The full list of books displayed at Bread, Soup, and Books 2019!
Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC by
In Hands on the Freedom Plow, fifty-two women--northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina--share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. The testimonies gathered here present a sweeping personal history of SNCC: early sit-ins, voter registration campaigns, and freedom rides; the 1963 March on Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the movements in Alabama and Maryland; and Black Power and antiwar activism. Since the women spent time in the Deep South, many also describe risking their lives through beatings and arrests and witnessing unspeakable violence. These intense stories depict women, many very young, dealing with extreme fear and finding the remarkable strength to survive. The women in SNCC acquired new skills, experienced personal growth, sustained one another, and even had fun in the midst of serious struggle. Readers are privy to their analyses of the Movement, its tactics, strategies, and underlying philosophies. The contributors revisit central debates of the struggle including the role of nonviolence and self-defense, the role of white people in a black-led movement, and the role of women within the Movement and the society at large. Each story reveals how the struggle for social change was formed, supported, and maintained by the women who kept their "hands on the freedom plow." As the editors write in the introduction, "Though the voices are different, they all tell the same story--of women bursting out of constraints, leaving school, leaving their hometowns, meeting new people, talking into the night, laughing, going to jail, being afraid, teaching in Freedom Schools, working in the field, dancing at the Elks Hall, working the WATS line to relay horror story after horror story, telling the press, telling the story, telling the word. And making a difference in this world."
To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America - A History by
This landmark work of lesbian history focuses on how certain late-nineteenth-century and twentieth-century women whose lives can be described as lesbian were in the forefront of the battle to secure the rights and privileges that large numbers of Americans enjoy today. Lillian Faderman persuasively argues that their lesbianism may in fact have facilitated their accomplishments. A book of impeccable research and compelling readability, TO BELIEVE IN WOMEN will be a source of enlightenment for all, and for many a singular source of pride.
The Revolution Question: Feminisms in El Salvador, Chile, and Cuba by
What do women do for revolutions? And what do revolutions do for women? Julie Shayne explores the roles of women in revolutionary struggles and the relationship of these movements to the emergence of feminism. Focusing upon the three very different cases of El Salvador, Chile, and Cuba, Shayne documents the roles of women in armed and unarmed political activities. She argues that women contribute to and participate in revolutionary movements in ways quite distinct from men. Despite the fact that their political contributions tend to be seen as less important than those of their male comrades, the roles that women play are actually quite significant to the expansion of revolutionary movements. Shayne also explains how, given the convergence of political and ideological factors, feminism is often born in the wake of revolutionary movements. As a result, revolutionary feminism is a struggle that addresses larger structures of political and economic inequalities. Based on extensive in-depth interviews with activists in all three countries, The Revolution Question offers new insight into the complex gender relations underlying revolutionary social movements and enables us to re-assess both the ways that women affect political struggle and the ways in which political struggle affects women.
Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists & Progressive Politics during World War II by
As World War II raged overseas, Harlem witnessed a battle of its own. Brimming with creative and political energy, the neighbourhood's diverse array of artists and activists took advantage of a brief period of progressivism during the war years to launch a bold cultural offensive aimed at winning democracy for all Americans, regardless of race or gender. Ardent believers in America's promise, these men and women helped to lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement before Cold War politics and anti-Communist fervor temporarily froze their dreams at the dawn of the postwar era.In Harlem Nocturne , esteemed scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin tells the stories of three black female artists whose creative and political efforts fueled this historic movement for change: choreographer and dancer Pearl Primus, composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams, and novelist Ann Petry. Like many African Americans in the city at the time, these women weren't native New Yorkers, but the metropolis and its vibrant cultural scene gave them the space to flourish and the freedom to express their political concerns. Pearl Primus performed nightly at the legendary Café Society, the first racially integrated club in New York, where she débuted dances of social protest that drew on long-buried African traditions and the dances of former slaves in the South. Williams, meanwhile, was a major figure in the emergence of bebop, collabourating with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell and premiering her ground-breaking Zodiac Suite at the legendary performance space Town Hall. And Ann Petry conveyed the struggles of working-class black women to a national audience with her acclaimed novel The Street , which sold over a million copies,a first for a female African American author.A rich biography of three artists and the city that inspired them, Harlem Nocturne captures a period of unprecedented vitality and progress for African Americans and women, revealing a cultural movement and a historical moment whose influence endures today.
Living the Revolution: Italian Women's Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945 by
Italians were the largest group of immigrants to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, and hundreds of thousands led and participated in some of the period's most volatile labor strikes. Jennifer Guglielmo brings to life the Italian working-class women of New York and New Jersey who helped shape the vibrant radical political culture that expanded into the emerging industrial union movement. Tracing two generations of women who worked in the needle and textile trades, she explores the ways immigrant women and their American-born daughters drew on Italian traditions of protest to form new urban female networks of everyday resistance and political activism. She also shows how their commitment to revolutionary and transnational social movements diminished as they became white working-class Americans.
Feminism in the Heartland by
Feminism in the Heartland tells the story of second-wave feminism. Set in a "typical" American city, Dayton, Ohio, it traces the history of a dynamic, utopian movement that transformed the lives of thousands of women who fought to make their city and country responsive to women's needs. Life stories of fifty-eight activists, woven throughout, give voice to the subjects themselves and transmit to younger generations a feel for what it was like to be a feminist in the 1970s.
Sex Workers Unite by
A provocative history that reveals how sex workers have been at the vanguard of social justice movements for the past fifty years while building a movement of their own that challenges our ideas about labor, sexuality, feminism, and freedom Documenting five decades of sex-worker activism, Sex Workers Uniteis a fresh history that places prostitutes, hustlers, escorts, call girls, strippers, and porn stars in the center of America's major civil rights struggles. Although their presence has largely been ignored and obscured, in this provocative history Melinda Chateauvert recasts sex workers as savvy political organizers-not as helpless victims in need of rescue. Even before transgender sex worker Sylvia Rivera threw a brick and sparked the Stonewall Riot in 1969, these trailblazing activists and allies challenged criminal sex laws and "whorephobia," and were active in struggles for gay liberation, women's rights, reproductive justice, union organizing, and prison abolition. Although the multibillion-dollar international sex industry thrives, the United States remains one of the few industrialized nations that continues to criminalize prostitution, and these discriminatory laws put workers at risk. In response, sex workers have organized to improve their working conditions and to challenge police and structural violence. Through individual confrontations and collective campaigns,they have pushed the boundaries of conventional organizing, called for decriminalization, and have reframed sex workers' rights as human rights. Telling stories of sex workers, from the frontlines of the 1970s sex wars to the modern-day streets of SlutWalk, Chateauvert illuminates an underrepresented movement, introducing skilled activists who have organized a global campaign for self-determination and sexual freedom that is as multifaceted as the sex industry and as diverse as human sexuality. From the Hardcover edition.
I Still Believe Anita Hill by
In the fall of 1991, Anita Hill captured the country's attention when she testified before the US Senate Judiciary Committee describing sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas, who had been her boss and was about to ascend to the Supreme Court. We know what happened: she was challenged, disbelieved, and humiliated; he was given a life-long appointment to decide America's judicial fate. What is lesser known is how many women and men were inspired by Anita Hill's bravery, how her testimony changed the feminist movement, and how she singlehandedly brought public awareness to the issue of sexual harassment. Twenty years later, this collection brings together three generations to witness, respond to, and analyze Hill's impact, and to present insights in law, politics, and the confluence of race, class, and gender. With original contributions by Anita Hill, Melissa Harris-Perry, Catharine MacKinnon, Patricia J. Williams, Eve Ensler, Ai Jen Poo, Kimberly Crenshaw, Lynn Nottage, Gloria Steinem, Lani Guinier, Lisa Kron, Mary Oliver, Edwidge Danticat, Kevin Powell, and many others.
Women's Antiwar Diplomacy During the Vietnam War Era by
In 1965, fed up with President Lyndon Johnson's refusal to make serious diplomatic efforts to end the Vietnam War, a group of female American peace activists decided to take matters into their own hands by meeting with Vietnamese women to discuss how to end U.S. intervention. While other attempts at women's international cooperation and transnational feminism have led to cultural imperialism or imposition of American ways on others, Jessica M.Frazier reveals an instance when American women crossed geopolitical boundaries to criticize American Cold War culture, not promote it. The American women Frazier studies not only solicited Vietnamese women's opinions and advice on how to end the war but also viewed them as paragons of a new womanhood by which American women could rework their ideas of gender, revolution, and social justice during an era of reinvigorated feminist agitation. Unlike the many histories of the Vietnam War that end with an explanation of why the memory of the war still divides U.S. society, by focusing on linkages across national boundaries, Frazier illuminates a significant moment in history when women formed effective transnational relationships on genuinely cooperative terms.
A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence, from the Middle East to America by
In Cairo in the 1940s, Leila Ahmed was raised by a generation of women who never dressed in the veils and headscarves their mothers and grandmothers had worn. To them, these coverings seemed irrelevant to both modern life and Islamic piety. Today, however, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world again wear the veil. Why, Ahmed asks, did this change take root so swiftly, and what does this shift mean for women, Islam, and the West? When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil's return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations. Ahmed observed that Islamism, with its commitments to activism in the service of the poor and in pursuit of social justice, is the strain of Islam most easily and naturally merging with western democracies' own tradition of activism in the cause of justice and social change. It is often Islamists, even more than secular Muslims, who are at the forefront of such contemporary activist struggles as civil rights and women's rights. Ahmed's surprising conclusions represent a near reversal of her thinking on this topic. Richly insightful, intricately drawn, and passionately argued, this absorbing story of the veil's resurgence, from Egypt through Saudi Arabia and into the West, suggests a dramatically new portrait of contemporary Islam.
Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights by
After a chapter exploring black women's religious context and presenting early examples of this work by women of the ante-bellum and post-Reconstruction eras, Ross looks at seven civil rights activists who continue this tradition. They are Ella Josephine Baker, Septima Poinsette Clark, Fannie Lou Hamer, Victoria Way DeLee, Clara Muhammad, Diane Nash, and Ruby Doris Smith Robinson. In a fascinating narrative style that draws on biography, social history, and original archival research, Ross shows how their moral formation and work reflect both womanist consciousness and practices of witness and testimony, both emergent from the black religious context. Ross' major work is engrossing history and moving ethical challenge. Examining black women's civil rights activism as religiously impelled moral practices brings a new insight to work on the movement and lifts up a paradigm for engagement in the mountainous challenges of contemporary social life.
A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics by
FOR THE PAPERBACK RELEASE: The prominent political women of today stand upon the shoulders of those who spent the last two hundred years building a foundation for women's political participation. Jo Freeman brings to us the rich story of how American women entered into political life and party politics--well before suffrage and often completely separate from it. She shows that women's early political involvement was focused on the Republican party, very different from the situation today. And she builds up to the explosion of women's political activisim of the 1960s and 1970s, connecting past to future by tracing the roots of key political strategies still being debated in the early 21st century. Now for the first time in paperback, A Room at a Time is considered a landmark of original research into women's political history as well as party politics.
Signs of Resistance: A Visual History of Protest in America by
"Clever images of dissent are not a recent phenomenon in the United States. . . . [Signs of Resistance is] visually fascinating. . . . [and] there is bigly wit here, too." --The Washington Post In hundreds of iconic, smart, angry, clever, unforgettable images, Signs of Resistance chronicles what truly makes America great: citizens unafraid of speaking truth to power. Two hundred and forty images--from British rule and women's suffrage to the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War; from women's equality and Black Lives Matter to the actions of our forty-fifth president and the Women's March--offer an inspiring, optimistic, and visually galvanizing history lesson about the power people have when they take to the streets and stand up for what's right.
Settlin' by 
The Cambridge History of Science Fiction by Explore some selected streaming films and documentaries on Kanopy!
Autumn Gem: Modern China's First Feminist
Meet the "Chinese Joan of Arc," Qiu Jin (Qiu Jin ) (1875-1907), a radical women's rights activist who defied tradition to become the leader of a revolutionary army. Qiu Jin boldly challenged traditional gender roles and demanded equal rights and opportunities for women. She was the first woman to lead an armed uprising against the corrupt Qing Dynasty, for which she was arrested and executed. She became the first female martyr for China's 1911 Revolution and is celebrated as a national heroine today.
While Qiu Jin is a familiar figure in China, she is largely unknown outside of the country. AUTUMN GEM is the first documentary feature on Qiu Jin in the U.S. Using scholar interviews, archival materials, and dramatic recreation scenes based on her original writings, AUTUMN GEM brings the story of Qiu Jin to life.
AUTUMN GEM was produced and directed by two San Francisco Bay Area Chinese American filmmakers, Rae Chang and Adam Tow. It stars former China National Wushu Champion and Hollywood stunt actress Li Jing. Our partners include the San Francisco Chinese Culture Center, San Diego Chinese Historical Museum, and the Official Qiu Jin Museum in Shaoxing, China.
"With all my heart I beseech and beg
my two hundred million female compatriots
to assume their responsibility as citizens.
Arise! Arise! Chinese women, arise!" -Qiu Jin
Gloria: In Her Own Words - Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem
Produced by Emmy®-winning documentary filmmaker Peter Kunhardt and HBO’s own Sheila Nevins, GLORIA: IN HER OWN WORDS combines recent interviews that showcase Steinem’s sharp sense of humor and compassion with archival footage and photographs from the 1950s to today.
What emerges is a portrait of a crusader whose singular focus has been to fight for equal rights for women, both in the U.S. and around the world. Beginning with her career as an undercover reporter writing an exposé on the working conditions of Playboy Bunnies, the film chronicles how Gloria was transformed by hearing women’s horrifying and humiliating experiences while covering a New York abortion hearing in 1969. Since then, she has been ubiquitous on the front lines of social activism, co-founding Ms. magazine in 1972, participating in countless women’s rights marches, and making numerous media appearances.
Despite decades of attacks and criticism from the Right, and a number of personal setbacks in recent years, Gloria today remains one of the most outspoken and visible symbols of the women’s movement.
Finding Kukan: Uncovering the Story of An Asian-American Female Producer from the 1940's
KUKAN, a landmark color film that revealed the atrocities of World War II China to audiences around the world, was the first ever American feature documentary to receive an Academy Award in 1942 and was considered lost for decades. When filmmaker Robin Lung discovers a badly damaged film print of KUKAN, she pieces together the inspirational tale of the two renegades behind the making of it -- Chinese American playwright Li Ling-Ai and cameraman Rey Scott.
Through a dynamic mix of verite, archival, and re-enactment footage, FINDING KUKAN creates an unforgettable portrait of a female filmmaking pioneer, and sheds light on the long history of racial and gender discrimination behind the camera, which continues to reverberate in Hollywood today.
My Feminism: Second Wave Feminism in the 1990's
A critically important look at second wave feminism in the 1990's, a time rife with anti-feminist backlash. Powerful interviews with feminist leaders including bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, and Urvsahi Vaid are intercut with documentary sequences to engagingly explore the past and present and future status of the women's movement.
Discussing the unique contributions of second wave feminism, they explore their racial, economic and ideological differences and shared vision of achieving equality for women. An essential component of women's studies curricula, MY FEMINISM introduces feminism's key themes while exposing the cultural fears underlying the lesbian baiting, backlash, and political extremism which informed feminist dialogues in the 90's, some of which continues to this day.
No Secret Anymore: Founders of the Modern Lesbian Civil Rights Movement
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were partners in love and political struggle for over fifty years. With incisive interviews, rare archival images and warmhearted humor, No Secret Anymore reveals their inspiring public work, as well as their charming private relationship. It is a delightful way to meet these legendary lesbians, known as the founders of the modern lesbian civil rights movement. When they courageously launched the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, it became the first public organization for lesbians in America. This documentary follows Martin and Lyon's story through half a century, tracing the emergence of lesbians from the fear of discovery to an expectation of equality.
The United States National Archives will be livestreaming several author talks and other events during Women's History Month 2019.
You can tune into these events by visiting the live stream section of the National Archives YouTube Channel!
Here are a few you might be interested in. See the National Archives calendar of events for the full schedule!
Oscar Rennebohm Library
959 Edgewood College Drive - Madison, WI 53711
608-663-3300
Instagram
Facebook
RSS: Library news