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WOMAN

THE AMERICAN HISTORY OF AN IDEA

An intelligently provocative, vital reading experience.

The distinguished feminist historian analyzes how the concept of woman has evolved over almost 500 years of American history.

Woman, Faderman argues, is a patriarchal concept with roots that run deep. Even the most liberal views of (White) womanhood, such as those of 17th-century Puritan minister Roger Williams, centered around woman as the “weaker Vessel…more fitted to keep and order the House and Children.” Wealthy women, especially widows, had slightly more agency, but a woman’s place, then and in the centuries that followed, was in the home. As the states expanded into Native American land, that idea was forced on Native women throughout the territories. At the same time, enslaved women suffered both race and gender marginalization that, as Angela Davis noted, “annulled” their womanhood. By the 19th century, women transformed the chains that bound them to woman into what Faderman calls the “visas” that took them out of the home and allowed them to “claim a voice in the public square.” Yet even as females—largely middle-class and White—gained greater access to public life in the 20th century, patriarchy, in the guise of medical science, denounced independent-minded women for violating gender norms. By the 1980s, Faderman engagingly demonstrates, thinkers like the radical lesbian feminist Monique Wittig called woman a dangerous patriarchal “myth” and helped liberate the concept of gender—and gender-prescribed behaviors—from sexuality. Faderman ably brings the discussion into the 21st century and the present day, when nonbinary conceptions of gender are gaining further acceptance in the mainstream even as the resolutely patriarchal system—perfectly embodied by Donald Trump and his cohorts—continues to fight against anything other than a strictly binary gender structure. This highly readable, inclusive, and deeply researched book will appeal to scholars of women and gender studies as well as anyone seeking to understand the historical patterns that misogyny has etched across every era of American culture.

An intelligently provocative, vital reading experience.

Pub Date: March 15, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-300-24990-3

Page Count: 576

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

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BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY

From the Pocket Change Collective series

A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.

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Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.

The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.

A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)

Pub Date: June 2, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Penguin Workshop

Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020

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