Don't Call Me Inspirational: A Disabled Feminist Talks Back
reviewdate:
Nov 2 2017
isn:
978143990936-2
Tagged with feminists
Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here
I read this book because a Barnard Women's & Gender Studies grad is the author's sister. And also, I read YA like a mofo. Breslaw's voice is witty and true, which I know because I work with college students and lurk in their Facebook groups.
reviewdate:
Oct 3 2017
isn:
9780698197497
Passing for Black
reviewdate:
Feb 7 2016
isn:
9780758233035
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Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
reviewdate:
Jan 7 2016
isn:
9780062415820
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F 'em! Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls
After a summer of subsisting on the literary equivalent of carbs (i.e., genre fiction), I started the school year off with Jeanette Wintersen then dipped close to chick flick territory, followed that with an international memoir and then feminist essay collections back-to-back. Not that I don't love my vampires and young adults, but it's satisfying to get back to spending some time in the minds of smart grown-up humans for a change. It helps that Jennifer Baumgardner is so damned likable in F'em.
Quotations:
From an interview with Ani DiFranco
Also from Ani (everyone calls her Ani, right?)
reviewdate:
Sep 21 2012
isn:
978-1-58005-360-0
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Roseanne: My Life as a Woman
You know you're a book geek/librarian/dork when you're constantly distracted from a text with the thought, "Did anyone proofread this thing?" You get the feeling that the editors at Harper & Row threw up their hands at some point and didn't give a fuck about getting the name Alfred E. Neuman right or fixing a mistaken "know" for "now," and didn't have the fortitude for copy editing either, since the narrative frequently bounces off the rail (billiards reference). Aside from my criticism of how the book was produced (seriously, I wouldn't have released a book in that condition if I were a publisher, but I guess since Roseanne was big money in 1989 they didn't care), I did enjoy reading it.
Quotations:
I think men like to pretend that they are not wholly dependent on women. Women like to pretend that they are dependent on men. And there you have it, folks, the Rosie Barr view of the BATTLE OF THE SEXES.
I always insisted on being the teacher when we played school, the mother when we played house, and the star of every neighborhood play. I didn't feel then (or now) that hogging the glory is a disservice. I can do it better than anyone and, being a perfectionist, I always make sure to do everything myself.
What we need is a Woman, a mother for President, and I'm going to run someday, and my campaign motto will be "Let's vote for Rosie, and put some new blood in the White House--every twenty-eight days."
We admitted that we were powerless over being female and that our lives had become unmanageable. We came to believe that a power deep within ourselves could restore us to sanity.
reviewdate:
Apr 7 2012
isn:
0-06-015957-x
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Color Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times
I tried to read this at ALA and then on zine tour, but my concentrate sucked, and I gave up. I’d pick it up again, but honestly, while the book is full of colorful quotations, it’s chaotic and hard to read. I’ve got enough chaos in my life right now, so I’m not going to force my way through. I do want to share the awesome quotations, though...
reviewdate:
Jul 1 2011
isn:
0-13-152363-5
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Skin: Talking about Sex, Class & Literature
First of all I love that Allison published this 1994 collection of essays with Firebrand Books, a feminist and lesbian press, rather than a large publisher, which surely she could have, based on the success of Bastard out of Carolina, published by Dutton in 1992. Instead of using her success, even to have a better platform for her message to advance her career, she used it to advance her community, to give back to the press that gave her a platform in the first place, with her first book, Trash. (A chapbook of poetry preceded Trash.)
Quotations:
I use the word queer to mean more than lesbian. Since I first used it in 1980 I have always meant it to imply that I am not only a lesbian but a transgressive lesbian--femme, masochist, as sexually aggressive as the women I seek out, and as pornographic in my imagination and sexual activities as the heterosexual hegemony has ever believed. "A Question of Class." p. 23
I'd recognized in her face the same look I'd been seeing in other women's faces for all the months since the Barnard Conference on Sexuality (which my friends and I referred to as the Barnard Sex Scandal)--a look of fascination, contempt, and extreme discomfort. "Public Silence, Private Terror." p. 101-02
What will they think twenty years from now of the oral histories of the passing women on file at the Lesbian Herstory Archives? There's no doubt in my mind that the oral histories of working-class dykes and passing women will get far less serious consideration than those of famous artists and rich eccentrics. "A Personal History of Lesbian Porn." p.191 (a blog post of mine that touches on this)
reviewdate:
Mar 1 2009
isn:
1-56341-045-1