Celebrating Women's History Month

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What is the purpose of art in a world on fire? Can it be a genuine form of political resistance? In this exhilarating and deeply inspiring work, Amber Massie-Blomfield considers the work of artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers--such as Gran Fury, Billie Holiday, Alexis Wright, Claude Cahun, Rick Lowe, and Joseph Beuys--alongside collectives, communities, and organizations that have used protest sites as their canvas and spearheaded political movements. From writer Ken Saro Wiwa combatting oil pollution in Nigeria and Susan Sontag directing Waiting for Godot in besieged Sarajevo to the women stitching subversive patchworks in Pinochet's Chile and the artist-activists who blocked the building of a new airport in France, with stories drawn from environmentalism, feminism, anti-fascism, and other movements, Acts of Resistance brings together remarkable acts of creativity that have shifted history on its axis.--

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From the award-winning author of a battle-cry of a book (The Guardian) Rage Becomes Her, comes a fearless and timely manifesto for identifying and rejecting male supremacy in our daily lives. Drawing on her trademark skill, wit, clarity, and sharp insight, Soraya Chemaly walks us through how male supremacy operates, adapting dynamically in order to maintain cruel, exploitative systems of oppression. Male supremacy, she asserts, isn't primarily about men dominating women; but rather a system that first and foremost violently pits men against each other using women and marginalized communities as resources in their competition for power. Under this system, anyone who isn't white, straight, CIS, and adhering to strict rules of traditional masculinity is considered inferior and rendered other-women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, immigrants, religious minorities, the disabled, and Black and Indigenous communities. Being feminized defines vulnerability, exploitability, and disposability. There is no justice for any community until we confront this defining injustice. Most men don't have to benefit from this system or feel powerful for this system to work, indeed only a relatively few do. While women, particularly those with multiple marginalized identities, are hurt the most, men, too, need liberation from this oppressive system. All We Want Is Everything offers both unflinching analysis and genuine hope, informed by the bold and revolutionary potential of feminist imagination. From private relationships to global politics, Chemaly shows how naming and refusing male supremacy is essential to resisting the forces tearing democracy apart. This fresh, timely, clear-eyed, and necessary manifesto is a call to refuse supremacist identities, relationships, and values in order to build more just, healthy, and sustainable worlds for everyone. -- ONIX annotation.

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What if we explored our relationship to consumption with the same depth and feeling we use to tell stories of great loves and losses? In 'American bulk', Emily Mester intertwines cultural critique and personal history to explore how the things we buy, eat, amass, and discard become an intimate part of our lives. She reflects on the joys and anxieties of family Costco trips, how a seasonal stint at Ulta Beauty taught her the insidious art of the sale, and what it means to get Mall Sad. In a nuanced examination of diet culture and fatness, Mester recounts her teenage summer at fat camp and the unexpected liberation she finds there. Finally, she ventures to Storm Lake, Iowa, to reckon with her grandmother's abandoned hoard, excavating the dysfunction that lies at the heart of her family's obsession with stuff. 'American Bulk' introduces readers to a striking new literary talent from the American heartland, one who dares to ask us to regard consumption not with guilt but with grace and empathy.

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Rooted in visions of Indigenous futurisms, Beyond the Glittering World proclaims and celebrates a rising generation of storytellers. The collection brings together twenty-two emerging and established women, two-spirit people, and people of marginalized genders who immerse readers in poems, stories, and worlds that challenge and delight. From a museum heist 177 years in the making, to lyrical explorations of love and loss, to a tale where language itself becomes the force that saves the land, this boundary-breaking, genre-bending anthology illuminates the power of Indigenous voices--

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When a remarkably well-preserved ancient body is discovered in a bog in northwest England, forensic anthropologist Agnes is called to investigate. As she uncovers the story of an Iron Age woman, Agnes navigates conflicts over land use and environmental concerns while confronting questions about her own abilities and identity. The novel alternates between contemporary England and Celtic Europe, exploring themes of history, self-discovery, and the intersection of past and present.

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Award-winning author and powerhouse talent Roxane Gay burst onto the scene with An Untamed State and the New York Times bestselling essay collection Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial). Gay returns with Difficult Women, a collection of stories of rare force and beauty, of hardscrabble lives, passionate loves, and quirky and vexed human connection. The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls' fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America reminiscent of Merritt Tierce, Jamie Quatro, and Miranda July.

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Inspired by the global #MeToo Movement, Drawing Power: Women's Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival is a collection of original, nonfiction comics drawn by more than 60 female cartoonists from around the world. Featuring such noted creators as Emil Ferris, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, MariNaomi, Liana Finck, and Ebony Flowers the anthology's contributors comprise a diverse group of many ages, sexual orientations, and races--and their personal stories convey the wide spectrum of sexual harassment and abuse that is still all too commonplace. With a percentage of profits going to RAINN, Drawing Power is an anthology that stokes the fires of progressive social upheaval, in the fight for a better, safer world.--

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In Eve, Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, Bohannon covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex. Eve is not just a sweeping revision of human history, it's an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Bohannon's findings, including everything from the way C-sections in the industrialized world are rejiggering women's pelvic shape to the surprising similarities between pus and breast milk, will completely change what you think you know about evolution . . . and women. A 21st-century update of Our Bodies, Ourselves, Eve offers a paradigm shift in our thinking about what the female body is and why it matters--

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The organizers of the International Women's Strike cut through the corporate feminist 'Lean In' noise to offer a feminism rooted not just in intersectionality . . . but also in economic justice--for readers of Roxane Gay and Rebecca Solnit (Vogue). Feminism shouldn't start--or stop--with seeing women represented at the top of society. It should start with the 99%. Unaffordable housing, poverty wages, inadequate healthcare, border policing, climate change--these are not what you ordinarily hear feminists talking about. But aren't they the biggest issues for the vast majority of women around the globe? Taking as its inspiration the new wave of feminist militancy that has erupted globally, this manifesto makes a simple but powerful case: feminism shouldn't start--or stop--with the drive to have women represented at the top of their professions. It must focus on those at the bottom, and fight for the world they deserve. And that means targeting capitalism. Feminism must be anticapitalist, eco-socialist and antiracist--From publisher description.

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Using an interdisciplinary approach, Healing Memories analyzes the ways that Puerto Rican women authors use their literary works to challenge historical methodologies that have silenced the historical experiences of Puerto Rican women in the United States. Following Aurora Levins Morales's alternative historical methodology she calls 'curandera history,' this work analyzes the literary work of authors, including Aurora Levins Morales, Nicholasa Mohr, Esmeralda Santiago, and Judith Ortiz Cofer, and the ways they create medicinal histories that not only document the experiences of migrant women but also heal the trauma of their erasure from mainstream national history. Each analytical chapter focuses on the various methods used by each author including using the literary space as an archive, reclaiming memory, and (re)writing cultural history, all through a feminist lens that centers the voices and experiences of Puerto Rican women--

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Lucy imagines college as more than a chance to party with other drama nerds and be roommates with her best friend Callie. College will be her fresh start. For the first time, she'll be able to introduce herself as Lucy to people she hasn't gone to school with since kindergarten. Plus, she happens to live an hour away from one of the most prestigious theater programs in the country. She's always dreamed of going to Central, but when she finally has a chance to visit, it's not what she imagined. While Lucy and Callie are on their campus tour, two kids from their high school make the typical transphobic comments Lucy's gotten used to in her small town. She starts to worry that her dream school might end up being High School 2.0. What if she belongs somewhere else? Somewhere that she can truly have a fresh start?--

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In May of 2022, Columbia University's Dr. Eleanor Johnson watched along with her students as the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. At the same time, her class was studying the 1968 horror film Rosemary's Baby and Johnson had a sudden epiphany: horror cinema engages directly with the combustive politics of women's rights and offer a light through the darkness and an outlet to scream. With a voice as persuasive as it is insightful, Johnson reveals how classics like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, and The Shining expose and critique issues of reproductive control, domestic violence, and patriarchal oppression. Scream with Me weaves these iconic films into the fabric of American feminism, revealing that true horror often lies not in the supernatural, but in the familiar confines of the home, exposing the deep-seated fears and realities of women's lives. While on the one hand a joyful celebration of seminal and beloved horror films, Scream with Me is also an unflinching and timely recognition of the power of this genre to shape and reflect cultural dialogues about gender and power-- Provided by publisher.

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This book aims to fill a large gap in scholarship and knowledge about black librarianship and enable newer librarians to see themselves reflected in the profession's long and rich legacy--

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A dazzlingly ambitious history of the ancient world that places women at the center--from Cleopatra to Boudica, Sappho to Fulvia, and countless other artists, writers, leaders, and creators of history. Around four thousand years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over one thousand years later, Sappho wrote great poems of longing and desire. For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women--whether they were simply sitting at their looms at home or participating in the highest echelons of power--were up to something much more interesting than other histories would lead us to believe. Together, these women helped to make antiquity as we know it. In this monumental work, Dunn reconceives our understanding of the ancient world by emphasizing women's roles within it. 'The Missing Thread' never relegates women to the sidelines and is populated with well-known names such as Cleopatra and Agrippina, as well as the likes of Achaemenid consort Atossa and Olympias, a force in Macedon. Spanning three thousand years, the story moves from Minoan Crete to Mycenaean Greece, from Lesbos to Asia Minor, from the Persian Empire to the royal court of Macedonia, and concludes with Rome and its growing empire. The women of antiquity are undeniably woven throughout the fabric of history, and in The Missing Thread they finally take center stage--

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Omar is the first African refugee, the first Somali-American, and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Only eight years old when war broke out in Somalia, her family fled after armed gunmen attacked their compound and ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya. After a painstaking vetting process, her family achieved refugee status and arrived in Arlington, Virginia. At twelve Ilhan was determined to find her American dream. She became a grassroots organizer, graduated from college and was elected to Congress with a record-breaking turnout by the people of Minnesota. In chronicling her personal journey, Omar's irrepressible spirit, patriotism, friendship and faith are visible on every page. -- adapted from jacket

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On September 16th 2022, in Iran, Mahsa Amini died after being beaten by the morality police for not wearing her veil in accordance with Iranian law. Her killing prompted a wave of protests all across the country, and grew into a woman's movement without precedent. Marjane Satrapi gathered together three specialists -- political scientist Farid Vahid, acclaimed journalist Jean-Pierre Perrin, and historian Abbas Milani -- together with sixteen of the most brilliant comic artists to tell the story of these events and their significance for Iran and for us all.--

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In this brash and unputdownable collection, we meet a sex bot trying to outlast her return policy, a skeptical lesbian grappling with her wife's mysterious pregnancy, and a post-Earth colonist struggling to maintain her faith in humanity as she travels to Planet B. Whether they exist in the grounded realism of a college dance studio or the speculative world of Deep Space, these women push against social norms and family expectations to reclaim their power, understand their mistakes, and find a better future. Hilarious, heartbreaking, and defiantly optimistic, the twelve stories in Women! In! Peril! balance humor and gravitas to explore the complexities of queerness, toxic relationships, parenting and divorce, Asian and Asian American identity, and so much more.--Amazon.