Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America / Edition 1

by Laura Browder

Overview

The gun-toting woman holds enormous symbolic significance in American culture. For over two centuries, women who pick up guns have disrupted the popular association of guns and masculinity, spurring debates about women's capabilities for violence as well as their capacity for full citizenship. In Her Best Shot, Laura Browder examines the relationship between women and guns and the ways in which the figure of the armed woman has served as a lightning rod for cultural issues.

Utilizing autobiographies, advertising, journalism, novels, and political tracts, among other sources, Browder traces appearances of the armed woman across a chronological spectrum from the American Revolution to the present and an ideological spectrum ranging from the Black Panthers to right-wing militias. Among the colorful characters presented here are Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man to fight in the American Revolution; Pauline Cushman, who posed as a Confederate to spy for Union forces during the Civil War; Wild West sure-shot Annie Oakley; African explorer Osa Johnson; 1930s gangsters Ma Barker and Bonnie Parker; and Patty Hearst, the hostage-turned-revolutionary-turned-victim. With her entertaining and provocative analysis, Browder demonstrates that armed women both challenge and reinforce the easy equation that links guns, manhood, and American identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807858899
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	03/10/2008
Edition description:	1
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.68(d)

About the Author

Laura Browder is professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she teaches in the creative writing program. She is author of Rousing the Nation: Radical Culture in Depression America and Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities (from the University of North Carolina Press).

Table of Contents

Preface     ix
Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction: The News about Women and Guns     1
Military Heroines: Narratives of Female Soldiers and Spies in the Civil War     22
Little Miss Sure Shot and Friends, or How Armed Women Tamed the West     57
Maid Marians and Bad Mothers: From the Gungirls of the 1920s to the Gangsters of the 1930s     100
Radical Women of the 1960s and 1970s     136
Armed Women of the Far Right: Race Mothers, Warriors, and the Surprising Case of Carolyn Chute     186
Armed Feminism or Family Values? Women and Guns Today     212
Conclusion     230
Notes     235
Bibliography     261
Index     279

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

In Her Best Shot Laura Browder poses an increasingly cogent question: how do women and guns go together in American popular culture? With wide-ranging instances culled from public and private sources, the book tells compelling stories and asks serious questions about changing meanings of gender, citizenship, and violence. Stunning in detail and wise in judgment, the book speaks urgently to the confusion between fantasy and reality that often endangers American life.—Alan Trachtenberg, Yale University

Laura Browder thinks like a historian and writes like a novelist. With memorable characters appearing in every chapter, her book looks at the relationship between women and guns from the American Revolution to the present and poses questions about violence, citizenship, and gender that are as relevant as today's news.—Joy S. Kasson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Editorial Reviews

Deftly analyzes the figure of the armed woman as both cultural hero and villain."—American Historical Review

A rich story."—Journal of Social History

Fascinating. . . . Lucidly written and clearly argued. . . . Illuminat[es] a culture of violence through the study of popular culture, media representations, and political spectacle."—Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Deftly explores one facet of the relationship between women and guns in American history: that most manifest in literary expression and advertising."—Pacific Northwest Quarterly

Browder's book is far-ranging. It is filled with provocative observations on class dynamics and on the biological essentialism that is—and long has been—used to define women with guns."—Journal of Southern History

The work is appealingly written, satisfyingly illustrated, and well researched."—CHOICE

Filled with fascinating history that has largely been lost or ignored—until now."—Field and Stream

Browder's study makes clear that the portrayal of a woman with a gun has many shades of meaning bound up with race and class as well as gender."—Roanoke Times

Provides fascinating insights into a feminized gun culture perhaps little known to academic readers. . . . An impressive account of women and guns in America."—Journal of American History

There is a lot of fascinating historical information in Her Best Shot, but its most attractive feature is the well-written narrative. . . . It deserves to . . . make the best seller list and would add to both the understanding of, and the continuing debate about, women gunowners.—Women & Guns

From the Publisher

The "thriving gun culture" of the South took Browder by surprise when the New Englander moved to Virginia. Now Browder (Rousing the Nation: Radical Culture in Depression America), an associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, explores the social meanings of armed womanhood in a culture where violence is associated with masculinity. Browder traces the phenomenon from Civil War cross-dressing spies to the present-day National Rifle Association's female-oriented marketing strategies, demonstrating how public discussions of gun-toting women find each successive era revealing its particular anxieties about women's sexuality and role as citizens. Browder discusses a series of " armed celebrities"-from Wild West stars like Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane to outlaws such as Bonnie Parker (of Bonnie and Clyde fame) and Patty Hearst-and examines the contradictory views about women soldiers, the gun-slinging pioneer mother "lioness" protecting her family, women at the turn of the 20th century who wielded their weapons to uphold white rights and the women radical activists, both black and white, of the 1960s and 1970s who "used the gun as a bid for equal power within their often sexist movements." Browder packs her dense yet jargon-free study with salient examples drawn from contemporary print and visual sources. 34 illus. (Oct. 16) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly