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.

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.

Rich and real, BMom is one woman's mosaic of love, life and loss, and of being found among the pieces. No one piece is a whole, yet all are precious, together a masterpiece, and each a gem. It's God restoring the shattered pieces of my life and my soul. His fingerprints are all over it. The reader will laugh and the reader will cry, and in that, we will become friends. BMom begins with my relinquishing my infant son into the hands of parents I couldn't know. It moves through the intervening years until he found me, on to our reunion, and beyond. Not only was I reunited with my son, I was reunited with myself. Interspersed are various interludes that speak of lessons learned, feelings finally understood and felt, and poetry written as part of my journey. BMom is entertaining and engaging, while occasionally making a point, to be taken or not, as the reader chooses. BMom is, above all else, a good read.

Eleanor Roosevelt was an American influencer. Using her own words, personal documents, past perspectives, and new biographical research, this book introduces young adult readers to Roosevelt not only within her own historical context, but connected to contemporary issues. Using Eleanor Roosevelt's own words, personal correspondences, private documents, and a wide range of past perspectives and new biographical research, this book tells the intimate story of a real woman who struggled with a lack of self confidence but built a supportive network of like-minded activist women to realize change. One hundred years ago, Roosevelt was drawn into politics and public service by events that seem ripped from current events-an opiate crisis, a global pandemic, unsafe working conditions for immigrant women, and the human costs of war. Roosevelt's story mirrors the challenges of the 21st century and offers real examples of how change is possible. For students of history, politics, and women's studies, this book brings together past perspectives with new biographical scholarship, primary resources, and Roosevelt's own words to understand the female role models who shaped her and how Roosevelt in turn built a women's network of friends and activists that changed U.S. politics and society. Brings together a wide range of new resources and primary sources to peel away Eleanor Roosevelt's crafted public persona and reveal the real woman-her vulnerabilities, priorities, heartbreaks, and triumphs Provides readers with historical context in an easy-to-understand writing style to understand the important social changes Roosevelt contributed to and how her work continues to impact American lives in the 21st century Includes a timeline that places Roosevelt's life within historical context Includes primary documents that give voice to Roosevelt and her influence Introduces readers to the private Eleanor Roosevelt, the women who mentored her, and the network of female activists she led to open the door for American women in politics, government, and international diplomacy

In Come Hell or High Water: Feminism and the Legacy of Armed Conflict in Central America, Tine Destrooper analyzes the political projects of feminist activists in light of their experience as former revolutionaries. She compares the Guatemalan and Nicaraguan experience to underline the importance of ethnicity for women's activism during and after the civil conflict. The first part of the book traces the influence of armed conflict on contemporary women's activism, by combining an analysis of women's personal histories with an analysis of structural and contextual factors. This critical analysis forms the basis of the second part of the book, which discusses several alternative forms of women's activism rooted in indigenous practices The book thereby combines a micro- and macro-level analysis to present a sound understanding of post-conflict women's activism.

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.

Author Lynn Barnes admits she's known all along that she'd been a little different in ways she can't explain. In her memoir, The Last Exit before the Toll, she examines her life and tries to make sense of who and what she is and how her being affects her existence.

She reflects on growing up as an only child and her life now as a single, surrealist artist and Poe aficionado. Barnes recalls the events that have greatly impacted her, including the deaths of her mother and father and the suicide of her best friend, Marc. But it was the discovery that she has undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome that helped piece together the puzzle that has been her life and allowed her to come to terms with the troubling personality traits she has experienced all her life.

An insightful and creative look at Barnes's life, The Last Exit before the Toll provides a glimpse into the sometimes frustrating and unknown world of someone who lives with Asperger's syndrome.

An enchanting 1940Us adventure of Connee in her childhood summer resort home and Sally, daughter of the wealthy cottage owners. Loneliness juxtaposed with hilarious escapades will fill tweenagers to keenagers with sadness and delight. Features 25 illustrations by Wendel Norton.