Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged feminist

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.

Dismissed With a Kiss

Described as music with “attitude and ovaries,” Dismissed With a Kiss is the first album from New York-based Spanking Charlene. This record features rock and roll with a lot of feminist reflection, as frontwoman Charlene McPherson sings about misogyny, how women treat one another and how perfect life will be “When I'm Skinny.” This album has a lot of potential, but it's lacking punch, despite the garage-band guitar riffs and provocative lyrics.

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.

Legacy

Legacy is a captivating book both sour and sweet. The placement of women puts an ugly taste in readers’ mouths, forcing a need to step back and savor just how decent we live. Sweetness comes in the form of poisonous flowers and a well needed rebellion. The opening line “My mother died before I was born,” followed by an overwhelming “She was fifteen when I was born, the first in a long line of unwelcome daughters,” already expresses the strict starved environment Shannon lives within. In the town village of Legacy this is the case with all child bearing women.

Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides

There are some women who, upon getting engaged, will spend hours poring over the most recent 700-page issue of Bride magazine. There are other women who would sooner use that behemoth of a magazine as a firestarter than spend a single minute reading about the most recent trends in bustles and floral arrangements.

Grrrl

_“I can’t believe that I have to go back to high school. I saw a whole bunch of ‘cool kids’ at the movie theatre today. They looked at me like I was a freak and then acted like jerks by yelling and throwing food all the way through the whole movie. This is what they think rebellion is. They also think it’s rebellious to take tons of drugs, have unsafe sex, and go to secret parties in farmer’s fields.

The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

Before there was Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, there was Muriel Rukeyser. Before there were the Beats, there was Muriel Rukeyser. As Anne Sexton once pointed out, Rukeyser was the “mother of us all.” This is why a collection of her work is so important. Despite Rukeyser’s stature, and her prodigious output, she is not as often read or taught as her better known literary progeny. Furthermore, some of Rukeyser’s prime writing years were during the era of New Criticism, when politically charged poetry was not in vogue.

The Hollywood Machine

The Hollywood Machine is similar to an op-ed: it may make the writer feel better, but chances are it will never get noticed. And if her message is heard, it will be by those sympathetic or already in agreement with the meaning. This is the message the artist is sending.

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.

Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics

In Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, Jennifer Baumgardner, co-author of third wave bestsellers Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future and _[Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374528659?ie=UTF8&tag=feminrevie-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=03745286

The Mammy Project

Michelle Nicole Matlock’s one-woman show, The Mammy Project, is a provocative piece of theater that entertains and educates through a series of vignettes that deconstructs the controversial history of the Mammy stereotype. Matlock builds her show around two stories - the life of Nancy Green, a former slave who was hired as the first-ever Aunt Jemima for the World’s Fair in 1893, and Matlock’s own experiences as a full-figured African-American actress who thought she’d never have to play the part of the mammy-maid in today’s entertainment business, but found herself getting cast in those r

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.

Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship, and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1950

Melissa Feinberg’s must-read new book, Elusive Equality, chronicles in rich and sometimes dramatic detail the fascinating, though frequently distressing, events that marked Czech feminists’ struggle to implement the radical ideas of equality on which the Czechoslovak Republic was founded after the end of World War I.

Greenzine #14

Any radical unfamiliar with the art and writing of Christy C. Road by now should check this out, in addition to visiting her website at http://www.croadcore.org to get caught up. That being said, everyone already acquainted will know what to expect with Greenzine #14, but this proves to be a good thing.

She's Such a Geek: Women Write about Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff

A collection of essays by women geeks? What can self-professed geeks share with the rest of women about what it means to be female? A heck of a lot, whether you measure it in decimal or binary.

Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move

Given the choice between staying where your career, friends, home and loved ones are and moving to a large city where you knew no one, what would you pick? Lucky for readers, Katherine Lanpher chose the latter. Lanpher, a newspaper reporter and radio host, grew up in Illinois and made her journalistic mark in Minnesota. Among other notable achievements, she was the first female metro columnist at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In her late 40s, she traded her Midwest life for a new one in the Big Apple, and went to work for Al Franken and Air America.

Indestructible

When you think of Miami, you don’t often think of punk. I grew up in South Florida, I’ve come back here (for now). Miami is anti-punk – superficial, isolationist, materialistic. It’s possible to be punk in this city – to create and exist outside of the mainstream. Yet I’m always curious to see how others form their own identities, their own cultures, in a place that doesn’t do much to support them. This is what made me read Cristy C.

We, Too, Must Love

We, Too, Must Love is Ann Aldrich’s second book of Kinseyesque reporting on New York City lesbians in the 1950s. At the time of the book’s original publication, in 1958, it was revolutionary. Any public debate or information on lesbians at the time had been strictly in medical and psychological terms. This in-depth look at the lives of lesbians in New York City was both shocking and lifesaving.

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?

Breaking the Silence: French Women’s Voices from the Ghetto

In her recently translated book Breaking the Silence, Fadela Amara attempts to rework and redefine feminism as it relates to her specific time and place. As a Muslim girl of Algerian immigrant parents growing up in the projects, Amara’s experience of feminism as the term is traditionally defined by western academics was non-existent. In fact, her book critiques the very term as it exists now, perceived by her to be owned by the white middle and upper-class women who coined it.