Here are 100 books that Eloquent Rage fans have personally recommended if you like
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We talk a lot about the big public events that expanded the #MeToo movement so astronomically, like the election to the US presidency of a man who bragged about assaulting women, and the allegations made against Harvey Weinstein. But I think most American women have other, more personal beefs that originate from their being a woman. I, for one, was shocked at how unnecessarily difficult it was to be a new mother in the US. Other places support this vulnerable group much more than we do here, and living that disparity angered me—like, for example, when my husband exhausted what little parental leave he had available before our twins were even released from the NICU.
This 2018 release had particularly good timing: By the end of the previous year, the #MeToo movement had exploded into a global phenomenon and women the world over were pissed. I was one of them, and I was doing a lot of soul-searching about the growing rage inside of me.
Good and Mad helped me understand the broader context of what I was feeling: why and how women have been taught that anger is unbecoming and unacceptable, how society holds us to that standard, and how some brave women—like Mamie Till—have turned this reality into an opportunity to create change.
Journalist Rebecca Traister's New York Times bestselling exploration of the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement is "a hopeful, maddening compendium of righteous feminine anger, and the good it can do when wielded efficiently-and collectively" (Vanity Fair).
Long before Pantsuit Nation, before the Women's March, and before the #MeToo movement, women's anger was not only politically catalytic-but politically problematic. The story of female fury and its cultural significance demonstrates its crucial role in women's slow rise to political power in America, as well as the ways that anger is received when it…
We talk a lot about the big public events that expanded the #MeToo movement so astronomically, like the election to the US presidency of a man who bragged about assaulting women, and the allegations made against Harvey Weinstein. But I think most American women have other, more personal beefs that originate from their being a woman. I, for one, was shocked at how unnecessarily difficult it was to be a new mother in the US. Other places support this vulnerable group much more than we do here, and living that disparity angered me—like, for example, when my husband exhausted what little parental leave he had available before our twins were even released from the NICU.
Women have been told, likely from time immemorial, to keep their anger under wraps or, even better, to not feel angry in the first place.
But what if our anger isn’t the unhealthy, unhelpful, ugly thing we’ve been told that it is? What if, as Chemaly suggests, our anger is the very thing we require if we want to pursue and achieve equality and justice, for women and for society more broadly?
Which is a lot like a question I ask in my book: What if anger is actually women’s superpower?
A conversation-shifting book urging 21st-century women to understand their anger, embrace its power, and use it as a tool for positive change
'How many women cry when angry because we've held it in for so long? How many discover that anger turned inward is depression? Soraya Chemaly's Rage Becomes Her will be good for women. After all, women have a lot to be angry about.' GLORIA STEINEM
Women are angry, and it isn't hard to figure out why. We are underpaid, overworked, thwarted and diminished. The assertive among us are labelled bitches, while the expressive among us are considered shrill.…
We talk a lot about the big public events that expanded the #MeToo movement so astronomically, like the election to the US presidency of a man who bragged about assaulting women, and the allegations made against Harvey Weinstein. But I think most American women have other, more personal beefs that originate from their being a woman. I, for one, was shocked at how unnecessarily difficult it was to be a new mother in the US. Other places support this vulnerable group much more than we do here, and living that disparity angered me—like, for example, when my husband exhausted what little parental leave he had available before our twins were even released from the NICU.
I love Eltahawy’s approach to solving the problems of the patriarchy: She wants to teach and encourage women and girls to do all the things we’re taught not to do, specifically a series of seven dubitable “sins” that have been instilled in females for centuries.
She begins by promoting the expression of anger, which like the rest of the traits on her list is something that women have been told is harmful, unfeminine, and wrong. But Eltahawy is—admirably, inspiringly—driven to flip it on its head, thereby turning it into an asset that can be employed to improve conditions for all of us.
A bold and uncompromising feminist manifesto that shows women and girls how to defy, disrupt, and destroy the patriarchy by embracing the qualities they’ve been trained to avoid.
Seizing upon the energy of the #MeToo movement, feminist activist Mona Eltahawy advocates a muscular, out-loud approach to teaching women and girls to harness their power through what she calls the “seven necessary sins” that women and girls are not supposed to commit: to be angry, ambitious, profane, violent, attention-seeking, lustful, and powerful. All the necessary “sins” that women and girls require to erupt.
We talk a lot about the big public events that expanded the #MeToo movement so astronomically, like the election to the US presidency of a man who bragged about assaulting women, and the allegations made against Harvey Weinstein. But I think most American women have other, more personal beefs that originate from their being a woman. I, for one, was shocked at how unnecessarily difficult it was to be a new mother in the US. Other places support this vulnerable group much more than we do here, and living that disparity angered me—like, for example, when my husband exhausted what little parental leave he had available before our twins were even released from the NICU.
In my book, the protagonist Harriet gets more and more pissed about a whole range of things, one being the fact that she’s got to do so much more than her husband Theo when it comes to the work of running their household.
In All the Rage, Darcy Lockman shows just how pervasive this reality is, and how deeply inconsistent it is with the worldviews of the women and men who find themselves stuck it. This mom-heavy imbalance of household labor is a breaking of a promise, in a way—one that so many of us went into our marriage with, and that remains an ongoing source of tension not only in my book but in homes across the US.
Why do men do so little at home? Why do women do so much? Why don't our egalitarian values match our lived experiences?
Journalist-turned-psychologist Darcy Lockman offers a clear-eyed look at the most pernicious problem facing modern parents-how progressive relationships become traditional ones when children are introduced into the household.
In an era of seemingly unprecedented feminist activism, enlightenment, and change, data shows that one area of gender inequality stubbornly persists: the disproportionate amount of parental work that falls to women, no matter their background, class, or professional status. All the Rage investigates the cause of this pervasive inequity to…
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 have loved history since I was a girl, visiting my grandparents in Virginia and reading American Girl books. I began to focus on women’s history when I learned in college just how much the women’s movement of the generation before mine had made my life possible. So much changed for American women in the ten years before I was born, and I wanted to know how that happened and how it fit into the broader political changes. That connection, between women making change and the bigger political scene, remains the core of my research. I have a B.A. in history and English from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia.
Springer’s book was one of the first to outline the multiple Black women’s feminist organizations that developed in the late 1960s and 1970s. Situating now fairly well-known groups like the Combahee River Collective alongside lesser-known organizations like the Third World Women’s Alliance, Springer’s brief book is a fabulous primer to Black women’s feminism in an era when many people still think such a thing didn’t exist.
The first in-depth analysis of the black feminist movement, Living for the Revolution fills in a crucial but overlooked chapter in African American, women's, and social movement history. Through original oral history interviews with key activists and analysis of previously unexamined organizational records, Kimberly Springer traces the emergence, life, and decline of several black feminist organizations: the Third World Women's Alliance, Black Women Organized for Action, the National Black Feminist Organization, the National Alliance of Black Feminists, and the Combahee River Collective. The first of these to form was founded in 1968; all five were defunct by 1980. Springer demonstrates…
I am passionate about the subject of suicide because I have lived with suicidal thinking all of my life, have made multiple suicide attempts, have lost loved ones to suicide, and have so many new friends who are survivors of suicide attempts. I am a philosophy professor and writer who spends a lot of his time thinking about the meaning of life, and reading other philosophers, writers, and thinkers who have taught us about the meaning of life. I think the Buddha is especially smart and helpful on this question, as are the existentialist philosophers.
The moral outrage of Audre Lorde is always directed at making the world a better place.
That is her great genius: she can see everything that is wrong, and knows how to awaken in each of us the desire to make things better. She also understands that every revolution begins with a single human being deciding that she, he or they can be a better person and help to make a better world.
Her spirituality is like the ocean: magnificent, scary, greater than us. She’s also perhaps the most important poet of the twentieth century and for the twenty-first century, so she’s just indispensable reading. Absolutely required.
If you haven’t already spent time with her work, you should read “Power” on the Poetry Foundation website today, before you look at any of the books I list above. It will take three minutes and may well change your view of poetry…
"These are poems which blaze and pulse on the page."-Adrienne Rich "The first declaration of a black, lesbian feminist identity took place in these poems, and set the terms-beautifully, forcefully-for contemporary multicultural and pluralist debate."-Publishers Weekly "This is an amazing collection of poetry by . . . one of our best contemporary poets. . . . Her poems are powerful, often political, always lyrical and profoundly moving."-Chuckanut Reader Magazine "What a deep pleasure to encounter Audre Lorde's most potent genius . . . you will welcome the sheer accessibility and the force and beauty of this volume."-Out Magazine
I write about race and technology, and specifically the histories of Black folks as they influence online activities, from memes and community-building to care networks and activist efforts. I use theory, research, and most importantly lived experiences to tell the story of Black digital practices. The books I choose here represent how diverse my thinking is when it comes to this topic: from fiction to non-fiction, these works are as fluid yet meaningful as I think identity is, on and offline.
As a young Black and West Indian academic and, importantly, an avid early Twitter user, I finally saw myself in the world of nonfiction works about technology when I first read this book.
Before I even got through the introduction, I dog-eared every other page and ran out of room in the margins for my notes (most of which included an embarrassing number of exclamation points on my part). Digital Black Feminism’s wit and historical heft weaves through multi-generational negotiations with Black feminism and beautifully writes Black women’s contributions back into existence.
Winner, Diamond Anniversary Book Award, awarded by the National Communication Association
Winner, 2022 Nancy Baym Book Award, given by the Association of Internet Researchers
Traces the longstanding relationship between technology and Black feminist thought
Black women are at the forefront of some of this century's most important discussions about technology: trolling, online harassment, algorithmic bias, and influencer culture. But, Catherine Knight Steele argues that Black women's relationship to technology began long before the advent of Twitter or Instagram. To truly "listen to Black women," Steele points to the history of Black feminist technoculture in the United States and its ability…
My current research centers on the organizing strategies of 20th and 21st-century Black activists in the U.S. and western Europe and on the U.S. as a reference culture for European anti-racism movements, particularly in my native country, the Netherlands. I believe the recent Black Lives Matter protests in Europe are an example of the effectiveness of diasporic politics and the next phase in a much longer history of homegrown activism. Foregrounding ‘Black Europe’ as an independent field of study accordingly helps to create much needed critical knowledge about Black Europeans’ history, agency, and needs as we navigate further into the volatile twenty-first century, while simultaneously challenging the perimeters of diasporic meaning and the centrality of ‘Black America’ within.
While the Black freedom struggle is often approached through the activism of Black males, the history of the struggle in Europe—like in the United States and elsewhere in the world—owes much to Black women, Black female scholar-activists, and Black feminist and Queer networks. Yet they remain woefully underrepresented in scholarship and collective memory.
I, therefore, chose this edited volume, because it uniquely presents the stories, intersectional experiences, and visions of contemporary Black female activists, artists, and scholars from across the continent. This not only uncovers the significant intellectual, political, social, and cultural contributions of Black women, but also expands definitions of (political) activism to include, among others, motherhood and the home.
This book brings together activists, artists and scholars of colour to show how Black feminism and Afrofeminism are being practiced in Europe today, exploring their differing social positions in various countries, and how they organise and mobilise to imagine a Black feminist Europe.
Deeply aware that they are constructed as 'Others' living in a racialised and hierarchical continent, the contibutors explore gender, class, sexuality and legal status to show that they are both invisible - presumed to be absent from and irrelevant to European societies - and hyper-visible - assumed to be passive and sexualised, angry and irrational.
I have been a dance teacher all of my adult life, and a poetry and word-lover even longer. I love the economy of language, immediacy, and the promise of surprise in poetry.
In middle age, I returned to writing just as my body began its slow rebellion, with the added shifts of remarriage and step-parenting a severely disabled son. I went back to grad school and wrote my first book, drawing on the experience of confronting change, just as these recommended poets have done.
Each of these poets has a very different story, but what they have in common outweighs their differences, and because of that we are able to see ourselves in their writing.
This collection teaches me as well, by taking me into the experience of growing up in the Black, rural Appalachian South.
The poems are part memoir, as in writing about the experience of her mother visiting her where she lived with her grandparents, “(We) held hands like we thought/mothers & daughters should/but neither of us knew for sure.”
They are also part love song to home-cooking, “Every morning of my childhood, my grandmother, who stood a little/ under five feet tall, donned an apron and cooked breakfast. Slow. Precise./ Deliberate. She equated food with love, and she cooked with both a fury/ and a quiet joy.”
And finally, they are part Black feminist manifesto, “My black body is a boulder, a stop sign. Sometimes i think my body is/ graceful, a song of freedom. Sometimes i think it is something that every/ eye casts away. I must concentrate if i…
"In Perfect Black, Crystal Wilkinson walks us back down the road she first walked as a girl, wanders us through the trees that lined the road where she grew up, where her sensibilities as a woman and a writer were first laid bare. In one of the first poems that opens the collection she is a woman looking back on her life, on the soil and mountains that first stamped the particular sound of her voice and she is deeply inquisitive about how it all fell into place: "The map of me can't be all hills& mountains…
