Emergency Contact

If there is a politic of poetry at stake in Emergency Contact, it stems as much from the a politicized urban landscape, as it does from the poetic representation of that setting. Against the familiar backdrop of a neighbourhood in the process of an irrevocable gentrification, Ziniuk records the objects, people and small hi-stories―perhaps otherwise unregistered―of Toronto’s west end neighbourhood Parkdale.

Sister Spit: The Next Generation (4/18/2007)

Some of you may have heard about the original Sister Spit tours in the mid- and late-1990’s. The tours were organized punk-rock band-style: a shoddy van with nights spent sleeping on floors of anarchist collectives and punk houses, but instead of music these tattoo-clad queer folks delivered words from their newly published books.

NACLA Report on the Americas (Mar/Apr 2007)

Free thinkers must support the independent, alternative publications in this country as a protest against mainstream media’s skewed priorities. Inevitably, news is slanted. With an independent publication, the chance of reading the unvarnished truth is enhanced. If you wish to embrace diversity and heighten your understanding of our neighbors “South of the border,” read the NACLA Report on the Americas.

Throws Like a Girl Rocks! (2/8-2/24/2007)

The Austin Rude Mechanicals (or Rude Mechs) presented its fourth “Throws Like a Girl” (TLAG) series this year from February 8-24 at the Austin Off Center. Originally produced in conjunction with the University of Texas Theater and Dance Department, Rude Mechs has made the TLAG series a fixture in Austin’s theater scene since 2000.

The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory

Quick, name the world's oldest profession! It's not what you think, say the authors of The Invisible Sex. The world's oldest profession is, most likely, midwifery. The combination of larger brains and narrower pelvises required adaptations that led to women no longer being able to give birth solo. The book's title itself illustrates the thesis: were women truly invisible in societies of the past, or did they become so because of anthropologists' biases?

Fight Like A Girl: How To Be A Fearless Feminist

As a young student activist, I often struggled with the idea that somehow we, as organizers, were supposed to “know” what we were doing and further that we were doing it better than those who came before us.

Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico

Mary Kay Vaughn, in her introduction to Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, asserts that while paternalism, Catholicism, Victorian morals and patriarchy experienced a fierce health before, during and after the Mexican Revolution, the women’s movement, while slow, was undeniable and, ultimately, irreversible.

Berg's Queer Foot Porn

If you’ve lost your sense of humor about sex lately, Berg's Queer Foot Porn will help you get it back. Women are indisputably objectified in mainstream pornography and are constantly told what’s sexually acceptable—leaving little room for reality or a holistic view of sexuality. In a subversive effort to retaliate, Berg and her co-authors created a site full of campy, voyeuristic galleries of foot pornography.

Fringe Magazine (Feminism, February 2007)

Fringe Magazine’s Feminism issue is bursting with refreshing and candid short stories, interviews, poetry, photographs, and non-fiction essays. Standout pieces include “Young Mother: Three Portraits” (poetry), “The Harlot’s Curse: Feminism and Prostitution” (non-fiction essay), “Wanting” (short story), and “The Sideboard” (photograph). “The Harlot’s Curse: Feminism and Prostitution”, by Kate Morris, takes a look at how feminism has always been divided on the issues of sexuality, i.e.

Dark Designs and Visual Culture

Michele Wallace is best known for her controversial, groundbreaking book, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. Published in 1979 when Wallace was twenty-six years old, it defined her as an outspoken feminist who was unafraid to examine the misogynistic elements of the Black Power and Civil Rights movements of the sixties, and explored how sexism as well as racism damaged the psyches of Black women. Not surprisingly, Wallace’s fearlessness came with a painful price. Although the book garnered her immediate fame and recognition in feminist and intellectual circles (so hot was the buzz about Macho that her face made the cover of Ms. shortly before the book was published), Wallace received an intense level of criticism from all sides that she was not prepared to face.

What the Mirror Said

Jocelyn Arem’s debut studio release greets us with all the freshness and promise of a new voice on the scene, but evidently someone who has been honing her craft for years. Arem released her debut demo in 2000, and kept her fans waiting for two more years for What the Mirror Said.

The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty

Margaret Hardenbroeck Philipse, the first woman to build her own lavish fortune in the New World, had the Midas touch when it came to trading everything from furs to slaves in seventeenth century colonial Manhattan, then called New Amsterdam.

Women and Sports in the United States

As the rather generic title would suggest, this collection is intended as an introduction to a broad field, perhaps a reader useful for a college-level Exercise Science or Physical Education seminar. There are nods to some of the pioneers of sport, essays on gender and athleticism—most of them more journalistic than scholarly—an all too brief treatment of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of A League of Their Own fame. There is a rehash of Brandi Chastain’s exuberant celebration after the 1999 Women’s World Cup and the sexualizing of athletes’ bodies in the media.

Children of Men

P.D. James’ The Children of Men is a story about the English countryside, devoid of the English. It is the near future, and men have become infertile. Half-deranged, aging women coo over porcelain dolls, pushing their prams through empty streets. An increasingly lonely and oppressed population struggles to maintain normalcy in Britain while chaos rules the rest of this world without hope.