Experiments In A Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia, and the Austin Project

In June 2009, I participated in a writing workshop with Sharon Bridgforth, not knowing what to expect and not knowing what I was expected to give. I only knew that I loved music, having already pledged my undying love for jazz at a young age, and that I loved writing; but I never intended to leave with a blueprint for the foundation of how I would put pen to paper from that point on.

Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry

In Beauty Shop Politics, Tiffany M. Gill documents the central role that Black beauticians played in the struggle against Jim Crow laws. Beauty shops were one of the few industries that offered Black women some economic stability and upward mobility in the face of segregation. The industry also offered Black women a respectable alternative to domestic labor, as well as a chance to not work for White people.

Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles

Part of Panthea Reid’s title seems to allude to Tillie Olsen’s 1961 collection of short stories, Tell Me a Riddle. It also seems to highlight the layers of complexity in a woman hailed as an iconic writer and feminist. Reid doesn’t idealize Olsen.

Get Opinionated: A Progressive’s Guide to Finding Your Voice (and Taking a Little Action)

A few years ago, my uncle, the family’s token conservative, sent me a copy of Dinesh D’Souza’s Letters to a Young Conservative, probably to irk my mother. Despite my inclinations, I decided to give it a try. The first chapter of Letters is masterful, beginning with a lecture D’Souza gave at Columbia University, at which he was greeted with crowds of angry, rioting, liberal students bent on silencing his conservative point of view.

Leading the Way: Young Women's Activism for Social Change

When I read Leading the Way, I felt the same way I did the first time I read Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards or Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation by Barbara Findlen. I felt inspired, challenged, and optimistic about the future of feminism. I felt I had a road map of feminist ideas I could apply to my own life, and I knew I had incredible, real-life examples of women creating social change in their lives.

Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis

From the early appearance of AIDS as deviant in conservative America in the early 1980s to a full blown global battle in the 2000s, Infectious Ideas charts the activism behind the disease and how it never once wasn’t a political problem. What readers will learn with this book is that knowledge of the disease evolved alongside activist work.

Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century

In Activist Sentiments, P. Gabrielle Foreman examines reading practices and literacies—formal and social/vernacular—among African American women from 1859 to the 1890s.

Feminist Agendas and Democracy in Latin America

The feminist experience of women in Latin America is not one that is often written about or discussed. Many discussions about politics in Latin America leave feminism out, as discussions of feminism in general are often limited to the U.S. and Europe.

The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoir

At the end of her memoir, The Weave of My Life, Urmila Pawar writes, “Life has taught me many things, showed me so much, it has also lashed out at me till I bled. I don’t know how much longer I am going to live, nor do I know in what form life is going to confront me. Let it come in any form; I am ready to face it stoically. This is what my life has taught me. This is my life and that is me!” People write memoirs for different reasons.

Fortune Cookie

“The signs are mixed, the next twelve months could bring new challenges and unexpected changes. Moulds may be broken wild some patterns may reoccur. A shedding of skin could be on the horizon. Moments of adversity, calamity, triumph, disappointment, delight and tedium should also be expected.” This astrological prose sums up the year of 1989 experienced by a twenty-four-year-old woman.

Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America

The town I grew up in—Athens, Georgia (pop. 100,266)—is generally known for two things: indie music (a la REM, Elephant 6, and Kindercore) and the University of Georgia, both of which play a major role in maintaining the town's liberal leanings. However, Athens doesn't lean too far. It's still a place where college football dominates from Labor Day to Christmas, and if you're not in church on Sunday morning, you are assumed to be riddled with sin. Coming up in an environment rife with contradiction, I learned a lot about peaceful co-existence through plausible deniability.

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix

As activists know all too well, crafting a political message and effectively mobilizing an audience is an elusive task. In The Real Cost Of Prisons, Lois Ahrens and her contributors beautifully stage a difficult dialogue—about mass incarceration, mandatory sentencing, and the “war on drugs”—with comics. Comics are an accessible, popular form of education, and most importantly, addictive, and hence become a subversive way to raise awareness.

What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq

March 20, 2009 marked the six-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Although the half a dozen years of occupation must seem like an extended nightmare from which Iraqis are anxious to awake, for many young Americans an occupied Iraq is the only Iraq they have ever known. This is precisely why Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s research could not have come at a better time.

Pray The Devil Back To Hell

Imagine all the worst atrocities that can be committed against women. Think of all of the greatest evils that stain a country with corruption and greed. Then, in the direst of situations, imagine how a group of women could change the face of blood and hopelessness. This is the story of Pray the Devil Back to Hell. Not the devil with a pitchfork, the devil referenced in this film is the evil that we all fear—women and men alike.