“The masculinist mode of representing history makes it so that, too often, credit is not given where it’s due.” These words—among an impassioned treasure-trove of others—were delivered by longtime political activist, radical queer feminist, writer and scholar Angela Davis this past Monday night. On the 43rd anniversary of her release from prison following her acquittal […]
Tag: Angela Davis
With These Posters, Celebrate Black History Month All Year Long
For the past 28 days of Black History Month, photographer Eunique Jones Gibson has put up a photo poster a day of an African American child posed as an historic figure–from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Malcolm X to Frederick Douglass to Barack Obama to Muhammad Ali. Of course we at the Ms. Blog are […]
Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth
I am the woman: Dark, repaired, healed Listening to you. … —Alice Walker, from her poem “Remember?” For more than four decades, Alice Walker has used the written word to make visible that which has been made invisible as a result of exploitation and marginalization. Equally as important, she is a humanitarian and social-change agent […]
Top 100 Feminist Non-Fiction Countdown: 40-31
As we get closer to the top, here are career-defining works from the likes of Angela Y. Davis, Kate Bornstein, Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof, Patricia Hill Collins, Susie Orbach and Mary Pipher. If you’ve heard of these folks, it’s probably because of the books below. If you haven’t, you have some great reading ahead! […]
What Would an Intersectional Women’s History Month Look Like?
Women’s History Month gives us an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the legacy of global women. Yet, year after year, the faces of Women’s History Month are the same: slideshows and commemorative stamps of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. These women all provided groundbreaking work for women’s rights, […]
Can’t Stop the Women of Hip-Hop
My awakening to Black feminist thought came in 1989 when Queen Latifah, with British rapper Monie Love, rapped about “Ladies First” and opened the music video for this powerful track with a pantheon of fierce Black feminist icons: Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, Frances E. W. Harper. Coincidentally, in the realm of the academy, Patricia Hill Collins […]
Don’t Ms.: Rape New York, UNRATED and more!
Everywhere: Happy Valentine’s Day! If you need some ideas for how to celebrate a day of love, check out How to Have a Feminist Valentine’s Day. Paris: If you happen to be in the city of l’amour–and if you are, I am jealous–you should head over to the Centre Pompidou and see the last week […]
Empowered and Sexy
Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality and Popular Culture by Tulane University professor Shayne Lee (Hamilton Books, 2010) revolutionizes the politics of black female respectability. Instead of writing about how hypersexualized representations hurt black women, Lee celebrates black female pop culture icons who purposefully hype uninhibited sexual agency. He defends Karinne Steffans, Tyra Banks, Alexyss Tylor […]