The World Split Open

by Ruth Rosen

  Older women. Patricia Huckle, Tish Sommers, Activist and the Founding of the Older Women’s League (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), gives the single best history on the discovery of the “displaced homemaker.” Other important feminist works on aging include Betty Friedan, Fountain of Age (New York: Touchstone, 1994); Erica Jong, Fear of Fifty.

  African-Americans. Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967), provides the background for the uproar that the Moynihan Report started. Celestine Ware, Woman Power (New York: Tower, 1970), was the earliest book to discuss and challenge the new feminist movement. Toni Cade, The Black Woman (New York: New American Library, 1970), offered the first essays that were widely debated. Some important articles that addressed the relationship between feminism and black women include Linda La Rue, “The Black Movement and Women’s Liberation,” in The Black Scholar 1:7 (May 1970); Charlayne Hunter, “Many Blacks Wary of ‘Women’s Liberation Movement,’” New York Times, November 17, 1970, 60; Angela Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1974); Gloria Hull, “My Life,” APA; Toni Morrison, “Interview with Claudia Tate,” in Claudia Tate, ed., Black Women Writers at Work (New York: Continuum, 1983), 117–31; from Third World Women’s Alliance, “Black Women’s Manifesto,” n.d.; Linda La Rue, “Black Liberation and Women’s Lib,” Transaction (November-December 1970); Toni Morrison, “What the Black Woman Thinks About Women’s Lib,” New York Times Magazine, August 22, 1971; La-neeta Harris, “Black Women in Junior High Schools,” in Tanner, Voices, 216. “The Sisters Reply,” September 11, 1968, Mt. Vernon, N.Y., responding to “Birth Control Pill and Black Children,” a statement by the Black Unity Party in Peekskill, N.Y., n.d.; Patricia Robinson, “Poor Black Women,” n.d., all in Nancy Gray Osterud Collection, SL. For additional views, see Frances Beale, “The Double Jeopardy of Black Women” in “Documents from the Black Women’s Liberation Movement,” Women’s Liberation Movement, in Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement, an On-Line Archival Collection, Duke University. For articles and manifestos that appeared as African-American women organized in the 1970s, see Michelle Wallace, “On the National Black Feminist Organization,” June 1975, reprinted in Redstockings, Feminist Revolution, 174; and The Combahee River Collective, The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1985 edition), pamphlet, APA.

  For overall histories on black women, see Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Bantam, 1984), and the collected essays in Darlene Clark Hine and Wilma King, eds., We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible: A Reader in Black Women’s History (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1995); Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds., All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men and Some of Us Are Brave (New York: Feminist Press, 1982); Nancie Caraway, Segregated Sisterhood: Racism and the Politics of American Feminism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986); Joyce Ladner, Tomorrows Tomorrow: The Black Woman (New York: Doubleday, 1971); Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis, Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and White Feminist Perspectives (New York: Anchor Books, 1981). The writer bell hooks has been extremely influential in offering theoretical challenges to assumptions held by white feminists. See bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism; Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston, South End Press, 1984), and Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston: South End Press 1989). For writing by Angela Davis, see Women, Race and Class (New York: Random House, 1981) and Women, Culture and Politics (New York: Random House, 1989). Other books that have informed and inspired are Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press, 1984); Barbara Smith, ed., Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983); Adrien Katherine Wing, ed., Critical Race Feminism: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Kristal Brent Zook, “A Manifesto of Sorts for a Black Feminist Movement,” New York Times Magazine, November 12, 1995, 86–89. Michelle Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (London: Verso, 1990 edition). Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” 1979, is a classic work reprinted in Moraga and Anzaldua. See bibliography in Unequal Sisters, pp. 585–590.

  Chicanas. The best historical overview of Mexican-American women can be found in Vicki Ruiz, Out of the Shadows: Mexican American Women in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford, 1998). For important primary documents, see Alma M. Garcia, Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings (New York: Routledge, 1997), and Martha Cotera, The Chicana Feminist (Austin, Information Systems Development, 1977). Important sources also include Nancy Nieto, “Macho Attitudes,” Hija de Cuauhtemoc 1:1 (1971); Mirta Vidal, “Women: New Voice of La Raza” (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971), reprinted in Chicanas Speak Out, DU. Segura and Pesquera, “Beyond Indifference and Antipathy: The Chicana Movement and Chicana Feminist Discourse,” Aztlan (Fall 1988): 69–80; Adalijiza Sosa Riddell, “Chicanas and El Movimiento,” Aztlan 5:1 (1974): 155–65; Mary Pardo, MELA (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998); Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987); Gretchen M. Bataille, Kathleen Mullen Sands, and Gloria Anzaldua, eds.; Making Face, Making Soul: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990); Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981), which includes a number of documents by lesbians who felt they belonged nowhere. Carla Trujillo, ed., Living Chicana Theory (Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 1998), provides a range of important essays, as does Trujillo, Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 1991).

  Native American women. Among the hundreds of new works on Native America women, I found these particularly useful: Paula Gunn Allen, As Long As the Rivers Flow: The Stories of Nine Native Americans (New York: Scholastic, 1996); Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change 1700–1835 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); Carol Devens, Countering Colonization: Native American Women and Great Lakes Missions (1630–1900) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Margaret Jacobs, Engendered Encounters: Feminism and Pueblo Culture 1879–1934 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999); Kathleen Donovan, ed., Feminist Readings of Native American Literature: Coming to Voice (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998); Diana Meyers Bahr, From Mission to Metropolis: Cupeno Indian Women in Los Angeles (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993); Luana Ross, Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998); Sabine Lang, John L. Vantine, tr., Men as Women, Women as Men: Changing Gender in Native American Cultures (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998); Ruth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri, eds., Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Paula Gunn Allen, Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-Busting, Border-Crossing Loose Canons (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998); Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992); and Rayna Green, Women in American Indian Society (New York: Chelsea House, 1992). Gretchen M. Bataille, American Indian Women, Telling Their Lives (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984); Elsie Allen, Porno Basketmaking: A Supreme Art for the Weaver, Vinson Brown, ed. (Happy Camp, Calif.: Naturegraph Publishers, 1972); and Shirley Hill Witt, “Native Women Today: Sexism and the Indian Woman,” in Civil Rights Digest, Spring 1974, are useful works for understanding American Indian women’s relation to feminism. See also the bibliography in Unequal Sisters, pp. 599–605.

  Asian-American women. A good collection of essays on Asian-American women is Sonia Shah, ed., Dragon Ladies: Asian-American Feminists Breathe Fire (Boston: South End Pr
ess, 1997), as is Elaine Kim and Norma Alarcon, eds., Writing Self/Writing Nation (Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 1994); Asian Women United of California, eds., Making Waves: An Anthology of Writing by and about Asian-American Women (Boston: Beacon, 1989); Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Mayumi Tsutakawa, eds., The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian-American Women’s Anthology, (Corvallis, Oregon: Calyx Book, 1989); Nobuya Tsuchida, ed., Asian and Pacific American Experiences: Women’s Perspectives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982); Eui-Young Yu and Philip H Phillips, eds., Korean Women in Transition: At Home and Abroad (Los Angeles: California State Univ., Los Angeles, 1987); Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman’s Journey from War to Peace (New York: Doubleday, 1989); and see the bibliography in Unequal Sisters, pp. 590–593.

  Other sources on minority women and feminism. Extensive bibliographies on minority women’s history can be found in Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz, eds., Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History (New York: Routledge, 2000); Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981); and Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Garden (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983) is the source for writings about “womanism” instead of feminism.

  The heartland and local community studies. Studies of local feminist communities are increasing rapidly. See Benita Roth, “The Fourth World Is Born: The Separation of the Radical Women’s Movement from the New Left, 1968–1971,” unpublished thesis, UCLA Department of Sociology, Spring 1989; Theresa Kaminski, “From Within and Without: Meanings of American Feminism in the 1960’s and 1970’s (Minneapolis),” paper presented at 1993 Berkshire Conference, Vassar, New York; and “Still Ain’t Satisfied: Legacies of the 1970’s Socialist Feminist Movement in Minneapolis, St. Paul,” n.d, unpublished dissertation, University of Minnesota, paper presented at same panel. Barbara Winslow, “The Struggle for Abortion Reform in Washington State, 1967–1970,” paper given to author in 1993; Joanna Leslie Dyl, “Burn This and Memorize Yourself: The Collectivists’ Small Group as a Social Movement Organization in Women’s Liberation in the Bay Area,” unpublished senior thesis, Department of History, Stanford University; Judith Sealander and Dorothy Smith, “The Rise and Fall of Feminist Organizations in the 1970’s: Dayton as a Case Study,” Feminist Studies 12:2 (Summer 1986): 221–339, APA; Anne Popkin, “Bread and Roses: An Early Moment in the Development of Socialist Feminism,” unpublished dissertation, Brandeis University, May 1978; and Michelle Moravec, “In Their Own Times: Voices from Los Angeles, 1967–1976,” master’s thesis, UCLA, n.d. There are now a number of local studies available. Barbara Winslow of Medgar Evers College is working on a study of Seattle Women’s Liberation. Amy Kessleman at SUNY New Paltz is working on a study of New Haven. See Deborah Gerson, “Consciousness as Politics: Mobilization in Bay Area Women’s Liberation, 1968–73,” unpublished method paper, U.C. Berkeley Sociology Department; Nancy Whittier’s study, Feminist Generations (of Columbus, Ohio) (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995); Judith Ezekiel, “Une contribution à l’histoire du mouvement feministe Americain: l’etude du cas de Dayton, Ohio (1969–1980),” unpublished dissertation, Paris, 1987. For other scholars and students working on the women’s movement, see Women’s Liberation Network Directory, version 8/15/97, Web site: http://www.duke.edu/~ginnyd/wlrn.html. Also see “A Quiet Revolution: How life in one Wisconsin City has changed since the beginning of the Women’s Movement,” Newsweek, December 28, 1997.

  Houston. For those interested in media studies and feminism, the press coverage of the Houston conference offers an especially interesting case study. The press coverage became increasingly respectful as reporters realized the significance of a government-sponsored meeting with a stated feminist agenda. For a range of examples, see Connie Skipitares, “Cleaver at Women’s Session,” San Jose Mercury, November 22, 1978, 28; Connie Skipitares, “Women Moving to Solidify their Gains,” San Jose Mercury, November 1977, 1; Mildred Hamilton, “Women Endorse the ERA,” San Francisco Examiner, November 20, 1977, 1; Merrill Shields with Lea Donosky, Lucy Howard, Elaine Sciolino, and Hall Bruno, “A Woman’s Agenda,” Newsweek, November 28, 1977, 57; Judith Anderson, “Gay, Abortion Planks Pass,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 21, 1977, 1; Judith Anderson, “Women’s Meeting Ends Abruptly,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 22, 1977, 1; “What’s Next for U.S. Women,” Time, December 5, 1977, 18–26; Judith Anderson, “Houston Meeting: Was It Worth It,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 24, 1977, 73; Anne Taylor Fleming, “That Week in Houston: It was said that the women’s movement was in a state of disarray. The National Women’s Conference proved otherwise,” New York Times Magazine, December 25, 1977, 10–33; Bill Curry, “Multitude of Voices on Women’s Issues,” Washington Post, November 29, 1977, 1, 21, 32; Anna Quindlen, “Women’s Parley Brings Action Over a Rights Agenda for Nation,” New York Times, November 20, 1977, 1. For the official history of the Houston meetings, see National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year, The Spirit of Houston: An Official Report to the President, the Congress and the People of the United States (Washington, D.C., March 1978); National Commission on the Observation of International Women’s Year, Declaration of American Women (Washington, D.C.: IWY Commission, 1977).

  CHAPTER NINE: SISTERHOOD TO SUPERWOMAN

  For studies of media representations of the movement see Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (Random House: New York, 1994); Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978); Ella Taylor, Prime Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Todd Gitlin, Inside Prime Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); Mary Anne Doane, et al., Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1984).

  Consumer feminism. See Elisabeth Cagan, “The Selling of the Women’s Movement,” Social Policy (May/June 1978); Scot Winoker, “Freud and Fashion; Tobacco Firms’ Seduction of Women,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 21, 1983, 6; “Brooke Shields Takes a Stand Against Smoking But the Government Didn’t Want Her Message,” American Lung Association Bulletin (June/July, 1981); Lawrence Wallack, “Mass Media Campaigns in a Hostile Environment: Advertising as Anti-Health Education,” paper for Health Education and Media International Conference, March 24, 1981, Edinburgh, Scotland. David Reuben, Any Woman Can! Love and Sexual Fulfillment for the Single, Widowed, Divorced, and Married (New York: D. McKay, 1971).

  Therapeutic feminism. The self-help books that best demonstrate the intersection between the women’s movement and the human potential movement are: Dorothy Tennov, Super Self: A Woman’s Guide to Self-Management (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1977); Dorothy Jongeward and Dru Scott, Women As Winners: Transactional Analysis for Personal Growth (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1976); Stanlee Phelps and Nancy Austin, The Assertive Woman (San Luis Obispo: Impact, 1975). Helen Gurley Brown, Having It All (New York: Pocket Books, 1982), is the best single description of the superwoman.

  Film. Some films that addressed ideas of the women’s movement were A Woman under the Influence, 1972; Looking for Mr. Goodbar, 1977; Norma Rae, 1979; Nine to Five, 1980; Diary of a Mad Housewife, 1970; Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974; Tootsie, 1980; Private Benjamin, 1980; Mr. Mom, 1983; Yentl, 1983; Silkwood, 1983. Also see Janice Mendehall, Films on the Women’s Movement; an annotated list of 90 films, mostly shorts, in Federal Women’s Program Coordinator, General Service Administration, Washington, D.C., Women and Film, no. 2 (1972): 16; Lee Israel, “Women in Film: Saving an Endangered Species,” Ms., February 8, 1975, 51; Andrew Kopkind, “Hollywood—Under the Influence of Women,” Ramparts (May 13, 1975): 56–60; R. McCormuck, “Women’s Liberation Cinema,” Cineaste (Spring 1972): 1–7; Linda Greene, “Politics of a Feminist Fantasy,” Jump Cut 6 (March/April 1983): 14; Bosley Crowther, “
Where Are the Women?” New York Times, January 23, 1966.

  Feminist concerns with the new superwoman. See Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift (Berkeley: University of California, 1989), and The Time Bind (New York: Viking, 1997), for how a stalled revolution affected women’s lives. See also Joan Peters, When Mothers Work: Loving Our Children Without Sacrificing Ourselves (New York: Perseus, 1998) and Peggy Orenstein, Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love and Life in a Half-Changed World (New York: Doubleday, 2000). A view that is harshly critical of the women’s movement is Sylvia Hewlett, A Lesser Life.

  Beyond backlash. Two important books are Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown, 1991), and Juliet Mitchell and Ann Oakley, Who’s Afraid of Feminism? Seeing Through the Backlash (New York: New Press, 1997).

  See early attacks by Marabel Morgan, The Total Woman (New York: Pocket Books, 1973), and Midge Decter, The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women’s Liberation (New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1972). The term New Right was first used by Lee Edward in 1962 in proposing a conservative platform for Young Americans for Freedom. It became popular in 1975 when conservative Kevin Phillips began to associate the New Right with the efforts of Paul Weyrich, Howard Phillips, Richard Viguerie, and Terry Dolan, which is described in Rebecca Klatch, Women of the New Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987). For a range of studies on the New Right and its relationship to feminism, see Allen Hunter, “In the Wings: New Right Ideology and Organization,” Radical America 15 (Spring 1981): 112–28; Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, “Antiabortion, Antifeminism and the Rise of the New Right,” Feminist Studies 7 (Summer 1981): 206–46; Barbara Ehrenreich, “The Social Issue Game: Family Feud on the Left,” Nation 234 (March 13, 1982): 289, and Linda Gordon and Allen Hunter, “Sex, Family and the New Right: Anti-Feminism As a Political Force,” Radical America 11–12 (November 1977–February 1978): 9–25, and David Frum, How We Got Here: The Seventies (New York: Basic, 2000). For women’s opposition to feminism, see Andrea Dworkin, Right Wing Women (New York, 1983); Phyllis Schlafly, The Power of the Positive Woman (New York: Jove/HBJ, 1977); Lisa Cronin Wohl, “Phyllis Schlafly: The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority,” Ms., March 1974, 63, and the longer biography by Carol Festenthal, The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority (New York: Doubleday, 1981); Pamela Johnston Conover and Virginia Gray, Feminism and the New Right: Conflict over the American Family (New York: Praeger, 1983); Zillah Eisenstein, Feminism and Sexual Equality: Crisis in Liberal America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984). Some of the best archival material on antifeminist sentiment can be found in a new collection called Antifeminism in America: A Collection of Readings from the Literature of the Opponents to U.S. Feminism, 1948 to the Present, edited with introductions by Angela Howard and Sasha Ranae Adams Tarrant (New York: Garland Press, 1997).