Black queer women have shaped American culture since long before the era of gay liberation. Decades prior to the Stonewall Uprising, in the 1920s and 1930s, Black “lady lovers”—as women who loved women were then called—crafted a queer world. In the cabarets, rent parties, speakeasies, literary salons, and universities of the Jazz Age and Great Depression, communities of Black lady lovers grew, and queer flirtations flourished. Cookie Woolner here uncovers the intimate lives of performers, ...

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping federal protection for abortion rights and placing control in the hands of individual states. This monumental shift in policy underscores the need for deeper historical perspectives on reproductive rights.The Nursing Clio Reader answers that call, bringing together essays that examine reproductive health through historical research...

Flapper is a dazzling look at the women who heralded a radical change in American culture and launched the first truly modern decade.The New Woman of the 1920s puffed cigarettes, snuck gin, hiked her hemlines, danced the Charleston, and necked in roadsters. More important, she earned her own keep, controlled her own destiny, and secured liberties that modern women take for granted.Flapper is an inside look at the 1920s. With tales of Coco ...

An incisive, groundbreaking book that examines how a biological concept of race is a myth that promotes inequality in a supposedly "post-racial" era.Though the Human Genome Project proved that human beings are not naturally divided by race, the emerging fields of personalized medicine, reproductive technologies, genetic genealogy, and DNA databanks are attempting to resuscitate race as a biological category written in our genes.This groundbreaking book by l...

Killing the Black Body remains a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women. It is as crucial as ever, even two decades after its original publication.**"A must-read for all those who claim to care about racial and gender justice in America." —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim CrowIn 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance into the national conv...

The “monumental” (The Washington Post), field-defining history of gay life in New York City in the early to mid-20th centuryGay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed in the closet, where all gay men were isolated, invisible, and ashamed. Based on years of research in diaries, letters, newspaper stories, and police reports, George Chauncey describes the saloons, speakeasies, and streets where queer m...

A must-read investigation of reproductive health under fire in Post-Roe America.I'm Sorry for My Loss delves into the abyss of pregnancy loss, a topic that is misunderstood and full of guilt and shame, written with emotional resonance and humor by authors who have both been through it themselves. Rebecca Little and Colleen Long, childhood friends who grew up to be journalists, enlighten readers on the deep, sometimes mystifying history behind how we view p...

As Lillian Faderman writes, there are "no constants with regard to lesbianism," except that lesbians prefer women. In this groundbreaking book, she reclaims the history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America, tracing the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from early networks to more recent diverse lifestyles. She draws from journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, media accounts, novels, medical literature, pop culture artifacts, and oral histories by lesbians of all ages...

A historian explores the complicated relationship between womanhood and motherhood in this “timely, refreshingly open-hearted study of the choices women make and the cards they’re dealt” (Ada Calhoun, author of Why We Can’t Sleep).In an era of falling births, it’s often said that millennials invented the idea of not having kids. But history is full of women without children: some who chose childless lives, others who wanted children but ne...

A unique and "often quite moving" look at gay women's role in US history ( The Washington Post).In this "essential and impassioned addition to American history," the three-time Lambda Literary Award winner and author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers focuses on a select group of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century lesbians who were in the forefront of the battle to procure the rights and privileges that large numbers of Americans enjoy tod...

A New York Times Book Review Notable BookFrom noted feminist and longtime columnist for The Nation, award-winning author Katha Pollitt's Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights presents a powerful argument for abortion as a moral right and social good. As the Supreme Court is set to overturn the landmark decision that legalized abortion nationwide, this urgent, controversial book reframes abortion as a common part of a woman's reproductive...

Published in 1982, But Some of Us Are Brave was the first-ever Black women's studies reader and a foundational text of contemporary feminism.Featuring writing from eminent scholars, activists, teachers, and writers, such as the Combahee River Collective and Alice Walker, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Bravechallenges the absence of Black feminist thought in women’s studies, confronts racism, and investigates th...