Elevate Difference

Reviews of Palgrave MacMillan

The Cuban Revolution (1959-2009): Relations with Spain, the European Union, and the United States

Joaquín Roy’s study is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive attempt to define Cuba’s relationship to the Western World (Europe and the U.S.) in the past fifty years. There is no question of its timely publication—to coincide with the fifty year anniversary of the Cuban Revolution (1959-2009).

Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City

The concept for Jane Latour’s book, Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York, was initially a brochure. While serving as the director of the Women’s Project of the Brooklyn-based Association for Union Democracy (AUD), Latour had the opportunity to interview women who were working in non-traditional blue-collar trades.

Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton

There has to be something said for being able to succeed in concisely communicating the issue of Black feminism and politics, but I think Duchess Harris has done just that.

Feminist and Queer Performance: Critical Strategies

Feminist and Queer Performance is a collection of eleven previously published essays by Sue-Ellen Case, a Professor of Theatre and Critical Studies at UCLA. Exploring topics as diverse as butch-femme aesthetics, cyber-minstrelsy, W.O.W.

Love All

Fans of Elizabeth Jane Howard won't be disappointed with Love All, her first novel since 1999's Falling.

Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship: Maria de Luna

In Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship, Nuria Silleras-Fernandez examines the life of the Spanish queen, Maria de Luna, from her childhood amongst the sons and daughters of the royal court, to her successes and failures as queen in the Crown of Aragon until her death in 1406.

Sisterhood Interrupted: From Radical Women to Girls Gone Wild

As if we needed more proof of the very existence of feminism—and how it has been interpreted through the mainstream culture—Deborah Seigel has handed us a history lesson wrapped in a hot pink love letter. In her nonfiction book, Sisterhood Interrupted, Seigel imparts that not only has feminism had its mis-steps, it's fallen clear away from its foundation.

Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration

Third Wave Feminism opens with not only a foreword by Imelda Whelehan and introduction by the editors, but with note on the individual essayists included in the book.

Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism

Madonna was once “willfully out of step with the times.” When she started her career in the early ‘80s, her body was fleshy and voluptuous. In a word: natural. She was a “model of resistance,” wrote Susan Bordo in her landmark book, Unbearable Weight. But succumbing to mainstream pressure, she “normalized” her body shortly after marrying Sean Penn in 1987, becoming lean and muscular. Madonna was then in her mid-twenties. Now, at forty-eight years old, she can still easily stir insecurity in women her own age, not to mention women in their twenties.

Defending Our Dreams: Global Feminist Voices for a New Generation

Identifying as a feminist has never been easy, and being a young feminist is even more difficult. Ever present is the threat of being attacked for failing to acknowledge the efforts our foremothers of the second wave, as well as criticism of those who see young feminists as third wave "fuck-me" feminists, asserting a gender-normative femininity at the expense of coalescing to male-dominated notions of sexuality. What does it mean to call yourself, or in this case, your book, the voice of a new feminist generation? What does it mean to attempt to do this on a global scale? Who is included?