Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism Through Seven Lives in India

Gwendolyn D. Pough

Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere

Hip-hop culture began in the early 1970s as the creative and activist expressions -- graffiti writing, dee-jaying, break dancing, and rap music -- of black and Latino youth in the depressed South Bronx, and the movement has since grown into a worldwide cultural phenomenon that permeates almost every aspect of society, from speech to dress. But although hip-hop has been assimilated and exploited in the mainstream, young black women who came of age during the hip-hop era are still fighting for equality.In this provocative study, Gwendolyn D. Pough explores the complex relationship between black women, hip-hop, and feminism. Examining a wide range of genres, including rap music, novels, spoken word poetry, hip-hop cinema, and hip-hop soul music, she traces the rhetoric of black women "bringing wreck." Pough demonstrates how influential women rappers such as Queen Latifah, Missy Elliot, and Lil' Kim are building on the legacy of earlier generations of women -- from Sojourner Truth to sisters of the black power and civil rights movements -- to disrupt and break into the dominant patriarchal public sphere. She discusses the ways in which today's young black women struggle against the ...

Jessica Taft

Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas

Explores how teenage girls across the world--Mexico City, Vancouver, Buenos Aires, San Francisco--reject the patriarchy and redefine their girlhood to claim their political authority and become activists From anti-war walkouts to anarchist youth newspapers, rallies against educational privatization, and workshops on fair trade, teenage girls are active participants and leaders in a variety of social movements. Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas illuminates the experiences and perspectives of these uniquely positioned agents of social change. Jessica K. Taft introduces readers to a diverse and vibrant transnational community of teenage girl activists in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mexico City, Caracas, Buenos Aires, and Vancouver. Expansive in scope and full of rich details, Taft brings to life the voices of these inspiring activists who are engaged in innovative and effective organizing for global and local social justice, highlighting their important contributions to contemporary social movements and social theory.Rebel Girls explores how teenage girls construct activist identities, rejecting and redefining girlhood and claiming political authority ...

Noelle Cleary, Dini Von Mueffling

The Art and Power of Being a Lady

Lady. Let's face it: the word brings to mind a host of associations' many of which call to mind costume dramas or tea-sipping debutantes. That is, until The Art and Power of Being a Lady' the book that brushes the cobwebs off and makes lady relevant to every girl and woman -- whether her role model is Audrey Hepburn, Oprah Winfrey, Madeleine Albright, Lauryn Hill, or Mia Hamm. In an era when looking out for one another and taking the high road is too often lost in the shuffle, today's lady has not forgotten what's important. She is kind and considerate without being a doormat. She's assertive, but never a bully. She is sexy without being vulgar. She has great style but is never superficial. She gives back without asking for kudos. And from now on, the perfect word to describe her is lady.