Beat Feminisms

This is the first book-length study to read women of the Beat Generation as feminist writers. The book shows how these Beat feminisms counteract the ways in which women have been undermined, possessed or silenced in countercultural spaces.

This is the first book-length study to read women of the Beat Generation as feminist writers. The book focuses on one author from each of the three generations that comprise the groups of female writers associated with the Beats – Diane di Prima, ruth weiss and Anne Waldman – as well as on experimental and multimedia artists, such as Laurie Anderson and Kathy Acker, who have not been read through the prism of Beat feminism before. This book argues that these writers’ feminism evolved over time but persistently focussed on intertextuality, transformation, revisionism, gender, interventionist poetics and activism. It demonstrates how these Beat feminisms counteract the ways in which women have been undermined, possessed or silenced.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Feminist Literary and Filmic Cultures for Social Action: Gender Response-able Labs examines teaching and research practices under feminist new materialisms, affect theories and response-ability through literary and visual products, and offers possible bridges between academia and activism to create feminist interventions in contemporary neoliberal structures. Featuring chapters from contributors across a wide range of disciplines, this book follows a methodological framework that blends traditionally opposite categories, such as theory and practice, and explores contemporary literature and films as case studies within innovative “feminist response-able labs”. In Feminist Literary and Filmic Cultures for Social Action readers will encounter a collaborative trans-disciplinary toolbox which can be of use to multiple disciplines and an invaluable resource to advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate researchers and scholars in literary studies, film studies, feminist theories, new materialisms, and affective pedagogies

Essays on hip-hop feminism featuring relevant, real conversations about how race and gender politics intersect with pop culture and current events. For the Crunk Feminist Collective, their academic day jobs were lacking in conversations they actually wanted. To address this void, they started a blog that turned into a widespread movement. The Collective’s writings foster dialogue about activist methods, intersectionality, and sisterhood. And the writers’ personal identities—as black women; as sisters, daughters, and lovers; and as television watchers, sports fans, and music lovers—are never far from the discussion at hand. These essays explore “Sex and Power in the Black Church,” discuss how “Clair Huxtable is Dead,” list “Five Ways Talib Kweli Can Become a Better Ally to Women in Hip Hop,” and dwell on “Dating with a Doctorate (She Got a Big Ego?).” Self-described as “critical homegirls,” the authors tackle life stuck between loving hip hop and ratchet culture while hating patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism. “Refreshing and timely.” —Bitch Magazine “Our favorite sister bloggers.” —Elle “By centering a Black Feminist lens, The Collection provides readers with a more nuanced perspective on everything from gender to race to sexuality to class to movement-building, packaged neatly in easy-to-read pieces that take on weighty and thorny ideas willingly and enthusiastically in pursuit of a more just world.” —Autostraddle “Much like a good mix-tape, the book has an intro, outro, and different layers of based sound in the activist, scholar, feminist, women of color, media representation, sisterhood, trans, queer and questioning landscape.” —Lambda Literary Review

Reviewers of this book have praised Christina Hoff Sommer's well-reasoned argument against many feminists' reliance on misleading, politically motivated 'facts' about how women are victimised.

Black Internationalist Feminism examines how African American women writers affiliated themselves with the post-World War II Black Communist Left and developed a distinct strand of feminism. This vital yet largely overlooked feminist tradition built upon and critically retheorized the postwar Left's "nationalist internationalism," which connected the liberation of Blacks in the United States to the liberation of Third World nations and the worldwide proletariat. Black internationalist feminism critiques racist, heteronormative, and masculinist articulations of nationalism while maintaining the importance of national liberation movements for achieving Black women's social, political, and economic rights. Cheryl Higashida shows how Claudia Jones, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Rosa Guy, Audre Lorde, and Maya Angelou worked within and against established literary forms to demonstrate that nationalist internationalism was linked to struggles against heterosexism and patriarchy. Exploring a diverse range of plays, novels, essays, poetry, and reportage, Higashida illustrates how literature is a crucial lens for studying Black internationalist feminism because these authors were at the forefront of bringing the perspectives and problems of black women to light against their marginalization and silencing. In examining writing by Black Left women from 1945–1995, Black Internationalist Feminism contributes to recent efforts to rehistoricize the Old Left, Civil Rights, Black Power, and second-wave Black women's movements.

Feminism and Power: the Need for Critical Theory is a six-chapter manuscript which offers an important critique of “power feminism.” The latter, having produced such spinoffs as “grrrl power,” “choice,” “babe,” “lipstick,” and “stiletto” feminisms, encourages women to be strong, self-sufficient, feisty, and independent. While I have no argument with much of that tough-minded ideal, I ask whether this “brave new girl” doesn’t too readily acquiesce in a neo-liberal ideology whose underlying tenets derive from American rugged individualism. At its worst, this strain within Third Wave feminism contains no critique of capitalism, no distance on neoliberal theory, no effort to address the injustices contained in globalization’s asymmetries and the industrialized North’s exploitation of developing countries. Feminism and Power: the Need for Critical Theory therefore argues that the critical theories of Theodor Adorno and Jacques Derrida have much to offer feminism, and a feminist understanding of female empowerment. Its pages rely on Adorno’s assertion that it is only by allowing the sufferer to speak that we can unveil social truth rather than be duped by the bravado of victory culture. Similarly, it demonstrates how Derrida’s insistence on the trace, as well as the asymmetries of friendship and hospitality, lead feminism away from the perils of contented triumphalism. The book promotes listening as a paradigmatic feminist gesture, rather than always speaking up and out.