"I'm glad I'm alive."

Doris Louise Bailey, a teen in the Prohibition era, writes this sentiment over and over in her diaries as she struggles with a life-threatening bout of scarlet fever. But it's also an apt summation of how she lived in the years following her brush with death. Reaching for the Moon: More Diaries of a Roaring Twenties Teen (1927-1929) contains Doris's true-life adventures as she flirts with boys, sneaks sips of whiskey and bets on racehorses - breaking rules and hearts along the way. In Portland, Oregon, she's the belle of the ball, enjoying the attention of several handsome gents. In Arizona, she rides a wild strawberry roan, winning races and kissing cowboys. From hospital wards and petting parties to rodeos and boarding school, this older, more complex Doris faces the dawning of the Depression and her own emergence as a young adult with even more humor, passion and love of life than she showed in her earlier diaries. Readers of all ages will relate to her pursuit of true love, freedom, and adventure in her own time and on her own terms.

Presents oral histories and interviews of women who belong to Nation of Islam With vocal public figures such as Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam often appears to be a male-centric religious movement, and over 60 years of scholarship have perpetuated that notion. Yet, women have been pivotal in the NOI's development, playing a major role in creating the public image that made it appealing and captivating. Women of the Nation draws on oral histories and interviews with approximately 100 women across several cities to provide an overview of women's historical contributions and their varied experiences of the NOI, including both its continuing community under Farrakhan and its offshoot into Sunni Islam under Imam W.D. Mohammed. The authors examine how women have interpreted and navigated the NOI's gender ideologies and practices, illuminating the experiences of African-American, Latina, and Native American women within the NOI and their changing roles within this patriarchal movement. The book argues that the Nation of Islam experience for women has been characterized by an expression of Islam sensitive to American cultural messages about race and gender, but also by gender and race ideals in the Islamic tradition. It offers the first exhaustive study of women's experiences in both the NOI and the W.D. Mohammed community.

Hope appears to be a typical young Christian woman at a Christian college, but behind the door of her dorm lies a secret life of past abuse, depression, eating disorders and self-mutilation. When her secrets become known, the past and present collide, and Hope finds her life spiraling out of control. Disowned and homeless, Hope realizes that, while she's known about God her entire life, she has never really understood unconditional love. Determined, and with a new-found faith, Hope returns home, attempting to reconcile with her family, and embarks on a journey of learning to find hope through life's roughest storms. Can Hope find acceptance and love? Can she sort through the lies she's learned, and find the truth of who she is, and who God is? Will the scars of past hurts ever fade, and allow her to have peace? From the mirror in her college dorm, to the mirror in her home today, follow Hope's journey of self-discovery, as she realizes her own strength, and allows her heart to heal.

Indian freedmen and their descendants have garnered much public and scholarly attention, but women's roles have largely been absent from that discussion. Now a scholar who gained an insider's perspective into the Black Seminole community in Texas and Mexico offers a rare and vivid picture of these women and their contributions. In "Dreaming with the Ancestors," Shirley Boteler Mock explores the role that Black Seminole women have played in shaping and perpetuating a culture born of African roots and shaped by southeastern Native American and Mexican influences.

Mock reveals a unique maroon culture, forged from an eclectic mixture of religious beliefs and social practices. At its core is an amalgam of African-derived traditions kept alive by women. The author interweaves documentary research with extensive interviews she conducted with leading Black Seminole women to uncover their remarkable history. She tells how these women nourished their families and held fast to their Afro-Seminole language -- even as they fled slavery, endured relocation, and eventually sought new lives in new lands. Of key importance were the "warrior women" -- keepers of dreams and visions that bring to life age-old African customs.

Featuring more than thirty illustrations and maps, including historic photographs never before published, "Dreaming with the Ancestors" combines scholarly analysis with human interest to open a new window on both African American and American Indian history and culture.

Winner of the 2022 Research Publication Book Award from the Association of Chinese Professors of Social Sciences in the United States. Based on ethnographic research with victims of intimate partner violence since 2014, this book brings to the forefront women's experiences of, negotiations about, and contestations against violence, and men's narratives about the reasons for their violence. Using an innovative methodology - online chat groups, it foregrounds the role of history, structural inequalities, and the cultural system of power hierarchy in situating and constructing intimate partner violence. Centering on men and women's narratives about violence, this book connects intimate partner violence with invisible structural violence - the historical, cultural, political, economic, and legal context that gives rise to and perpetuates violence against women. Through examining the ways in which women's lives are constrained by various forms of violence, hierarchy, and inequality, this book shows that violence against women is a structural issue that is historically produced and politically and culturally engaged.

In Shakespeare in Quebec, Jennifer Drouin analyses representations of nation and gender in Shakespearean adaptations written in Quebec since the Quiet Revolution. Using postcolonial and gender theory, Drouin traces the evolution of discourses of nation and gender in Quebec from the Conquest of New France to the present, and she elaborates a theory of adaptation specific to Shakespeare studies. Drouin's book explains why Quebecois playwrights seem so obsessed with rewriting "le grand Will," what changes they make to the Shakespearean text, and how the differences between Shakespeare and the adaptations engage the nationalist, feminist, and queer concerns of Quebec society. Close readings from ten plays investigate the radical changes to content that allowed Quebecois playwrights to advocate for political change and contribute to the hot debates of the Quiet Revolution, the 1970 October Crisis, the 1980 and 1995 referenda, the rise of feminism, and the emergence of AIDS. Drouin reveals not only how Shakespeare has been adapted in Quebec but also how Quebecois adaptations have evolved in response to changes in the political climate. As a critical analysis in English of rich but largely ignored French plays, Shakespeare in Quebec bridges Canada's "two solitudes."

Branded Women in U.S. Television examines how The Real Housewives of New York City, Martha Stewart, and other female entrepreneurs create branded televised versions of the iconic U.S. housewife. Using their television presence to establish and promote their own product lines, including jewelry, cookware, clothing, and skincare, they become the primary physical representations of these brands. While their businesses are serious and seriously lucrative, especially reality television enables a certain representational flexibility that allows participants to create campy and sometimes tongue-in-cheek personas. Peter Bjelskou explores their innovative branding strategies, specifically the complex relationships between their entrepreneurial endeavors and their physical bodies, attires, tastes, and personal histories. Generally these branded women speak volumes about their contemporaneous political environments, and this book illustrates how they, and many other women in U.S. television history, are indicative of larger societal trends and structures.

For much of the 20th century, books for children encouraged girls to be weak, submissive, and fearful. This book discusses such traits, both blatantly and subtly reinforced, in many of the most popular works of the period. Quoting a wide variety of passages, O'Keefe illustrates the typical behaviour of fictional girls - many of whom were passive and immobile while others were actually invalids. They all engaged in approved girlish activities: deferred to elders, observed the priorities, and, in the end, accepted conventional suitors. Even feisty tomboys, like Jo in Little Women, eventually gave up on their dreams and their independence. The discussion is interlaced with moments from the author's own childhood that suggest how her developing self-interacted with these stories. She and her contemporaries, trying to reconcile their conservative reading with the changing world around them, learned ambivalence rather than confidence. Good Girl Messages also includes a discussion of books read by boys, who were depicted as purposeful, daring, and dominating.

Medicine carries the burden of its own troubling history. Over centuries, women's bodies have been demonised and demeaned until we feared them, felt ashamed of them, were humiliated by them. But as doctors, researchers, campaigners and most of all as patients, women have continuously challenged medical orthodoxy. Medicine's history has always been, and is still being, rewritten by women's resistance, strength and incredible courage. In this ground-breaking history Elinor Cleghorn unpacks the roots of the perpetual misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women's bodies, illness and pain. From the 'wandering womb' of ancient Greece to today's shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation and menopause, Unwell Women is the revolutionary story of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical misogyny. Drawing on Elinor's own experience as an unwell woman, this is a powerful and timely expose of the medical world and woman's place within it.

This thought-provoking work examines the dehumanizing depictions of black males in the movies since 1910, analyzing images that were once imposed on black men and are now appropriated and manipulated by them. Moving through cinematic history decade by decade since 1910, this important volume explores the appropriation, exploitation, and agency of black performers in Hollywood by looking at the black actors, directors, and producers who have shaped the image of African American males in film. To determine how these archetypes differentiate African American males in the public's subconscious, the book asks probing questions-for example, whether these images are a reflection of society's fears or realistic depictions of a pluralistic America. Even as the work acknowledges the controversial history of black representation in film, it also celebrates the success stories of blacks in the industry. It shows how blacks in Hollywood manipulate degrading stereotypes, gain control, advance their careers, and earn money while making social statements or bringing about changes in culture. It discusses how social activist performers-such as Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Spike Lee-reflect political and social movements in their movies, and it reviews the interactions between black actors and their white counterparts to analyze how black males express their heritage, individual identity, and social issues through film. Discusses the social, historical, and literary evolution of African American male roles in the cinema Analyzes the various black images presented each decade from blackface, Sambo, and Mandingo stereotypes to archetypal figures such as God, superheroes, and the president Shows how African American actors, directors, and producers manipulate negative and positive images to advance their careers, profit financially, and make social statements to create change Demonstrates the correlation between political and social movements and their impact on the cultural transformation of African American male images on screen over the past 100 years Includes figures that demonstrate the correlation between political and social movements and their impact on cultural transformation and African American male images on screen

In 1965, fed up with President Lyndon Johnson's refusal to make serious diplomatic efforts to end the Vietnam War, a group of female American peace activists decided to take matters into their own hands by meeting with Vietnamese women to discuss how to end U.S. intervention. While other attempts at women's international cooperation and transnational feminism have led to cultural imperialism or imposition of American ways on others, Jessica M.Frazier reveals an instance when American women crossed geopolitical boundaries to criticize American Cold War culture, not promote it. The American women Frazier studies not only solicited Vietnamese women's opinions and advice on how to end the war but also viewed them as paragons of a new womanhood by which American women could rework their ideas of gender, revolution, and social justice during an era of reinvigorated feminist agitation. Unlike the many histories of the Vietnam War that end with an explanation of why the memory of the war still divides U.S. society, by focusing on linkages across national boundaries, Frazier illuminates a significant moment in history when women formed effective transnational relationships on genuinely cooperative terms.