Filling a long-standing gap both in women's history and in the material history of class culture, this book is a unique and necessary reassessment of the social and cultural scene during the inter-war period in England. By combing over the everyday practices of working-class girls in 1920s and 30s England, including a sharp focus on Bermondsey south-east London and oral testimony from women who grew up in the period, Milcoy demonstrates the persistence and ingenuity with which these teenagers gained access to the commercial leisure culture of the day, from hairstyles and fashionable dress to films, music, and dances. She shows how this access had a startling ripple effect, transforming the way young women rehearsed and contested their identities so that play, rather than work, became the primary mechanism for defining subjectivity and constructing femininity. When the Girls Come Out to Play is a refreshing and nuanced take on the social and cultural history of England between the World Wars.

The book chronicles the life story of a woman pioneer in the electrical trade. It begins with the early childhood experiences that formed her approach to life. The empowerment of feminism was a natural result of her changed life that lead her into teaching, nursing, farming and the formation of her own electrical contracting company. Another aspect in the book is her journey from realism to faith. The dynamic tension between both of these themes and the resolution of them is the substory in this very interesting memoir.

When author Nalini Juthani and her new husband, Viren, left India for the United States in June of 1970, neither they nor their families knew this adventure would continue for a lifetime, that America would be the place where they would fulfill their dreams, raise a family, and find a new home. In "An Uncompromising Activist," Juthani shares the stories from her life as a woman, daughter, wife, immigrant, medical educator, mother, and grandmother.

These essays, with photographs included, provide a glimpse of what it was like for the first twenty-four years of growing up in India as a woman and how the loss of her father at an early age affected her and her future. "An Uncompromising Activist" narrates her experiences of getting her first job in New York, her first car, her first house, and her first American friend. The stories show the courage of a woman who became a trendsetter in a new country.

Inspiring and touching, the essays describe the influence Juthani had on the lives of others while overcoming cultural barriers. It also offers the story of the Ghevaria-Juthani families and provides a history for future generations.

The supernatural has become extraordinarily popular in literature, television, and film. Vampires, zombies, werewolves, witches, and wizard have become staples of entertainment industries, and many of these figures have received extensive critical attention. But one figure has remained in the shadows - the female ghost. Inherently liminal, often literally invisible, the female ghost has nevertheless appeared in all genres. Subversive Spirits: The Female Ghost in British and American Popular Culture brings this figure into the light, exploring her cultural significance in a variety of media from 1926 to 2014. Robin Roberts argues that the female ghost is well worth studying for what she can tell us about feminine subjectivity in cultural contexts. Subversive Spirits examines appearances of the female ghost in heritage sites, theater, Hollywood film, literature, and television in the United States and the United Kingdom. What holds these disparate female ghosts together is their uncanny ability to disrupt, illuminate, and challenge gendered assumptions. As with other supernatural figures, the female ghost changes over time, especially responding to changes in gender roles. Roberts's analysis begins with comedic female ghosts in literature and film and moves into horror by examining the successful play The Woman in Black and the legend of the weeping woman, La Llorona. Roberts then situates the canonical works of Maxine Hong Kingston and Toni Morrison in the tradition of the female ghost to explore how the ghost is used to portray the struggle and pain of women of color. Roberts further analyzes heritage sites that use the female ghost as the friendly and inviting narrator for tourists. The book concludes with a comparison of the British and American versions of the television hit Being Human, where the female ghost expands her influence to become a mother and savior to all humanity.

Diane de Poitiers could have-and should have-been Queen of France. King Henri II was devoted to her throughout his life. His childhood attachment turned into an adolescent attraction, and eventually into a passionate and consuming love. His greatest wish was to make her his wife and to have her rule France at his side. However, theirs was a time when royal marriages were arranged for political gain, and Henri's first duty was to France; he was forced to marry a woman he could never love.

Diane de Poitiers was beautiful, wealthy, and well educated. Nineteen years his senior, she was Henri's ideal woman. Diane and Henri loved each other with a love that was not only romantic and physical, but which also existed on a pure and spiritual level. Henri lavished gifts upon the woman he loved, and Diane guided and inspired him like no other-until they were separated for eternity by a cruel twist of fate.

Over five hundred years later, historians credit Diane with the success of Henri's reign. But who was this woman who won the heart of the King of France? Let her tell you, in her own words...

They are in different countries but share the same hell. Maria is one of 14 women lured from Mexico to Seattle, Washington, with the promise of a job, then held by force in a brothel and required to sexually service men 12 hours a day. Anna is a young mother from the Ukraine who left her husband and children there to take a job as a housecleaner in Italy, where she was put in a barred, guarded house and forced into prostitution. Nadia is an 11-year-old girl in Africa, kidnapped and forced to have sex with a militiaman daily, with a machete ever ready nearby should she refuse. All three women are part of horrific sex slavery that has drawn the attention of officials in countries around the globe. It is not rare; officials say it is increasing, at least partly due to the billions of dollars it brings in for organized crime. The U.S. State Department estimates 800,000 victims, mostly women and children, are trafficked for sex trade across nations each year and millions more are trafficked within countries - including the U.S., Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands. As a "Seattle Times" reporter explained when Maria's case hit the news there, the reality is that sex slaves for the most part are young women and teenaged girls who come from almost every one of the world's poorer countries and end up in almost every country where there is a combination of sexual demand and money. But they are also in undeveloped Africa, in prisons internationally, locked in forced marriages, or sold to men by parents.

In this book, Parrot and Cummings outline the scope and growth of the sex slave market today and explain the history with various elements - including economic, political, cultural, and religious - that make this trade difficult to fully expose, quell, combat, and shut down. We hear from girls and women around the world describing how sexual enslavement has tortured them physically, emotionally, and spiritually, whether they suffer at the hands of prison guards in Turkey, criminals in Washington, or buyers dealing with parents who sell their daughters for the sex slave trade in Greece, Belgium, or France. The authors also describe national and international efforts and legislation passed or in design to stop sex slavery. Successful countries and regions are spotlighted. Then Parrot and Cummings point out actions still needed to stop the sex slavery trade.

Although female communication networks abound in many contexts and have received a good measure of critical scrutiny, no study has addressed their unique significance within narrative culture writ large. Filling this conspicuous gap, Ned Schantz presents a lively exploration of the phenomenon, resituating novelistic culture as central even as he ranges across media and the myriad technologies that attend them.
Charting the emergence of female networks via the most prominent modes of communication--gossip, letters, and phones--Schantz brings his study to life with unconventional interpretations of classic British novels and popular Hollywood films spanning multiple genres and time periods. With incisive readings of Clarissa, Emma, and Evelina, Schantz shows how gossip both draws sympathy and is repressed by dominant male culture in a recurrent pattern of avowal and disavowal. The epistolary novel added a rhythm to communication that was generative of fantasy, which in turn informed "telephonic film," a development depicted in analyses of movies such as Sorry, Wrong Number; Vertigo; Terminator; and You've Got Mail. Schantz highlights the way the telephone works as a structuring device, not merely a prop, one that shapes the plot and suggests provocative formal implications.
While this study traverses an uncanny realm of lost messages and false suitors, telepathy and artificial intelligence, locked rooms and time-traveling stalkers, these occult concerns only confirm the importance of female communication at its most basic level. Illuminating and accessible--Gossip, Letters, Phones reveals female networks as one of narrative's most supple and persistent elements in literature andcinema.

A shockingly TRUE account of a woman living part of her teenage years and young adulthood as a Muslim wife and eventually became part of a 'Harem' inside of one of the most influential underground cults in the United States. Assuming the pen name of Ruby Garnett at the request of her family, the author recounts the circumstances that led her to eventually be enticed by the religious extremist dogma of one of the most charismatic, influential underground cult leaders Black America has seen since since the likes of Father Divine... Garnett has a candidly-intimate conversation with the reader about her state of mind from beginning to end. She wrote "Soul Sacrifice" for the children that came forward to let someone know about the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Nuwabian cult leader Malachi York. Despite the threats, harrassment and lack of support (from some of their own brainwashed parents), these brave survivors of abuse are the reason this story needs to be heard...

Maiden Voyages is a fascinating, unusual study of the centrality, impact and place of sea travel on the lives of women in Eastern Indonesia. It shows how women there travel constantly by sea, to move between islands, to urban centres and even overseas. In doing so, they negotiate and cross and re-make their social boundaries. In contrast to the dominant economic approach to migration, this book uses Eastern Indonesian women's own travel accounts to show how sea voyages recreate their identities. The book is based on research of contemporary rural and semi-rural women in the East Nusa Tenggara province of Indonesia. This book is an original and valuable contribution to the debates on gender, subjectivity, and the local specificity. It aims to contribute to an understanding of women's mobility and spatial relations in Eastern Indonesia. It will be of interest to scholars of geography, migration, gender and microeconomics as well as of appeal to general readers.