I can’t remember precisely the first time I saw The Woman’s Film, a collaborative short documentary made by San Francisco Newsreel in 1971, but I do remember being struck by its boldly feminist mode of address and content. It has stuck with me for years and now I use it in class anytime I can. […]
Culture
Feminist Flashback: The Woman’s Film
Moxie’s Militant Millennial Feminism
by Jennifer L. Gauthier
In 1913, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst famously said, “You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs.” The protagonist of Moxie, Amy Poehler’s new film on Netflix, doesn’t break any eggs, but she does smash the principal’s “Best Principal” trophy, en route to “smashing the patriarchy.” Vivian (Hadley Robinson) learns this phrase – and goal – from her […]
Scarcity and Other White Lies
by Ilse Hogan Griffin
We—white folks with financial privilege—are bloated with excess and resistant to messages of our own abundance. Scarcity, the quality or state of being scarce, means, or should mean, a legitimately low supply, not enough of something. Scarcity, legitimate and illegitimate, drives and modifies behaviors. The scarcity myth, which often seems inherent in white people, especially those with considerable […]
The Killing Thing Between Your Teeth
by Sophia Kaufman
Weeks before the inauguration, I started a screenshot collection of viral tweets or other social media posts comparing the relationship of the U.S. with Trump, Mitch McConnell, and/or the GOP to an abusive relationship. I eventually gave up because there were too many and they were all so similar and it was depressing. Most of […]
Kiran Bhat in Conversation with Aruni Kashyap
Aruni Kashyap is a writer, editor, and translator. He has published two works of fiction in English (The House of a Thousand Stories, Viking/ Penguin Random House, 2013 and His Father’s Disease, Westland, 2019), one work of fiction in his mother tongue, Assamese, (Noikhon Etia Duroit, Panchajanya Books, 2019) and he has edited an anthology […]
The Lie You Buy: An Interview with Koa Beck, author of White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind
by Sophia Kaufman
Koa Beck is the former editor-in-chief of Jezebel and co-host of “The #MeToo Memos” on WNYC’s The Takeaway. Previously, she was the executive editor of Vogue.com and the senior features editor at MarieClaire.com. For her reporting on gender, LGBTQ rights, culture, and race, she has spoken at Harvard Law School, Columbia Journalism School, The New […]
Gender Neutral
by Sarah Terez Rosenblum
Every semester I get the same email from my program’s artistic director: “Hey Creative Writing Instructors! Introduce yourself to your students!” The survey requests my favorite quotes about writing. (Chekov: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”) It invites me to share practical advice. (“If there’s […]
Family Romance, LLC and How to Make a Family
by Marie Johnson
“Maybe it was my other daughter.” Turning toward the bathroom, I realized what my mom had already noticed: The garbage can was overturned. I emptied the trash and forgot to put it back in its original position. In a flurry of chores, I was not consciously trying to leave it awry. Maybe this “other daughter” […]
Sons of The Confederacy 2.0: Not Just a Few Bad Apples
by Laketa Smith
Finally, after one of the most suspenseful and unnerving elections of my lifetime, the United States Congress was poised on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, to certify Electoral College votes, a long-held ceremonial element of every incoming presidential cabinet. Instead, mayhem descended on the capital city, and Congress itself, as a mob of Trump supporters laid […]
Unmaking Whiteness
by Erin Monahan
The toxic, masculine white power displayed from the nation’s Capitol for the world to see started from a young age, within their families. Our homes are breeding grounds for this kind of white entitlement and violence. White people must investigate our complicity. Those who stormed the Capitol are regular, everyday, white people we greet on […]
