Our Revolution A Mother And Daughter At Midcentury

A daughter’s “tender and unflinching portrait of her complex, privileged, wildly talented mother” (Louise Erdrich) evolves beautifully into a narrative of the far-reaching changes in women’s lives in the twentieth century. With the sweep of an epic novel, Our Revolution follows charismatic and brilliant Jenny Moore, whose life changed as she became engaged in movements for peace and social justice. Decades after Jenny’s early death, acclaimed poet and memoirist Honor Moore forges a new relationship with the seeker and truth teller she finds in her mother’s writing. Our Revolution is a daughter’s vivid, absorbing account of the mother who shaped her life as an artist and a woman, “beautifully recorded, documented, and envisioned as feminist art and American history” (Margo Jefferson).

A daughter’s memoir of her mother evolves beautifully into a narrative of the far-reaching changes in women’s lives in the twentieth century. With the sweep of an epic novel, Our Revolution follows Jenny Moore, a charismatic and brilliant woman whose life changed as she became engaged in the great twentieth-century movements for peace and social justice. Born into Boston society in 1923 and the first woman in her family to go to college, she set aside writing ambitions to marry Paul Moore, a decorated war hero who became Bishop Paul Moore. Together they had nine children—"I wanted a baseball team," Jenny said, "or a small orchestra." Rejecting a conventional path, the Moores moved to an inner-city parish in Jersey City and began their family while collaborating on a socially radical, multiracial ministry. In 1968, Jenny published her first book. "Everything was just starting," she protested—meaning an independent life inspired in part by the new feminist movement—when she was diagnosed with cancer at fifty. Jenny bequeathed to her eldest daughter, Honor, then a twenty-seven-year-old poet, her unfinished writing. As Honor pursued her own career as a writer, she was haunted by her mother’s bequest. Decades later, she delves into Jenny’s pages and forges a new relationship with the passionate seeker and truth teller she finds there. Our Revolution is a vivid, absorbing account of two women navigating the twentieth century and a daughter’s story of the mother who shaped her life as an artist and a woman.

From the poems of Anne Bradstreet, America’s first published poet, The FemPoetiks of American Poetry and Americana Music presents a powerful discourse that developed in the poetry of writers like Phillis Wheatley, Emily Dickinson and in Americana song lyrics of writers like Brandi Carlile, Rhiannon Giddens, and Lucinda Williams.

In an elegant but contemporary voice, award-winning author Susan Griffin breaks down the creative process step-by-step, guiding the reader through a practical course in how to begin and end a work of literature, whether fiction or nonfiction, poetry, or prose The distinguished author of more than twenty-two books, many award-winning, Susan Griffin distills daily wisdom garnered from more than five decades teaching creative writing and editing manuscripts, as well as from her own writing. This collection of brief but ultimately pithy chapters designed to help beginning writers get started also guides experienced writers through blocks and difficulties of all kinds. Organized according to a practical timeline, Out of Silence, Sound. Out of Nothing, Something. elucidates the process of writing from beginning to end, presenting an approach that is similar to the practice of meditation as it encourages and enlarges the mind’s intrinsic capacity for creativity. An autobiographical account, a sometimes humorous, at times moving essay called “How I Learned to Write” is threaded throughout the book.

An intimate account of a seminal filmmaker’s development—as a creator and as a woman—both in art and in life. "Joyce Chopra, what a gift of an extraordinary filmmaker you are, and one of our great pioneers who forged a very difficult path. And for female filmmakers everywhere, we are so blessed to have you as a storyteller to forge the way to make it easier for others."—Laura Dern, actor Hailed by the New Yorker as “a crucial forebear of generations,” award–winning director Joyce Chopra came of age in the 1950s, prior to the dawn of feminism, and long before the #MeToo movement. As a young woman, it seemed impossible that she might one day realize her dream of becoming a film director—she couldn’t name a single woman in that role. But with her desire fueled by a stay in Paris during the heady beginnings of the French New Wave, she was determined to find a way. Chopra got her start making documentary films with the legendary D.A. Pennebaker. From her ground-breaking autobiographical short, Joyce at 34 (which was acquired for NY MoMA’S permanent collection), to her rousingly successful first feature, Smooth Talk (winner of the Best Director and Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1985), to a series of increasingly cruel moves by Hollywood producers unwilling to accept a woman in the director’s role, Chopra’s career trajectory was never easy or straightforward. In this engaging, candid memoir, Chopra describes how she learned to navigate the deeply embedded sexism of the film industry, helping to pave the way for a generation of women filmmakers who would come after her. She shares stories of her bruising encounters with Harvey Weinstein and Sydney Pollack, her experience directing Diane Keaton, Treat Williams, and a host of other actors, as well as her deep friendships with Gene Wilder, Arthur Miller, and Laura Dern. Along with the successes and failures of her career, she provides an intimate view of a woman’s struggle to balance the responsibilities and rewards of motherhood and marriage with a steadfast commitment to personal creative achievement. During a career spanning six decades, Joyce Chopra has worked through monumental shifts in her craft and in the culture at large, and the span of her life story offers a view into the implacable momentum of the push for all womens’ liberation. "Joyce Chopra has written a devastatingly frank, candid, and unsparing memoir of her life as a film director—a 'woman director' in a field notoriously dominated by men. The reader is astonished on her behalf, at times infuriated, moved to laughter, and then to tears. Lady Director: Adventures in Hollywood, Television, and Beyond is one of its kind—highly recommended." —Joyce Carol Oates, author of "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

“An eloquent argument for speaking even the most difficult truths.” —New York Times Book Review Paul Moore’s vocation as an Episcopal priest took him— with his wife, Jenny, and their family of nine children—from robber-baron wealth to work among the urban poor, leadership in the civil rights and peace movements, and two decades as the bishop of New York. The Bishop’s Daughter is his daughter’s story of that complex, visionary man: a chronicle of her turbulent relationship with a father who struggled privately with his sexuality while she openly explored hers and a searching account of the consequences of sexual secrets.

Two pioneering feminists present a groundbreaking collection recovering a generation's revolutionary insights for today When Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, the book exploded into women’s consciousness. Before the decade was out, what had begun as a campaign for women’s civil rights transformed into a diverse and revolutionary movement for freedom and social justice that challenged many aspects of everyday life long accepted as fixed: work, birth control and abortion, childcare and housework, gender, class, and race, art and literature, sexuality and identity, rape and domestic violence, sexual harassment, pornography, and more. This was the women’s liberation movement, and writing—powerful, personal, and prophetic—was its beating heart. Fifty years on, in the age of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, this visionary and radical writing is as relevant and urgently needed as ever, ready to inspire a new generation of feminists. Activists and writers Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore have gathered an unprecedented collection of works—many long out-of-print and hard to find—that catalyzed and propelled the women’s liberation movement. Ranging from Friedan’s Feminine Mystique to Backlash, Susan Faludi’s Reagan-era requiem, and framed by Shulman and Moore with an introduction and headnotes that provide historical and personal context, the anthology reveals the crucial role of Black feminists and other women of color in a decades long mass movement that not only brought about fundamental changes in American life—changes too often taken for granted today—but envisioned a thoroughgoing revolution in society and consciousness still to be achieved.

“Sexy, telegraphic, edgy, and rapt. . . . Exquisitely visual, cuttingly witty, Moore’s poems are at once cool and searing.”—Booklist