Resources for Learning More about Social Movements and Culture

Chapter 3. The Poetical Is the Political: Feminist Poetry and the Poetics of Women’s Rights

Books and Articles

Anzaldúa, Gloria, and Cherríe Moraga, eds. This Bridge Called My Back. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press, 1981. Pioneering anthology of Chicana, black, Asian, and Native American feminism that includes essays, poetry, and short fiction.

Fisher, Dexter, ed. The Third Woman. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1979. Collection of poetry and fiction by feminist women of color that helped signal the greater visibility of woman of color feminisms in creative work.

Howe, Florence, ed. No More Masks: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Women Poets. New York: Perennial, 1993. Newer edition of the groundbreaking anthology that did much to propel the feminist poetry movement.

Hull, Gloria, Patricia Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. New York: Feminist Press, 1982. Classic anthology that did much to define a black feminist aesthetic and politics.

King, Katie. Feminist Theory in Its Travels. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Masterly book tracing relations between feminist theory and cultural production.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984. Brilliant, influential collection of essays redefining feminism through greater attention to intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender.

Montefiore, Jan. Feminism and Poetry. London: Rivers Oram/Pandora, 2004. Excellent introduction to a variety of issues in the relations between various feminisms and poetries.

Ostriker, Alicia. Stealing the Language. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. Places explicitly feminist poetry into the wider context of twentieth-century American women’s poetry.

Rich, Adrienne. Art of the Possible. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Collects many of Rich’s most influential essays, including several on relations between poetry and feminism.

Smith, Barbara, ed. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. 1983; repr. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Important follow-up volume to All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men.

Whitehead, Kim. The Feminist Poetry Movement. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986. The first full-length study of the connection between the feminist movement and feminist poetry.

Young, Stacey. Changing the Wor(l)d: Discourse, Politics, and the Feminist Movement. New York: Routledge, 1997. Analyzes and criticizes various histories of post–World War II U.S. feminism for their inattention to cultural factors, and offers a case study of the role of culture within the movement, especially poetry.

And books of poems by any of the following feminist poets: Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Lucille Clifton, Jayne Cortez, Toi Derricotte, Judy Grahn, Marilyn Hacker, Joy Harjo, June Jordan, Irena Kelpfisz, Audre Lorde, Janice Mirikitani, Cherríe Moraga, Grace Paley, Marge Piercy, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, and Mitsuye Yamada, among many others.

Websites

Academica: Resources for Chicana and Chicano studies. Includes annotated bibliographies, book reviews, articles, and links to other resource sites inside and outside academia.

African American/Black/Womanist Feminism on the Web. Annotated list of sites made by the University of Wisconsin.

African American Feminism. Includes links on many prominent black womanist/feminist theorists and creative artists.

Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s home page. Rich with syllabi and links on Chicana feminist theory, art, and popular culture.

Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement. Excellent collection, from Duke University, of full text of historically influential essays.

Feminist Chronicles. Detailed, year-by-year history of social, economic, and political developments shaping feminism from 1953 to 1993.

Feminist Theory Website. The most comprehensive site on this topic.

Guerilla Girls. Lively site from the (in)famous feminist artists who have challenge sexist, racist, and homophobic elements in the visual art world.

National Organization for Women. NOW is one of the major organizational legacies of the new wave of feminism action in the 1960s and 1970s.

“The Politics of Black Feminist Thought.” First chapter of Patricia Hill Collin’s groundbreaking book, Black Feminist Thought.

Voices from the Gaps: Women Artists and Writers of Color. Great resource site for poets and novelists of color.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000. Site for Women and Social Movements journal, with many links to articles and resource sites.

Women of Color Web. Comprehensive site for feminisms pertinent to women of color.

Women’s Poetry: Selections. Includes excerpts from such key feminist poets as Shange, Piercy, Lorde, and Rich.

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