Nasty Women


Laura JonesChitra Ramaswamy - 2017
    We must hold the truth to account in the midst of sensationalism and international political turmoil. Nasty Women is a collection of essays, interviews and accounts on what it is to be a woman in the 21st century.People, politics, pressure, punk - From working class experience to racial divides in Trump’s America, being a child of immigrants, to sexual assault, Brexit, pregnancy, contraception, identity, family, finding a voice online, role models and more, Laura Jane Grace of Against Me!, Zeba Talkhani, Chitra Ramaswamy are just a few of the incredible women who share their experience here.Keep telling your stories, and tell them loud.

An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures


Ann Cvetkovich - 2003
    She argues for the importance of recognizing---and archiving---accounts of trauma that belong as much to the ordinary and everyday as to the domain of catastrophe. Cvetkovich contends that the field of trauma studies, limited by too strict a division between the public and the private, has overlooked the experiences of women and queers. Rejecting the pathologizing understandings of trauma that permeate medical and clinical discourses on the subject, she develops instead a sex-positive approach missing even from most feminist work on trauma. An Archive of Feelings challenges the field to engage more fully with sexual trauma and the wide range of feelings in its vicinity, including those associated with butch-femme sex and AIDS activism and caretaking.An Archive of Feelings brings together oral histories from lesbian activists involved in act/up New York; readings of literature by Dorothy Allison, Leslie Feinberg, Cherrie Moraga, and Shani Mootoo; videos by Jean Carlomusto and Pratibha Parmar; and performances by Lisa Kron, Carmelita Tropicana, and the bands Le Tigre and Tribe 8. Cvetkovich reveals how these cultural formations---activism, performance, and literature---give rise to public cultures that both work through trauma and transform the conditions producing it. By looking closely at connections between sexuality, trauma, and the creation of lesbian public cultures, Cvetkovich makes those experiences that have been pushed to the peripheries of trauma culture the defining principles of a new construction of sexual trauma-one in which trauma catalyzes the creation of cultural archives and political communities.About the Author: Ann Cvetkovich is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism.

Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood


Lisa Damour - 2016
    Untangled explains what’s going on, prepares parents for what’s to come, and lets them know when it’s time to worry. In this sane, highly engaging, and informed guide for parents of daughters, Dr. Damour draws on decades of experience and the latest research to reveal the seven distinct—and absolutely normal—developmental transitions that turn girls into grown-ups, including Parting with Childhood, Contending with Adult Authority, Entering the Romantic World, and Caring for Herself. Providing realistic scenarios and welcome advice on how to engage daughters in smart, constructive ways, Untangled gives parents a broad framework for understanding their daughters while addressing their most common questions, including • My thirteen-year-old rolls her eyes when I try to talk to her, and only does it more when I get angry with her about it. How should I respond? • Do I tell my teen daughter that I’m checking her phone? • My daughter suffers from test anxiety. What can I do to help her? • Where’s the line between healthy eating and having an eating disorder? • My teenage daughter wants to know why I’m against pot when it’s legal in some states. What should I say? • My daughter’s friend is cutting herself. Do I call the girl’s mother to let her know? Perhaps most important, Untangled helps mothers and fathers understand, connect, and grow with their daughters. When parents know what makes their daughter tick, they can embrace and enjoy the challenge of raising a healthy, happy young woman.Praise for Untangled“Finally, there’s some good news for puzzled parents of adolescent girls, and psychologist Lisa Damour is the bearer of that happy news. [Untangled] is the most down-to-earth, readable parenting book I’ve come across in a long time.”—The Washington Post “Anna Freud wrote in 1958, ‘There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves.’ In the intervening decades, the transition doesn’t appear to have gotten any easier which makes Untangled such a welcome new resource.”—The Boston Globe “Damour offers a hopeful, helpful new way for parents to talk about—and with—teenage girls. . . . Parents will want this book on their shelves, next to established classics of the genre.”—Publishers Weekly“For years people have been asking me for the ‘girl equivalent of Raising Cain,’ and I haven't known exactly what to recommend. Now I do.”—Michael Thompson, Ph.D., co-author of Raising Cain “An essential guide to understanding and supporting girls throughout their development. It’s obvious that Dr. Damour ‘gets’ girls and understands the best way for any adult to help them navigate the common yet difficult challenges so many girls face.”—Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees & Wannabes “A gem. From the moment I read the last page I’ve been recommending it to my clients (including those with sons!) and colleagues, and using it as a refreshing guide in my own work with teenagers and their parents.”—Wendy Mogel, Ph.D., author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee

Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace


Jessica Bennett - 2016
    Every month, the women would huddle in a friend’s apartment to share sexist job frustrations and trade tips for how best to tackle them. Once upon a time, you might have called them a consciousness-raising group. But the problems of today’s working world are more subtle, less pronounced, harder to identify—and, if Ellen Pao is any indication, harder to prove—than those of their foremothers. These women weren’t just there to vent. They needed battle tactics. And so the fight club was born.Hard-hitting and entertaining, Feminist Fight Club blends personal stories with research, statistics, infographics, and no-bullsh*t expert advice. Bennett offers a new vocabulary for the sexist workplace archetypes women encounter everyday—such as the Manterrupter who talks over female colleagues in meetings or the Himitator who appropriates their ideas—and provides practical hacks for navigating other gender landmines in today’s working world. With original illustrations, Feminist Mad Libs, a Negotiation Cheat Sheet, as well as fascinating historical research and a kit for “How to Start Your Own Club,” Feminist Fight Club tackles both the external (sexist) and internal (self-sabotaging) behaviors that plague today’s women—as well as the system that perpetuates them.

Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution


Laurie Penny - 2014
    Unspeakable Things is a book that is eye-opening not only in the critique it provides, but also in the revolutionary alternatives it imagines.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman


Jill Lepore - 2014
    A cultural history of Wonder Woman traces the character's creation and enduring popularity, drawing on interviews and archival research to reveal the pivotal role of feminism in shaping her seven-decade story.Examines the life of Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston and his polyamorous relationship with wife Elizabeth Holloway and mistress Olive Byrne, both of whom inspired and influenced the comic book character's creation and development.-Abstract from WorldCat

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot


Mikki Kendall - 2020
    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?

The Season: A Social History of the Debutante


Kristen Richardson - 2019
    In this brilliant history of the phenomenon, Richardson shares debutantes’ own words—from diaries, letters, and interviews—throughout her vivid telling, beginning in Henry VIII’s era, sweeping through Queen Elizabeth I’s court, crossing back and forth the Atlantic to colonial Philadelphia, African American communities, Jane Austen’s England, and Mrs. Astor’s parties, ultimately arriving at the contemporary New York Infirmary and International balls.Whether maligned for its archaic attitude and objectification of women or praised for raising money for charities and providing a necessary coming-of-age ritual, the debutante tradition has more to tell us in this entertaining and illuminating book.

Understanding Men's Passages: Discovering the New Map of Men's Lives


Gail Sheehy - 1998
    Now Gail Sheehy guides contemporary men through the turbulent challenges and surprising pleasures that begin at forty. As a man crosses that threshold, he is bound to ask midlife's most troubling question: Now what? Work anxieties, concerns over sexual potency, marital and family stress, issues of power, all take on new urgency as men contemplate the decades ahead. But as Gail Sheehy reveals in this major new book, midlife is precisely the period when men are most likely to reinvent themselves and become masters of their fate. In Understanding Men's Passages, Sheehy offers all men--and the women in their lives--an essential guide to self-discovery.Hundreds of bold, imaginative men--celebrities as well as everyday heroes--share here their most intimate desires, deepest fears, and most fervent cravings for renewal. Decade by decade, Sheehy uncovers the real issues facing men today: finding new passion and purpose to invigorate the second half of their lives, dealing with "manopause," surviving job change, enjoying post-nesting zest, defeating depression, and learning what keeps a man young.Informative and inspiring, grounded in fact and full of fascinating life stories, Understanding Men's Passages is a landmark that will take its place beside Gail Sheehy's epoch-making Passages and New Passages.

The Erotic Silence of the American Wife


Dalma Heyn - 1992
    Something had changed during marriage--they experienced an inexplicable silencing of their inner and sexual selves--and so despite the moral codes against it, they committed adultery. "Dalma Heyn shows us a new reality and a tantalizing hint of the future--and neither women nor marriage will ever be the same."--Gloria Steinem.

Methodology of the Oppressed


Chela Sandoval - 2000
    Third World feminism" into the narrative in a way that thoroughly alters our perspective on contemporary culture and subjectivity.What Sandoval has identified is a language, a rhetoric of resistance to postmodern cultural conditions. U.S liberation movements of the post-World War II era generated specific modes of oppositional consciousness. Out of these emerged a new activity of consciousness and language Sandoval calls the "methodology of the oppressed". This methodology -- born of the strains of the cultural and identity struggles that currently mark global exchange -- holds out the possibility of a new historical moment, a new citizen-subject, and a new form of alliance consciousness and politics.Utilizing semiotics and U.S. Third World feminist criticism, Sandoval demonstrates how this methodology mobilizes love as a category of critical analysis. Rendering this approach in all its specifics, Methodology of the Oppressed gives rise to an alternative mode of criticism opening new perspectives on a theoretical, literary, aesthetic, social movement, or psychic expression.

Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness


Jessica Valenti - 2012
    She moves beyond the black and white “mommy wars” over natural parenting, discipline, and work-life balance to explore a more nuanced reality: one filled with ambivalence, joy, guilt, and exhaustion.    Would-be parents must navigate the decision to have children amidst a daunting combination of cultural expectations and hard facts. And new parents find themselves struggling to reconcile their elation with the often exhausting, confusing, and expensive business of child care. When researchers for a 2010 Pew study asked parents why they decided to have their first child, nearly 90 percent answered, for “the joy of having children.” Yet nearly every study in the last ten years shows a marked decline in the life satisfaction of those with kids.  Valenti explores this disconnect between parents’ hopes and the day-to-day reality of raising children—revealing all the ways mothers and fathers are quietly struggling. A must-read for parents as well as those considering starting a family, Why Have Kids? is an explosive addition to the conversation about modern parenthood.

Everyday Sexism


Laura Bates - 2014
    Astounded by the response she received and the wide range of stories that came pouring in from all over the world, she quickly realised that the situation was far worse than she'd initially thought. Enough was enough. From being leered at and wolf-whistled on the street, to aggravation in the work place and serious sexual assault, it was clear that sexism had been normalised. Bates decided it was time for change. This bold, jaunty and ultimately intelligent book is the first to give a collective online voice to the protest against sexism. This game changing book is a juggernaut of stories, often shocking, sometimes amusing and always poignant - it is a must read for every inquisitive, no-nonsense modern woman.

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype


Clarissa Pinkola Estés - 1992
    Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller shows how women's vitality can be restored through what she calls "psychic archeological digs" into the ruins of the female unconsious. Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes helps women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype.Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World


Elinor Cleghorn - 2021
     Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman ten years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. As Elinor learned to live with her unpredictable disease she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis.In Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect. The result is an authoritative and groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between women and medical practice, from the wandering womb of Ancient Greece to the rise of witch trials across Europe, and from the dawn of hysteria as a catchall for difficult-to-diagnose disorders to the first forays into autoimmunity and the shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation, menopause, and conditions like endometriosis.Packed with character studies and case histories of women who have suffered, challenged, and rewritten medical orthodoxy--and the men who controlled their fate--this is a revolutionary examination of the relationship between women, illness, and medicine. With these case histories, Elinor pays homage to the women who suffered so strides could be made, and shows how being unwell has become normalized in society and culture, where women have long been distrusted as reliable narrators of their own bodies and pain. But the time for real change is long overdue: answers reside in the body, in the testimonies of unwell women--and their lives depend on medicine learning to listen.