More Than A Magazine, A Movement
I have spent the last few months scouring catalogs and websites, receiving hundreds of books and even more emails from authors, publicists and publishers, reading your book Tweets and DMs, all to find out what books are coming out in 2023 that I think you, my exceptional, inquisitive and discerning Ms readers, will want to hear about.
Here’s your TBR (to be read) for the year. Enjoy!
Gray Love: Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60 showcases men and women’s own voices, showing the nitty-gritty headiness of first dates, the joy of getting to know someone’s history, politics and quirks, and the inevitability of decline.
Nan Bauer-Maglin, co-editor, says it’s rare for books about love to intertwine with aging. “I hope that younger readers will learn that older people have desires and still want to date and have romantic relationships. I hope that they will see that older people do not want to spend the rest of their lives longing for a person who is no longer there.”
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.
It has been just over two years since the imposition of a near-total ban on abortion across Poland. The ban removed almost all conditions in which a woman can access abortion care, leaving millions of women in the dark when it comes to deciding what happens to their bodies.
It is more critical than ever that we stand up to support access to life-saving abortion care, especially those with the power to liberalize laws. There are millions of lives depending on it.
Earlier this month, a few major news outlets erroneously reported that the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran had abolished the morality police—the infamous government body in Iran designed to harass and control women for such crimes as wearing an improper hijab or walking in public with a male friend. But it seems the news of its death has been greatly exaggerated.
The eyes of the world are on Iran. That’s why it’s crucial, Dr. Yalda Hamidi, assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at Minnesota State University, warned, not to “pay attention to what a single Iranian politician does” but “what people are doing and reporting, despite internet shutdowns and censorship.”
Even though death is symbolically very much present in Halloween, it’s also a time to celebrate life. The holiday draws from mixed emotions that resonate even more than usual during the COVID-19 era.
Looking at the ways survivors of past pandemics tried to celebrate the triumph of life amid widespread death can add context to the present-day experience. Consider the Black Death—the mother of all pandemics.
An excerpt from Finding My Voice: On Grieving My Father, Eric Garner, and Pushing for Justice by Emerald Garner, Monet Dunham and Etan Thomas:
“While you haven’t even fully grieved, you’re now linked to other cases, and you only have the bond that your loved one was also murdered by the police. … We didn’t choose for my father to be murdered, but we were left to pick up the pieces after, and that just wasn’t fair.”
In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in in this biweekly round-up.
This week: Saturday Night Live and Sesame Street hire first nonbinary and Black woman cast members, respectively; Kelley Robinson hired as first Black woman director of the Human Rights Campaign; California becomes sanctuary state for trans youth; U.S. Soccer Federation documents rampant abuse; 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable, and more.
There has never been a queer leader like Urvashi Vaid. Until her death of metastatic breast cancer on May 14 at age 63, she spent the better part of five decades fighting injustice. Principle drove Urvashi in almost everything she did. She exploded onto the scene with a dynamism that has never been equaled since.
“The lesbian agenda is the reconstruction of families … the reimagining of power … the reorganization of the economic system … the reinforcement of civil rights and dignity for all people … the end of the oppression of women, the end of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia … the reestablishment of a proper relationship to our environment. … When I list this laundry list of oppression, it does not overwhelm me; it tells me how far I have to go in my struggle; it tells me who my allies are.”
Men’s bodies and women’s bodies behave differently in collisions due to differences in size, muscle structure and bone density. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which issues five-star safety ratings, does not crash test cars with dummies that accurately represent women. The tests strictly prioritize men’s safety and offer only hope that women may stand a chance. Too often, we don’t.
Crash test dummies that accurately represent women are available today, and other countries are already planning to require them in crash tests. The U.S. should do the same.
