Elevate Difference

Reviews of Modern Library

The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present

The appropriate feminist response to The Feminist Promise is to send truckloads of gratitude to Christine Stansell, professor of history at the University of Chicago, who collected and digested a vast array of material, much of it ephemeral, and put it in a history book. Some of us hang on to the materials of history—like Laura Murra and my late friend Arlene Meyers, who preserved so much of the material base of second wave feminism as it was happening.

The Southern Woman

I grew up in the so-called New South, where there are sweet tea and skyscrapers, Gone with the Wind screenings in posh movie theaters, and Faulkner reading groups, but no stereotypical southern drawl and no cornbread. In an age where regional identity yields to interstates and chain hotels, can I still call myself a southern woman? After reading Elizabeth Spencer’s collection of short stories, I think I can. Spencer’s South is not just a location; it is a kind of voice, a way of thinking and of speaking.