Back Women’s Liberation! Feminist Writings that Inspired a Revolution & Still Can

Women’s Liberation! Feminist Writings that Inspired a Revolution & Still Can

“This dazzling anthology is a gift, a love letter, a testament to the power, perseverance, and faith of women of all stripes and persuasions. Most important, it is source material and blueprint for those of us who believe that there is no distinction between art and politics when it comes to women’s lives. Be prepared to be astonished.”
—Emily Bernard, author of Black Is the Body

Overview
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Video Maxine Hong Kingston and Viet Thanh Nguyen
May 27, 2022

Video Women’s Liberation! Feminist Writings That Inspired a Revolution and Still Can
March 19, 2021

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.

With sixteen pages of photographs.

Alix Kates Shulman’s 1972 debut novel, the million-copy best seller Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, is now a feminist classic. Hailed by The New York Times as “the voice that has for three decades provided a lyrical narrative of the changing position of women in American society,” she has written five novels, three memoirs, a biography of anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman, and the collection A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays. Her memoir Drinking the Rain was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and in 2018 she received a Clara Lemlich Award for a lifetime of social activism.

Honor Moore is the author of Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter at Midcentury; The White Blackbird, a life of her grandmother, the painter Margarett Sargent; The Bishop’s Daughter, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and three collections of poems. For Library of America, she edited Amy Lowell: Selected Poems and Poems from the Women’s Movement. She is on the faculty of the graduate writing program at the New School, where she heads nonfiction.

This special publication features full-cloth binding, acid-free paper, and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.
Table of Contents

Introduction by Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore

1963–1969
Betty Friedan: (from) The Feminine Mystique
Casey Hayden and Mary King: Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo
Pauli Murray and Mary O. Eastwood: (from) Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII
Valerie Solanas: (from) SCUM Manifesto
Beverly Jones and Judith Brown: (from) Toward a Female Liberation Movement, Part I
New York Radical Women: No More Miss America!
Black Women’s Liberation Group of Mt. Vernon New York: Statement on Birth Control
Dana Densmore: On Celibacy
Anne Koedt: The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm
Mary Ellmann: (from) Phallic Criticism
WITCH: Leaflet
Mary Ann Weathers: An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force
Ti-Grace Atkinson: (from) Radical Feminism
Carol Hanisch: The Personal Is Political
Pat Mainardi: The Politics of Housework
The Feminists: Women: Do You Know The Facts About Marriage?
Frances M. Beal: Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Lisa Leghorn: The Man’s Problem
Vivian Gornick: (from) The Next Great Moment in History Is Theirs
Redstockings: Manifesto and Principles

1970–1979
Shulamith Firestone: (from) The Dialectic of Sex
Kate Millett: (from) Sexual Politics
Shirley Chisholm: (from) The 51% Minority
Lucinda Cisler: Abortion Law Repeal (Sort of): A Warning to Women
Radicalesbians: The Woman Identified Woman
Gene Boyer: (from) Are Women Equal Under the Law?
Doris Wright: (from) Angry Notes from a Black Feminist
Young Lords Party: (from) Position Paper on Women
Judy Syfers: Why I Want A Wife
Robin Morgan: A Brief Elegy for Four Women
Marcia Sprinkle and Norma Allen Lesser: (from) The Children’s House
Susan Griffin: (from) Rape: The All-American Crime
Mirta Vidal: (from) New Voice of La Raza: Chicanas Speak Out
Margaret Sloan: Black & Blacklesbian
Gloria Steinem: Sisterhood
Jane O’Reilly: (from) The Housewife’s Moment of Truth
Tillie Olsen: (from) Women Who Are Writers in Our Century: One Out of Twelve
Charlotte Bunch: Lesbians in Revolt
Johnnie Tillmon: Welfare Is a Women’s Issue
Barbara Seaman: (from) Birth Control
Phyllis Chesler: (from) Women and Madness
Florynce R. Kennedy: (from) The Verbal Karate of Florynce R. Kennedy, Esq.
Kathie Sarachild: (from) Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon
Boston Women’s Health Collective: Preface to Our Bodies, Ourselves
Catharine R. Stimpson: (from) The New Feminism and Women’s Studies
Alice Walker: In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
Silvia Federici: Wages against Housework
Lolly Hirsch: Practicing Health Without a License
Anne Forer: Sex and Women’s Liberation
Angela Davis: (from) Joan Little: The Dialectics of Rape
Susan Brownmiller: (from) Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape
Michele Wallace: (from) A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood
Maxine Hong Kingston: (from) The Woman Warrior
Judy Chicago: (from) Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist
Adrienne Rich: (from) Of Woman Born
Jo Freeman: (from) Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood
Del Martin: A Letter from a Battered Wife
Barbara Ehrenreich: What Is Socialist Feminism?
Gerda Lerner: The Majority Finds Its Past
The Combahee River Collective: A Black Feminist Statement
Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz: (from) In Mourning and In Rage . . .
Mary Daly: (from) Gyn/Ecology
Susan Jacoby: Notes from a Free-Speech Junkie
Lin Farley: Eleven Ways to Fight Sexual Harassment
Audre Lorde: (from) Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
Barbara Smith: Racism and Women’s Studies

1980–1991
Rosario Morales: We’re All in the Same Boat
Gloria Anzaldúa: (from) Speaking In Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers
Catharine MacKinnon: To Change the World for Women
Andrea Dworkin: (from) Pornography
Paula Webster: Pornography and Pleasure
Joan Nestle: My Mother Liked to Fuck
Cherríe Moraga: (from) La Guera
Mitsuye Yamada: (from) Invisibility Is an Unnatural Disaster: Reflections of an Asian American Woman
Sonia Johnson: (from) From Housewife to Heretic
Z. Budapest: (from) The Vows, Wows, & Joys of the High Priestess or What Do You People Do Anyway?
Carol Gilligan: (from) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development
Ellen Willis: (from) Toward a Feminist Sexual Revolution
Deirdre English: The Fear That Feminism Will Free Men First
Beth Brant: (from) A Gathering of Spirit
Paula Gunn Allen: (from) Who Is Your Mother? Red Roots of White Feminism
Kate Shanley: (from) Thoughts on Indian Feminism
bell hooks: Ending Female Sexual Oppression
Ursula K. Le Guin: (from) The Mother Tongue, Bryn Mawr Commencement Address
Sonia Sanchez: style no. 1
June Jordan: Don’t You Talk About My Mama!
Sarah Wynter: WHISPER: Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt; and
Rachel West: (from) U.S. PROStitutes Collective
Ann Snitow: (from) Pages From a Gender Diary: Basic Divisions in Feminism
Susan Faludi: (from) Backlash
Contributors

Paula Gunn Allen
Gloria Anzaldúa
Ti-Grace Atkinson
Frances M. Beal
Gene Boyer
Beth Brant
Judith Brown
Susan Brownmiller
Z. Budapest
Charlotte Bunch
Phyllis Chesler
Judy Chicago
Shirley Chisholm
Lucinda Cisler
Mary Daly
Angela Davis
Dana Densmore
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Andrea Dworkin
Mary O. Eastwood
Barbara Ehrenreich
Mary Ellmann
Deirdre English
Susan Faludi
Lin Farley
Silvia Federici
Shulamith Firestone
Anne Forer
Jo Freeman
Betty Friedan
Carol Gilligan
Vivian Gornick
Susan Griffin
Carol Hanisch
Casey Hayden
Lolly Hirsch
bell hooks
Susan Jacoby
Sonia Johnson
Beverly Jones
June Jordan
Florynce R. Kennedy
Mary King
Maxine Hong Kingston
Anne Koedt
Leslie Labowitz
Suzanne Lacy
Ursula K. Le Guin
Lisa Leghorn
Gerda Lerner
Norma Allen Lesser
Audre Lorde
Catharine MacKinnon
Pat Mainardi
Del Martin
Kate Millett
Cherríe Moraga
Rosario Morales
Robin Morgan
Pauli Murray
Joan Nestle
Tillie Olsen
Jane O’Reilly
Adrienne Rich
Sonia Sanchez
Kathie Sarachild
Barbara Seaman
Kate Shanley
Margaret Sloan
Barbara Smith
Ann Snitow
Valerie Solanas
Marcia Sprinkle
Gloria Steinem
Catharine R. Stimpson
Judy Syfers
Johnnie Tillmon
Mirta Vidal
Alice Walker
Michele Wallace
Mary Ann Weathers
Paula Webster
Rachel West
Ellen Willis
Doris Wright
Sarah Wynter
Mitsuye Yamada

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