More Than A Magazine, A Movement
The conflicting responses to Halle Bailey’s casting in “The Little Mermaid” highlight the importance of representation as a tool for fighting white supremacy.
“In a society where everyone wants to forget race, and act as if racial discrimination does not exist, digital spaces of support become the space where marginalized groups can have conversations that center their bodies and lived experiences.”
The Brooklyn Academy of Music relaunched Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. Hansberry is best known for A Raisin in the Sun (1957), the first production written by a Black woman staged on Broadway, which won her a New York Drama Circle Critics Award in 1959.
Friday, March 10, is Harriet Tubman Day, which marks the 110th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s passing on March 10, 1913. Last year, we celebrated Tubman’s bicentennial birthday with Ms. magazine’s Tubman 200 project. Today, we continue in the celebration of our Black feminist hero as we recognize the latest Harriet Tubman Monument. Designed by artist Nina Cooke John, Shadow of a Face opened to the public yesterday in Newark, N.J., in Harriet Tubman Square, renamed from Washington Park on Juneteenth of 2022.
The new Harriet Tubman monument replaces a statue of Christopher Columbus, which was removed in 2020. Newark’s arts and cultural affairs director Fayemi Shakur said the city’s choice to replace of a symbol of conquest with “an ideal figure for democracy and freedom” is part of a larger project of healing.
As Ms. turns 50, we are looking back at the life and legacy of some of the groundbreaking Black feminists who have been featured on the magazine’s covers and in its pages over the years—from Anita Hill, to Pauli Murray, to Zora Neale Hurston, to Coretta Scott King.
Black Americans have kept and published diaries for more than 150 years, chronicling their experience in the moment and using the powerful conventions associated with the diary form—privacy, honesty, confiding in a trusted audience—to create a stark picture of lived experience under racism. Diaries by African American women document personal experiences within social contexts of injustice—and show how their own actions make history. These stories offer evidence that apparently new developments like the Black Lives Matter movement, white fragility exposure, and intercultural dialogue practices have long roots in the past.
Around the globe, white supremacy is a thread that runs through reproductive policies, maternal health programs, marriage and family law.
The reproductive justice framework can help people everywhere access the care they need.
Each month, I provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups. Here’s to a new year and, hopefully, a better one for us all. I wish you a year of peace, collectivity, good health, bountiful joy and, of course, fantastic reading! You can start with these 33 titles that I am most excited about this month.
To ring in the new year, we asked a few of our favorite feminists—reproductive justice advocates, scholars, legal minds, voting rights activists, Ms. staffers and environmental justice experts—what they are wishing for in 2023.
The Ms. community, family, friends and colleagues recently said goodbye to R. Dianne Bartlow—professor, scholar, feminist writer, Emmy-winning producer and director. She’s left too soon, at the age of 67 after a short battle with lung cancer.
I remember Dianne for her easygoing temperament and her patience. Dianne was humble and down-to-earth, which is why I was surprised to learn of her accomplishments as an award-winning television writer-producer.
Each month, I provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups—to do my part in the disruption of what has been the acceptable “norm” in the book world for far too long (white, cis, heterosexual, male); and to amplify indie publishers and amazing works by writers who are women, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, APIA/AAPI, international, queer, trans, nonbinary, disabled, fat, immigrant, Muslim, neurodivergent, sex-positive or of other historically marginalized identities—you know, the rest of us.
Make some time to read one or two of these 30 new books, or whatever goes well with your pumpkin spice latte or hot apple cider.
