More Than A Magazine, A Movement
So Witches We Became, a YA horror novel by Jill Baguchinsky, combines the supernatural, a queer romance and suppressed trauma to tell a fast-paced and cathartic feminist story about collective healing and reclaiming power.
Ms. spoke with Baguchinsky about what inspired her to tell a story about witches, friendship and recovery from sexual assault and rape.
Kristine S. Ervin was 8 when her mother was abducted from a mall parking lot, murdered and abandoned in an Oklahoma oil field. In her debut memoir Rabbit Heart, Ervin resists the true crime trope of exploiting and glorifying femicide and instead delves into the emotional toll her mother’s death took on her and her family. We sat down recently to talk about her book, growing up motherless, how this informed her life’s gender power dynamics and her evolution from being a feminist-skeptic to writing what is undeniably a deeply feminist memoir.
“I see this as a grief memoir, a motherless daughter memoir, a memoir that is meant to show what 25 years of unrelenting, brutal grief looks like when you are the loved one of a victim and you don’t have answers.”
Each of the 30 essays in Dare to be Fabulous, by writer and editor Johanna McCloy, recounts a life-changing instance when women dared to be their true selves. The inciting moments are as unique as the women themselves—deciding to join a roller derby team, canceling a wedding at the last minute, or walking 3,000 miles to raise hell and make a point.
As the abortion rights landscape changes from week to week, peer advocates are doubling down, speaking out and committing to what they’ve been doing all along: sharing accurate information about safe and legal abortion.
“Young people are fundraising for their loved ones to get abortions out of state, they are speaking out against draconian state abortion restrictions, and even organizing for their campuses to make emergency contraception, condoms and medication abortion easily accessible to the students who need them.”
Earlier this month, Korea’s presidential election brought the conservative candidate Yoon Suk-yeol and his decidedly anti-feminist party into power. But the groundswell of activism and resistance won’t go away. In fact, some think it will only grow stronger.
Being a member of the LGBTQ community is punishable by life in prison in countries such as Uganda, making the acceptance of refugees and role of LGBTQ resettlement programs in countries such as the U.S. essential.
Women, girls and members of the LGBT community are hitting the streets in cities throughout Myanmar to protest the country’s military takeover. The junta has erased the advances women have made and taken the country back to its hyper patriarchic past, which includes decades of repression and violence against Myanmar’s ethnic communities.
The 46 writers represented in the new collection “She’s Got This!,” and the work they share in its pages, make clear that profound social change comes when women’s lives are made public.
A young Mixtec woman is at the center in Roma—but do we really know her?
Learning English and adjusting to life in America wasn’t easy—but the hardest part for Puja Mapchen was feeling like she wasn’t supposed to talk about her life growing up in a refugee camp.
