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Jo Freeman Reviews Mazie's Hirono's Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter's Story
Jo Freeman Reviews: Mazie Hirono's first four years in the Senate were relatively uneventful, as she dug down and learned the job. When Trump became President, Hirono pulled out her sword. His acts, appointments and words represented everything she disliked. There’s a lot on the Kavanaugh hearings where, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she questioned Kavanaugh about his alleged sexual assaults. There’s also a lot on immigration (one of her pet issues) and the “Chinese virus.” Hirono’s political career coincided with the rise of political women from bit players to major leaguers. Her stories illustrate the forward steps as well as the backward ones. This book is a tribute to success, both hers and that of other women. more »
Jill Norgren Reviews Women’s Liberation!: Feminist Writings That Inspired a Revolution & Still Can
Jill Norgren Reviews: "In their newly published compendium, Women’s Liberation! Feminist Writings That Inspired a Revolution & Still Can editors Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore have selected ninety important texts written from 1963 through 1991 that educate us on the range of feminist thinking in the 20th century – what it meant to be a woman in the United States and the changes that these authors wanted, often demanded. And like the Seneca Falls Declaration, once read these writings provide a similar opportunity to explore which feminist goals have been achieved and where the movement is still reaching." more »
New York's Jewish Museum: Photography and the American Magazine; When Avant-garde Techniques in Photography and Design Reached the United States via European Emigrés
Despite the looming shadow in the 1930s of World War II, the magazine and book-publishing world thrived in New York City. The section “Art as Design, Design as Art” explores the ways the city’s budding graphic-design culture gave rise to a diversity of photography — as it absorbed literary, painterly, and cinematic elements — and challenged the conventional distinction between the fine and the applied arts. “Fashion as Desire” highlights the fusion of art and fashion during the 1940s, when American modernism in magazine publishing established itself during the boom economy of the war years. Photographers such as Erwin Blumenfeld, or Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, both influenced by Brodovitch, as well as by Edward Steichen, merged art and fashion in their work, and altered the genre of portraiture. more »
Diane Girard Writes: Rereading Books for Pleasure and Solace
Diane Girard Writes: I return to some of my favorite books these days for fun and for comfort. And, as the pandemic has shown me, reading printed books gives me a break from peering at words and images online. For contrast and with no obvious morals tucked into the story, I sometimes reread H.E. Bates’, A Little of What You Fancy. The Larkins are, as the cover of my 1979 edition notes, ‘thirsty, hungry, lusty, happy, irrepressible — immortal’. Bates wrote several books about the Larkins and there was a TV series called ‘The Darling Buds of May.’ The stories are set in the English countryside and Pop Larkin’s motto is the more the merrier, which also applies to his amorous activities. If income tax evasion, opposition to the tunnel under the English Channel, a lot of tippling, and women expressing healthy sexual appetites distress you, I suggest you don’t read the book. more »