In her introduction to Poems from the Women’s Movement, Honor Moore recollects a friend saying, “The women’s movement was poetry.” The women’s movement was–and is–many things, and poetry was–and is–a necessary part of it. During the 1970s, poetry provided a way for women to find their voices and validate their experiences. Poetry enabled feminists to […]
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a trailblazing writer, intersectional feminist and civil rights activist. Her works include Sister Outsider, which is still considered an important text for Black studies, women’s studies and queer theory, and The Cancer Journals, which details her experiences with breast cancer and her mastectomy.
Black Herstory: The Founders of the Feminist Party
It never ceases to amaze me how many students in my women’s studies classes have never heard the names Flo Kennedy, Pauli Murray and Shirley Chisholm (left), all Black women. Yet they “might have heard” of Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique and a white woman, thus suggesting that Black feminist founders of the movement have been written out of feminist history.
How Audre Lorde Made Queer History
In her piece “Breast Cancer: Power vs. Prosthesis” in The Cancer Journals, black feminist lesbian mother warrior poet Audre Lorde wrote: “I also began to feel that in the process of losing a breast I had become a whole person.” This courageous insight and numerous others—about her mind, body and spirit being sites loaded with meaning, […]
Gaming: Tool of Pedagogy or Oppression?
Last month, a trailer for a new video game, Slavery the Game, was released on YouTube and instantly went viral. It also elicited worldwide outrage and indignation, as well as racially abusive rhetoric in the YouTube comments section from those who must have eagerly awaited a game that invites players to take on the roles […]
Ms. Readers’ 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time: The Top 10 and the Complete List!
Scholar, activist, provocateur, teacher, community-builder, inspiration: No one word can span the career of bell hooks or capture how much we love her work. According to Ms. readers’ selections of the best feminist non-fiction of all time, she’s your favorite writer, with three books in our top ten–including number one–and a total of seven books […]
Top 100 Feminist Non-Fiction Countdown: 50-41
Within books 50 to 41, you’ll find several controversial takes on motherhood and many a memoir, including a reflection on the personal impact of breast cancer, a graphic autobiography from a dyke to watch out for and some gutsy revelations from a Nation columnist. You’ll also see a satire of how the patriarchy tries to dampen […]
Scapegoating Black Women in a Recession
You know the media spin cycle and the propagandists are winning when you advise a young, promising black woman undergraduate student about her prospects for doctoral studies, and she immediately takes herself out of the running. Not because there are fewer fellowships to help pay for graduate school or because she wants to pursue a […]
Setting The Record Straight… Or Rather, Queer!
Hey, my fellow queer folk! Guess what? We’re finally making history! Or rather, California is finally acknowledging that we’ve always been making history. In an it’s-about-time turn of events, California Governor Jerry Brown signed the FAIR Education Act into law on July 14. The act: …would amend the Education Code to include social sciences instruction on […]