Book lists from an indie reference librarian wannabe, June 2012

List of books I brought to “Show & Tell” at Queer/Feminist Theory Reading Group at Portland Q Center, June 24th, 2012.

• Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa
• Friends from the Other Side / Amigos del otro lado by Gloria Anzaldúa (children’s book)
• Prietita and the Ghost Woman / Prietita y la llorona by Gloria Anzaldúa (children’s book)
• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
• This Bridge Called My Back ed. by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa
• On Lies, Secrets, and Silence by Adrienne Rich
• Women as Womb: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle Over Women’s Freedom by Janice Raymond
• This is What Lesbian Looks Like ed. by Kris Kleindienst
• Prostitution, Power and Freedom by Julia O’Connell Davidson
• At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex, & Equality by Drucilla Cornell
• Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation by Eli Clare
• The Politics of Disablement by Michael Oliver
• How Nonviolence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos
• Violence by Slavoj Žižek

Librarian wannabe comments: My friends know that Gloria Anzaldúa is my hero and greatest influence, but not many people know that she wrote children’s books for border kids. I wanted to share them with the group. In this theory reading group, we’ve read articles that challenge us, things that we might not agree with but it would be helpful for us to know what they are. I often recommend Janice Raymond’s “Women as Womb” in that way: by understanding her larger critique of medical technologies and individual choices, one could more fully understand her vitriolic (and insincere) work on transsexual women (The Trans-sexual Empire: Making of the She-Male) that she is most notorious for. I also picked some books related to critical disability theory and others that deals with the concept of violence/nonviolence critically because they could be good themes for our future meetings.

List of books I brought to June Portland Feminist Meet-up discussion on “waves” of feminism at In Other Words community center, June 3rd, 2012.

• Letters of Intent: Women Cross the Generations to Talk About Family, Work, Sex, Love and the Future of Feminism ed. by Anna Bondoc & Meg Daly
• To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism ed. by Rebecca Walker
• Listen Up!: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation ed. by Barbara Findlen
• Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism ed. by
• Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century ed. by Rory Dicker & Alison Piepmeier
• Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future by Jennifer Baumgardner & Amy Richards
• Daughters of Feminists: Young Women with Feminist Mothers Talk about Their Lives by Rose Glickman
• We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists ed. by Melody Berger
• Feminist Fatale: Voices from Twentysomething Generation Explore Future Women’s Movement by Paula Kamen
• various issues of HUES magazine
• the first issue of Alice magazine
• early issues of Bitch and BUST magazines
• Rebecca Walker’s article, “Becoming the Third Wave” from January/February 1992 issue of Ms. magazine

Librarian wannabe comments: To Be Real, Listen Up!, and Third Wave Agenda were all important “third wave” anthologies in the mid-1990s, but they framed “third wave” differently. Listen Up! was edited by a second wave feminist to “give voice to” younger women, which made it the most palatable (to second wave feminists) representation of the “third wave” voices, whereas Third Wave Agenda traces the roots of “third wave” in the tradition of radical women of color feminism that have resisted second wave orthodoxy since the 1970s. Letters of Intent is the most interesting book ever published on the intergenerational conflict between feminists. Daughters of Feminists and Feminist Fatale are usually not associated with the third wave because they came earlier than that phrase but points to what was to come. HUES magazine, co-edited by Adios, Barbie/Body Outlaws editor Ophira Edut, was for me the single most important feminist magazine in the mid-1990s that represented to me what third wave was all about. Reading earlier issues of Bitch and BUST is interesting because Bitch was pretty much what it is today pretty since early on, while earlier issues of BUST was actually more like what Bitch: clearly and identifiably feminist, rather than simply giving feminism a lip service to sell products.