with strategic mastery and inimitable elan. It’s a remarkable comeback for the veteran politician who for years was demonized by the right and taken for granted by many in her own party—even though, as speaker under President Barack Obama, she deserves much of the credit for epochal liberal accomplishments from universal health care to gays in the military. How did a 79-year-old Italian grandmother in four-inch heels become the greatest legislator since LBJ—and how will she manage her greatest challenge yet, impeachment?Ball’s nuanced, page-turning portrait takes readers inside the life and times of this historic and underappreciated figure. Based on exclusive interviews with the Speaker and deep background reporting, Ball shows Pelosi through a thoroughly modern lens to explain how this extraordinary woman has met her moment.
Things That Make White People Uncomfortable
Michael Bennett - 2018
He's also one of the most scathingly humorous athletes on the planet, and he wants to make you uncomfortable.Bennett adds his unmistakable voice to discussions of racism and police violence, Black athletes and their relationship to powerful institutions like the NCAA and the NFL, the role of protest in history, and the responsibilities of athletes as role models to speak out against injustice. Following in the footsteps of activist-athletes from Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick, Bennett demonstrates his outspoken leadership both on and off the field.Written with award-winning sportswriter and author Dave Zirin, Things that Make White People Uncomfortable is a sports book for our turbulent times, a memoir, and a manifesto as hilarious and engaging as it is illuminating.