| VETERAN FEMINISTS OF AMERICA |
|
||||
| VFA READING CORNERA FEMINIST REVIVAL? More and more books of the feminist movement are being published. Reviews by VFA members are forthcoming. Until then, we urge you to order these books from the public library and bookstores in your area. This will place the books on the shelves, whether or not you take it out or buy them. Help us get our feminist history read! Most books are available at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble! | |||||
|
|
|||||
|
|||||
Only 54 pages, this is a precious
little book and a model for all pioneer feminists. VFA has asked everyone to write their story. For we non writers,
it is frightening, but read Barbara s story and copy her style. Well& adding your personal touch of course.
Barbara was first a "housewife" and an artist, then a lawyer. She tells a little about her childhood,
the story of her awakening to feminism and her work in the Movement, particularly in the Connecticutt Political
Caucus, from 1971 to today. You can read it in an hour.
Sterling Publishing is proud to announce the publication of Super Granny Great Stuff to do with Your Grandkids by Sally Wendkos Olds A Note from Sally  I’m really excited about Super Granny. I’ve written about my earlier life stages like breastfeeding and being a working parent, and it was fun to explore this newest phase of my life—especially since grandmothering is so different now in so many ways from what it used to be. Talking with other grandmas around the U.S. and abroad and then writing about what they love to do with their grandkids was wonderful; I even included a few of my own favorite activities. I learned a lot and think you will too! I hope that all these true stories about real people will inspire, inform, amuse, and fuel you with lots of good ideas for making memorable every moment spent with your grandkids. (Well, nearly every moment—let's be realistic here!) For more stories about grannies check out my blog. About the Book  Super Granny offers an up-to-the-minute 21st-century treasure trove of activities that help grandmothers enjoy, communicate, and really connect with their grandchildren. Sally Olds, a grandmother of five, talked to other grandmothers about what they love to do with their grandkids, and came up with 75 lively, fun-to-read narratives bursting with creative ideas and clear how-to directions. Most are free or dirt-cheap, simple to do, and even work for grannies who don’t live near the kids. With something for the most computer-savvy to the most traditional, and for infants to adolescents, Super Granny has the perfect activity for every grand-pair. Praise for Super Granny “Sally Wendkos Olds’s excellent book is a must read for all grandparents, especially those that ever wondered what to do with their grandchildren on a rainy day.—Arthur Kornhaber, M.D., president of the Foundation for Grandparenting “A great book for granny's (and grandfathers) who don't want to depend on the amount of money spent to enjoy grandkids, but instead depend on imagination, and ingenuity…a treasure of tips for giving every grandkid lasting experiences and valued memories."—Stevanne Auerbach, Ph.D. (Dr. Toy) “If you've ever needed grandparenting inspiration, meet Super Granny! This book…lives up to its title.”—GRANDPARENTS.about.com. “I'm halfway through Super Granny already. I love it!”—Sally's granddaughter, Lisa. Contact Sally: wendkos07@yahoo.com Back to Top of Page back to top |
|
In Celebration of Women over Sixty A guide for women in the “third third” of life A Time of our Own is a must-read for today’s generation
of
“A pioneering work that helps all of us understand
the dramatic changes in our world Fay Wadsworth Whitney is a career nurse practitioner and nursing faculty member.She is professor emeritas of nursing at the Fay W.Whitney School of nursing at the University of Wyoming. Both she and Elinor Greenberg are wives, mothers, and grandmothers. For more information on A Time of Our Own, please visit www.fulcrumbooks.com. Contact Elinor: Ellie.Greenberg@UCHSC.edu |
|
|
VICKI MOSS Vicki Moss is author of three novels, Solo Flights, The Amboy Duchess, and
The Lust Chart, as well as Blood Memories, a book of short stories, and Alien On the Road, a poetry memoir. The
Lust Chart is scheduled to be published in 2008 by Horsetooth Press, the same company that published the other
four books. She has also written five children's books, and has been a reporter for daily newspapers, winning Gannett
awards for investigative reporting, and a freelance business journalist. She has been an adjunct professor of English
at the SUNY/Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City since 1989, where she teaches literature and writing
courses.Contact: vickimoss@optonline.net To Order Books contact: horsetoothpress@optonline.net  Solo Flights, 285 pp. Horsetooth Press, $14 1972. Runaways to Haight Ashbury are as numerous as anti-war demonstrators. Fifteen-year-old Peter Frankel and three buddies head west in a yellow van, a rainbow arc on its side saying: Rainbow Rollers. The boy's divorced parents, Jennifer and Mitch, follow false leads to New England communes looking for him, while Anna, his grandma's ghost, flies over the van on a wild adventure, her wispy gray hair blowing in the wind, as she keeps her eye on the musicians in case they run into trouble.  The Amboy Duchess, 407 pp. Horsetooth Press, $16 In the pre-dawn hours of November 12, 1941, Avi Tannen was found murdered in his car just blocks from where the head of Murder Inc., Abe Reles, fell to his death. Tannen's daughter, Winnie, who was nine, still relives those hours when she hears sirens. Now, 32 years later, appointed New Business Developer at Allerton Bank, Winnie becomes an instant celebrity serving the women's market. Remaking Allerton into "the bank that's friendly to women," she discovers the bank president's dubious past, and is drawn into an investigation of payroll padding, questionable loans and racketeering that reveals her father's killer and her family's Prohibition-era activities. |
| Sexism in America:
Alive, Well, and Ruining Our Future Barbara J. Berg  The news in 2008 was that
women had taken huge strides forward. Feminists’ decades-long struggle finally seemed to be paying off, not only
in boardrooms, classrooms, and kitchens but also at the very top—in presidential politics. But what is the truth
behind the headlines?In Sexism in America: Alive, Well, and Ruining Our Future, renowned feminist author Barbara J. Berg debunks the many myths about how far women have come and the pervasive belief that ours is a postfeminist society. Combining authoritative research and compelling storytelling, Berg traces the assault on women’s status from the 1950s—when Newsweek declared “for the American girl, books and babies don’t mix”—to the present, exploring the deception about women’s progress and contextualizing our current situation. All women are hurt by a society lauding their attributes in speeches while scorning them in public policy and popular culture, and the legacy of the women’s movement is being short-circuited in every aspect of their lives. Passionate, extensively documented, humorous, and persuasive, Sexism in America is simultaneously enlightening, frightening, and revitalizing. Berg, an ardent optimist, helps women understand where they are and why and how they can move beyond the marginalizing strategies. It is exactly the right book at exactly the right time. "Sexism in America is a powerful and passionate analysis of the systematic degradation of feminist accomplishments-in education, employment, athletics, and elsewhere-and the virulent resurgence of sexism. In this convincingly argued and poignantly written analysis, Berg assiduously documents the conservative politics, policies, and practices that have caused American women and girls unremitting harm since the Reagan era-and especially under George Bush. Berg's is an undaunted vision of an anti-feminist past and its disastrous influence: an insecure present and uncertain future for females. Reminding us that the "personal is political," this book will provide women with an unambiguous understanding of a broader pattern of gender inequality. The daily incidents, insults, assaults, and setbacks that feel unfair to women and girls, turn out to be, deliberately unjust." -Miriam Forman-Brunell, Professor of History at University of Missouri-Kansas City. About Barbara Research and writing have always been essential aspects of Barbara's career. Her books are widely respected and quoted. She has also written for THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE BALTIMORE SUN. Her feature articles have appeared in both scholarly and popular magazines, PARENTS, MS., WORKING WOMAN and LADIES' HOME JOURNAL among them. Barbara has repeatedly been engaged in nationwide speaking tours, discussing such topics as women's health, parenting, balancing family and work, childbirth and adoption. Her extensive television appearances throughout the United States and Canada have included the morning talk shows in most major cities, CBS MORNING SHOW, THE DONAHUE SHOW, CNN and OPRAH. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Yale Medical School, Columbia University's Physicians and Surgeons, The Academy of Medicine, Marymount College and The Horace Mann School where she started a women's history program. As a consultant to PBS, the National Endowment for Humanities, The Mayor's Commission on the Status of Women, and The Rockefeller Foundation, Barbara has worked to get women's issues the attention they deserve. The recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, her biography is included in the recent book, FEMINISTS WHO CHANGED AMERICA (University of Illinois Press, 2006). Visit Barbara Berg's Website: www.barbarajberg.com Contact Barbara Berg: barbara_berg@msn.com back to top |
| The
Things We Do To Make It Home Beverly Gologorsky  This extraordinary first novel,
reminiscent of Steinbeck for its clear, unadorned prose and sheer visceral impact, follows the fate of six couples
in the wake of the Vietnam war. It is the story of the men who fought and returned home profoundly altered and
the women who strove to create for them a safe haven, yet who could do little more in the end than bear silent
witness to their pain. It is a story of deep hungers, the brevity of solace, and the limits of devotion to help
those we love.In 1973, stateside and seemingly whole, Rooster, Frankie, Rod and the others begin getting on with their lives. They buy houses, get married, find jobs. But beneath the surface activity, there's a dangerous fault line that constantly threatens to crack open and shatter everything built upon it. Twenty years later, Vietnam still permeates every facet of their lives and has spread like an invisible gas to envelop everyone around them. Brilliantly constructed, told in a voice so original and starkly powerful it sears itself into the reader's consciousness, The Things We Do To Make It Home is destined to be among the most important novels ever written about the legacy of Vietnam. Biography Beverly Gologorsky has been an activist in the women's and peace movements. She lives in New York and works in legal-medical publishing.Her partner, Charles Wiggins, lives in New England, where Gologorsky spends a good deal of time. She has a daughter, Georgina. Contact Beverly Gologorsky: bevgo7@aol.com back to top |
|
THE CENTAUR FOR WOMEN: MEMOIRS OF THE STUDENT FOUNDER OF WOMEN'S STUDIES by Carol Rowell Council Email: cnclcarol@yahoo.com Available in the following Formats! Printed Edition Price: $18.95 PDF Download Price: $9.95 Just Go To BookStand Publishing. You can make your choice there! BookStand Publishing: http://www.bookstandpublishing.com/m/carolrowellcouncil/ About Our Book: About Our Book:  Told in the personal and political, Council's book is a fascinating read. The pages turn themselves! Women's Studies may be the most important development of the Feminist Movement. That it is in almost every university in America assures that silence about women’s oppression from time immemorial has been lifted, and creates forces to fight for women's freedom worldwide.” ." Alice Donenfeld, attorney, TV producer, former NOW speaker, NY. "Carol Council brings the feeling and passion of the times so close you can hear the music and feel the angst of those struggling for women to attain their rightful place in universities, work and the world. Following generations owe her a debt… This book is a must for all to read - lest we forget..Jacqui Ceballos - founder and president, Veteran Feminists of America. Number of pages:278 About the Author:  Carol Rowell Council has a B.A in
Public Administration from SDSU, and an M.F.A. in Art History from Rosary College Villa Schifanoia in Florence,
Italy. She is the former director of the San Diego Women’s History Museum and Educational Center. At age 21, in
1969, Rowell Council co-founded the first women’s studies program in the world, the Women’s Studies Department
at San Diego State University. While still a student, she served as faculty, teaching a course in Field Experience.
Today there are over 700 women’s studies programs in the U.S. In 1972 she helped found The Center for Women’s Studies
and Services (now the Center for Community Solutions), where she was director for 20 years. The Center started
a domestic violence shelter, a rape crisis center, and organized arts festivals, poetry readings, and performances.
Today, Carol continues as a women’s rights activist, an art historian, and public speaker. She is at work on a
book of art historical fiction.Back to Top of Page |
|
About the Author CONTACT: RNEMZOFF@bentley.edu Website: http://www.dontbiteyourtongue.com/ |
|
Shifting seamlessly between past
and present, consciousness and dreams, Lila Karp explores the conflicted psyche of thirty-two-year-old Harriet
Battenberg as she inventories her life during a fourteen-hour labor. Wrenching flashbacks recall embittering conflicts
with her mother, unfulfilling relationships with men, a miscarriage, and an abortion. Harriet’s struggle above
all is to understand how her perception of womanhood has brought her to this moment of personal crisis.
The Village Voice |
|
Contact: maggio1@juno.com The Bias-Free Word Finder
Rosalie Maggio’s been writing and speaking about
people and language for more than a decade. The
Bias-Free Word Finder, called
“an outstanding reference source” by the American Library Association and cited by Ms. Magazine as “an indispensable
real-life reference book,” is a feminist winner. The book suggests thousands of specific and varied alternatives
for terms that are biased against people on the basis of sex, race, age, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity,
class or religion as does her Talking
About People, a comprehensive
guide for everyone interested in using language accurately, gracefully and respectfully.
The best-selling How to Say It®
is now better than ever. The second edition of this one-of-a-kind book has been updated with ten new chapters-that’s
fifty chapters in all-offering readers even How to Say It® provides short lists of what to say, and sometimes more
importantly, what not to say when writing business or personal letters. It begins with examples of why and when
certain letters are appropriate, tips on writing the letter, and advice for special situations. It then offers
sample words and phases for each type of correspondence, as well as examples of sentences and paragraphs that are
best suited for the task. Finally, it provides full sample letters giving readers a sense of what to look for in
the final product. Includes appendices offering tips on etiquette, formatting, and grammar. Editorial Reviews From the author of How to Say It,
the million-copies-sold bestseller Whether it's small talk or big, social or work-related,
The Art of Talking to Anyone gives you all the tools you need to speak up with confidence,
to charm and persuade, and to talk your way through any situation--successfully. |
| Sex is Not a Natural Act Leonore Tiefer  As Leonore Tiefer provocatively states
in Sex is Not a Natural Act, "A kiss is not a kiss; your orgasm is not the same
as George Washington's, premarital sex in Peru is not premarital sex in Peoria, abortion in Rome at the time of
Caesar is not abortion at the time of John Paul II, and rape is neither an act of sex nor an act of violence -
all of these actions remain to be defined by individual experience within one's period and culture." This
newly revised collection by one of the foremost sex researchers today explores sex and its "experts"
in colorful, original, and perceptive ways.In 1972 at age 28 Tiefer got the news about feminism while teaching psychology and directing an animal mating behavior research lab at Colorado State University in beautiful Ft. Collins. She went on to help organize the Ft. Collins chapter of NOW, the CSU Commission on Women, a CSU study group on part time employment and tenure. By 1977 she had given up animal sex research and shifted to sex therapy and human sex, challenging biological essentialism and promoting feminist approaches to sex research and education.  In her second book, Sex is Not a Natural Act, first published in 1995 and now updated, she argues that the medical model was not helpful in understanding women's sexual lives, and it would be better to think of sexuality as a social and psychological construct. The expanding universe of medicalization had encroached on many areas of women's lives, such as pregnancy and menstruation, and Tiefer urges drawing the line at sexuality before it damages too much of our potential for sexual emancipation. In the 1990s, she began to examine the economic, political, regulatory aspects of sexuopharmaceuticals and founded an educational campaign which now has a website, books, videos, a listserv, conferences, and a manifesto (www.newviewcampaign.org). A PhD, she has a psychotherapy practice in sex therapy in Manhattan but mostly takes the feminist anti-pharma message on the road - both real and virtual. This newly updated collection includes a new section on Tiefer's most recent essays on female sexual dysfunction. Her background as a sexologist is unusually broad, including sex therapy, classification of dysfunctions and feminist analysis, and they all add up to a lively, controversial presentation of the forces shaping sex in our culture. You can purchase Sex is not a Natural Act AT www.newviewcampaign.org/books.asp Back to Top of Page |
|
ALIX KATES SHULMAN'S CLASSIC MEMOIRS OF AN EX PROM QUEEN IS REISSUED!
ALSO BY ALIX
Website: http://www.alixkshulman.com |
Parents make enormous sacrifices
helping children become healthy and autonomous adults. And when children are older, popular wisdom advises parents
to let go, disconnect, and bite their tongues. But increasing life spans mean that parents and children can spend
as many as five or six decades as adults together: letting go is not an option for families anymore.
Remember the old nursery rhyme "Sing a song of sixpence"?
It included this line: "the queen is in the parlor, eating bread and honey." Author and feminist activist
Lila Karp turned this image on its head in the 1960s when she was writing her novel, The Queen Is in the Garbage.
She created a gripping stream-of-consciousness tale that describes the inner turmoil of a woman enduring a fourteen-hour
labor. Karp shows her protagonist struggling to make sense of men, marriage, miscarriages, abortion, sexuality,
racism, and psychological entanglements all the issues the nascent women's movement was confronting.
more
material for quickly and effortlessly constructing original, effective letters.
Alix Kates Shulman's Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen created a profound
impact on the cultural landscape when it was published in 1972. A sardonic portrayal of one white, middle-class,
Midwestern girl's coming-of-age, the novel takes a wry and prescient look at a range of experiences treated at
the time as taboo but which were ultimately accepted as matters of major political significance: sexual harassment,
job discrimination, the sexual double standard, rape, abortion restrictions, the double binds of marriage and motherhood,
and the frantic quest for beauty. The book went on to sell more than a million copies and is regarded today as
a classic, one of the first and best pieces of fiction born of the women's liberation movement. With many of its
concerns still with us today, this witty and devastating novel continues to resonate with readers, and Sasha Davis
has proved herself a prom queen for the ages.
Faces of Feminism - An activist's Reflections on the Women's Movement
- The Future of Feminism: Lessons from Our Past
- Feminism Remembered; Feminism Divided
- Why Feminists Wouldn't Abandon Clinton
- Women in Science, Women and Science
In her narrative history of the second wave of feminism, Sheila Tobias concludes that the "Movement" with a capital M may be over, but the "movement" of American women into power and into the mainstream is unstoppable. How this came about, the future of feminism, and why feminists were so loathe to abandon President Clinton in 1997-98 are topics she addresses in her talks (1), (2), and (3). In (4), she goes beyond and beneath the statistics and examines the underlying paradigmatic "ideology" of access and advancement of women in science. She suggests that multiple strategies are called for, some of which may appear on the surface to be contradictory. She ends with a discussion of what employers should do and what young women in science can do to counter the dominant paradigm.
Betty Rollin says "This is the book about feminism that brings everything into focus -- that offers wise and lively interpretation and is just a plain wonderful read!"
Westview Press - 5500 Central Ave. Boulder, CO 80301-2877.
ALSO BY SHEILA...
Overcoming Math Anxiety,
and Succeed with Math
Math Anxiety: An Update
Sheila Tobias first wrote Overcoming Math Anxiety in 1978. In her updated version, published by W. W. Norton in 1994 (and in paperback in 1995), she enlarges on her analysis of the attitude and approach variables that interfere with students' performance in college-level mathematics. Their problem, she finds, is not a failure of intellect but a failure of nerve. Above all, she challenges the notion that "math anxiety" is a disability. "Math Anxiety" can be overcome.
Her second book, Succeed with Math, tells
teachers and students (college age and older) how to approach mathematics and master it without anxiety. Her books
and her talks are particularly pertinent to the issue of access for minorities and women. She brings a video tape
of a math anxiety session along.
Visit Sheila Tobias' Website for MORE OF HER INCREDIBLE BOOKS: http://www.sheilatobias.com/
THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE
From Publishers Weekly
Women played leading roles in the first Christian communities; Jesus' teachings had a feminist bent; ancient Hebrews
worshipped the prehistoric goddess-mother well into monarchic times; and Nazis, with their system of male dominance,
were a direct throwback to the Indo-European or Aryan invaders whom they crudely imitated. These controversial
ideas and findings suggest the thrust of Eisler's highly readable synthesis. She convincingly documents the global
shift from egalitarian to patriarchal societies, interweaving new archeological evidence and feminist scholarship.
In her scenario, as womenonce veneratedwere degraded to pawns controlled by men, social cooperation gave way to
reliance on violence, hierarchy and authoritarianism. The book, despite its jargon, is an important contribution
to social history. Eisler wrote The Equal Rights Handbook.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.--
From Library Journal
In this first of a projected three-book series, Eisler covers terrain also described by Marilyn French in Beyond
Power ( LJ 6/1/85) and Gerda Lerner in
The
Creation of Patriarchy ( LJ 7/86). In prehistorical times, Eisler argues, women and men lived together in egalitarian
communities devoted to nurturance; with the imposition of male domination, female values gave way to creeds of
hierarchy, aggression, power, obedience. Eisler, a futurist, posits a new society based on the recovery of more
humane values. She gives us a broader reach of time than Lerner, and she does not swamp her outline in detail as
French did. An imaginative and persuasive work, Eisler's effort is undermined by jargon; her view of the future
is exceedingly optimistic. For a select audience. Cynthia Harrison, American Historical Assn., Washington, D.C.
Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, honored Riane Eisler, President of the Center for Partnership, with a Doctorate degree at their 2005 Commencement Ceremony, May 15, 2005, for “having exemplified the highest ideals and standards” in her work and life. In awarding this honor the Provost of the University, said of Riane and the Center:
“Few people on earth embody the values of integrity and respect, mentorship and diversity, and partnership and social responsibility more completely than Riane Eisler. Through her nonprofit Center for Partnership Studies, she has introduced a holistic model for human rights policy and action that fully integrates the rights of women and children. Through her work at the Center, and through her books, creative research, and untiring ability to take action, she serves as a leader and inspiration to all who believe that life should be based on harmony with nature, nonviolence, and equality.”
You can buy the book at Amazon.com
-- its price has been discounted -- Order a copy today at Amazon.com!
For more details, please visit the Partnership website:
www.partnershipway.org. And please continue to support their work
of building foundations for a sustainable, peaceful, and equitable partnership world.
Dream
of the Perfect Child
by Joan Rothschild
Provides a Feminist Critique of Bioethics and Attitudes toward Reproduction Technologies and the Disabled
“Others have addressed the societal implications of contemplating ‘the perfect child’ but no one has written about
it so poignantly, so compellingly, and so beautifully. . . . The best discussion of bioethics and reproductive
practices I’ve seen.” —Carole Browner, University of California, Los Angeles
“Science and technology, medical professionals, and parents meet in the doctor’s office. This privatized setting
is the site for individual decisions: whether to test or not, whether to keep a pregnancy or terminate it, and
for which diagnosed ‘defect.’ Each decision becomes another judgment as to which conditions, and which children,
are acceptable or not. As they aggregate over time, individual decisions add up to a selection process, marking
the imperfect, those who may be dispensed with, while certifying those worthy to be born. This process constitutes
the discourse of the perfect child.”
—from the Introduction
Every parent wants a healthy, normal
child, and scientific and technological advances have now made this increasingly possible to achieve. But progress
comes with a price. Tracing its roots from Enlightenment thought through the biological discoveries of the 19th
and 20th centuries, Joan Rothschild shows how the dream of human perfectibility masks a darker motivation to eliminate
all that does not meet its increasingly heightened standards.
Rothschild points to the thousands
of decisions about prenatal testing that are made each day by prospective parents and their doctors, the context
in which they occur, and how they add up to the discourse of the perfect—and imperfect—child. She argues that the
mainstream bioethics community has been ineffective in raising appropriate questions, resulting in support for
the status quo.
The Dream of the Perfect Child is the first book to put the practice of prenatal diagnosis into historical, cultural,
and ideological contexts, deconstructing the discourse through changing scientific, cultural, and historical moments.
Not a matter of conspiracy or plot—as “brave new world” alarmists would have it—the dream of the perfect child
arises today in reproductive medical practice, as individual decisions about prenatal diagnosis select and begin
to rank which fetuses, and therefore which children, are acceptable or not, reinforcing negative attitudes toward
people with disabilities, and setting standards for the perfect. Rothschild places these decisions within the history
of negative attitudes toward people with disabilities from the 18th century to the present, as the striving for
human perfectibility produced an underside in negative images and eugenics. While predictions—both bad and good—about
making perfect babies and people have been the subject of other books and articles, none has offered the kind of
historic context that is set forth here.
Drawing on counter-voices from medicine
and feminist ethics, as well as from pregnant women and people with disabilities, The Dream of the Perfect Child
reevaluates the uses of genetics and prenatal testing. Ultimately, the goal is to change reproductive medical practice
and thereby transform the dream.
About the author
JOAN ROTHSCHILD is professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and research associate at the Center
for Human Environments, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York. The author and editor of numerous
articles and books, Rothschild was instrumental in establishing the field known as “gender and technology” with
the publication of Machina Ex Dea: Feminist Perspectives on Technology in 1983. The Dream of the Perfect Child
is the culmination of almost two decades of research on this topic
Book Information
The Dream of the Perfect Child
By Joan Rothschild
304 pages, 5 b&w illus., bibliog.. index , 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Trade paperback, $24.95 ISBN 0-253-21760-1
Also available in hardcover, $60 ISBN 0-253-34565-0
Published: June 20, 2005 by Indiana University Press
To order call 1-800-842-6796 or log onto http://iupress.indiana.edu
Date of release: May 18, 2005
Contact: Marilyn Breiter, Marketing Manager (812) 855-5429; fax (812)856-0415; mbreiter@indiana.edu
601 North Morton St., Bloomington, IN 47404-3797
DELL WILLIAMS
Press
Reprinted from the July 4th, 2005 Chicago Sun Times
by Laura Berman
Sometimes history takes
two steps forward and one step back.
We live in a world where I'm able
to have a full-time career as a sex therapist. This column would not have been possible as little as 30 years ago.
But there are stops and starts along the way, and I can't help but wonder if we've gone into neutral at the moment
when it comes to our sexuality.
Today's climate of abstinence-only initiatives and the increasing objectification of women in the media makes me
worry that we're traveling back in time, rather than forward. I was reminded of this the other day as I looked
through a new book.
Have you had a great orgasm today? This is the question Dell Williams poses in her new memoir, Revolution in the
Garden (Silverback Books, $22.95). It's also the query that propelled her into the heart of the women's movement,
with her special message that every woman deserves sexual pleasure. It's in part because of work like Williams'
that we are where we are today -- both as a society and as women.
A feisty 82, Williams maintains an unwavering belief in knowledge, advocacy and experimentation for women's sexual
health and intimacy. She also believes a vibrator is a woman's best friend. I wholeheartedly agree. Under the guidance
of Betty Dodson in the early '70s, Williams discovered the pleasure that a vibrator and little self-exploration
put in every woman's hands. It was a life-changing experience. So Williams headed over to Macy's to buy her "personal
massager." Trouble was, she couldn't find it. After the sales clerk kindly directed her to it, she inquired
what she would be using it for. The story goes that Williams mumbled something about her back but felt the whole
store was watching her and knew her real intentions. She felt ashamed.
The experience -- combined with the memory of her first truly incredible orgasm -- crystallized her calling in
life: to give every woman who wants to improve her sexuality access to the products that can help her, free of
shame and humiliation. Sexual pleasure renews us and connects us to others and ourselves.
I fear the message is getting lost in our current zeitgeist. Sex is shrinking back into a territory that is off
limits and taboo. However, anybody who hasn't had sex in a while could see Williams' point. Those in touch with
their pleasure are generally happier, easier people to be around. It's as if Williams tells us orgasms can save
the world. Can they?
I personally admire Williams for jump-starting the trend that gives women access to the devices of our pleasure.
Today we take it for granted. But just 30 years ago, when Williams founded Eve's Garden, her female-friendly sex
shop in New York, it was the first of its kind. Now it has its own Web site.
As Williams herself put it after she participated in the March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C.: "I marched
and, I'll tell you what, at 82 I'm pretty damned tired of having to go out and tread this same old ground all over
again." But no battle was ever won overnight. We just have to make sure we don't stop trying.
Laura Berman, Ph.D., is a sex therapist and director of Chicago's Berman Center. Have a topic you'd like to see
addressed in a future column? E-mail drberman@suntimes.com.
ABOUT DELL WILLIAMS...
She was born at a time when women
had only just gotten the vote - and she grew up to march along side Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Flo 
Kennedy. She served honorably in the U.S.
Army during WWII - and got censured by the FBI in the 1950's for her work defending The Hollywood Ten from charges
of Communism.
Her career has taken her from posing as an artist's model, to assisting the legendary producer Norman Corwin, to being at the top of the New York advertising world. She has journeyed from committed agnosticism to becoming an ordained minister.(Dell Williams and author Lynne Vannucci pictured right)
Most significantly, in 1974, she opened up the first woman-owned and -operated erotica boutique in the United States and helped to break open forever the boundaries that once confined women's sexuality, and defined the ways in which we were able to joyfully express and satisfy our desires. Revolution in the Garden: Memoirs of the Gardenkeeper is the funny, touching, remarkable story of Dell Williams, founder of Eve's Garden. It's available a eve's garden or most bookstores!
EVE'S GARDEN WEBSITE! http://www.evesgarden.com
Back
to Top of Page
THE
GURU PAPERS: MASKS OF AUTHORITARIAN POWER
Diana Alstad/Joel
Kramer
Contact Diana: joeldiana@msn.com
Diana Alstad and
Joel Kramer (FrogLtd). This consciousness-expanding new take on the patriarchy will make your hairstand on end.
Don't be deceived by the title.Patriarchy uses the "sacred" to get people to sacrifice to it, and defines
being "good" as sacrificing to whatever it decrees a "higher" priority. ( Gurus are the ultimate
patriarchs). Since women get the biggest dose of this, we have more guilt putting ourselves first.
(Diana Alstad, a founding member of New Haven Women's Liberation and of the New Haven Radical Feminist Collective,
taught one of the first Women's Studies Courses and co-founded Women's Alliances at both Yale and Duke.A Woodrow
Wilson Fellow,she received herPh.D fromYale in l971. She and Joel Kramer have led seminars on relationships, yoga
and Eastern thought at Esalen and other growth centers.)
SPIRIT TAKING FORM
Contact Nancy Azara: nancy@nancyazara.com
SPIRIT TAKING FORM
Spirit Taking Form is a practical book. It offers lists of materials to work with and exercises
and meditation techniques to help everyone bring out their inner voice. It includes specific meditations for healing
the inner critic, cultivating imagination, and finding one's artistic heart. Its meditations and exercises can
be done many times, and each time they can bring the reader new and richer experiences and deeper insights.
About Nancy Azara...
Nancy came of age during the feminist movement of the 1965 and began a lifelong
spiritual practice that has influenced her art and led her to teach and perform psychic healing circles. In Spirit Taking Form, she marries both interests.
Contact Nancy: nancy@nancyazara.com
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and more...
Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon
Women's liberation was the largest social move- ment in the history of the
United States, and evidence of its monumental influence is everywhere-in the schools, on the playing fields, in
the media, the law andthe workplace. Dear
Sisters documents,
celebrates and assesses the groundbreaking ideas and activities of women's liberation as the movement took off
with such breadth and force in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, distinguished scholars and former participants in women's liberation, have
assembled a unique collection of posters and poems, songs and cartoons, manifestoes and leafiets. The documents
range widely, from a poster attacking the tyranny of high heels to an analysis of labor-market inequities. Here
are the dramatic high points of women's liberation-the birth of consciousness raising, the demonstration at the
Miss America Contest in 1969, the first Chicana women's caucus, the speak-outs on abortion, the movement against
sexual harassment, the campaign for child care, the birth of black feminism-high points that together chronicle
the tremendous social progress women brought about in such areas as health, reproduction, work and family.
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Contact Rosalyn Baxandall: ROSYBAX@aol.com
Back
to Top of Page
Louise Bernikow
The American Women's Almanac
Contact Louise: Weezieman@aol.com
Here is a new American history.
It is full of charmers and cranks, visionaries and lost souls, and amazingly heroic women. The American Women's Almanac shows how women of all races have, individually and together, challenged injustice and pushed aside narrow definitions of womanhood.
The only book of its kind, this engaging volume is based on nearly thirty years of new research in women's studies, spanning three centuries of women's history.
Here are suffragists, labor organizers, trumpeters, sex radicals, singers, dancers, sculptors, architects - and especially bad girls and rebels.
A provocative chronicle of women's road to freedom, accompanied by hundreds of illustrations and photographs that bring history to life, The American Women's Almanac shows just how far women have come.
Available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon Books and most othe bookstores
Contact Louise: Weezieman@aol.com
New for Adults from Virtue Hathaway,
a novel for the
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY WOMAN
Buying the Ranch - Book I -Facing Real Life
" This is the first in a series of four books, tracing, the evolution of a young woman of the mid-20th century
from cheerleader to radical feminist. In a form entertaining, erotic and enlightening, the story follows Joanna's
dramatic journey of self-realization. Struggling to live her life, she finds she must face the reality of the rules
society lays down in order for women to "fit in", "play the game" and ultimately to survive,
let alone be able to create meaningful change around her.
"A well-planned,
intricate plot that takes the reader on their own dramatic journey of self-discovery" Lief Carlson, Vallarta Today.
CONTACT SHIRLEY: sjboccaccio2000@yahoo.com
To Purchase your copy, send CHECk or MONEY ORDER made out to: Shirley Boccaccio
AND MAIL TO:
Wachovia Securities
6991 East Camelback Road, Suite D200
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
For the Rebels in all of Us!
PURCHASE YOUR OWN HISTORICAL ICON TODAY!
Fuck Housework
Remember that great Woman's Liberation Poster of the new wave of the 70's, now an historical icon? This was the poster that added potent fuel to the woman's movement in its time.
The original posters are now available, personally signed and dedicated by the author; illustrator, Shirley Boccaccio, or "Virtue Hathaway", her "nom de plume"
The Poster costs just $25.00 plus $5.00 for shipping & handling.
CONTACT SHIRLEY: sjboccaccio2000@yahoo.com
CONTACT SHIRLEY: sjboccaccio2000@yahoo.com
To Purchase your copy, send CHECk or MONEY ORDER made out to: Shirley Boccaccio
AND MAIL TO:
Wachovia Securities
6991 East Camelback Road, Suite D200
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
Marquerite de la Roque - A Story of Survival
- is the true story of a French Hugenot woman (like Elizabeth) who was marooned for three years with her old nurse
and her husband on a desolate island near Labrador in 1542 - by her uncle and guardian. The miracle is how she
survived the bitter cruel winters and wild animals, losing her baby, her husband and then her nurse - living alone
for a year, until fishermen found her and returned her to France. She was the first settler in 'America, but the
story is mentioned only in passing in history books. How Elizabeth got the true story is a feat of literary detective
work almost as incredible as the historical circumstances it discloses. $25.00
A Colony of One - The History of A Brave Woman- Contains documents, maps and stories about the event which Elizabeth found
in France. There are photos of Marquerite, her husband, and various family members...$35.00
Freydis and Gudrid - A documentary novel of three women; one,
the daughter of Eric the Red; the other , the sister of Leif Erikson, and the woman who is the mother of the first
European child born on the North American continent. The book tells of the little-known part women played in the
conquest of the western wilderness. $20.00
Send check made out to: WEAL
Elizabeth Boyer Books
P.O. Box 16397
Rocky River, OH 44116
Visit the WEAL Website at: http://ohiowomeninc.org/orgs/weal.html
About the
author:
Legendary feminist, Elizabeth Boyer, a lawyer and the founder of Women's Equity Action League (WEAL), was honored by VFA in May of '99 in Washington.
WEAL was the prime mover in forcing state universities and colleges to abandon quotas and discrimination against
women. When she passed the bar, unusual for a woman way back then, *Alice Paul heard about her and invited her
to Washington, then got her to lobby for the ERA. Later, with another legendery feminist lawyer, the late Marguerite
Rawalt, she carried the case on the Help Wanted Ads to the Supreme Court and "desexed" the banks.
*Alice Paul - the indomitable fighter for the vote, who chained herself to the White House, and was jailed and
force fed. Paul founded the National Woman'' Party and started the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment.
(photo: Elizabeth Boyer is given the VFA Medal of Honor by Mary Beth Crisp also honored by VFA May 1999 in Washington,
DC.)
ATTENTION!
From Patricia Bliss-Egan, WEAL National President...
I wanted to contact you about
VFA's book listing of Elizabeth Boyer's books. WEAL is continuing on with Dr. Boyer's work! I am the current National
President of WEAL. We are in possession of Betty's books and are selling them as a fund-raiser for the WEAL Foundation.
Is it possible for you to change the mailing address for the purchase of her books?
WEAL
Elizabeth Boyer Books
P.O. Box 16397
Susan
Brownmiller's
IN OUR TIME: MEMOIR
OF A REVOLUTION
The Dial Press.
Booklist, from the American Library Association, says: "A riveting blend of eyewitness accounts and keen analysis,
this is history at its most vital and a stirring testament to our ability to come together to combat social injustice."
Susan Brownmiller now brings the Women's
Liberation Movement and its passionate history vividly to life. Here is the colorful cast of characters on whose
shoulders we stand - the feminist icons Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Germaine Greer, and Gloria Steinem, and the
lesser known women whose contributions to change were equally profound. And here are the landmark events of the
era: the consciousness-raising groups that sprung up in people's living rooms, the mimeographed position papers
that first articulated the new thinking, the abortion and rape speak-outs, the daring sit-ins, the underground
newspaper collectives, and the inventive lawsuits that all played a role in the most wide-reaching revolution of
the twentieth century. Here as well are Brownmiller's reflections on the feminist utopian vision and her dramatic
accounts, rendered with honesty and humor, of the movement's painful internal schisms as it struggled to give voice
to the aspirations of all women. Finally, Brownmiller addresses that most relevant question: What is the legacy
of feminism today?
Kirkus says: "Meetings, debates, demonstrations, church speak-outs, living-room confessions all come passionately
to life in this memoir. A cogent, vivid view that conveys the drama and urgency of the women's liberation movement
from a writer who was both a committed activist and a critical observer, sometimes simultaneously."
Available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon books
Contact Susan here:
sueb@echonyc.com
"And logically enough, as the millennium turned, Jacqui Ceballos had hauled together a strong gemutlich organization called the Veteran Feminists of America to celebrate and welcome all those who played a part in that great revolution."
Book Description
The original, best-selling, classic feminist history, a Book of the Month
Club Featured Alternate, submitted by Simon & Schuster for a Pulitzer Prize. "Marcia Cohen has cleverly
and wisely chosen to trace the history of the fractured feminist movement via interwoven biographies of head honchas,
tying up those loose ends better than most novelists and displaying an awesome gift for making her story move.
Utterly delightful. Run, don't walk to the nearest bookstore for this one. There's not a dull page in it!"
(Florence King, Newsday) "It analyzes the human side of the sisterhood, provides the colorful aspects, gossips
about personal lives and finally gives the group their much-earned praise for changing the way this society treats
its female members." (The New York Times Book Review) "This is a fascinating, funny and, at times, sad,
cultural history of the women's movement during the passionate years of the 60s and 70s." (People Magazine)
The Kirkus Review
"Her pages crackle with such energy they almost turn themselves."
Ingram
An ultimate history of the feminist movement reveals the inside story of the passion, personality, ambition, and
courage of the women who created the movement, focusing on such leaders as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinam, Germaine
Greer, and Kate Millet.
About the Author
Marcia Cohen is a journalist/historian, and a former editor at Hearst, Gannett, and the New York Daily News. Her
articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine as well as many other national publications. Born and raised
in Binghamton, NY, she lives in New York City and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Ann
Crittenden
The Price of Motherhood
The Price of Motherhood, a widely acclaimed bestseller, argues that
although women have been liberated,
mothers have not. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, and the latest research in economics, family law, sociology,
history, and child development, this provocative book shows how mothers are uniquely disadvantaged economically.
Unlike most other nations, the United States systematically refuses to value or support unpaid caring labor. As
a result, mothers, children, and society as a whole pay an enormous price. Crittenden makes a forceful argument
that the anachronistic, dependent status of mothers and other caregivers is the finished business of the woman's
movement.
CONTACT
Visit Ann Crittenden's
website: http://www.anncrittenden.com/
E-Mail Ann: ann.crittenden@erols.com
Telephone: 202-362-3419
A former economics reporter for the NYTimes
and a Pulitzer Prize nominee, Ann has also been a reporter for Fortune, a financial writer and foreign correspondent
for Newsweek, and an occasional commentator for CBS News. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband John Henry.
Her previous books include Sanctuary: A Story of American Conscience and the Law in Collision, which was a New
York Times Notable Book in 1988, and Killing the Sacred Cows: Bold Ideas for a New Economy. Her articles have appeared
in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Foreign Affairs, and Barron's
among others.
Contact: efoa@usa.net
Whither Thou Goest The Story of an Uprooted Wife by Eleanor Foa Dienstag "This could be the story of a woman from anywhere,
torn from the life she knew and loved, faced with the real and psychological shocks of relocations."
Whither Thou Goest is the honest story of one woman -- who could be any woman -- facing up to the moral demands of business, marriage and self, and con- fronting the seductive power of the American dream of upward mobility -- a dream that diminishes both men and women.
There's more about Eleanor in the VFA FEATURES SECTION!
Contact: efoa@usa.net
Website: http://www.eleanorfoa.com
Roxanne
Dunbar-Ortiz
Red Dirt:
Growing Up Oakie
Website: www.reddirtsite.com
Contact: rdunbaro@pacbell.net
W hat else can you do but to tell about the travails and hardships,
fears and violence, the joys and discoveries and affirmations, and the mysteries and revelations when you tell
the story about your land, people, heritage, and your innermost self. Because that's the way you've known your
life, that's the way you know how to tell the story, the truth. Red Dirt is such a story, and Roxanne Dunbar affirms
this by acknowledging and expressing such a truth about her life--and we come to realizesuch a story is always
a truth about oneself, whether you tell it as a historian, poet, or storyteller.
AND ALSO FROM ROXANNE
DUNBAR-ORTIZ
OUTLAW WOMAN:
A MEMOIR OF THE WAR YEARS, 1960-1975
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Available from City Lights Books, March 2002
ISBN: 0-87286-390-5
Trade paperback original, 340pp $17.95
Pre-order directly from City Lights Books at
http://www.citylights.com/CLorder.html
or call toll-free 800-283-3572
For review copies: STACEY LEWIS, PUBLICIST stacey@citylights.com
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is Professor of Ethnic and Women's Studies at California State University, Hayward. She is
the author of Roots of Resistance: Land; Tenure in New Mexico, The Great Sioux Nation and Indians of the Americas.
She is currently working on a historical novel based on the life of Belle Starr, the "Bandit Queen" from
Oklahoma.
Website: www.reddirtsite.com
Contact: rdunbaro@pacbell.net
Back
to Top of Page
Brenda
Feigen
"Not One of the Boys: Living Life as a Feminist"
http://www.notoneoftheboys.com
notoneoftheboys@aol.com
Although she never achieved the media stardom
of such pioneering feminists as Gloria Steinem or Susan Brownmiller, Feigen, in a more peripheral role, has been
an effective activist for social change. In this behind-the-scenes view of the women's movement from the late '60's
to the '90's, she is sharply critical of the discrimination she has found in every aspect of her personal and public
life, as a lawyer, politician, Hollywood movie producer, wife and mother.
When she entered Harvard Law School
in 1966, women students were told by the dean that they were taking the place of men who needed to become fimaily
breadwinners; the school's only eating club was restricted to men; squash courts were closed to women' and firms
that excluded women were permitted to interview on campus. Seething at the injustice, Feigen jointed the National
Organization for Women and was elected its national legislative vice-president. Working for passage of the equal
rights amendment, she met Steinem, who became a good friend. She and Steinem conceived the grassroots Women's Action
Alliance; the organzation's "newsletter" later evolved into Ms. magazine. A highlight of her feminist
career came in 1972, when she served as director of the Women's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties
Union with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Alternating anecdotes about her personal life with movement history in a somewhat
confusing chronology, Feigen recounts the failure of her marriage and the happiness she later found with her companion,
writer Joanne Parrent. Feigen's feisty attitude and her very real achievements make this work an important document
of social history as well as an entertaining read.
Back
to Top of Page
We Will Be Heard: Women's Struggles for Political
Power in the United States
Rowman & Littlefield
276 pages
Paper: ISBN 0-7425-5608-5
Cloth: ISBN 0-7425-5607-7
Contact Jo Freeman: jfrbc@joimail.com
Jo Freeman's Website: http://www.JoFreeman.com
In We Will Be Heard noted political scientist Jo Freeman chronicles some of
the struggles of women in the United States for political power. Most of their stories are little-known, but Freeman’s
compelling portrait of women working for change reminds us that women have never been silent in the political affairs
of the nation.
From J. Ellen Foster's address to the 1892 Republican Convention to Nancy Pelosi's 2007 election as the first female
Speaker of the House, women have worked to influence politics at every level. Well before most could vote, women
campaigned for candidates and lobbied to shape public policy. Men welcomed their work, but not their ideas. Even
with equal suffrage women faced many barriers to full political participation.
The fifteen case studies of women’s struggles for political influence in this book provide the historical context
for today’s political events. Starting with an overview of when and why political women have been studied, the
three sections of the book look at different ways in which women have broken barriers, practiced politics, and
promoted public policy. These engaging and accessible stories are even more important in today’s political climate,
when a woman can finally be a front-runner in a presidential race.
Readers of all political stripes will enjoy the history behind modern politics in this story of women struggling
to make their voices heard.
A ROOM AT A TIME: HOW WOMEN ENTERED PARTY POLITICS
What were women doing between the feminist waves? Working in the major political parties, says political scientist Jo Freeman. In her new book (forthcoming, early 2000) she traces the path of political women from the mid 19th Century to the mid 1960s.
"Jo Freeman uncovers the hidden facts of women in this century's party
politics--whether feminists, reformers, or party women--and so creates an inside, readable, and non-partisan history
of how politics really works. Every voter, politician, women's studies, and American history course needs this
book. A ROOM AT
A TIME is a landmark."
Gloria Steinem
"Jo Freeman breaks new ground with her comprehensive account of the rise of women as active participants in American politics over more than a century. With a fine eye for human detail, she tells the story of women, many now largely forgotten, who not only gave leadership to reform movements but also penetrated ruling party machines. Her findings will be illuminating to scholars and absorbing to general readers." A. James Reichley, Georgetown University, author of THE LIFE OF THE PARTIES
Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000
Visit Jo Freeman's website for
more articles, how to order
her books and promos at:
http://www.jofreeman.com
“The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency”
The director of Cornell University's
Feminism and Legal Theory Project, Fineman here imagines legal structures that put caregivers-parents, children
of the elderly, spouses, partners or others-at the center of a web of recognitions and subsidies, a framework that
works to "reconceptualize and transform our notions about the family and its relationship to the state and
other social institutions." Fineman (The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies)
seeks to change how society defines and supports families, traditional or otherwise. Fineman finds that in the
U.S., "collective responsibility...is privatized through the institution of the family," and that U.S.
domestic policy is oriented toward "the delivery of social goods only in the case of family default."
This set-up has allowed, on the one hand, a kind of deregulation of social goods as delivered by corporations and
other sources, and on the other, a relative lack of support for many kinds of caregiving relationships, including
same-sex households and partnerships. Fineman argues that the U.S. must extend the shield of privacy, in its legal
sense, around such caregiving relationships, and support all of them with a guaranteed set of rights and subsidies.
Putting caregiving, rather than sexual affiliation, at the center of policy, would reflect a recognition that "merely
being financially generous with our own mothers or... wives will not suffice to satisfy the share of societal debt
we generally owe all caretakers." While non-scholars should be able to follow Fineman's use of jargon and
legal precedents, her book is largely theoretical, and lacks the case studies, anecdotes and reportage that would
make her ideas more immediate to lay readers. Anyone who calls for "the abolition of marriage as a legal category,"
as Fineman has done previously and does again here, is bound to raise hackles, but Fineman makes an interesting
case.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
AND THIS ALSO...
Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus: Gender, Law, and Society
Martha Albertson Fineman
"The essays in this volume confront the inroads that economics has made into the legal academy. . . . Law and Economics uses principles of neoclassical economics to develop laws and social policies that maintain if not bolster current allocations of power."-from the Introduction
The Law and Economics school has had a significant impact on the legal and governmental landscape in the United
States. It posits a perfectly rational "economic man"-homo economicus-who is unconstrained by familial
and communal ties and who can and should make decisions solely in light of considerations of economic value. Feminism
Confronts Homo Economicus offers a major intervention in debates about how law has come under the influence of
economic principles. Drawing on the latest thinking in the fields of feminist legal theory, critical legal studies,
and feminist economics, the essays critique the notion that legal and policy decisions should be made solely through
the lens of economics. While the contributors question the wholesale incorporation of the neoclassical economic
model into legal analysis, they do not all discard economic analysis and theory.
Situated at the intersection of feminism, law, and economics, Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus will appeal to
scholars and students of these disciplines as well as policy analysts and social theorists interested in family,
education, labor, and welfare.
About the Author:
Martha Albertson Fineman is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Interdisciplinary
Study of Religion at Emory University. Her many books include The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency and The
Neutered Mother, The Sexual Family,and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies. Terence Dougherty is an Associate with
Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, LLP, concentrating in tax and exempt organizations work.
Contact E-mail: mfineman@law.emory.edu
Fuentes' book is available from her publisher, Xlibris Corp., in paperback and hardcover. To order, call toll free
1-888-795-4274 or go to Xlibris' web site at www.xlibris.com .
It is also available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and borders.com.
Check it out!
The story begins with the wedding of Fuentes' parents, Hinda and Zysia Pressman, in Piltz, a town in Poland. It goes on to the adventures of the Pressmans and Fuentes in Berlin, Antwerp, the Bronx, the Catskills, Miami Beach, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Stamford (Connecticut), and Washington, DC. Along the way, Fuentes had encounters with Pat Ward (a notorious call girl in the '50s), Betty Friedan, Harry Golden, Dr. Cecil Jacobson (a prominent geneticist convicted on fifty-two counts of perjury and fraud), and many others. At forty-two, she married a handsome Puerto Rican and 1 year later, her Puerto Rican Jewish daughter was born. She tells about it all in Eat First.
Visit erraticimpact for a closer look at Sonia's work: http://www.erraticimpact.com/fuentes
It's here! Sonia's fascinating book...available at Amazon Books; Barnes & Noble and Xlibris Publishers
Amazon Books: http://www.amazon.com
Barnes & Noble: http://www.bn.com
Xlibris Publishers: www.xlibris.com
EAT FIRST
- YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'LL GIVE YOU
E-mail Sonia for other options
on
ordering your copy of "Eat First": spfuentes@comcast.net
Alice
Kessler-Harris
IN PURSUIT 0F EQUITY
Women, Men and the Quest for Economic
Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America
$35.00 - ISBN: 0-19-503835-5 - 374 pp.
Publication date.- 09.27.01
In 1937, the United States Supreme Court
sustained a Georgia law that allowed women to pay a lower poll tax than men. In 1937, this seemed quite fair, since
women were expected to stay at home with children, and men worked outside of the home to earn a living for the
entire family. In Alice Kessler-Harris' new book, she explores how gender helped to shape some of the key elements
of twentieth- century American social policies. Kessler-Harris reveals the powerful role gender performed in producing
differential access to resources for men and women. She also demonstrates how race and gender have intersected
to restrict the claims of many Americans to full economic citizenship.
By providing a feminist context for examining the government-institutionalized laws and programs, Kessler-Harris
opens the door for discussion and reassessment of economics based on the ever-evolving role women. IN PURSUIT OF EQUITY is a challenging, vigorous analysis that
tells a crucial part of the story of how gender has shaped the rules by which we live. Kessler-Harris offers here
a major contribution to feminism, economics, and U.S. history.
Available at Amazon Books and Barnes & Noble
For further information:
CONTACT: Tara Kennedy, Publicist
212.726.6106 phone
212.726.6447 fax
E-mail: tsk@oup-usa.org
Judith Hennessee
BETTY FRIEDAN: HER LIFE.
Judith Hennessee. Random House. 330
pages.
This unauthorized biography covers Betty's childhood, journalist career, marriage, The Feminine Mystique,
the founding of NOW to the present. The book was six years in the writing and includes interviews with Betty and
many of the founders and early members.
Contact Judith Hennessee
here: JHennessee3@aol.com
Back
to Top of Page
Daniel
Horowitiz
BETTY FRIEDAN AND
THE MAKING OF THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE
By Daniel Horowitiz. University of Massachusetts Press - 336 pp. The professor of American Studies focuses on Betty's
early years and challenges the belief that her experience as a suburban housewife led to the writing of The Feminine
Mystique, positing instead that it was her involvement in labor politics.
Back
to Top of Page
WOMEN, POWER, AND AT&T
Winning Rights in the Workplace
Lois Kathryn Herr 224 pages
herrlk@earthlink.net
Publisher: Northeastern University Press
17 illustrations/chronology/tables/notes/index
2002 ISBN 1555535372 * $47.50 cloth
2002 ISBN 1555535364 * $18.95 paper
In the 1960s, Lois Kathryn Herr left her job as a seventh-grade English teacher and entered the ranks of AT&T, where in unprecedented ways she helped awaken the corporate giant to its injustices against women. What she and others accomplished by the early seventies would raise the standard of treatment of women in corporations throughout the United States. Yet in the beginning, Herr knew little of the burgeoning women’s movement. Here she tells about her growing feminist awareness and her career as an activist who remained loyal to her company while effecting positive change.
Engagingly written, Herr’s insiders’ view of women’s life in the corporate world is an invaluable case study of how reform really happens. LOIS KATHRYN HERR is Director of Marketing at Elizabethtown College, where she also teaches a colloquium on women at work. She spent twenty-six years working for various units of AT&T, and, after divestiture, NYNEX, before returning to her home county of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
LOIS KATHRYN HERR is Director of Marketing at Elizabethtown College, where she also teaches a colloquium on women
at work. She spent twenty-six years working for various units of AT&T, and, after divestiture, NYNEX, before
returning to her home county of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Back
to Top of Page
BARBARA
JOANS
BIKE LUST
available and Barnes & Noble, Amazon and most other bookstores
Bike Lust
roars straight into the world of women bikers and offers us a ride. In this adventure story that is also an insider's
study of an American subculture, Barbara Joans enters as a passenger on the back of a bike, but soon learns to
ride her own. As an anthropologist she untangles the rules, rituals, and rites of passage of the biker culture.
As a new member of that culture, she struggles to overcome fear, physical weakness, and a tendency to shoot her
mouth off-a tendency that very nearly gets her killed.
Bike Lust travels a landscape of contradictions. Outlaws
still chase freedom on the highway, but so do thousands of riders of all classes, races, and colors. Joans introduces
us to the women who ride the rear-the biker chick, the calendar slut straddling the hot engine, the back-seat Betty
at the latest rally, or the underage groupie at the local run. But she also gives us the first close look at women
who ride in their own right, on their own bikes, as well as a new understanding of the changing world of male bikers.
These are ordinary women's lives made extraordinary, adding a dimension of courage to the sport not experienced
by males, risking life and limb for a glimpse of the very edge of existence. This community of riders exists as
a primal tribute to humanity's lust for freedom.
Author Biography: Barbara Joans is director of the Merritt Museum of Anthropology and chair of the Department of
Anthropology at Merritt College in Oakland, California. She rides a Harley-Davidson Low Rider.
Back
to Top of Page
Somewhere Out in the West
by ISBN 1-4033-3342-4
"Somewhere Out In The West", novel by Leota Koms, shows us in dramatic form what talk show hosts Rush
Limbaugh and others hammer home to us, and towering Alston Chase and attorney, William Perry Pendley, "War
on the West" write for us.
Ms. Korns novel tells the struggle of developing in the West today. It pits the stalwart people of the West with their frontier neighborliness, against the newcomers, who want the West to remain as is except for sheep and cattle, and no water storage, so that rivers run wild and free.
In this background developer Judith Sandstrom meets documentary film producer Robert Markham and they share the same experiences.
Available from lst
Books Library
To order call 1-888-280-7715
or visit www.1stbooks.com
Leota Korns
P.O. Box 1617
Durango, CO 81302
E-mail Leota at: leotakorns@frontier.net
Visit Leota's website: http://www.somewhereoutinthewest.com
LAWRENCE
LADER
IDEAS TRIUMPHANT
May 2003 -- NOW AVAILABLE at Most Bookstores!
Ideas Triumphant: Evolution and History
of the Reproductive Rights Movement
Inspiration!
Lawrence Lader helped to change the world when his book "Abortion" in 1966 helped launch the abortion rights movement, and he became founding chair of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) from 1969 to 1975. Lader's book "RU 486" in 1971 roused the public to the importance of this new drug. As president of Abortion Rights mobilization, he organized the research that led to the drug's approval by the FDA. Now Lader's new book sums up fifty years of activism. "Ideas Triumphant" analyzes how ideas originate, how they can be turned into movements and become national policy through the courts and legislatures.
Another Must Read by Lawrence
Lader!
RU486
LAWRENCE LADER
RU 486 is a pill that ends an unwanted pregnancy
quickly, safely, and without an invasive procedure. By rendering abortion a private matter between a woman and
her doctor, it could fundamentally change the nature of abortion in America. Yet, although developed, tested, and
administered to more than 100,000 women in France and Great Britain, it has been banned from importation to the
United States. In this book, Lawrence Lader, a pioneer on behalf of reproductive rights for women (his 1966 book,
Abortion, was cited nine times in the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision), tells the exciting story behind the
discovery and development of this groundbreaking drug, and the controversial tale of the drug's suppression in
America. Anti-abortion forces have successfully kept the drug from being imported, tested, and made available.
Both the Reagan and the Bush Administrations have cooperated in this, directing the FDA to allow virtually no testing
of the drug, even for its potential other benefits -in treating breast cancer , endometriosis, and certain brain
tumors. As a result, American science and medicine are being held hostage to politics and ideology , and a drug
that has been called by leading feminists "the moral property of women" is simply unattainable.
In a challenging last chapter, Lawrence Lader outlines a plan to introduce RU 486 into the country at the state
level. His book is essential reading for an understanding of the politics of science and medicine.
Available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and most other bookstores!
Back
to Top of Page
GERDA LERNER
The Creation of Feminist Consciousness
A pioneer in women's
studies and long-term activist for women's issues, and a past president of the 
Organization of American Historians, Gerda Lerner is one of the founders
and foremost scholars of Women's History.
The Creation of Patriarchy, the first book in her two-volume Women and History Series (1986) received wide review
attention and much acclaim, winning the prestigious Joan Kelly Prize of the American Historical Association for
the best work on Women's History that year. Ms. hailed the book for providing "a grand historical framework
that was impossible even to imagine before the enlightenment about women's place in the world provided by her earlier
work and that of other feminist scholars."
New Directions for Women said it "may
well be the most important work in feminist theory to appear in our generation." Patriarchy traced the development
of the ideas, symbols, and metaphors by which men institutionalized their domination of women. Now, in The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, the eagerly awaited concluding volume of
the Women and History Series, Lerner documents the twelve-hundred-year struggle of women to free their minds from
patriarchal thought, to create Women's History, and to achieve a feminist consciousness. Lerner argues that the
millennia-old educational disadvantaging of women and their marginalization in the intellectual life of Western
civilization retarded women's ability to comprehend their condition and to define their needs as a group. She shows
the devastating impact on women's psychology of notions of their innate mental inferiority, reinforced generation
after generation by the teachings of family, church, and state. Through examining over a thousand years of feminist
biblical criticism, Lerner illustrates her most important insight - the discontinuity of Women's History. The generation
to generation transmission of knowledge on which the building of civilization rests did not work for women. Because
they did not know its history.
Contact Gerda Lerner: glerner@facstaff.wisc.edu
Back
to Top of Page
ANOTHER CHANCE!
Sexual Politics
News from Kate Millett: Kate's books, the classic Sexual Politics, as well as Sita,
The Loony Bin Trip
and Flying will be published by the Illinois University Press this fall! The books
have been out of print for a while -- so if you don't own them, and/or haven't read them, you have another chance!
You can visit Kate's website at: http://www.KateMillett.com
PROUD SHOES:
The Story of an American
Family (Black Women Writers Series)
by Pauli Murray, Patricia Bell-Scott
Spurred by the 1950s civil rights movement
in the United States, Pauli Murray interrupted her lawcareer for four years to investigate and document her family's
history. Meticulously researched and eloquently written, Proud Shoes provides both an engrossing story of one family
and an historical overview of race relations in the United States spanning almost one hundred years. Pauli Murray
grew up in the South with her grandparents, Cornelia and Robert Fitzgerald, two strong-willed individuals of vastly
different backgrounds. Cornelia, the child of a beautiful house slave and the master's son who drove away her lawful
husband and repeatedly raped her, was brought up in a Southern household, both heir and slave. Robert grew up in
the North, the sickly child of free black Thomas and his white wife Sarah Ann, who through her marriage "enlisted
in a cause which called for raw courage and no retreats." Educated and brave, Robert refused to pass for white
and waited impatiently until the Union allowed blacks into the military; his determination and heroism on and off
the battlefield served as a constant example and a psychological shield against the racism of young Pauli's world.
As Pauli Murray traces her family's history, she shows the Civil War from two sides and describes a world of North
and South, pre- and post-emancipation, filled with family stories, laws, injustice, bravery, and heroes and villains
of both races. She never shrinks from truth, and her loving pride is ever-present
Available at Barnes
& Noble, Amazon and most other bookstores!
Back
to Top of Page
Agate Nesaule
A WOMAN IN AMBER
The author presents a memoir of her life
during and after World War II. "As a child in Latvia, she endured the terror and dislocation of {the war}
at the hands of both Soviets and Germans, lived in a postwar refugee camp, andbecame an immigrant to the American
Midwest."
Only seven when she and her family fled their comfortable parsonage in rural Latvia to avoid the Russian advance,
Agate Nesaule has been a witness to rape, torture, and executions. A Woman in Amber chronicles her amazing story
of survival, struggling still to live with such terrible knowledge.
A heartbreaking yet inspiring memoir of tragedy and healing, of war and recovery, of physical dislocation and psychological
relocation…A beautifully told story.
AVAILABLE AT: AMAZON
BOOKS and BARNES and NOBLE
The Hungry Heart, A Woman's Fast for Justice
By Zoe Ann Nicholson
Released on August 26, 2004 - Women's
Equality Day
Lune Soleil Press
http://www.lunesoleilpress.com/bk-hh.php
"As a teacher of U.S. Women's History, if I had to choose one book about the struggle for the Equal Rights
Amendment, The Hungry Heart would be that 
book.
In fact, if I had to choose one book which captures the spirit of the women's movement of the late 1970's and 1980's,
this would be it. Nicholson's account of the Women's Fast for Justice is the most compelling and profoundly accurate
I have ever read about the transformative power of non violent action for social justice and the spiritual journey
of one who travels that path"
Mary Lee Sargent
Professor Emerita, Parkland College and co-founder
of the Grass Roots Group of Second Class Citizens.
About Zoe Ann Nicholson
Zoe Ann Nicholson, founder of Lune Soleil Press, holds a B.A. in Theology, Quincy University,
1969 and a M.A. in Religion, USC, 1975. She has led a very diverse life, from teaching high school, building and
operating a bookstore, to working in high tech. Her dedication to the advancement of women began with fasting for
37 days in Springfield, Illinois, demonstrating for the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982 and continues to the current
day. She lives in Southern California.
You can read more about her life at www.onlinewithzoe.com.
Contact Zoe: zoe@onlinewithzoe.com
Himilce
Novas
Princess Papaya
The Power of Papaya:
New Novel Swirls Magic and Mystery
Pages: 240 Price: $14.95
“I love Himilce’s characters and her understanding of the Latino soul in all its guises, traditions, and classes.
Her writing is universal and timeless. Princess Papaya is beautifully rendered, chilling, touching and haunting.”
—Isabel Allende
Roberto Lobo receives anonymous calls in
the night. Voices whisper threats in his ear. His fear drives him to seek the help of Ideliza Mercado, Princess
Papaya and Priestess of the Barrio. Roberto hopes Princess Papaya’s powerful knowledge of santería will
end his torment. Hiding in the shadows is Ideliza and Roberto’s deaf-mute son, Bembé. Across the city, Victoria
Lobo, a Jewish, Cuban-American poet, mourns the death of her husband, Francisco, until a chance meeting with Bembé
brings her closer to her brother and the disappearance that has plagued her family for twenty years.
Taking us from the 9/11 tragedy in New York City to the political dungeons in Cuba to the vineyards of Santa Barbara,
Novas weaves santería, gender, transgender, sexuality politics, and the resistance movement in contemporary
Cuba.
Born into a family of prominent intellectuals, HIMILCE NOVAS
grew up in New York City. Novas is the author of several works, among them Mangos, Bananas, and Coconuts: A Cuban Love Story (Arte Público Press, 1996; Putnam
Riverhead 1997) and Everything
You Need to Know about Latino History
(Plume/Penguin, 1994; 1997; 2003). She teaches writing and literature at colleges and universities throughout the
country, including Wellesley College; the University of California, Santa Barbara; Clark University; and Tulane
Univers
ity.
Himilce Novas is one of America's foremost feminist authorities on the increasingly powerful Latino population
in the U.S. Active in New York NOW in the late "60s and early '70's, she is a writer, historian, an expert
on Latino culture and founder of Latino Pride Enterprises. She reaches the huge and ever-growing Latino population
and addresses their concerns and aspirations eloquently by celebrating their strength, energy and contributions
to America and awakening their burgeoning feminist consciousness. Her animated discussions range from topics like
machismo to multi-ethnic traditions and the changing role of women in Latino society.
For the past fifteen years she has lectured on her own works as well as on Latino and literature, multicultural
studies, Asian-American history, women's history from an International perspective, history and success of the
Feminist Movement and Gay, Lesbian and Transgender civil rights issues.
Review of latest book by VFA member Himilce Novas..
Family plot
An unfolding mystery changes the lives of three siblings in lyrical
'Princess Papaya'
Roxana Popescu
October 3, 2004 Sometimes a novel is so delicious that it reads like a cookbook graced with a plot and characters.
M.F.K. Fisher details seductively simple dishes from her visits to France, and Laura Esquivel assembles mouth-watering
Mexican meals for her readers. If only they had access to a magical-realist kitchen. Princess Papaya
Himilce Novas Arte Publico Press, 240 pages, $12.95
On par with this tradition of literary gourmandise is "Princess Papaya," a novel by Cuban-American novelist
and cookbook author Himilce Novas. Though not about food in any proper sense, it relates a mystery where grief,
belief, betrayal, cultural and gender identity, and the redemptive power of forgiveness, are all seeped in the
salves and spices of Jewish and Cuban cuisines. Novas' recipe goes something like this: Take one scheming obstetrician
and mix with a Cuban curandera, or healer, with pendulous papaya breasts, to get a deaf-mute boy with milk-chocolate
skin. In a separate bowl, mix a vanilla-sweet widower and an olive-skinned Sept. 11 widow who met on the Internet,
to get a pungent romance. Finally, add a bitter missing brother or two and a dash of revenge. Serve cold. This
is the story of three Lobo siblings, Jewish-Cuban exiles born in New York whose lives are disturbed by a series
of disappearances and discoveries.
VISIT HIMILCE NOVAS WEBSITE: http://supernovas.org
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Contact: Marina Tristan
mtristan@uh.edu
www.artepublicopress.com
Back
to Top of Page
A BALCONY IN NEPAL:
GLIMPSES OF A HIMALAYAN VILLAGE
by Sally Wendkos Olds
Art by Margaret Roche
In 1993 writer Sally Wendkos Olds from Port
Washington, New York and artist Margaret Roche from Evanston, Illinois were the first western women to visit the
village of Badel, nestled in Nepal's eastern hills. They returned four more times, living with families each time,
and in their book, graced by Roche's impressionistic sketches of the villagers, these two mature women from a sophisticated
society show what they learned from people who live and work as they have for centuries in a hamlet with no electricity,
no telephones, no modern sanitation.
To read the first chapter and an article that in slightly revised form constitutes Chapter 20, go to www.sallywendkosolds.com.
For more information
or to order the book, go to any online bookstore or to:
http://www.iuniverse.com
THE QUOTABLE WOMAN
The First 5000 Years
by Elaine T. Partnow
The new edition (the 5th) of The Quotable Woman contains close to 19,000 quotations from
the works of almost 3,700 women of 160 nationalities. An inclusive work, it embraces women of color and women from
non-English speaking nations, women in the humanities, the sciences, politics, sports and business. There are 4
indexes: 1) Biographical, 2) Subject, 3) Nationality & Ethnicity, and 4) Profession or Occupation.
Elaine started work on the first edition of The Quotable Woman back in 1974. At that time her only professional experience was as an actor, and the longest
paper she'd ever written was a twenty page dissertation for an English Lit class at UCLA. Elaine says that, for
her, "research was like a rope that I climbed up, hand over hand, leg-up over leg-up: Learning about hundreds
of women, most of whom I'd never of heard before, pulled me out of a dark hole into which I'd fallen. It has always
been my greatest hope that the words collected here would serve a similar purpose for others -- as well as, of
course, give visibility to our invisible past." Her research is on-going; already she is collecting for the
next edition.
The Quotable Woman has been twice singled out by the American
Library Association as an "outstanding reference work of the year," and is considered to be the standard
in its field.
E-Mail Elaine: TheQuotableWoman
Back
to Top of Page
Martha
Matilda Harper and the American Dream: How One Woman Changed the Face of Modern Business
by Jane R. Plitt
Published by Syracuse
University Press
Jane Plitt's E-Mail:
bruen2@att.net
Martha Matilda Harper is a forgotten international business visionary
who defied her destiny as a servant girl to launch America's first business format franchising system in 1891.
Inspired by Susan B. Anthony and her Christian
Science faith, Harper's new business model became her revolutionary tool to transform poor women into business
owners. The result was a worldwide empire of over 500 Harper Method health-conscious hair and skin salons and a
team of thousands of women known as Harperites. Using Harper's floor-length hair as an advertising tool, this image
of her became identified with the Harper distinctiveness.
Delighted customers included suffragists, government leaders, and actresses, such as Susan B. Anthony, Presidents
Wilson and Coolidge, First Ladies Coolidge, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson, and Helen Hayes.
To learn more about Harper, the mother of business format franchising, you can order her biography or hear Harper
biographer Jane Plitt speak.
The Martha Matilda Harper Story
As a Visiting Scholar at the University of Rochester, Jane Plitt is the definitive biographer of Harper. She lectures
widely on Harper, women, and business. She will be speaking:
To book Jane for your
organization's program:
E-mail: info@MarthaMatildaHarper.com
Note: A portion of the book's royalties fund The Women's
Foundation of Genesee Valley's entrepreneurial
projects to support poor women.
Back
to Top of Page
GREAT READING FOR THE YOUNG ONES!
CALIFIA
QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA
Can you imagine that an Amazon Queen once owned all the gold in California? This fantasy story for children in Spanish and English is based on an old legend first written down in Spain in 1510 by Garcia de Montalvo about a beautiful Amazon Queen named Califia and her tbbe of women warriors. They fly about their island on griffins, mythical beasts that are half eagle and half lion. They almost meet their downfall when ambition drives Queen Califia and her warriors over the seas to Constantinople to wage war with the Turks against the Spanish.
Spanish and English.
ISBN 970-91841-2-1
Cover in color, 28 pages 14 full page illustrations.
For ages 6 to 12 years.
PRICE: $7.95
To order: Send price of book plus $3.50 for postage
and handling. It's Mexico, so allow a month for delivery. They are worth the wait.
Send check to:
Penelope Boccaccio
934 East Grandview Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85022
Phone: 602-499-9960
You can contact Trina through: sjboccaccio2000@yahoo.com
Ruth
Rosen
Published by Viking Books
Available at Amazon
Books
THE WORLD SPLIT OPEN
How The Modern Women's Movement Changed America
"Bursts of artillery fire, mass strikes, massacred protesters,
bomb explosions-these are our images of revolution. But some revolutions are harder to recognize: no cataclysms
mark their beginnings or ends, no casualties are left lying in pools of blood. Though people may suffer greatly,
their pain is hidden from public view. Such was the case with the modem women's movement." With these words,
Ruth Rosen takes the reader on an unforgettable journey through the last half of the twentieth century, charting
the accomplishments and failures of a movement that both addressed-and accelerated-the astonishing changes that
transformed American society. Starfing with the early years of the Cold War, Rosen explores how American politics
and culture shaped the distinct nature of the women's movement.
At the same time, she convincingly argues that the greatest accomplishment of the movement was its profound transformation
of our politics, our culture, and our lives. Weaving together ten years of archival research and interviews, Rosen
turns the long and complicated history of the women's movement into a compelling and coherent narrative. With uncompromising
integrity, she challenges us to understand how the women's movement has forever altered our lives and why the revolution
is far from over. An extraordinary achievement, this is the long awaited history that will attract both men and
women, entice educators and students, beguile movement veterans and captivate those who came of age in the wake
of this revolution.
Viking 448 pp. 0-670-81462-8 $27.95
E-mail Ruth for more
info: rerosen@ucdavis.edu
Order it at
Amazon Books: http://www.amazon.com
Lorraine Rothman/Marcia Wexler
Menopause Myths and Facts, What Every Woman Should Know about Hormone Replacement Therapy
Author Lorraine Rothman with Marcia Wexler have listed 26 myths
about menopause and are setting the record straight about the drug companies and HRT. There is never a good reason
for healthy women to take HRT, and the vast majority of us ageing women are healthy. HRT cannot and will not prevent
heart disease, osteoporosis, or Alzheimer's. Annoying short-lived symptoms (hot flashes/dry vagina) can be treated
safely without harmful drugs.
Menopause Myths and Facts,
What Every Woman Should Know about Hormone Replacement Therapy
Lorraine Rothman
Feminist Health Press, Los Angeles 1999
For more information contact Lorraine at:
Menopause@ProgressiveHealth.org
The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women
Barbara Seaman
Published by Hyperion Books
June 2003; $24.95US/$36.95CAN; 0-7868-6853-8
For almost a century women have been taking some form of estrogen to combat the effects of menopause and aging,
and more recently to prevent a host of diseases, from osteoporosis to Alzheimer's to heart disease. For most of
that hundred years, doctors have been prescribing estrogen in either its organic or synthetic forms, and 
women have gone to their pharmacists and dutifully filled their
prescriptions. In some cases, menopause sufferers who were experiencing the most extreme symptoms were in search
of relief from hot flashes, night sweats, dryness, and more, but increasingly in recent years, women began receiving
estrogen sometimes with progesterone as "hormone therapy," not because they were in immediate danger
of anything but rather as a preventative. But was this regimen warranted? Did doctors know enough about estrogen
and its effects to be widely prescribing it for such a range of ailments? Or were women being used as guinea pigs
in a great experiment, an experiment the author terms "The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women"?
Since the 1960s, women's health icon Barbara Seaman has been one of the lone voices in journalism to question whether
doctors have sufficient justification to be writing so many estrogen prescriptions, or whether it is the pharmaceutical
industry that is driving the research, marketing, and use of hormone replacement therapy. In 2002, several important
women's health studies revealed that estrogen may cause more problems in patients than it is correcting or preventing,
and that in fact it has a dismal record in terms of prevention.
This groundbreaking book illuminates today's "menopause industry," tracing the history of estrogen use
from its early purveyors, including a well-meaning British doctor who lost control of the marketing of DES and
therefore inadvertently led to the DES baby crisis, to Nazi experimentation with women and estrogen, to the present,
and looks at how an experiment of this proportion could have been conducted without oversight, intervention, or
real knowledge as to what its effects would be.
Also from Barbara Seamen
FOR WOMEN ONLY!
Barbara Seaman
The practice and politics of women's health are addressed in this uniquely comprehensive
work.
This awesome collection addresses
women's health from a preventative/curative perspective as well as a historical/contextual one. Both a reference
book and an activist's handbook, For
Women Only! brings
together hands-on advice from the country's leading alternative health practitioners essays and interviews, and
commentary by leading thinkers, activists, writers, doctors, and sociologists.
With a depth of historical coverage unusual for a women's health book, For Women Only! is not only a treasure for every woman, but a necessary reference for every bookshelf.
FOR WOMEN ONLY! Your
Guide to Health Empowerment
1600 pages / $49.95 ISBN 1-58322-015-1
Health/ Politics/ Women's Studies
CONTACT: Nicole Dewey or Ruth Weiner at (212) 226-8760
E-Mail: nicole@sevenstories.com - or- ruth@sevenstories.com
Rachel Blau duPlessis/Ann Snitow
THE FEMINIST MEMOIR PROJECT: Voices from Women's Liberation
Edited by Rachel Blau duPlessis and Ann Snitow
Reviewed by *Sheila Tobias
This is a "must read" for anyone who lived through the beginnings of the Second Wave, or wishes she had. Rachel Blau duPlessis, a historian at Temple U. and writer Ann Snitow have edited remembrances of the women's liberation movement from 32 feminists into a collective memoir. We experience again the spirit of those times, their "excitement and engagement" from those who were there.
The contributors offer highs and lows and a range of remembered and current political agendas. I was struck with how much Idid not know (or had forgotten) -- that Carol Hanisch initiated the Miss America action, that, No More Fun and Games was an 80 page manifesto, that Valerie Solanas (author of The S.C. U.M. Manifesto) died a bag lady in San Francisco in 1978. But most of all the book reminds us how much feminism meant to us and how it transformed our lives.
A book like this inevitably provides perspectives on the same events. The first gatherings of exiles from SDS and
other male-dominated movements in Maryland and Illinois are remembered variously -- as in the 1970 Congress to
Unite Women. Also of importance was the first wave of writings: Jo Freeman's Voices of Women's Liberation, Naomi
Weisstein's Psychology Constructs the Female, Juliet Mitchell's Women: The Longest Revolution, and the S.C.U.M
Manifesto itself.
Back
to Top of Page
Ellen Snortland
Beauty Bites Beast
ISBN: 0-9711447-0-2 Lightning Press
2460 N. Lake Ave. #112 Altadena, CA 91001
A vailable on www.amazon.com
or visit Ellen's website: www.snortland.com
As a writer producer director humorist
actor, dormant lawyer, women's and children's self defense advocate, feminist homemaker, Snortland has the unique
ability to speak and write with authority on subjects ranging from knitting and cooking, to S.W.A.T. team methods
of close quarter hand to hand combat to the opportunities and obstacles of the professional American woman. Her
perspective provides a much needed bridge of understanding between the home, university and the office in a context
of feminist theory.True to her Renaissance Woman nature, she is the author of Beauty Bites Beast: Awakening the Warrior Within Women and Girls, (Trilogy Books, Pasadena, 1998), recently featured on Dateline NBC.
Foreword by Gavin de Beckert
Author of the national best-seller The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence
Beauty Bites Beast:
Awakening the Warrior Within Women and Girls, 2001, B3 Books, (second edition) is available in bookstores and on-line.
Ms. Snortland can be reached by e-mailed at: Ellen@snortland.com
References, writing
samples and video tape available on request.
Back
to Top of Page
Sappho
Rising
By Mary Vasiliades
ISBN: 0-7388-5240-6
(Trade Paperback)
Available at Amazon Books, Barnes and Noble, most other shops.
DESCRIPTION
“Sappho Rising” is an action love story
about Hillary and Iris, lovers who defy the conventions of their world with disastrous consequences for their relationship
and their future. Forced to separate by their homophobic parents who intercept them in a motel, they find their
isolation intolerable. They need money desperately so that they can runaway together. Iris does something so outrageous
to get funds that her criminal actions separates them even more. Hillary moves on to become a fashion photographer
and an activist in the lesbian and gay rights movement while Iris becomes a fugitive and lives underground with
a new identity.
The novel follows their parallel lives and romantic adventures. Hillary is blamed for everything and is hated by
Iris's family, especially by her homophobic brother, Jerry. She holds on to the dream of finding Iris until she
meets Virginia, a rich, beautiful lesbian who is in a marriage of convenience.
Meanwhile, Iris’s escape route leads her to a group that befriends her and gives her a new identity and a future.
She is a free spirit and romps through life. After a series of jobs she teams up with the gay crowd in the ad agency
where she works, spending summers at Fire Island and having casual affairs.
There are many complications that develop including the resurfacing of Iris’s accomplice, a mass demonstration
that reopens old wounds for Iris’s brother, who belongs to a secret militia group in New Jersey. His hate for Hillary
and all gays and lesbians triggers another desperate plan that puts everyone in danger.
To read an excerpt or to purchase a copy go to:
www.xlibris.com/SapphoRising.html
For more information about “MEMOIRS OF A NEW YORK FEMINIST”
Contact Mary Vasiliades at: marychrisv@yahoo.com
Back
to Top of Page
MYSTERY OF THE SWAMP LIGHTS
an adventure story for girls and boys, ages 8 to12.
Winnie Wackwitz with Jo Barnes, Illustrated by Ruth McAnespy.
MYSTERY OF THE SWAMP LIGHTS was inspired by persistant rumors about inexplicable lights observed in
the swamps along Bayou Grosse Tete, deep in rural south Louisiana. It draws upon actual people, places and events
experienced by ten year old Winnie Davis living an unfettered Tom Sawyer-like childhood during the 1930's in an
environment rich in social, racial and ethnic cultures. Colorful characters abound. Winnie leads three male companions
in her determination to solve the mystery of the lights. Success was finally achieved after overcoming formidable
obstacles and terrifying misadventures. The story proved to be a spell-binder for both boys and girls in three
fifth grade classes that critiqued the manuscript.
Send for your copy
today!
Send $9.00 for
this adventure story for girls and boys,
and get an autographed copy from Winnie!
Your payment will be given to VFA in your name,
or in the name of the young person you give it to.
Winnie Wackwitz
2205 E Pecan Lane
Plano, TX TX 75074
For more info email Dnawk@aol.com
or
jabarnes@ix.netcom.com
Back
to Top of Page
Sally Roesch
Wagner
SISTERS IN SPIRIT
THE UNTOLD STORY ---
NATIVE AMERICAN SOCIETY INFLUENCED EARLY FEMINISTS
SISTERS IN SPIRIT
- Haudenosaunee ( Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists -Sally 
Roesch Wagner - This little book, by the president of the Matilda Joseylyn Gage Foundation,
and founder of women's studies at C.S.U in Sacremento, tells the story of the Native American civilization that
influenced Mott, Stanton and Gage, the three who started the women's rights movement. The movement was born in
the territory of the Haudenosaunee in July, 1848. The Haudenosanuee ( called Iroquois by settlers) Gage, visited
the Cattaraugus community in June, 1848, just before the Seneca Falls Convention. She later adopted into the Wolf
Clan of the Mohawk Nation. Roesch Wagner's extensive studies of the Haudenosanuee and the early feminist's contact
with them is a compelling proof that the model for women's rights movement came also from the equitable society
of these native americans.
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) women fired the revolutionary vision of early feminists by providing a model of freedom
for women at a time when EuroAmerican women experienced few rights. Women of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy
enjoyed decisive political power, control of their bodies, control of their own property, custody of the children
they bore, the power to intiiate divorce, satisfying work, and a society generally free of rape and domestic violence.
The author recounts the compelling struggle for freedom and equality waged by women in the U.S. and documents the
inspiration and influence Native American women gave to this dynamic social movement.
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Back
to Top of Page
Feminism & Love: Transforming Ourselves and Our World
This book presents a new vision of feminism and love. Love is our inner core.
As our vital energy, love is our creative life force and vibrant spirit. Love is the binding force and moving power
that causes the ecological interdependence and unity of all people, nature, the universe and the divine Feminism
is the vision and practice of love.
Feminism is acts of love that work to eliminate all forms of domination; that actualize respect, liberty, equality,
justice and love for all women and men; and that transform the world by nurturing loving individuals who create
communities of love. Feminism is love in action.
This book is not only idealistic and inspirational, it is also realistic and practical as it explains self-help steps to become more loving and concrete ways to prevent the personal and social causes of human destructiveness. Its goal is to transform ourselves and our troubled world by helping us become more loving.
Feminism is acts of love that work to eliminate all forms of domination; that actualize respect, liberty, equality, justice and love for all women and men; and that transform the world by nurturing loving individuals who create communities of love. Feminism is love in action.
Ruth Whitney, Ph.D., currently teaches Women's Studies at the University of South Florida. After serving in the
Peace Corps in Ghana, Africa, she received her doctorate and taught at a number of colleges and universities. In
addition, she has been a feminist activist for over twenty-eight years. ISBN: 0-940121-47-6 LC: 98-71416
Contact Ruth here: WhitneyRA@aol.com