I recently completed ManifestA. I wouldn't suggest it for a first-time young-feminism read because Baumgardner and Richards have a lot of opinions I don't necessarily agree with and if I didn't know better it would be easy to mistake their feminist consciousness for the collective whole. This is to say I did agree a lot of opinions in ManifestA and I do not think that there is a collective feminist whole.
The book is a call to feminist action, but they analyze third wave (i.e. young) feminism in detail, which is something I enjoy - and have learned others do not. So there's the fair warning. I almost feel like Baumgardner and Richards captured our cultures love of gossip in this book - telling stories about Kathleen Hanna and Elizabeth Wurtzel.
I really did like the book. I think it is a little outdated and many of the young feminist references are more applicable to women ten years older than myself. (I would recommend you read an anthology like To Be Real or Listen Up before reading this book though. And it should be an objective read. The authors talked about restoring Second Wave (white women's) literature, but barely talked about disability-rights and its role in the feminist movement - I thought they were particularly insensitive to this topic during discussions of abortion) Jennifer Baumgarder and Amy Richards wrote a second book together Grassroots, which I have decided to skip over and go straight into Baumgarder's newest book Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics.
Oh, really I decided to include my thoughts on ManifestA because I ran across this really silly review of the book that I wanted to share: Bookslut: ManifestA Also if you want more information about the book here is its website: ManifestA, which actually has some really cool information available. And here is an excerpt that I got from feminist.com where Amy Richards is the columnist for Ask Amy.
And on the topic of buying books (as I am literally buying Look Both Ways right now) I am using Amazon.com instead of Barnes and Noble or Borders because the company owners are pretty sexists dudes. (I am getting a pretty good deal too.)
SRY this entry has not been edited!
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4 comments:
I read Grassroots and I felt like it didn't really tell me anything. There were some nice stories and a list of people/places to contact but it really wasn't applicable here in Texas.
I'm sort of burnt out, though, so maybe my opinion isn't the greatest. How did your zine turn out?
Grl, I'm burnt out too.
This is my e,e,e,e,e,e,e-mail address, drop me a line. I wanna talk to you. -ATW
I read Grassroots as well and I'm ambivalent as to whether to give it my stamp of approval or dismissal. The book was riddled with some applicable strategies for mobilization and techniques for spreading awareness; however, many examples and chapters were either circumstanial, righteous, out-of-date, or read like they just wanted to fill paper.
Therefore, my suggestion is check the book out from the library and only read the chapters that seem relevant for you.
I do feel like a lot of what baumgardner and richards writes is out of date, in general cos the books were written a few years ago, but also cos their generation of writers are a decade older than us.
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