Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists

by J. Courtney Sullivan (Editor), Courtney E. Martin (Editor)

Overview

When did you know you were a feminist? Whether it happened at school, at work, while watching TV, or reading a book, many of us can point to a particular moment when we knew we were feminists. In Click, editors Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan bring us a range of women—including Jessica Valenti, Amy Richards, Shelby Knox, Winter Miller, and Jennifer Baumgardner—who share stories about how that moment took shape for them. 

Sometimes emotional, sometimes hilarious, this collection gives young women who already identify with the feminist movement the opportunity to be heard—and it welcomes into the fold those new to the still-developing story of feminism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580052856
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	04/27/2010
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.66(w) x 8.34(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

J. Courtney Sullivan lives in New York City. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Allure, Tango, and the New York Observer.

Table of Contents

Introduction 13

I'm Gonna Wash that King Right out of my Hair Elisa Albert 19

One is Silver and the other's Gold Jennifer Baumgardner 25

Seventeen Years of Ridicule: A Young Feminist's Polemic Nellie Beckett 31

Cross-Stitch and Soap Operas following Football Gordan Berg Powers 37

Killing in the Name of Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne 43

Empowerment in Soft Focus: Growing up Female with ADHD Li Sydney Cornfeld 51

You are What you Wear Anitra Cottledge 59

Feminism, Warts and all Marni Grossman 67

God, Sex, and Pythagoras Shelby Knox 73

The Right Pitch Colleen Lutz Clemens 77

Born-Again Feminist Jillian Mackenzie 83

Not my Mother's Hose Courtney E. Martin 89

I was not Aborted and Further Miscellanea Winter Miller 95

The Women's Center Olessa Pindak 105

I was a Secret Rich Kid: A Tale of Class Unconsciousness Karen Pittelman 113

Finding and Making the Reasons Sophie Pollitt-Cohen 121

I married a war Correspondent Alissa Quart 129

Righteous Little Beaver Amy Richards 137

The Feminist Evolution of an Artist, Survivor, Conjurer from the Tropics Marta L. Sanchez 145

"What's the Female Version of a Hustler?": Womanist Training for a Bronx Nerd Joshunda Sanders 155

You can't Rape a whore: A Love Story Rachel Shukert 161

Anita and me Deborah Siegel 169

My Number one must-have Amy Spalding 175

The Brown Girl's Guide to Labels Mathangi Subramanian 181

Word and Deed J. Courtney Sullivan 191

On Reading Katie Roiphe Rebecca Traister 199

An Engineering Approach to Feminism Janet Tsai 207

I Was an Obnoxious Teenage Feminist Jessica Valenti 215

Pillow Dancing and Other Failed Hetero Experiments Miriam Zoila Perez 219

Contributors 227

Editorial Reviews

Compiled by authors Martin (Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters) and Sullivan (Commencement), this volume looks at the catalytic moments when 28 women (and one man) found their way to feminism. Including writers, activists, and educators, contributors provide perspective and personal revelations from all stages of life. Joshunda Sanders, an Austin newspaper reporter, talks about growing up poor and black in "the least desirable place in New York" and how it led to her embrace of "womanist" thought; Indian American writer and educator Mathangi Subramanian describes years of struggle with the feminist "label," navigating the cross-currents of her grandmother's pressure to marry and her mother's enthusiasm for independence (and feminist classics like Susan Estrich's Sex & Power); Martin herself contributes a piece contrasting her own coming-of-age, involving a college visit from Manifesta authors Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner, with her mother's: "This wasn't the swishy skirt feminism that my mom had manifested at her once-a-month women's groups. This was contemporary, witty, brash, even a little sexy." With this enervating collection, Martin and Sullivan help continue that modernizing trend.
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Publishers Weekly

Donaldson (The Ville: Cops and Kids in Urban America) studies prisoner reentry through the harsh experiences of one ex-con, Kevin Davis, who sought out Donaldson after the image on the dust jacket of Donaldson's previous book—about a Housing Authority police officer and his work fighting crime in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn—led to Davis's arrest and conviction in connection with a brutal homicide. Davis served his sentence in upstate New York at the maximum-security Elmira Correctional Facility, then he moved to a nearby enclave called Zebratown, so named for its many interracial couples. Donaldson follows the trajectory of Kevin Davis and a pragmatic, ambitious single mother, Karen Tanski (the latter is a fictional name for the woman in question). Self-possessed, capable of intense focus, and buoyed by Karen's support, Davis has powerful tools to disengage from a world of drug dealers, short lives, and violent ends. But old habits and entanglements, police suspicions, limited employment options, and ego are huge barriers to a clean life. VERDICT Davis's provocative and relevant story demonstrates in grim detail the immense challenges faced by ex-felons reentering "the world," as prisoners refer to free society. A challenging, timely view of a subculture of sorts for whom redemption is a lifelong process. Recommended especially for lay readers in criminology, race relations, hip-hop culture, or regional studies, and to specialists on the criminal justice system and prisoner reentry issues.—Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus

Library Journal