A 20-year study of birth mothers and analysis of the outcomes of their open adoptions, Gretchen Sisson’s book Relinquished posits that most birth mothers don’t want to relinquish, and would not do so if they had limited financial support. After the Dobbs decision and before the upcoming election, Sisson’s timing could not be better.
Tag: Books
Spotlighting books that tell important feminist stories.
April 2024 Reads for the Rest of Us
Each month, we provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.
Here are 25 fantastic books releasing this month that we recommend you dig into. There are stunning debuts, masterful historical fiction, kaleidoscopic short stories, thoughtful manifestas, moving memoirs, groundbreaking nonfiction, and so much more.
‘She Devils at the Door’: Women’s Suffrage and Its Opposition
She Devils at the Door tells the true story of two formidable sisters, Lucy and Eliza Kennedy, who came of age in Gilded Age Pittsburgh, graduated from Vassar College, and became leaders of the suffrage movement.
Speaking While Female: A History
Thousands of American women have courageously spoken in public over the past four centuries. Their speeches helped shape the beliefs, culture and ideals of America. But their voices have been omitted from American history, and our storehouse of common knowledge. The same cannot be said about the many lionized male orators who appear in our history books, media, and public discourse.
I know because when I give talks and teach classes in public speaking, I ask my audience: “Which famous speakers in American history can you name?” Many people can rattle off at least half a dozen American male speakers like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan. But when I ask which women speakers they remember, there’s a long pause. Someone might mention Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama. Mostly the faces are blank.
Could it be true, I wondered, that the “great men” in history gave all the greatest speeches? Or could it be we just don’t know about great women speakers?
The Women of the Winningest Team in Pro Football History
Amid a national backdrop of the call to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the National Women’s Football League was founded as something of a gimmick. However, the league’s star team, the Toledo Troopers, emerged to challenge traditional gender roles and amass a win-loss record never before or since achieved in American football.
‘Dare to Be Fabulous’ Essay Collection: 30 Remarkable Women on Embracing Our True Selves
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.
Looking Back and Forging Ahead: Three Feminist Writers on Women’s History, Feminist Media and Intergenerational Engagement
Friends of Ms. gathered last month to discuss two extraordinary anthologies, Blackbirds Singing: Inspiring Black Women’s Speeches from the Civil War to the Twenty-First Century by Janet Deward Bell and 50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution. Both give voice to extraordinary women throughout history who fought to define and demand equality.
Don’t Say Rape: How the Book Banning Movement Is Censoring Sexual Violence
The book-banning movement is efficiently eradicating an already narrow space to learn about sexual violence in public schools.
Rape cannot be censored away in the real world. It shouldn’t be censored in our libraries either.
March 2024 Reads for the Rest of Us
Each month, we provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.
You can choose from an epic graphic memoir, a darling of a biography, collections of poignant essays and stories of 1950s India, Chinese-Canadian coming of age, star-crossed lovers in Cameroon or Korean stray cats.
Private Equity Firms Profit Off the Backs of Working Women and Families
If you’ve ever wondered whatever happened to iconic U.S. businesses like Sears and Friendly’s Ice Cream, Samsonite Luggage and Zales’ Jewelry, or even Toys-R-Us, you’ll find distressing answers in Brendan Ballou’s Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America and Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner’s These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America. Both books describe private equity firms’ largely secret and little understood 40-year-long hit-and-run scam.
If you’re worried about the deteriorating appearance of downtown areas, hospitals or the housing market, if you’ve noticed a growing shabbiness, or if you’ve notice the government’s indifference, these books will help explain not only what’s wrong, but what we ordinary people can and must do to stop the steal—the real steal.