Blog Entries tagged 'rebecca walker'
Third Wave: An accurate and succinct rendering.
This is an excellent description of Third Wave; one of the most accurate and succinct I've seen. From the online version of the Encylcopedia Brittanica:
The third wave of feminism emerged in the mid-1990s. It was led by so-called Generation Xers who, born in the 1960s and ’70s in the developed world, came of age in a media-saturated, culturally and economically diverse milieu. Although they benefitted significantly from the legal rights and protections that had been obtained by first- and second-wave feminists, they also critiqued the positions and what they felt was unfinished work of second-wave feminism.
The third wave was made possible by the greater economic and professional power and status achieved by women of the second wave, the massive expansion in opportunities for the dissemination of ideas created by the information revolution of the late 20th century, and the coming of age of Generation X scholars and activists.
Some early adherents of the new approach were literally daughters of the second wave. Third Wave Direct Action Corporation (organized in 1992) became in 1997 the Third Wave Foundation, dedicated to supporting “groups and individuals working towards gender, racial, economic, and social justice”; both were founded by (among others) Rebecca Walker, the daughter of the novelist and second waver Alice Walker. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, authors of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (2000), were both born in 1970 and raised by second wavers who had belonged to organized feminist groups, questioned the sexual division of labour in their households, and raised their daughters to be self-aware, empowered, articulate, high-achieving women.
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The Art of Memoir on Maui
Happy Sunday!
Just a few spots left for the writing retreat.
Come write your heart out...and then go wade in the ocean blue.
One Big Happy Family, Starred Kirkus Review!
So happy to share this starred review of the new book in today's KIRKUS:
A moving, wildly diverse collection showing how radically different familial configurations can work.
Prompted
by her experiences growing up in a family "fragmented and haunted by
unfulfilled longings," Walker (Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a
Lifetime of Ambivalence, 2007, etc.) looks beyond her well-publicized
estrangement from her mother, novelist Alice Walker, to the lives of
other writers "searching for authenticity through experimentation" in
their domestic situations. The essays she assembles smash class, race
and gender stereotypes to collectively demonstrate the fluidity of the
contemporary family unit. Resisting the traditional boundaries of
coupledom, Jenny Block, on the one hand, celebrates the openness of
what she calls a "polyamorous marriage" with her husband and her
girlfriend. On the other hand, Judith Levine and her boyfriend,
together for 17 years, never married for a number of practical and
philosophic reasons. Writes Levine: "A marriage may or may not be a
union of love. It is always a union of property...I'd like the state to
get out of the sexual-licensing business altogether, actually, for
couples gay, straight, bi, or none of the above." Essays by Dan Savage
and Dawn Friedman lay bare the highs and lows of open adoption. Savage
details the difficulty he and his partner have in deciding what to say
to their adoptive son when his homeless, substance-abusing biological
mother drops out of touch for more than a year: "Which two-by-four to
hit him with? That his mother was in all likelihood dead? Or that she
was out there somewhere but didn't care enough to come by or call?"
Friedman, while admitting to occasional twinges of jealousy and guilt
evoked by having her daughter's birth mother integrated into their
lives, trumpets openness for her daughter's sake: "She will never have
to wonder why her first mother chose adoption; she can ask her."
Rebecca Barry closes the anthology with a frank, humorous exploration
of how she and her sister ended up in couples therapy.
Eye-opening and sometimes shocking, as it brilliantly explodes traditional notions about the nuclear family.
(A star is assigned to books of unusual merit, determined by the editors of Kirkus Reviews.)
Pre-order and help put our book on the list its first week out!
Newseek: What Michelle Obama Can Teach Us
Interesting Newsweek piece today, with nice reference to yours truly, referring to my post on theroot.com about the CNN black in America series.
