General Feminist Non-Fiction:
Backlash: the Undeclared War on American Women – Susan Faludi
The Body Project – Joan Jacobs Brumberg
Catfight! – Leora Tanenbaum
Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists – Courtney Martin and Courtney Sullivan
Englightened Sexism – Susan J. Douglas
Everything You Wanted to Know About Feminist But Were Afraid to Ask – Rachel Fudge (read online here)
The Feminine and The Sacred – Catherine Clemant
The Feminist Promise – Christine Stansell
Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics – Bell Hooks
Feminist Theory from Margin to Center – Bell Hooks
Full Frontal Feminism – Jessica Valenti
He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut – Jessica Valenti
Men and Feminism – Shira Tarrant
The Mermaid and the Minotaur – Dorothy Dinnerstein
No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power – Gloria Feldt
Reading Lolita in Tehran – Azar Nafisi
Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV – Jennifer Pozner
Reasonable Creatures – Katha Pollitt
Reproductive Justice Briefing Book: A Primer on Reproductive Justice and Social Change (read online here)
Sexism in America: Alive, Well, and Ruining Our Future – Barbara J. Berg
Sisterhood Interrupted – Deborah Siegel
Slut! – Leora Tanenbaum
Taking on the Big Boys, or Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business and the Nation – Ellen Bravo
Virginity or Death – Katha Pollitt
Where The Girls Are – Susan J. Douglas
When Everything Changed – Gail Collins
The World Split Open – Ruth Rosen
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape – Jaclyn Friedman

Women of Color:
Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism – Bell Hooks
Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism – Daisy Hernadez
Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black – Bell Hooks
Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice – Jael Silliman
Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought – Beverly Guy-Sheftall

Feminist Parenting:
The Courage to Raise Good Men – Olga Silverstein & Beth Rashbaum
The Curse of the Good Girl – Rachel Simmons
Dads and Daughters – Joe Kelly
Free to Be You and Me – Marlo Thomas and Friends
How To Say It To Girls – Nancy Gruver
Live-Away Dads – William Klatte
Reviving Ophelia – Mary Pipher

Feminist Literature (single book/work):
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
Beloved – Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
Book of Dead Birds – Gail Brandeis
The Book of Salt – Monique Truong
Crescent – Diane Abu-Jabar
The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted and Other Stories – Elizabeth Berg
A Doll’s House – Henrik Ibsen
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf – Ntosake Shange
Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
The Great Gilly Hopkins – Katherine Paterson
Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisneros
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This – Robin Black
In the Time of the Butterflies – Julia Alvarez
Leaving Rock Harbor – Rebecca Chace
Like One of the Family – Alice Childress
Living My Life – Emma Goldman
Love and Rockets – Jaime Hernandez
The Magician’s Assistant – Ann Patchett
A Map of Home – Randa Jarrer
Maud Martha – Gwendolyn Brooks
My Bird – Fariba Vafi
My Year of Meats – Ruth Ozeki
Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozi AdicheReading Lolita in Tehran -
The Red Tent – Anita Diamant
The Rose and the Beast – Francesca Lia Block
The Salt Eaters – Toni Cade Bambara
Scottsboro – Ellen Feldman
Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson
Sula – Toni Morrison
A Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
The Thing Around Your Neck – Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
This Child’s Gonna Live – Sarah Wright
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories – Sandra Cisneros

Feminist Fiction Writers/Playwrites (multiple works):
Margaret Atwood
Jane Austen
Aimee Bender
Octavia Butler
Angela Carter
Edwidge Danticat
Ursula Le Guin
Audre Lorde
Suzan Lori-Parks
Grace Paley
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Wendy Wasserstein
Jeannette Winterson
Virginia Woolf

Feminist Poetry:
Ai
Margaret Atwood
Anne Carson
Sandra Cisneros
Lucille Clifton
Audre Lorde
Grace Paley
Adrienne Rich

New Words, Cambridge, Massachusetts’ feminist bookstore, opened in 1973 as a partnership of four women. In 2000, they wrote a Ford Foundation grant and received funding to examine whether we still need feminist bookstores. After focus groups and media research, they answered, YES. While this answer may have been predictable (I am no less grateful for it), their innovative projects since then have not been. They created Women Action & the Media, or WAM!, closed the bookstore, and generated an exciting roster of interactive and transnational events focused on increasing women’s media literacy and agency. Their new project, WAM! It Yourself, guides activists to create collaborations in various cities, challenging the single-place of the bookstore model.

The article also brings readers up to date on the new approaches being tried by Bitch Magazine, Women and Children First, Feminist Press, and numerous other crucial feminist literary institutions. Read the whole thing here.

“Louisa Alcott’s life was no children’s book: she worked as a servant, a seamstress, and a Civil War nurse before becoming a millionaire celebrity writing “moral pap for the young,” as she called it. Under pen names and anonymously, she also wrote stories with enough drugs, sex and crime to prove the author was no “little” woman.”

Need directions or more info on the event? Go here.

Want more info on the film? Go here.

We’re seeking both short and feature-length films in all genres produced by local female and/or transgender filmmakers and students for a one-day film festival. Films from a variety of subjects are welcome.

If you’d like to submit a piece of work, please send a DVD copy of the film along with a short bio, contact information, and whether or not you are available to attend the festival and participate in a short q&a session to: Women, Action and the Media, 7 Temple St, Cambridge MA 02139. Deadline for submissions is March 5. Check out the WAM! It Yourself site for more information about the weekend.

More than a dozen businesses have partnered with Women, Action & the Media – including Bitch Magzine, Ms. Magazine, and The OpEd Project – and new businesses will be added throughout the year. In addition you’ll receive 10% off your WAM!2011 registration.

Check out the membership page for the full list of businesses and benefits.

It states:  “CBS has a well-documented history of prohibiting advocacy ads it deems controversial, rejecting ads from organizations such as PETA, MoveOn.org, United Church of Christ, and even ones that carry only an “implicit” endorsement for a side in a public debate. Last year, NBC made the prudent decision to not air anti-choice messages during the Super Bowl. CBS executives have indicated in the past that they would not air Super Bowl ads where “substantial elements of the community (are) in opposition to one another.””

Read the full statement here.

The purpose of the survey is twofold:

1) To get a sense of what WAM! has already accomplished, which will help in making our case to funders, and
2) To find out what’s most important to each of you as we move forward, decide on new program priorities, etc.

Which is to say: it’s pretty important that you participate. You’ve got until Jan. 31. Everyone is encouraged to participate – we want to hear from people who are already part of our core community, from folks who’ve never been involved before in any way, and from everyone inbetween!

Just click here to get started.

Thanks!

UPDATE: We’ve extended the deadline until Feb. 5. But don’t wait – help shape the new WAM! today.