Confronting entrenched social inequality and inadequate access to resources, women across Africa are working with determination and imagination to improve their material conditions and to blaze a clear path for their daughters and granddaughters. The thirty-one African-born contributors to this book move beyond the linked dichotomies of victim/oppressor and victim/heroine to present their experiences of resistance in full complexity: they are at the forward edge of the tide of women's empowerment that, at the start of the twenty-first century, is moving across the African continent. Contributions illuminate the effect on women of women's poverty and lack of access to education, health care, credit, and political power; HIV/AIDS; female genital cutting; Sharia law; armed conflict and rape as a weapon of war; displacement and exile; women's oppressions within heterosexual relationships; resistant sexualities; intergenerational conflict and tensions between tradition and modernity.

"Deviant and Useful Citizens" explores the conditions of women and perceptions of the female body in the eighteenth century throughout the Viceroyalty of Peru, which until 1776 comprised modern-day Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Mariselle Melendez introduces the reader to a female rebel, Micaela Bastidas, whose brutal punishment became a particularly harsh example of state response to women who challenged the system. She explores the cultural representation of women depicted as economically productive and vital to the health of the culture at large. The role of women in religious orders provides still another window into the vital need to sustain the image of women as loyal and devout -- and to deal with women who refused to comply.

The book focuses on the different ways male authorities, as well as female subjects, conceived the female body as deeply connected to notions of what constituted a useful or deviant citizen within the Viceroyalty. Using eighteenth-century legal documents, illustrated chronicles, religious texts, and newspapers, Mariselle Melendez explores in depth the representation of the female body in periods of political, economic, and religious crisis to determine how it was conceived within certain contexts.

"Deviant and Useful Citizens" presents a highly complex society that relied on representations of utility and productivity to understand the female body, as it reveals the surprisingly large stake that colonial authorities had in defining the status of women during a crucial time in South American history.

In Colonial America, the lives of white immigrant, black slave, and American Indian women intersected. Economic, religious, social, and political forces all combined to induce and promote European colonization and the growth of slavery and the slave trade during this period. This volume provides the essential overview of American women's lives in the seventeenth century, as the dominant European settlers established their patriarchy. Women were essential to the existence of a new patriarchal society, most importantly because they were necessary for its reproduction. In addition to their roles as wives and mothers, Colonial women took care of the house and household by cooking, preserving food, sewing, spinning, tending gardens, taking care of sick or injured members of the household, and many other tasks. Students and general readers will learn about women's roles in the family, women and the law, women and immigration, women's work, women and religion, women and war, and women and education, literature, and recreation. The narrative chapters in this volume focus on women, particularly white women, within the eastern region of the current United States, the site of the first colonies. Chapter 1 discusses women's roles within the family and household and how women's experiences in the various colonies differed. Chapter 2 considers women and the law and roles in courts and as victims of crime. Chapter 3 looks at women and immigration--those who came with families or as servants or slaves. Women's work is the subject of Chapter 4. The focus is work within the home, preparing food, sewing, taking care of children, and making household goods, or as businesswomen or midwives. Women andreligion are discussed in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 examines women's role in war. Women's education is one focus of Chapter 7. Few Colonial women could read but most women did receive an education in the arts of housewifery. Chapter 7 also looks at women's contributions to literature and their leisure time. Few women were free to pursue literary endeavors, but many expressed their creativity through handiwork. A chronology, selected bibliography, and historical illustrations accompany the text.

On March 14, 2012, Kim Rideout heard the words that one in every nine women will hear in her lifetime: she had breast cancer. Taken To My Knees is a candid memoir written from the daily journals she kept as she underwent surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments to deal with the IDC Stage IIB breast cancer she had been diagnosed with. Rideout recounts how scared she was in those early days with a brutal honesty. She takes her audience along with her as she makes daily attempts to reconcile her "new normal" with the gut-wrenching fear that a cancer diagnosis brings. In sharing her story, Rideout demonstrates how important it is to be surrounded with love, family, and friendship and how a positive attitude can be just as important in the healing process as any medication. This poignant book will provide a firsthand insight to family, friends, and caregivers of any breast cancer patient as well as give hope and strength to fellow warrior survivors.

Russian women of the nineteenth century are often thought of in their literary incarnations as the heroines of novels such as Anna Karenina and War and Peace. But their real-life counterparts are now becoming better understood as active contributors to Russia's varied cultural landscape. This collection of essays examines the lives of women across Russia - from wealthy noblewomen in St Petersburg to desperately poor peasants in Siberia - discussing their interaction with the Church and the law, and their rich contribution to music, art, literature and theatre. It shows how women struggled for greater autonomy and, both individually and collectively, developed a dynamic but often overlooked presence in Russia's culture and society during the long nineteenth century (1800-1917). Women in Nineteenth-Century Russia provides invaluable reading for anyone interested in Russian history, nineteenth-century culture and gender studies.

This collection of essays examines the relationship of women of color's armed resistance to their aesthetic struggles, tension and transformation in feminist practice, and the impact of the gender-based design of state-sponsored terror, human rights debates, and the economic development for women of color. Athey brings together new scholarship testing the possibility of transnational feminist action and theorizing historical and contemporary aspects of resistance for women of color. Included are essays by and about women of Africa, India, and the Americas, including women of African American, Chicana, Puerto Rican, and Yaqui origins. Essays examine regional and historical contexts to demonstrate the central role of women of color in armed resistance struggle and in sustaining cultures of resistance, despite the fact that the agency, speech, and writing of women of color have received the least attention in studies of resistance. Contributors challenge thinking across many disciplines: sociology, literary and cultural studies, history, political science, and education. Resistance struggles examined include women in armed struggle for national self-determination, political and economic struggle for human rights and against state-sponsored repression; and women sustaining political and cultural resistance against specific religious, feminist, or nationalist doctrines, and against the repression of multiple forms of political, sexual, intellectual, and artistic expression.

Few would argue that war has been a defining experience for people born in Europe and North America in the twentieth century. The degree to which war has been instrumental in improving women's social situation remains a vexed question, however. Conventional wisdom repeats the cliche that the Great War liberated women by allowing them to demonstrate their fitness for equality by recruiting them to work in men's jobs previously considered beyond their capabilities. In fact, their patriotic enthusiasm was used against them after the war, when they were seen to have profited from the deaths of the men they replaced. As Europe prepared for the Second World War, this resentment of women's perceived war-profiteering helped to smooth their transition from sacred, protected icon to target.

In "Beyond The Home Front," Yvonne M. Klein provides selections from autobiographical writing by women in the two World Wars that illustrate the richness and complexity of women's war-time lives. Although women generally did not take up arms, this collection reminds us that their war stories are neither peripheral nor secondary to the battle stories of men. This volume helps to reclaim women's experience of war as part of the universal experience of the twentieth century, different from that of men, but not as different as might be thought.

Bringing together more than forty selections from the two wars, "Beyond the Home Front" includes the work, much of it long out of print, of a wide array of voices including Sylvia Pankhurst, Vera Brittain, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Lee Settle, Mary Borden, Gertrude Stein, and Joy Kogawa. The volume, which will appeal to the general reader as well as to the student of history and literature, includes contextual introductions as well as brief biographies of each of the writers.

In the quiet Balti villages, high in the Karakoram Mountains of North Pakistan, life goes on. The women live peacefully as they prepare for the seasonal harvest and take in views of the breathtaking high mountains and pastures. Deeply rooted female relationships bloom and mature, as do their sustainable, ecologically friendly lifestyles. The Balti women have been living in the mountains for centuries, so why does there seem to be change in the air? There's the war on terror, going on just outside their village. There are the growing influences and stresses of modernization. How will this society cope with such changes, and is there any hope for its survival? Social geographer Farida Azhar-Hewitt has spent months living in the Karakoram Mountains with the Balti women; now she presents her detailed study and firsthand experience in "The Other Side of Silence: The Lives of Women in the Karakoram Mountains. " Azhar-Hewitt takes a careful look at this mountain society-gaining recent media attention for its close proximity to the war on terror. Through the violence and fear, the Balti people have remained peaceful; the women have remained fruitful. Living as an insider, Azhar-Hewitt takes us behind the veil of these rural Muslim women, revealing a world of seclusion, community, and joy, despite all odds.

Animal rights is one of the fastest growing social movements today. Women greatly outnumber men as activists, yet surprisingly, little has been written about the importance and impact of gender on the movement. Women and the Animal Rights Movement combats stereotypes of women activists as mere sentimentalists by exploring the political and moral character of their advocacy on behalf of animals. Emily Gaarder analyzes the politics of gender in the movement, incorporating in-depth interviews with women and participant observation of animal rights organizations, conferences, and protests to describe struggles over divisions of labor and leadership. Controversies over PETA advertising campaigns that rely on women's sexuality to ""sell"" animal rights illustrate how female crusaders are asked to prioritize the cause of animals above all else. Gaarder underscores the importance of a paradigm shift in the animal liberation movement, one that seeks a more integrated vision of animal rights that connects universally to other issues--gender, race, economics, and the environment--highlighting that many women activists recognize and are motivated by the connection between the oppression of animals and other social injustices.

In many parts of Appalachia, family ties run deep, constituting an important part of an individual's sense of self. In some cases, when Appalachian learners seek new forms of knowledge, those family ties can be challenged by the accusation that they have gotten above their raisings, a charge that can have a lasting impact on family and community acceptance. Those who advocate literacy sometimes ignore an important fact -- although empowering, newly acquired literacies can create identity conflicts for learners, especially Appalachian women. In "Negotiating a Perilous Empowerment," Erica Abrams Locklear explores these literacy-initiated conflicts, analyzing how authors from the region portray them in their fiction and creative nonfiction. Abrams Locklear blends literacy studies with literary criticism to analyze the central female characters in the works of Harriette Simpson Arnow, Linda Scott DeRosier, Denise Giardina, and Lee Smith. She shows how these authors deftly overturn stereotypes of an illiterate Appalachia by creating highly literate characters, women who not only cherish the power of words but also push the boundaries of what literacy means. "Negotiating a Perilous Empowerment" includes in-depth interviews with Linda Scott DeRosier and Lee Smith, making this an insightful study of an important literary genre.

Have you ever dreamed of running away to a tropical island? In 1996 Jane Grossman left behind a comfortable life in Chicago and set off on with her husband on their 34-foot sailboat, Iniki, to sail South America. What began as a chance to simplify their lifestyle and to see the islands gradually evolved to a sojourn of self-discovery, renewal and triumph over breast cancer. "Windshifts" is a true sailing adventure that chronicles the wonder and excitement, the difficulties and fears from a woman's perspective. Vivid details and delightful descriptions of exotic lands, cultural interactions and inevitable conflicts of a husband and wife confined to close quarters involve the reader with all of their senses. More importantly, it is a reflection on dealing with the unexpected challenges that confront us all throughout our lives.

British women who resisted their own enfranchisement were ridiculed by the suffragists and have since been neglected by historians. Yet these women, together with the millions whose indifference reinforced the opposition case, claimed to form a majority of the female public on the eve of the First World War. By 1914 the organized "antis" rivaled the suffragists in numbers, though not in terms of publicity-seeking activism. The National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage was dominated by the self-consciously masculine leadership of Lord Cromer and Lord Curzon, but also heavily dependent upon an impressive cadre of women leaders and a mostly female membership.
Women Against the Vote looks at three overlapping groups of women: maternal reformers, women writers and imperialist ladies. These women are then followed into action as campaigners in their own right, as well as supporters of anti-suffrage men. Collaboration between the sexes was not always straightforward, even within a movement dedicated to separate and complementary gender roles. As the anti-suffrage women pursued their own varied social and political agendas, they demonstrated their affinity with the mainstream social conservatism of the British women's movement. The rediscovered history of female anti-suffragism provides new perspectives on the campaigns both for and against the vote. It also makes an important contribution to the wider history of women's social and political activism in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Britain.

In this book, Sister Angelita tells her story of those 15 years in Nigeria. Sister Angelita did all this missionary activity while constantly begging for prayers and financial support to carry on her work. Her love of God shines through in everything that Sister Angelita accomplished. During her worst tribulations, and there were many, her constant prayer was "God is Good." Indeed, each of the stories Angelita relates in her little book radiates her dependence on Divine Providence. The chapters show how God worked through her to ease the afflictions of body, soul, and spirit of the people she loved so much. Because of her, their lives became a little more bearable. This little dynamo of a person never takes "no" for an answer. When the going gets tough, she works all the harder to accomplish her objectives. I know of no one with a more determined spirit. Sister Angelita and I have known each other for 45 years and this is my testimony to a woman of God who radiates the words of Jesus: "Live in Me as I do in you ... those who live in Me and I in them will bear much fruit." John 14:4-5 Sarah E. Wellinger Longtime Friend

The fact that domestic violence is a serious and ongoing social problem has been well recognized since the women's movement made the hitherto private experience of violence against women in the home into a political issue in the 1960s and 1970s. In Australia, a major national prevalence study of violence against women conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1996 found that 23% of women who had ever been married or in a de facto relationship-1.1 million women-had experienced violence from their partner at some stage during the relationship. Feminist legal scholarship, however, has highlighted the many failures of criminal law to respond adequately to women's experiences of domestic violence. Civil remedies for violence and abuse seem to offer better possibilities: there is a lower standard of proof, and the woman is the subject of her own action rather than merely being the object of proceedings. The availability of civil remedies has, in many cases, resulted from feminist campaigns to fill the gaps in protection left by the criminal law. It has also been argued that civil actions provide scope to change public discourses and legal understandings of violence against women. Listening to women's stories might force a revision of traditional conceptions and myths about what constitutes violence, its causes and effects, and "appropriate" reactions to it. This study investigates the ways in which women's experiences of domestic violence are heard and understood in civil court settings, and examines women's experiences of telling their stories (or at least attempting to do so) in those settings. The two areas on which the study focuses are intervention order proceedings in State Magistrates' Courts, and residence, contact, and property matters in the federal Family Court in Australia. The relevant legislation in the two jurisdictions is either partly or wholly a product of feminist legal activism. The study, therefore, seeks to determine whether the feminist claim that the criminal law silences women also pertains in the context of new civil claims specifically designed to respond to women's experiences. The general history and theory of law reform suggests that reforms often strike problems in the process of implementation. But because law does not operate monolithically, the exact nature of those problems is not necessarily predictable. In the context of this study, implementation problems may arise from social and legal discourses about domestic violence and about victims of violence which tend to operate constantly across the legal system, and/or they may arise from the particular rules and structures found in each institutional setting. There is thus a need for detailed examination and analysis of how these various elements operate and interact in different court settings. In undertaking this task, the study has two objectives. First, it draws conclusions about the nature of implementation problems in the two jurisdictions in order to inform future feminist activism around violence against women. Secondly, it makes a more general point about the importance of procedure in feminist legal theory and praxis. In Australia in particular, feminist legal scholars and advocates have placed a heavy emphasis on doctrinal revision and have largely ignored issues of implementation. The study argues that procedure (conceived broadly to encompass the what, where, how, and who of legal proceedings) crucially shapes women's experience of the legal process, and is neglected by feminists at their peril. This book will be of interest to feminist jurisprudence and law and society scholars and researchers, and to activists and advocates in the field of domestic violence.

A critique of population control narratives reproduced by international development actors in the 21st century Since the turn of the millennium, American media, scientists, and environmental activists have insisted that the global population crisis is "back"-and that the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change is to ensure women's universal access to contraception. Did the population problem ever disappear? What is bringing it back-and why now? In On Infertile Ground, Jade S. Sasser explores how a small network of international development actors, including private donors, NGO program managers, scientists, and youth advocates, is bringing population back to the center of public environmental debate. While these narratives never disappeared, Sasser argues, histories of human rights abuses, racism, and a conservative backlash against abortion in the 1980s drove them underground-until now. Using interviews and case studies from a wide range of sites-from Silicon Valley foundation headquarters to youth advocacy trainings, the halls of Congress and an international climate change conference-Sasser demonstrates how population growth has been reframed as an urgent source of climate crisis and a unique opportunity to support women's sexual and reproductive health and rights. Although well-intentioned-promoting positive action, women's empowerment, and moral accountability to a global community-these groups also perpetuate the same myths about the sexuality and lack of virtue and control of women and the people of global south that have been debunked for decades. Unless the development community recognizes the pervasive repackaging of failed narratives, Sasser argues, true change and development progress will not be possible. On Infertile Ground presents a unique critique of international development that blends the study of feminism, environmentalism, and activism in a groundbreaking way. It will make any development professional take a second look at the ideals driving their work.

"My husband's aspirations in the Army are as high as the moon some days and deep into the sea the next. He loves it, I know it, but he doesn't like having to be away from us. It's hard to explain to people that your husband wants to go to war, but he does. He wants the experience. That is what he is trained to do. He feels as though he can't really know how long he wants to be in the Army until he has that experience behind him. I want what is best for him. I fear the danger of war, but I know he will not feel complete doing time in the Army until he sets foot on foreign soil. I am afraid, but I have to have a peace about it, because if I don't, I won't survive if he doesn't return. We have a peace that, whether together or apart, we are a family, always. I don't know exactly how or why I feel this way. Maybe, it's because my husband has been a Christian all his life. I can't put into words what type of peace that brings. Death, injury, or deployment, we are a family. I will always stand by my soldier and I will always stand by my husband."

Paula Bennett's anthology, based on seven years of pioneering archival research, establishes nineteenth-century American women's poetry as a major field in American literature and American women's history.

Selections from 140 writers provide a rich balanced interweaving of established and marginalized women's poetry from every geographical region of the United States, with many poems taken from over a hundred national, regional and special interest newspapers and periodicals, including such fugitive sources as the "Colored American," the "Cherokee Phoenix," the "Cincinnati Israelite," the "Irish Nationalist," the "Shaker and Shakeress," and the "New Century for Women,"

Arguing for a new, more comprehensive concept of "canonization," Bennett none the less submits all selections to the test of the poem itself. At the same time, she gives special attention to poetry developed to women's issues -the evolution of feminist consciousness, the expression of women's subjectivities, and the emergence of the "new women." Previously neglected avant-garde poetry from the last decades of the century, as found in penny magazines of the period, is also thoroughly covered with compelling consequences for the understanding of Emily Dickinson and the early women modernists, Amy Lowell and H.D.

A key text for the classroom, Nineteenth-Century American Women Poets: An Anthology offers an inviting wealth of classic and newly discovered poetry for scholars and general readers alike.

Designed as a practical reference guide for professional pianists and piano teachers, "A Guide to Piano Music by Women Composers, Volume I," is an annotated catalogue of the available piano music in print composed by 144 women born before the 20th century. The work also features biographies and extensive bibliographical information for each composer. Arranged alphabetically by composer into categories including single works, collections, and anthologies, the music is also described in terms of grade level, genre, mood, style characteristics, and technical requirements, and ranges in difficulty from late elementary to virtuoso concert repertoire.

Far too many teachers, students, professional musicians, and audiences are unaware of the contributions made by women in music, and of the beauty and merit of their specific compositions. This reference work provides an invaluable addition to the current literature.