Category: Feminism

Honoring our fore-mothers

Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living ColorDead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color by Chandler O’Leary
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An art collective started making broadsides, to commemorate famous women in history, but also to raise money for various causes. They have been doing this for a number of years, and decided to collect all of these broadsides into a book.

But what good would such a book be, if you knew nothing about the women that inspired these. So each of the braodsides, which were created, have a breakdown of why the symbles used, and text used were done, plus a short bio of each woman. And perhaps you think you know Marie Curie, or Rachel Carson, but after reading this book you will learn more, so much more.

This is a great collection of wonderful women, and wonderful history.

Everyone should ahve this book as a wonderful history lesson, as well as a beautiful piece of artwork.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Twist on a graphic novel

LadycastleLadycastle by Delilah S. Dawson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I was growing up, as a young teen, I discovered Star Trek. Now Star Trek, the original series was very American, fighting, and punching people to “win” the day. Lasted, in college, I discovered Doctor Who. Very different. Brains, not brawn was what worked there.

I bring this up because LadyCastle is the Doctor Who to most graphic novels out there. The basic story is that all but one of the men have been eaten by a dragon, and so all the women have to take over the running of the castle, which they actually have been doing while the men were out on quests, so it isn’t all that much different for them.

The one man that remains is an old knight, and he thinks he is going to take over, and tell the women what to do, but they will have none of it. They are more interested in thinking of solutions than fighting. When they are attacked by flaming salamanders, they learn they don’t have to fight them, they can be friends with them. When they are attacked by werewolves, they just have to trap them long enough to make them change back to men, they don’t have to kill them. It is that sort of thing that makes me love this collection of the first five issues of this comic book, collected together.

In a nodd to Barbara Gordon, the librarian is a red-head in a wheel chair.

There are little gems like that through the book. There is a revision of the song of “I wonder what the king is doing tonight” from Camelot. There is a quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, revised to say “Listen, strang women lyin’ in ponds, distributing swords i a great basis for a system of government.”

Go seek this one out. The pictures are fun. The story is fun. The dialogue is fun. Thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

View all my reviews

Feminists year round.

The Little Book of Feminist SaintsThe Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I first picked this book, I thought, oh another book about famous women. Wonder if I’ll learn anything new.

Answer, yes, yes, I did.

This is more than just short histories of famous women. This is a collection that calls out why these women are famous and should be known about, and what they were known about. Yes, it is odd to make it out to be saint days, but why not?

And these are not light little nothings about famous women. These are all statements of why we should honor and listen to these women from the past and present.

For example, here is the excerpt about Rachel Carson, whose feast day is April 14:

The cancer had metastasized and her body had burns fromt he radiation.
Even the wig she wore when she went out was hot and itchy. And no one-her critis in particular-could k now of her condition, for fear it might be used to call her objectivity into question:
Silent Spring’s unprecedented claim was that petrochemicals were linked to human cancer. That day in San Franscico, she emphasized the urgency of her findings. “We behave,
not like people guided by scientific knowledge, but more like the poverbial bad housekeeper who sweeps dirt under the rug in the hope of getting it out of site.” “The Pollution of Our Environment”
would be her last speech: she died six months later.

And here is part of the excerpt about Nina Simone, the matron saint of soul:

“When I heard about the bombing of the church in which the four little balck girsl were killed in Alabama,” she said, “I shut myself up in a room and that song happened.”
The result was “Missisippi Goddam,” a rallying cry for the movement and one of Simone’s most famous protest songs.
Everybody knows about Missisippi-goddam.

And while I had heard and knew of Nellie Bly, the famous female journalist, I had not considered how important her story on the Insane Asylum was. And although I knew that Frances Perkins was the first female member of a U.S. president’s cabinate, I was not aware of how much work she did to make the Social Security Act be established, or minimum wages, or the forty-hour work week, and the banning of child labour.

This is a great book to get people to read, and realize how many great women are out there that we should know more about.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

View all my reviews