Here are 100 books that All Bound Up Together fans have personally recommended if you like
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In Rochester, New York, where I was raised, Susan Anthony and Frederick Douglass are local heroes. But in the late 1960s, I was drawn more to grassroots movements than charismatic leaders. Despite dropping out of college—twice—I completed a B.A. in 1974 and then pursued a PhD in History. My 1981 dissertation and first book focused on three networks of mainly white female activists in nineteenth-century Rochester. Of the dozens of women I studied, Amy Post most clearly epitomized the power of interracial, mixed-sex, and cross-class movements for social justice. After years of inserting Post in articles, textbooks, and websites, I finally published Radical Friend in hopes of inspiring scholars and activists to follow her lead.
Cathleen Cahill explodes the conventional history of women’s suffrage by tracing the stories of suffragists of color from 1890 to 1928. Analyzing the efforts of African American, Native American, Mexican, and Chinese American activists, Cahill shifts the focus away from each group’s interactions with white suffragists and explores, instead, the commonalities and differences among women of color. She interweaves compelling vignettes of individual suffragists, including Carrie Williams Clifford, Nina Otero-Warren, and Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, with the larger issues addressed in their communities. Inwielding dynamic analyses of these communities of color, Cahill creates a powerful new narrative of the long fight for women’s suffrage.
We think we know the story of women's suffrage in the United States: women met at Seneca Falls, marched in Washington, D.C., and demanded the vote until they won it with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. But the fight for women's voting rights extended far beyond these familiar scenes. From social clubs in New York's Chinatown to conferences for Native American rights, and in African American newspapers and pamphlets demanding equality for Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, a diverse cadre of extraordinary women struggled to build a movement that would truly include all women, regardless of race or national origin. In…
In Rochester, New York, where I was raised, Susan Anthony and Frederick Douglass are local heroes. But in the late 1960s, I was drawn more to grassroots movements than charismatic leaders. Despite dropping out of college—twice—I completed a B.A. in 1974 and then pursued a PhD in History. My 1981 dissertation and first book focused on three networks of mainly white female activists in nineteenth-century Rochester. Of the dozens of women I studied, Amy Post most clearly epitomized the power of interracial, mixed-sex, and cross-class movements for social justice. After years of inserting Post in articles, textbooks, and websites, I finally published Radical Friend in hopes of inspiring scholars and activists to follow her lead.
Thavolia Glymph analyzes the many ways that women—white and Black, enslaved and free, North and South—sought to promote or constrain the radical transformations promised by the Civil War. Sheinterweaves well-known stories of white nurses and teachers and northern white feminists who labored to expand their claims on the nation with the lesser-known efforts of free, fugitive, and self-emancipated Black women and poor and working-class white women to ensure that the war led to greater liberty. Even some plantation mistresses became more politically active in efforts to impede Union military campaigns. This powerful book expands our concept of activism, forcing us to rethink its many meanings, sites, and goals in times of crisis.
Historians of the Civil War often speak of "wars within a war--the military fight, wartime struggles on the home front, and the political and moral battle to preserve the Union and end slavery. In this broadly conceived book, Thavolia Glymph provides a comprehensive new history of women's roles and lives in the Civil War--North and South, white and black, slave and free--showing how women were essentially and fully engaged in all three arenas. Glymph focuses on the ideas and ideologies that drove women's actions, allegiances, and politics. We encounter women as they stood their ground, moved into each other's territory,…
In Rochester, New York, where I was raised, Susan Anthony and Frederick Douglass are local heroes. But in the late 1960s, I was drawn more to grassroots movements than charismatic leaders. Despite dropping out of college—twice—I completed a B.A. in 1974 and then pursued a PhD in History. My 1981 dissertation and first book focused on three networks of mainly white female activists in nineteenth-century Rochester. Of the dozens of women I studied, Amy Post most clearly epitomized the power of interracial, mixed-sex, and cross-class movements for social justice. After years of inserting Post in articles, textbooks, and websites, I finally published Radical Friend in hopes of inspiring scholars and activists to follow her lead.
Schuller’s book critiques the elitist and racist views of well-known white feminists from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Sheryl Sandberg and highlights a counter-politics created by women of color and poor and trans women. The author explores as well white feminists who embraced the latter’s intersectional vision. Each chapter examines two contemporary feminists. I found the comparisons of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frances E. W. Harper, Pauli Murray and Betty Friedan, and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Jacobs especially powerful. (The author’s discussion of Jacobs draws on letters she wrote to her friend and ally, Amy Post.) Schuller presents a powerful critique of one version of white feminism and an equally powerful vision of a racially-inclusive intersectional feminism.
An incisive history of self-serving white feminists and the inspiring women who’ve continually defied them
Women including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, and Sheryl Sandberg are commonly celebrated as leaders of feminism. Yet they have fought for the few, not the many. As award-winning scholar Kyla Schuller argues, their white feminist politics dispossess the most marginalized to liberate themselves.
In The Trouble with White Women, Schuller brings to life the two-hundred-year counter history of Black, Indigenous, Latina, poor, queer, and trans women pushing back against white feminists and uniting to dismantle systemic injustice. These feminist heroes such as Frances Harper,…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
In Rochester, New York, where I was raised, Susan Anthony and Frederick Douglass are local heroes. But in the late 1960s, I was drawn more to grassroots movements than charismatic leaders. Despite dropping out of college—twice—I completed a B.A. in 1974 and then pursued a PhD in History. My 1981 dissertation and first book focused on three networks of mainly white female activists in nineteenth-century Rochester. Of the dozens of women I studied, Amy Post most clearly epitomized the power of interracial, mixed-sex, and cross-class movements for social justice. After years of inserting Post in articles, textbooks, and websites, I finally published Radical Friend in hopes of inspiring scholars and activists to follow her lead.
Radical Sistersdoes for the 1970s what I tried to do for the nineteenth century—to show that while Black and white women activists usually worked separately and embraced different and often opposing priorities, some women forged interracial alliances to address shared concerns. Valk also reminds us that divisions among white feminists and among Black liberationists could be as contentious as those between the two groups. By focusing on Washington, D.C., the population of which was over 70 percent Black in 1970, Valk ensures the centrality of race to every issue she analyzes. Providing in-depth case studies of anti-poverty movements, welfare rights, lesbian separatism, anti-sexual violence, and reproductive rights, Valk shows how these movements shaped each other as well as the limits of and possibilities for forging truly interracial coalitions.
Radical Sisters is a fresh exploration of the ways that 1960s political movements shaped local, grassroots feminism in Washington, D.C. Rejecting notions of a universal sisterhood, Anne M. Valk argues that activists periodically worked to bridge differences for the sake of improving women's plight, even while maintaining distinct political bases. Washington, D.C. is a critical site for studying the dynamics of the feminist movement, not only for its strategic location vis-a-vis the federal government but because in 1970 over seventy percent of the city's population was African American. While most historiography on the subject tends to portray the feminist movement…
I am an Associate professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis who is primarily interested in crime, illicit leisure, masculinity, American cities, and imprisonment. I grew up both in New York City and Orlando, Florida, and I received a PhD from the University of Rochester. Most of the books I read have to do with understanding the American criminal justice system, criminality itself, and the part societies play in constructing crime. Currently I am researching and writing a book about African American men and the carceral state, tentatively entitledJim Crow Prison.
I first read Hick’s history of black women in New York’s criminal justice system while I was in graduate school, and I was fascinated by how she brought stories to life in a city I was so familiar with.
Along with Kali Gross’s Colored Amazons, which looks at black women in Philadelphia, it inspired me to imagine what a similar study on black men could look like.
Hicks masterful use of the New York State prison archives and her attention to the details in the lives of the women in her work makes this an essential book for anyone interested in race, gender, and the carceral state.
With this book, Cheryl Hicks brings to light the voices and viewpoints of black working-class women, especially southern migrants, who were the subjects of urban and penal reform in early-twentieth-century New York. Hicks compares the ideals of racial uplift and reform programs of middle-class white and black activists to the experiences and perspectives of those whom they sought to protect and, often, control. In need of support as they navigated the discriminatory labor and housing markets and contended with poverty, maternity, and domestic violence, black women instead found themselves subject to hostility from black leaders, urban reformers, and the police.…
I am a historian with a doctorate and years of experience in diplomatic history. While researching a foreign minister’s policy decisions, I stumbled across his wife’s diaries. Later, I went back to read them. What started as sheer curiosity turned into a mission when I realised how vital diplomats’ wives were to the functioning of twentieth-century diplomacy. Yet I had spent years in the field without reading about the influence of gender. I wrote a book to bridge the gap and challenge the idea that diplomatic history can disregard gender if its focus is political. The books on my list show how everyday gendered practices are connected to political power.
Before I read Women and States, I was familiar with the concept of like-minded states and aware that similar or different normative values could complicate or facilitate the cooperation between states.
Yet, I had never considered those norms in terms of international status. Political scientist Ann Towns convincingly argues that, like any society, international society is social. To arrange relations, whether familial, local, or global, norms are used to compare and rank.
Contrary to a society built on shared values, though, international society incorporates parallel and conflicting values in an inherently unequal system, making for the coupling of norms to international status.
I love how Towns uses this simple and elegant observation to connect the political emancipation of women in different national contexts to (changing) hierarchical norms between states. Identifying links like these between local and so-called big politics is vital for better understanding international power relations.
Momentous changes in the relation between women and the state have advanced women's status around the globe. Women were barred from public affairs a century ago, yet almost every state now recognizes equal voting rights and exhibits a national policy bureau for the advancement of women. Sex quotas for national legislatures are increasingly common. Ann E. Towns explains these changes by providing a novel account of how norms work in international society. She argues that norms don't just provide standards for states, they rank them, providing comparative judgments which place states in hierarchical social orders. This focus on the link…
What were America's first prisons like? How did penal reformers, prison administrators, and politicians deal with the challenges of confining human beings in long-term captivity as punishment--what they saw as a humane intervention?
The Deviant Prison centers on one early prison: Eastern State Penitentiary. Built in Philadelphia, one of the…
I grew up during the civil rights movement in the US, and my ancestors—the lucky ones—escaped pogroms in eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century and made it to North America. (The unlucky ones were slaughtered in the Holocaust.) So I suppose it is natural that I would be drawn to write stories about the struggle to overcome persecution, racism, and injustice. I love creating characters who, at the beginning of the story, don’t know that they have what it takes to fight for justice, but then slowly build the confidence and courage to make a difference. And writing about these triumphs is fun, too!
From our comfortable perch in North America, it’s almost impossible to imagine how children—girls, especially—survive in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The Breadwinner made it real to me, with all the oppression that the main character, eleven-year-old Parvana, experiences and all the courage she demonstrates. This book showed me the common humanity we share with people whose lives are so different from our own. And it forced me to ask myself: Could I have been as brave and resourceful as Parvana?
Afghanistan: Parvana's father is arrested and taken away by Taliban soldiers. Under Taliban law, women and girls are not allowed to leave the house on their own.
Parvana, her mother, and sisters are prisoners in their own home. With no man to go out to buy food, they face starvation.
So Parvana must pretend to be a boy to save her family. It is a dangerous plan, but their only chance. In fear, she goes out - and witnesses the horror of landmines, the brutality of the Taliban, and the desperation of a country trying to survive. But even in…
I am Virginia Mendez, mother of 2 and author of 2 children’s books and a parenting book about the topic of gender equality from childhood. My day job is in Diversity and Inclusion Consulting, and I train companies and schools on how to bring more gender equality into their organisations. I wasn’t always a feminist, but I was by the time I was pregnant with my first child, and it made me determined to make the world a more fair place for everyone. Everyone.
This is an absolute favourite of mine as a gift for new baby boys.
It is in rhyme and has very easy illustrations. It is never too early to let people know that feminism is for everyone, including boys, and to show in an easy way the things that they can do to help but also expand the options for them.
Feminism begins at home—and My First Book of Feminism (for Boys) is where it begins!
Simple illustrations paired with engaging, rhyming text make the compelling, age appropriate argument that girls and boys are equal, plain and simple. Humorous, familiar scenarios are treated as teachable moments for very young boys (ages 0-3) who will ideally grow up without ever questioning women's equality. From "no means no," to "women's rights are human rights," important, grownup ideas are made clear and fun for young, impressionable minds. This is the book every mom should read to her son!
Women’s rights in the workplace have been my passion for thirty years. As a sociologist who does fieldwork and oral histories, I am interested in understanding work through workers’ perspectives. The most important thing I’ve learned is that employers can be notoriously reluctant to enact change and that the most effective route to workplace justice is through collective action. I keep writing because I want more of us to imagine workplaces that value workers by compensating everyone fairly and giving workers greater control over their office’s rhythm and structure.
Did you know that until 1974, the job category ‘domestic worker’ was excluded from labor rights that were established in FDR’s New Deal legislation such as the minimum wage and workers’ compensation? Did you know that 1960s union leaders ignored the exploitative labor conditions of domestic work because they considered these workers “unorganizable”?
Historian Premilla Nadasan’s wonderful book tells the story of Black domestic workers’ exclusion from legal rights to which other workers were entitled and their fight to gain those rights beginning in the 1950s and extending through the establishment of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1974.
Telling this history through the life stories of domestic workers who were leaders in this movement makes this book a particularly compelling and worthwhile read.
Telling the stories of African American domestic workers, this book resurrects a little-known history of domestic worker activism in the 1960s and 1970s, offering new perspectives on race, labor, feminism, and organizing.
In this groundbreaking history of African American domestic-worker organizing, scholar and activist Premilla Nadasen shatters countless myths and misconceptions about an historically misunderstood workforce. Resurrecting a little-known history of domestic-worker activism from the 1950s to the 1970s, Nadasen shows how these women were a far cry from the stereotyped passive and powerless victims; they were innovative labor organizers who tirelessly organized on buses and streets across the United…
Tourists and local residents of St. Augustine will enjoy reading about the secret wonders of their ancient city that are right under their noses. Of course, that includes a few stray corpses and ghosts!
I am a writer of biographical historical fiction, with some of my novels set in medieval and Tudor England, others set in nineteenth-century America. In researching my books, I try to immerse myself in my characters’ world, and that means reading primary sources, such as newspapers, periodicals, letters, diaries, and memoirs. I especially like to read my characters’ own words. Fortunately, the nineteenth-century feminists featured in this list left a lot of words behind them!
Ernestine Rose, a Polish-Jewish immigrant who was one of the first women to speak out for women’s rights in the United States, was well-known in her time but is little remembered today.
This book, which includes most of her published speeches and some of her letters, made her come alive for me. With lines like “It is time to consider whether what is wrong in one sex, can be right in the other” (referring to the double standard of sexual morality for men and women), it still holds relevance for us today. I’ll never get to hear Ernestine Rose speak in person, so this is the next best thing.
Susan B. Anthony hung a picture of Rose on her wall. Elizabeth Cady Stanton publicly eulogized her as indispensable. Unique among the founders of the women’s rights movement because she was a Polish immigrant of Jewish background, celebrated orator Ernestine Rose (1810-1882) won the title "Queen of the Platform" for her brilliant speeches, advocating and linking women's rights, religious freedom, and the abolition of slavery.
