The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER - Drawing on the diaries of one woman in eighteenth-century Maine, "A truly talented historian unravels the fascinating life of a community that is so foreign, and yet so similar to our own" ( The New York Times Book Review). Between 1785 and 1812 a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine. On the basis of that diary, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich gives us an intimate and densely imagined portrait, not only of the industrious and reticent Martha Ballard but of her society. At once lively and impeccably scholarly, A Midwife's Tale is a triumph of history on a human scale.

Transforming a Rape Culture

Originally published in 1993, this pioneering anthology is a powerful polemic for fundamental cultural change: the transformation of basic attitudes about power, gender, race, and sexuality. This edition adds new pieces on Internet pornography, the role of sports in sexual violence, and rape as a calculated instrument of war. The diverse contributors, which include bell hooks, Andrea Dworkin, Michael Messner, Yvette Flores, and Ntozake Shange, are activists, opinion leaders, theologians, policymakers, educators, and authors of both genders who tackle such hot-button issues as pornography and the intersection of race and rape. The book's statistics have been thoroughly updated, as have essays about sexual violence in K-12 schools and in the church. New pieces from within America's immigrant communities depict struggles with domestic violence, sexual harassment, and community stigmas against reporting rape. This violence, not limited to one race, creed, or nationality, has its roots in cultural biases that are still much in need of change.

A Patchwork Shawl: Chronicles of South Asian Women in America

A Patchwork Shawl sheds light on the lives of a segment of the U.S. immigrant population that has long been relegated to the margins. It focuses on women's lives that span different worlds: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and the United States. This collection of essays by and about South Asian women in America challenges stereotypes by allowing women to speak in their own words. Together they provide discerning insights into the reconstruction of immigrant patriarchy in a new world, and the development of women's resistance to that reconstruction. Shamita Das DasGupta's introduction also acquaints readers with the psychological topography of the South Asian community. A Patchwork Shawl considers topics from re-negotiation of identity to sexuality, violence to intimacy, occupations to organizing within the community. The essays bear witness to women's negotiations for independent identities, their claim to their own bodies, and the right to choose relationships based on their own histories and truths. They bring new understanding to the intersection of gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, and class.