In the Company of Women: Voices from the Women's Movement

by Bonnie Watkins, Nina Rothchild, Gloria Steinem (Foreword by)

Overview

Seeking to reveal the movement's humanity and diversity, activists Bonnie Watkins and Nina Rothchild recorded the accounts of homemakers and business owners, explorers and artists, factory workers and spiritual seekers, scientists and secretaries, prostitutes and policewomen. Encountering this company of women will change the way readers understand the movement that has transformed American life from the 1960s to the present.

"Like all good art, these stories start from a particular place and become universal. Women in all parts of the country—and in many other countries—will find themselves here. In the Company of Women affirms the importance of every woman's story. It affirms the power of hearing our own and each other's words unfiltered by interpretation. . . . We need this book and more like it." — from the Foreword by Gloria Steinem

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780873513296
Publisher:	Minnesota Historical Society Press
Publication date:	08/15/1996
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

Editorial Reviews

The editors present 83 first-person accounts from a variety of women currently living in Minnesota who describe their involvement in feminism. The material becomes repetitive when read straight through, making this most valuable as an oral history of feminism. In a competent if unsurprising foreword, Gloria Steinem recalls how hearing women tell their stories of illegal abortion sparked her consciousness and rejects the portrayal of feminists as "white, middle class, and privileged." Many of these women report the same events in slightly different form, mainly a realization that something was wrong and the discovery that feminism (in the form of consciousness-raising groups, women's studies classes, etc.) helped set it right. The most interesting information here lies in the details: Meridel Le Sueur, a writer born in 1900, recalls when her own mother was arrested for giving out birth-control information; Sara M. Evans, history chair at the University of Minnesota, tells how an early feminist group planned to distribute a flyer by sticking it in copies of Ladies Home Journal; Vivian Jenkins Nelson, now director of the International Institute for Interracial Interaction reports that her schoolteacher mother darkened Dick and Jane illustrations when teaching in the rural South; Evelina Giobbe describes leaving prostitution to found WHISPER, a group for refugees from the sex industries; and Judith Niemi recalls the liberation she experienced on female-only canoeing trips. While their contributions to the movement are definitely valuable, many of the young feminists included here add only a few obvious observations ("I get angry at the way women have been treated"), and the editors' footnotes on everything from George Jessel to pay equity are haphazard. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Watkins and Rothchild, both active in women's issues since the early 1970s as volunteers, administrators, speakers, and writers, present well-written interviews with women of like achievement. The women all currently reside in Minnesota, but many have lived and worked elsewhere. Women of color are represented, as are women from various economic levels and careers, including sportswomen, professors, doctors, lawyers, prostitutes, abortion-rights activists, social workers, and religious practitioners. All of the women, however, reached a point where they were unwilling to settle into the traditional roles society ordained for them. Many were single mothers who struggled for their children as well as for themselves and overcame substantial obstacles. This work provides a good cross-section of women's efforts in the last 20 years. Recommended for public libraries.Sharon Firestone, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Library Journal