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.
Author: Leslie Absher
Leslie Absher is a journalist living in the Bay Area. She writes about human rights, travel, and growing up with a spy father. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and others. You can find her work at leslieabsher.com.
Getting Closer to Cleo
A young Mixtec woman is at the center in Roma—but do we really know her?
Telling Her Story to Change History
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.
Bridging Lives and Homelands
While Trump is talking about closing borders and deporting Muslims and Brexit begins to take shape, a women’s migrant organization in Greece offers Europe and the world a startling alternative: solidarity.
Where Writers Aren’t Free
Five decades of military rule in Myanmar have kept it politically isolated, economically undeveloped and, in terms of freedom of expression, very unfree. That may be about to change. In last November’s election, the National League for Democracy party (NLD), headed by populist leader and writer Aung San Suu Kyi, won nearly 80 percent of seats. […]
From Iraq to North Dakota: The Global Sex-Trafficking Crisis
Recent reports have surfaced about the sexual enslavement of women and girls by the so-called Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL), an extremist group that has overtaken territories in Northern Iraq and Syria. Video footage appears to show ISIS men sitting around talking and laughing before they bid to purchase women and girls; price tables for […]
Where Do Feminists Fall in the Charlie Hebdo Debate?
Last night, the PEN American Center, a literary and human rights organization, conferred a Freedom of Expression Courage award to Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine that was brutally attacked by Islamic extremists in January after it published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. In the weeks leading up to the PEN event, heated controversy erupted when […]
Where Are All the Women in Ai Weiwei’s New Exhibition?
When I walked into the New Industries Building where the Ai Weiwei @Large exhibit is housed on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, I was greeted by a giant Chinese dragon. Suspended from the ceiling, it snaked through the prison’s old work space, where model prisoners were once allowed to sew uniforms or do […]
Forget “The November Man” — Try “Homeland,” “Hunted” or “Haywire” Instead
You don’t have to be a feminist to not like The November Man. You just have to be someone who likes good movies. Even though I grew up watching sexist James Bonds films with my real-life CIA dad, this movie is worse. Not only does the film specialize in putting women down, but the female […]
Why Mamas Write
Outside of a few high-profile writers such as Anne Lamott, women who write explicitly about being a mother risk being seen as lightweight by the literary establishment. Not real writers. The anthology Mamas Write: 29 Tales of Truth, Wit and Grit turns this assumption on its head. You won’t find cliché advice on how to […]