The Feminist Press – Advancing Women’s Rights & Feminist Perspectives

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If you are browsing the Durland Alternatives Library, you’ll see books here and there published by The Feminist Press.

The Feminist Press was initially founded by Florence Howe and her husband, Paul Lauter, in 1970 as an attempt to recover a series of “lost” feminist literary classics. As a teacher, Howe was particularly interested in creating a women’s studies curriculum. Disappointed with the amount of available literature on the subject, Howe was determined to supplement curriculums that lacked these voices. The initial series of the publisher was of works by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and established its publishing program with books by American writers of diverse racial and class backgrounds. Since then it has also been bringing works from around the world to North American readers.

Since the time that marks the beginning of The Feminist Press, feminists have grown together into leadership roles necessary for social change. Through collaboration and critical interrogation, these critical feminists have had opportunity to become leaders in unraveling the natural necessity of ties between sources of urgent conflict. This is predicated upon an insight that no inequality exists alone — instead, they inform each other. Conflicts like sex and gender, race and sex, race and nation, class and race, sex and reproduction are highly integrated. In the United States, we have watched this leadership of feminists evolve through a powerful and active history whose stride became particularly potent in the early 60’s, when women and men began writing for an audience to account for necessary social change.

Feminism in the early 70’s

Leading up to around the time of Florence Howe’s decision to create and publish the Feminist Press, feminist activity in America began to speak out against the domesticity of women in a post-war era. These efforts were a great expansion from the first wave of feminist activity in the 19th and 20th century, which focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles. The momentum of influential writers, artists, and speakers became potent fuel to critique the woman’s subordinate and fixed status in a patriarchal society. The second wave of feminists broadened their efforts to include a larger range of issues – issues that were not necessarily determined by law. Beginning in the United States, second-wave feminists turned towards issues such as a woman’s role in the family, the workplace, her rights to reproduction, education and official legal inequalities, as well as issues of crisis and violence. In order to refrain from becoming lost in the voice of so many other social movements, this second wave was increasingly theoretical, and began to associate the subjugation of women with broader critiques of patriarchy, a woman’s role in society, capitalism, and normative heterosexuality.  This need for sources to support and produce content involved within this critical edge was integral to the founding of the Feminist Press. 

New Releases from Feminist PressThe Feminist Press Today

The Feminist Press has continually upheld their mission to elevate silenced and marginalized voices in order to support personal transformation and social justice for all people through publishing classic and new writing from around the world. As the longest surviving women’s publishing house in the world, the Press is playing an active role in advocating for freedom of expression and social justice while staying relevant and present with the feminist movement as it has grown and changed to be what it is today.

“Feminism today is many stories, intersections, and multiple genders”

Feminist Press executive director Jennifer Baumgardner.

Check out these recent book releases from the Feminist Press:

Screen Shot 2016-03-28 at 7.02.47 AMBeijing Comrades

Bei Tong

The first gay novel published in mainland China– Beijing Comrades is a tale of capitalism, love, power, and secrecy.

 

Screen Shot 2016-03-28 at 7.03.21 AMThe Feminist Utopia Project

Through a combination of essays, interviews, poetry, illustrations, and short stories, The Feminist Utopia Project challenges the status quo that accepts inequality and violence as a given—and inspires us to demand a radically better future.

http://www.feministpress.org/

Catalog: http://www.feministpress.org/books/categories

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Ryan Clover-Owens

I'm on a mission to prove that we can live in a society that reconciles with our history, respects difference, cherishes the land and animals, and can create solutions to the challenges we face.