Recently in Books Category

I am *this* close to handing in my book on purity to my editor, and I'm just so happy that it's done! And it's not just that I'm stoked to get my life back (though finally seeing my friends will be a treat!), it's that this book is incredibly important to me. It's something I've been thinking about and working on for so long - to know that it's finally going to go out into the world is just the best. (Can you tell I'm in a good mood?)

If you want a sneak peek at the cover, it's after the jump!

The other day I was having a beer with a few guys--one of whom didn't know the other two very well--and they started talking about the Mets. Their newness seemed to fade away in a flurry of familiarity built around sports. And it got me thinking...almost every guy I know--whether they're hip hop heads, indy hipsters, computer science geeks, city kids, farm boys--seems at least mildly interested in sports.

I brought this up, and the three of us tried to come up with a female parallel, but quickly realized that there wasn't one. There are certainly interests that a lot of women share, but there's nothing as generalizable as sports. (Then we proceeded to have a feminist vs. sports trivia competition. Let's just say that I knew that the tie goes to the runner and they had no idea what intersectional feminism was).

While reading Michael Kimmel's new book, Guyland, I couldn't stop thinking about this moment, and so many others that I've shared over the years with my various, amazing, if not sometimes lost guy friends. It's a book that delves deep into the world of boys becoming men (for his purposes, ages 16 to 26, and predominantly white) in an attempt to describe just how limiting and inauthentic it can be. An important note: Kimmel is not talking about all guys. The majority of the dudes he's writing about are the ones that you probably steer clear of whenever possible--the jerky hockey player who posts up in your high school hallway and makes comments about girls' bodies, the guy who lived on your floor and insisted on hanging posters of half naked women outside his door, calling you a bitch when you suggested he keep his porn inside his own room, the ex-boyfriend you can't believe you ever dated. In Kimmels' view, those are the bonafide guys of Guyland, but there are traces to be found on most males.

There were two parts that resonated the most for me. The first was focused on young men's framing of adulthood, this notion that "freedom is equated with a lack of accountability--not having to answer to anyone--and so being irresponsible becomes a way of declaring your freedom and, hence, your adulthood." Though most of my guy friends are too enlightened to hang out in traditional Guyland with a straight face, they do seem pulled by the black hole force of no expectations. Far more than the women I know, the guys seem totally petrified of having others expect things of them--whether it's a phone call the next day, a solid yes or no on a party invite, or an on time arrival. As an extension, they are often fearful of "settling down" with one partner. Suddenly, it's like the girl who has been really fun to hang out with and really interesting to get to know becomes an expectation ogre, even if she doesn't change her tune one little bit.

The other part of Kimmel's analysis that I found riveting was his look at young men's twin emotions--entitlement and anger. He picks up this thread at various moments. When looking at white teenagers' obsession with hip hop music: "In some of their media consumption--rap music or some video games--they do it in blackface, symbolically appropriating the idiomatic expressions of the racialized 'other' to gain access to and express their own emotions." When critiquing rape culture: "...while psychologists and feminists and the entire legal system see male sexual aggression as the initiation of violence, guys describe it in a different way--not as initiation but as retaliation. What are the retaliating against? The power that women have over them." And the only way to counter these cultures of misappropriation and scapegoating: "The only way to transform Guyland is to break the culture of silence that sustains the Guy Code...the majority of guys are bystanders. And so it is the bystanders, the ones who know, and yet do nothing, whom we have to engage."

So why immerse yourself in this world of cowards and posers for 289 pages? Because it's such a huge part of all of our lives. As Kimmel puts it, "Girls have to contend with Guyland just as much as guys do. Just as Guyland is the social world in which boys become men, so too is Guyland the context in which girls become women. How they navigate those troubled waters will do a lot more than raise or lower her self-esteem. It can determine what sort of life she will have."

*Feministing bonus: my super smart friend Chloe Angyal, feministing newsletter editor, is quoted in the book. Check out her new blog here.

So the last time I wrote about American Apparel's use of mock tribal prints and the name, "Afrika" for a line of clothing, it was a little bit controversial. Some folks didn't understand why putting thin, white models, in faux tribal and animal prints with the title, "Afrika" was racist. So be it.

UPDATE: I think one of our commenters put the argument for why the use of "African" symbolism is problematic and racist best here.

She says,

For people who have not been exposed to critical race theory or the study of colonialism and cultural appropriation, the new Afrika line probably doesn't look racist to you. The reason it doesn't look racist to you is because the attractiveness of the line is meant to play on the unconscious attitudes that non-African westerners have about Africa. Here's a set of association words:

exotic
primitive
tribal
jungle
wild
animalistic
hypersexual

I can go on, but you get the point.

This is too neat. Blogs can now embed books available on Google Books for readers to peruse. I hope Feministing can use this to highlight awesome feminists texts... So in honor of Samhita's recent post, check out Barbara Smith's great book, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, after the jump. (And don't forget to support feminists by buying their books!)

Many of you undoubtedly saw Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich's awesome documentary film, Speak Out: I Had an Abortion. I am a huge fan and have written about it in the past.

Well, now Jen has taken her radical work from the screen to the page, with lots of additional analysis and framing. Abortion & Life, written by Jen and containing gorgeous photographs by Tara Todras-Whitehill, just came out on Akashic Books. In it, Jen sets the scene of the contemporary abortion debate, not just between pro-lifers and pro-choicers, but between feminists of different generations and perspectives, women and men, mothers and daughters, and all of the other complex subgroups that struggle with the abortion issue ever day. As she writes, "The majority of Americans don't want abortion to be recriminalized but are uncomfortable talking about and even facing the realities of the procedure."

Jen soothes that discomfort with personal stories--stories that are as diverse as women's abortion experiences, all inciting empathy and a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which reproductive justice policy influences every day lives. But she does even more than that here; she also gives a brand new frame within which we can understand these stories. She authors a thorough history of abortion rights and then she writes honestly and entertainingly about the reoccurring question: "Can you be a feminist and prolife?" She also flips the old scripts, tracing the recent rise of the provoice movement where women's authentic experiences, not just their political ideologies, are brought to bear on the future of the movement.

Add to all of this a vast resource guide and a reprint of Rebecca Hyman's fantastic Bitch Mag article on the topic, and you've got yourself one of the most innovative, contemporary, and inclusive conversations about abortion that exists today, right on the page. I leave you with Jen's own words:

Some of what I write might be seen as turning away from the radical history of abortion rights in search of a compromised "middle ground." But I would argue, however, that the cornerstones of a new feminist theory of abortion rights will be created by those whom unplanned pregnancy most urgently affects--women born post-Roe. Still, as in the past, abortion is a part of life--just as sex and death are.

I think for me it was a slow process, starting from when I was in the womb...

We were reading the Great Gatsby in high school English, and I came across this line: 'That's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.' I felt enraged, but none of my classmates even seemed to notice.

It was a rainy Take Back The Night rally my first year of college... I looked around at the women on every side, and thought about how strange it was that I'd ended up here, given my conservative Republican upbringing. I realized that if I don't identify as a feminist, no one really does.

One movie: Girls Town. Amazing.

A generation ago, feminists talked about their "click" moments: those split-second experiences that led them to join the women's movement. Today's young feminists come to the movement--which is looking less like a protest march and more like a blog--in myriad, often piecemeal, ways. It can be as simple as reading a book or attending an event or talking with one person or witnessing a horrendous act of sexism. (You told us about some of your amazing "clicks" here.)

Deciding to identify as a feminist often requires a lot of learning and unlearning these days; so many of us have been exposed to the well-oiled machine of the anti-feminist movement. According to Newsweek, feminism might be dead. Charlotte Allen tells us that we're stupid, via the Washington Post. Some older women within our own movement wonder if we even exist.

J. Courtney Sullivan and I are editing a new anthology for Seal Press on the topic, and we want your ideas. Send us a couple of paragraphs--in the style and voice that you'd use in a full-fledged essay--proposing what you would write, along with your name, email address, phone #, age, and ethnic background (we understand that this might seem a little reductive, but we are committed to including diverse authors). We'll look them all over, then get back to you once we've accounted for a range of moments, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds.

We hope it will be a historic document, a totally entertaining gift, a course adoption text, and, most of all, a collection that makes young women who already identify with the movement feel seen and heard, and welcomes all those just growing into the still unfolding story of feminism.

Send your ideas to: clickmoment@gmail.com
DEADLINE: October 15, 2008

Bonus: We've already got some great feminist writers on board that you may have heard of, including (in no particular order):

Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan (well, obviously)
Jessica Valenti
Miriam Perez
Samhita Mukhopadhyay
Curtis Sittenfield
Rebecca Traister
Anna Holmes
Rachel Simmons
Winter Miller
Deborah Siegel
Alissa Quart
Hannah Seligson
Latoya Petersen
Shelby Knox
Jennifer Baumgardner
Amy Richards

Deborah Stone, a professor at Dartmouth and one of the founders of the American Prospect, has a fascinating book out that lays to rest a lot of the anxiety I've carried with me about good works and unintended side effects since I first stepped into a political science classroom as a wide-eyed undergrad. She writes, "I wrote this book to challenge the attack on help and to reunite politics with doing good. I started from the intuition that what real people care about is not what social scientists by and large tell us we care about. We care most about relationships with other people."

She goes on to examine the many theories that privilege self-interest about altruism, that attempt to naturalize meanness and cruelty, that essentially make even the most tender of us become skeptical of people's intentions. The most obvious and universal example, which Stone uses often, is that of the homeless person you walk by on the street. He or she asks you for money, and you feel an initial, natural impulse to help--because you are human and have the capacity for empathy. But then, if you're like me and so many other strategic progressives, you think, "Well, maybe they'll use the money for liquor. I should just donate my money at the end of the year to an organization that does this work systematically." Sure, you may have won on strategy, but you've lost on humanity. You feel like shit. The potentially good and hungry homeless person doesn't get a slice to eat that night.

The book isn't actually focused on these interpersonal exchanges, but rather on the macro picture of government and public morality. Stone masterfully lays out the ways in which the GOP has turned government assistance and social programs into evil over the last few decades, and in so doing, has stripped citizens of one of their most natural and basic instincts--to want a government that helps us all live sustainable, healthy lives, maybe even with a little help. "Mutual dependence," she writes, "is the essence of democracy."

I can't tell you how much I LOVED this book. Reading it was one of those experiences where all of these lurking suspicions that I had trouble articulating were brought to light in the most eloquent, sensical, passionate words. I leave you with some of her best:

We need to untwist our notion of personal freedom by acknowledging that dependence is the human condition. Genuine freedom can't be had by denying our individual limitations. Freedom comes from understanding them and working around them, and from building a community where bonds of loyalty compensate for the things we can't do ourselves.

I announced my new book project here last week. If you missed it, feel free to check out all the info at the Do Greaters blog. I just found out that the donation process is a bit different than I originally explained, so...

If you want to support the multimedia platform for Do Greaters: The Kids These Days and How They're Changing the World, please send checks to: Amy Caldwell, Beacon Press, 41 Mt. Vernon Street, Boston, MA 02108.

Thanks a bazillion.

I'm a big fan of Soft Skull press, which is sort of a haven for the kind of creative stuff that the mainstream publishing industry is notoriously scared of--graphic novels, photojournalism, queer lit, youth political analysis. Check them out, if you haven't already.

One of their latest releases is Bad Habits: A Love Story by Cubana artist Christy C. Road. It's a mostly autobiographical graphical novel about her "personal revolution" from bad habit-prone, self-punishing punk wanderer to independently-minded, self-protecting punk philosopher. You can't help but sort of fall in love with the angsty, gritty drama of it all. Like when she writes passages like this:

And, like Brooklyn, the human heart is divided into several humble portals, each with a function, relevance, history, and culture distinct to its region. Every developmental blow cripples the antiquity of its boroughs, and every imperfect experience cripples the wellbeing of every corner of the heart. But the city doesn't stop and the human heart trudges with clandestine motivation.

The book is filled with feminist polemic brought down to the palpable level of everyday reflection. It's most searing when she contrasts traditional power structure's perspective of her versus her own gorgeously drawn, deeply felt reality: "According to the law, I'm just some bipolar junky who happened to have been sexually assaulted once or twice, and later mind-fucked by some crass romantic I shouldn't have trusted anyway...the the conservative many, I was the scum of the earth, and my allies were just numbers. To me, we were the things that went bump, rack, and hump, in the night."

Bump on Road, bump on.

UPDATE: Celina interviewed Road, along with Diane DiMassa, back in June.

The past couple of weeks have been big book weeks for yours truly.

First it began with the release of the memoir I co-wrote with the amazing Marvelyn Brown, The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful, and (HIV) Positive. Marvelyn in a 24-year-old HIV activist with the sort of charisma and authenticity that are born from surviving hard times. Here is Marvelyn being interviewed at the recent International AIDS Conference in Mexico:

Being able to play a role in getting Marvelyn's story out in the world has been one of the most profound honors of my life. Thanks M.

And, as if that wasn't enough, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters just came out with a new cover and a new subtitle on September 2nd!

I can't tell you how excited I am that my book is only $15 (as opposed to the 25 big ones it cost in hardback). I always intended this book to reach young women first and foremost. I know I rarely shell out $25 for a book, so I knew teenagers and, well, just about anyone, couldn't afford such a price tag. Thanks to Penguin/Berkeley, my paperback publisher, for all of their faith in the book and gallant effort to give it a renewed life in the literary world!

Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters has been an incredible catalyst for me to meet young women (many of them feministing readers), educate mothers, teachers, and coaches about what's really going on with young women, visit tiny towns across America that I might never have seen otherwise, be interviewed on television, radio, and in print and online publications through out the world, but more than any of that, it has allowed me the rare opportunity to speak a truth, to turn pain into polemic, to experience the personal as the political. It has been one of those rare experiences of feeling like you actually have the capacity to make a difference, just by paying acutely close attention to your genuine feelings and observations of the world around you, researching and reflecting on these feelings and observations, and stringing some words together. Thank you to everyone who I've met along the way. Can't wait to meet many more of you this fall...

I had been meaning to read this journalistic classic by Janet Malcolm for years, after having read an excerpt of it in grad school, but, you know, life happens. I finally picked it up and devoured it on a plane a few days ago on my way home to visit my parents.

Essentially, Janet Malcolm revisits the case against Joe McGinniss, a journalist who was sued after publishing a book about convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald. MacDonald felt that McGinniss had deliberately lured him into thinking that they were friends, that he believed in his innocence, and then written a scathing indictment. McGinniss denied intentional subterfuge and, also, argued that it is the writer's practice to coax the subject into comfort, however false. It explores the complexity of the writer-subject relationship, truth and justice, and the thorny psychology involved in making the personal public.

This book is a journalistic classic for a reason; it pushes writers to come to terms with the insanity of trying to write about real people's lives with integrity. What you learn in journalism school these days is fairly limited to networking and logistics--new media techniques, the craft and art of writing, journalistic protocol, but rarely are the psychological incongruities of the profession brought to light and discussed openly.

I have struggled with the drive to write the emotional truth of a person's story so as to illustrate my analysis in the most cogent, inspiring way and my deep commitment to honoring that person's humanity and privacy. The two are often at odds in a way that I suspect non-writers wouldn't predict. It's painful and murky and fraught with human frailty.

Through a feminist lens, this is very related to the personal being the political. On the one hand, for example, women's struggles with perfection and their own bodies is entirely personal--right up there with sex and money and religion in terms of unspeakables. On the other hand, I had a conviction that there was a collective story to our individual pain, and I wanted to bring that to light in my book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. So I asked these women--many of them my friends, all of them people I care about--to share their stories with the world. I encouraged/pushed/coaxed (depending on your perspective) them to bare their souls (personal) for the betterment of the public (political). Many experienced unanticipated consequences (angry mothers, a sense of being horribly exposed). Some also experienced a deep sense of freedom, courage, a letting go. I stood, morally, in between these two experiences, feeling a bit helpless and also totally responsible.

I leave you with Malcolm's own words (pronouns admittedly annoying):

Unlike other relationships that have a purpose beyond themselves and are clearly delineated as such (dentist-patient, lawyer-client, teacher-student), the writer-subject relationship seems to depend for its life on a kind of fuzziness and murkiness, if not utter covertness, of purpose. If everybody put his cards on the table, the game would be over. The journalist must do his work in a kind of deliberately induced state of moral anarchy.

Today the Washington Post covers a new book with the earth-shattering thesis that, if women want to "keep a man" they should start scrubbing floors in lingerie, learning to cook steaks to order, and giving blowjobs in between.

Is that cover condescending or what? And that's not even getting into the content of the book...

Moore's slim treatise purports to explain how women should go about sex, relationships and marriage -- according to men. Here is his mission as a self-described reeducator: "I want to express my anger and frustration as a man with the women I feel are miseducated, misinformed, and ill-prepared about their responsibilities in getting and maintaining a relationship with a man of quality," he writes in the introduction.

Moore, of course, considers himself just such a man. Read his book, ladies, and you can snag a catch just like him. Your responsibilities include cooking, staying skinny, wearing sexy things around the house and doing whatever your man tells you to do (because, Moore writes, "Here's a little secret, ladies: men never really ask for anything. They command. . . . And believe me, what you won't do, ten broads around the corner will.")

Ugh. The sad part is, he's found this method successful:

Moore's girlfriend, Khanequa Tuitt, who's at the book-signing, recalls that when she first read his manuscript, she only got past the first couple of pages before calling him to curse him out. But now she's come to terms with his views. She's started "trying to stay away from wearing frumpy, flannel stuff," even when she's cleaning, for example.

Moore also keeps it classy with a "no fatties" message:

In his book, size matters -- a lot: "The fatter you get, the more you decrease your potential single-man pool. Let me give you an example. When you go to the grocery store to shop, do you pick out the nastiest-looking, most rotten, smelliest fruit or meat you can find? Oh, you don't? Why not? . . . It's the same with men when they see baby elephant-sized, out-of-shape women."

The interesting thing is that (as you may have noticed from the cover above), the book is "presented by" Zane, a best-selling writer of black erotica. (As M.Dot at Model Minority writes today, "Zane sells because her fiction allows Black women to be sexual in a culture that refuses to acknowledge that we are sexual, a culture that calls us ho's if are so inclined to be sexual, talk about sex, or even look like we are human and have a sexual appetite.") But Zane says her name on the book is not an endorsement -- it's a warning: "There are some men who feel exactly like he does. I feel like women should be forewarned and realize what's out there."

As you've probably noticed, the editors at feministing tend to be pretty fascinated and outraged by the state of sex education in this country. Well, so is sociologist Jessica Fields, and she's done an amazing, comprehensive, visionary study of the ways in which our pedagogy on sex shortchanges all of us. Her book, Risky Lessons: Sex Education and Social Inequality, is the best I've read on the subject--excelling on both the nitty gritty level (she's really in classrooms, really observing teachers and students wrestling with poor curriculum) and the big picture level. Where the latter is concerned, she basically lays out a liberation philosophy for sex education. You think I'm kidding?:

...if education is an opportunity for students and teachers to face and reimagine those constraining definitions, then sex education insists upon the importance of young people's desire, pleasure, and power in that reimagining. Young people's desires and pleasures have the potential to remake the world.

Warning: Fields is an academic, so there are times when the prose doesn't exactly sing, but I was actually pretty transfixed the entire time. She doesn't do any insecure academic posturing (big words, over-referencing of Foucault etc.) and she seems to really emotionally engage with this material. There's even some personal narrative sprinkled in.

Thanks Jessica Fields. I hope this book is read far and wide.

I read a lot of anthologies, and I'm just embarking on the hard task of editing one, so I understand how varied the quality of them can be. Sometimes I pick one up, and I'm immediately struck by the unevenness of the submissions--the diamonds in the rough sparkling, but too much rough to make the diamonds worth the searching. Sometimes, I am immediately drawn in, struck by the originality and veracity of the words. A good personal essay is one of my favorite things on the planet Earth.

The latter was absolutely the case with The Maternal is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change, a new anthology by Shari MacDonald Strong. As the title suggests, it features a range of essays by women contemplating the ways in which their mothering is part and parcel of their activism, how changing diapers is not opposed to developing a political conscience, and is in fact, intertwined with it.

Although there are some big names (Nancy Pelosi, Benazir Bhutto etc.) on the cover, with the exception of Barbara Kingsolver's awesome essay, all the best were by those that are not household names (or at least not outside of the mother's movement). They explore work/life balance, welfare, adoption, caregiving conflicts, relationships between mothers and nannies, race, love, and ten million other interesting threads.

Read the Q&A I did with the editor for Alternet here. And congrats to all the moms who wield both pen and so fiercely.

So I've been reading this book called How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein and I'm finding myself perpetually vacillating between "That's amazing!" and "Wait a minute..." Let me explain.

Bornstein, an extremely thorough journalist, decides that he'll travel around the world and profile "social entrepreneurs" connected to the Ashoka Foundation, starting with the founder of Ashoka himself, Bill Drayton. I first heard about this idea of "social entrepreneurship" a few years ago at an NYU conference, and my interest was immediately piqued. At that time I was feeling especially depressed about the state of the world and my capacity to do anything about it.

Here's the definition, in part, provided on Ashoka's site:

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society's most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change.

Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.

So on to the confusion. Sometimes I see these entrepreneurial projects as mind-blowingly amazing. They often abandon the old charity model (third world poor need wealthy western help) and instead embrace the idea that those in community know what their community needs and how to get it--they just need help getting the resources in the right places at the right times. For example, I just read a profile of Jeroo Billimoria, the founder of Childline, a 24-hour helpline and emergency response system for children in trouble--completely run by children! Totally frickin' amazing. Jeroo basically had the wisdom to fund and formalize what street children in India were already doing--sharing resources and looking out for one another.

This works for me entirely, but other profiles seem to operate on the idea that poor people just need to be turned into "a market" and then they will uplift themselves. It's a little like the boot strap ideology with a patronizing altruistic twist. We can't just give malaria nets away; we have to sell them so that people will be incentivized to take them seriously.

So the way to "save the world" is to import more capitalism? What about a systemic analysis of our economies and the ways in which they fail so many people? Is this a little like importing democracy? We've seen how wise that turned out to be.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Will someone help me out here?

*Hey, thanks to all of those that confirmed in the reader's survey that they liked this feature!

I get so many amazing books and I only have so many hours in the day, so I thought I would direct you all to other reviews/posts about some of the great books on my shelf that I'll never get to (at this rate, anyway):

a review of
No Seat at the Table: How Corporate Governance and Law Keep Women Out of the Boardroom by Douglas M. Branson

a blog post on Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer among the American Romantics by Renee Bergland

Righting Feminism: Conservative Women & American Politics by Ronnee Shreiber recommended by the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics

Firedoglake on The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism of the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet

a review of The Saint of Kathmandu and Other Tales of the Sacred in Distant Lands by Sarah LeVine

some harrowing real life analysis from What About Our Daughters? on Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence by Jody Miller

Marvelyn Brown, my brilliant and courageous friend, was on the CNN special, "Black in America," last night. If you didn't catch it, there should be clips available shortly, but meanwhile you can check out the book she and I co-wrote of her life: The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful and (HIV) Positive. It will be released August 19th, but you can pre-order whenever. In it, she very frankly explores how she was infected with HIV while in a committed relationship with "prince charming" and all that happened after. Don't sleep: AIDS is the number one killer of black women aged 25-34.

And on a far less serious note, Marvelyn got us a blurb from none other than Ludacris for the cover. Just rap it: "Marvelyn Brown takes a bold approach to speak to our youth with enough honesty and frankness, everybody should be listening! She is an inspiration to men and women everywhere!" Word Cris.

Most of the feministing crew met Marvelyn last summer when we all won ChoiceUSA awards.

Besides having the best title ever--You're Amazing! A No-Pressure Guide to Being Your Best Self--this Girls Inc. sponsored, young adult nonfiction book is also the shiznit (come on, this is for the tweens) because it's written by Claire Mysko, feministing fan and awesome young feminist upstart.

In an age when every 13-year-old is made to walk the tightrope of high-pressure adolescence--make out but don't be slutty, worry about your weight but don't become a bore, do well in school but don't become a total nerd--this book is so needed. It's, in some ways, a reaction to the Supergirl Dilemma study that Girls Inc. conducted, which showed that girls today are feeling more empowered, but also way more anxious.

Mysko walks girls through all sorts of different rough patches--rejection, gossip, parents' fighting--with the cool ease of a big sister. She's not patronizing or cheesy about it, just compassionate and real. And what's even better--she quotes real girls through out the entire thing. Their voices are totally honored--like this heart breaker section where she asks, "If you could tell older adults in your life one thing you need to hear from them...what would it be?":

"Even if we make you angry or do something wrong, we always want to be told that we're loved and appreciated. Nobody's perfect." -Emma, 13
"Respect our opinions and help us, don't control us!" -Tabitha, 12
"Tell me I'm important!" -Rose, 11

You're important! You're important! Is that my inner 12-year-old crying? Okay, seriously, this book is amazing. You should get it for your little sister, niece, next door neighbor, bad ass lemonade saleswoman.

*There are also places to journal, quizzes (gotta love the quizzes), and feminist history worked in all sneaky like.

Saunter over to your women's studies bookshelf and open up that first flap to discover who published your favorite feminist tomes. Chances are it wasn't Random House or Simon & Schuster, or one of the other major biggies (with a few exceptions). Instead you were probably introduced to feminism thanks to the ingenuity of publishers like the Feminist Press, Seal Press, or one of the other many, many small, independent publishers that takes a chance on feminist lit.

I just sold a new book (stay tuned for details), so I've been thinking a lot about ye ole publishing industry and the way it works. It is an industry that started out with a deep commitment to Ideas--to giving people the goods on how to live a great life, to challenging the status quo, to the development of long careers of writing, reading, and editing. But because of market forces hard to explain in one little blog post (Barnes & Noble, Amazon, the rise of less literary forms of entertainment etc.), the publishing industry is not heavily dependent on dollars and cents.

This isn't to say that some books aren't published simply because they contain brilliant ideas, but it is to say that we would naïve if we really bought the idea that publishers aren't primarily interested in the bottom line these days. Did my editor at Simon & Schuster buy Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters because she felt a moral obligation to spread the word about food and fitness obsession? In part. But in truth, she was able to convince her publisher to buy it because they thought it would sell. Point blank.

Feminist presses, on the other hand, still strain to juggle the bottom line with a higher calling. They are committed to spreading the feminist gospel, to challenging traditional notions of gender, to finding new voices who are marginalized and/or left out all together by mainstream publishers. For this--and for Listen Up: Voices From the Next Feminist Generation, Riverbend's books out of Iraq, and Brown Girl, Brownstone etc.--we thank them from the bottom of our big, feminist hearts.

If there is a book, published by a feminist press, that changed your life, please let us know in the comments.

Jessica's new book, He's a Stud, She's a Slut, is reviewed in tomorrow's New York Times -- alongside Kathleen Parker's ode to gender difference, Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care. (Not familiar with Parker? She's said that women having sex without going through courtship rituals first is a "mental health crisis." And she looooves to talk about how women in the military should expect to get raped.) It makes for quite the contrast:

Both of them cite a study that shows that women are "biologically" programmed to like housework more than men do. Ms. Valenti denounces it as rank anti-feminism. "In our happy little sexist world, things run much better when women are relegated to the home," she writes.

Ms. Parker applauds it: "Allow me again to translate. There's no way to make men into women."

Read the rest here. You can buy Jessica's book here.

Photo of Diane DiMassa by Love Alban

Photo of Cristy C. Road by Amos Mac

Diane DiMassa and Cristy C. Road are contributors of the new anthology, Live Through This. Edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev, Live Through This is a collection of original stories, essays, artwork and photography that explore the use of art to survive many of life's lows, traumas and struggles. Both illustrated and contributed real-life personal pieces to the anthology.

Diane DiMassa is best known as the creator of the comic heroine Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. She recently illustrated a graphic novel written by Daphne Gottlieb called Jokes and the Unconscious, and regularly contributes to anthologies.

Cristy C. Road's works and publications include the punk rock zine, Greenzine; illustrated storybook, Indestructable; a series of illustrated novels based on filmmaker Esther Bell's upcoming film, Flaming Heterosexual Female; and is currently working on Bad Habits, an illustrated love story.

Here are Diane and Cristy...

It's shameless self-promotion time. As many of you probably already know, I have a new book out: He's a Stud, She's a Slut...and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know. After writing FFF, it was difficult to know what to write next, so I figured why not go back to basics.

I like to think of this book as a sexism handbook of sorts, it gets into the everyday misogyny that so many of us face - whether it's the sexual double standard or a million other daily inequities women are expected to put up with. It's a fun book, one that that I'm hoping will be a bit subversive - it doesn't look like a feminist book, 'feminism' isn't in the title - so my goal is that a lot of women will pick it up. Think of it as stealth feminism.

I've excerpted the Introduction of the book, and one of the double standards, if you'd like a sneak peak.

I hope you'll pick up a copy and pass it around to your friends. And, of course, huge thanks to all of the incredible readers and supporters of Feministing for making my writing possible.

Judy Norsigian is co-founder of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective and co-author of the ground breaking Our Bodies, Ourselves published in 1970. Since its publication, women's groups around the world have developed cultural adaptations of, or other publications inspired by, Our Bodies, Ourselves. Most recently, women's groups in Albania, Russia, South Korea, and Tibet have produced new publications in book and other formats. Judy is also the co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves: Menopause and most recently, Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth. Check out the Our Bodies, Ourselves blog when you can: http://ourbodiesourblog.org/

Judy speaks and writes frequently on a wide range of women's health concerns, including abortion and contraception, sexually transmitted infections, genetics and reproductive technologies, tobacco and women, women and health care reform, and midwifery advocacy.

Here's Judy...

Speaking of (Un)Feminist Guilty Pleasures, last night Nik and I are watching The Real World, yes, it's a habit I don't seem to break, and one of the girls on the show admits to her alcoholic friend that she struggled with an eating disorder. Didn't think much of it.

Then this morning my friend Kate sends me an email:

I'm watching the Real World, and one of the girls in it (Sarah) is lying on her bed in front of a bookshelf. And I see an acid green and book spine and think, "Hey, I know that book." I slowed it down frame by frame and guess what it is? I took a picture because I was so tickled.

Yeah, that's my book people. Mind is blown. Now if we can just get Jess' books on that blonde girl's shelf...she needs a serious dose of feminism 101.

If you're looking for an outlet for some of your no doubt brilliant feminist writing, consider this opportunity: Think Girl's newest project - "I Was There: Stories from the Feminist Front." Sarah Morgan writes:

I was inspired to begin this project after reading Susan Brownmiller's description in Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs of her work on reproductive rights during the Roe v Wade fight. Her first person account of rallying, flyering, marching and, finally, celebrating struck a cord with me and I wanted to read more. I soon learned about the 1998 book The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women's Liberation. I now want to deepen the dialogue on feminism and anti-racism, to cull past and present stories of activism, and to bridge generational divides between feminists.

In this spirit, Think Girl asks women of all ages, races and backgrounds to submit stories of their work as activists for women's issues. (Think: A Radical Chicken Soup for the Feminist Soul.) These first person stories of strength, perseverance and courage will serve as inspiration to women and girls as they continue their work in or enter the movement.

And more on the organization: Think Girl believes in feminist activism that is both global and local. We aim to center women of color in our dialogues and activism, and to represent the ways in which all social justice movements intersect.. Globally, our web site links activists with women's news, educational resources, and personal writings. We hope to help girls and women understand feminism's past and present, and encourage them to contribute to its future. We are co-organizing The Feminist Summit, a national conference coming to Detroit in May 2009.

Locally, Think Girl bridges women in Metro Detroit: women of all races and ethnicities, of low- and middle-income, of all body abilities, of spiritual and secular beliefs, and from Detroit and the suburbs. We present educational workshops for preteen girls on media literacy and body image, women's history and feminism, and challenging stereotypes.

I saw one of my favorite writers this weekend at Politics and Prose in DC. She's a Young Adult fiction writer named Sarah Dessen, and she happens to be from the town where I grew up. We even went to the same high school (although a lot of years apart). When I was a kid I read a lot--and much of it was young adult fiction. There are a lot of books in that genre, but what I love about Sarah Dessen is that her books have substance. Her characters (almost all of whom are young women) are strong, independent, smart and interesting. She tackles real issues, like divorce, intimate partner violence and substance abuse, but without it feeling forced or like a public service announcement. You might know her work from the Mandy Moore movie, How to Deal (which is based on two of her books combined).

I still read her new books as they come out, even though I'm much out of her target audience age. While I still enjoy them, I do wish they had more to say about things like race and sexual orientation. While Sarah does a good job of portraying women from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, the main characters of the books are generally straight and white. Kind of like the town we grew up in.

Did you read YA Fiction growing up? Who were some of your favorite authors?

From a recent performance at The Whitney Biennial. Photo by Eduardo Aparicio.

Coco Fusco is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer. She is the author of English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas, and editor of Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas, and Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (with Brian Wallis). Her work on military interrogation was selected for the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

"In the guise of a CIA manual, Coco Fusco's provocative A Field Guide for Female Interrogators offers an unflinching look at women's role in the military and at America's use of torture in the War on Terror"-- (from the book's back cover copy).

Here's Coco...

This is completely indefensible. These images are flat-out racist. Not. Okay.

I want to echo Holly's sentiments, and her call for more information about how the hell this happened. And I'll be writing a letter to Seal that's very similar to Barry's.

UPDATE: Seal Press has issued an apology, and will be removing the images from future printings of the book.

UPDATE II Amanda has also apologized.

Martha Ma is a food and media educator and producer, community chef and health counselor. She is the host and producer of "The Tasty Life," a bi-weekly television show on Manhattan Public Access channel 57, and the editor of the e-newsletter, "Eater's Digest."

Martha is also executive producer of the Food for Thought Film Festival. If you're in the NYC area this weekend, check out the last weekend of the festival at Cooper Union's Wollman Auditorium, 51 Astor Place at Third Ave. Feature films include King Corn, Black Gold, and Life and Debt. Shorts include The Meatrix I, II and II 1/2 and The True Cost of Food.

Here's Martha...

A new children's book, My Beautiful Mommy, (being released on Mother's Day, no less) aims to explain to kids why their mom is getting plastic surgery.

It features a perky mother explaining to her child why she's having cosmetic surgery (a nose job and tummy tuck). Naturally, it has a happy ending: mommy winds up "even more" beautiful than before, and her daughter is thrilled.

Okay, I can understand the need to explain to children why a parent is getting surgery, but this...well, it's just ridiculous.

"My Beautiful Mommy" is aimed at kids ages four to seven and features a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael (a musclebound superhero type) and a girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, a nose job and breast implants. Before her surgery the mom explains that she is getting a smaller tummy: "You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better." Mom comes home looking like a slightly bruised Barbie doll with demure bandages on her nose and around her waist.

Superhero, huh? I suppose that should come as no surprise, given the book is written by a Florida-based plastic surgeon, Dr. Michael Salzhauer. Now, I'm certainly not going to sit in judgment of those who get plastic surgery - but do we really have to teach our kids that we need it to "feel better" and be "beautiful"? Ugh.

Thanks to Alexis for the link.

I will admit that the blog Stuff White People Like is no doubt one of my guilty pleasures, (maybe even an (Un) Feminist Guilty pleasure), but I, like most with a sense of humor certainly laugh along with the uncanny amount of humor in that blog and all those "aha" moments you have when reading it. The first time I read it I was sure a person of color was writing it and was honestly surprised and pretty happy that it was being written by a white man. I mean what makes a person of color feel better than a white person that can totally laugh at themselves and not take it personally? Well a lot of things, but it is definitely up there.

But jokes aside, I have some deeper feelings that I am trying to work out about this blog that make me not think it is as great and groundbreaking as many have hailed it to be. The real question being, what does this blog do for actual dialog on race?

I guess one simple answer is that it names, marks and makes visible the assumed invisibility of white culture. I grew up hearing, "you are so lucky to have a culture," and I remember thinking, dude you have a culture too. So on a basic level the calling out of white culture for what it is, is in fact powerful and will get you a lot of unexpected fans.

But if you believe that culture is not a static thing, but something that moves and changes and takes in and drops different participants as you go, than maybe it is not as salient. I am all about poking fun at the dominant culture, but if you are a person of color that is reading this blog and you can relate to a lot of the stuff white people like, does that make you white? Are you not a hard-core enough "person of color" if you like the things on that list?

For me, despite the humor (and yes, I see the humor and LMAO to different entries all the time) I don't see how marrying the concept of white-ness to the concept of material is actually helping us get to a new place. And as a friend of mine pointed out, the opposite effect of this is that the underlying assumption of stuff white people like is that the stuff they like is not cool, so then is everything that people of color do totally cool? Does that mean that we should look to people of color for what is cool (insert "wow you are such a good dancer!")? So in a way it is perpetuating that same thing we are trying to get away from. A hyper fascination with the things that white people like.

What sealed the deal for me was when I heard the author got a $300,000 dollar book deal. That is fucking crazy. If he had been a person of color he would have never gotten so much attention or such a hefty book deal. People would have said, omg, that is racist! They wouldn't have given it so much cred. My point being, there are a lot of people that call out racism and whiteness, but they don't get huge book deals for it because they are not white. So despite the potential transformative nature of calling out whiteness for what it is, the author is still getting rewarded for being white, even though he is making fun of white people. And let's not forget, white people also get paid for making fun of people of color. And what exactly do people of color get paid to do. . . ? To also make fun of people of color or to create characters that fit into white people's comfort levels of what is acceptable people of colorness. Because as the blog points out subtly, white people have the most capital to be the biggest consumers of everything, so all the images we see are tailored to their sensibilities.

This may be a total stretch, but this is where I am at with the whole thing and just had to put it out there. I see how many people LOVE this blog and how many people of color love it. And I see how uncomfortable it makes white people, which I also think is good. Being uncomfortable can often motivate you to think outside yourself. But is it really leading to this transformative conversation for a racially just world or is it perpetuating our assumed differences, realigning them with a gaze on what is considered white?

If you haven't had a chance to check out Sarah Seltzer's awesome piece in Bitch on sexism in The New York Times Book Review, pick up a copy today (or read it online). A sharp and savvy excerpt:

Recently, Times editors—in both the daily paper and the Sunday section—have trotted out a particularly insidious formula for bashing feminist authors. First, hire a female reviewer to unleash misogynist tropes in her piece and then, lest she appear prejudiced against her own gender, throw in an illogical, contradictory statement about the importance of a less threatening version of feminism that isn’t so “polarizing,� “provocative,� or “strident.�