Viva la Feminista

  From A to Z, discover your power to speak up for what you believe in and change the world! With empowering language and vibrant illustrations, this alphabet board book calls little ones to action with big and small steps that children can take to lead the way and become the next generation of activists. Written by Veronica I. Arreola Illustrated by María Díaz Perera Purchase your copy today! Women and Children First Using my Bookshop Affiliate link Using my Amazon affiliate link

  Listen & Subscribe at Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts Kim Moldofsky is an all-around creative person and lifelong learner with a penchant for adventure. Inspired by Amelia Earhart, she  recently flew in a restored 1929 biplane. Read Kim's newsletter to keep up on all the things she has going on. This is her  first book.  Ways to support The Feminist Agenda podcast (affiliate links): Archer & Olive : Use code feminista10 to save 10% on most items Buy books my Bookshop site Purchase books mentioned and reviewed in this episode through my Bookshop affiliate links: It's Her Story: Amelia Earhart a Graphic Novel  Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League  People & things mentioned in this episode:  Wally Funk   1918 pandemic   Amelia's NYT Letter to the Editor   ERA   Dr. Kristin Neff Follow The Feminist Agenda on Twitter 🟣 Instagram 🟣 Facebook The ...

  Listen & Subscribe at Anchor | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts Jennifer Baumgardner is a writer, activist, filmmaker, and lecturer. Baumgardner joined The Feminist Agenda to discuss the need to publish feminist children's books, letting projects go, and editing the new feminist book review LIBER. Originally from Fargo, Baumgardner has been working in New York City at the intersection of feminism and publishing for three decades, beginning in 1993 as an intern (and later editor) at Ms. magazine. From 1997 on, she wrote dozens of features for a diverse array of magazines (Glamour, Teen Vogue, Bust, Dissent, Harper’s Bazaar, Harper’s, The Nation, Elle, New York Times, etc.), authored/co-authored seven books (including Manifesta, Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, and Abortion & Life) and wrote, directed, and produced two feature-length documentaries (It Was Rape and I Had an Abortion). Baumgardner has keynoted at more than 250 colleges and universities and, in...

  Listen & Subscribe at Anchor | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts   Dr. Tara T. Green has two books out in 2022 that center the respectability of Black women, specifically lesser-known women of the Harlem Renaissance era such as Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Green is an award-winning teacher-mentor-scholar and is currently Professor and former Director (2008-2016) of African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. Her areas of research include Black gender studies, African American autobiographies and fiction (late nineteenth through contemporary), African women’s literature, African American parent-child relationships, and African Americans in the South. Believing that research should explore major issues of the day, Green considers how literature reflects current social and political concerns. Dr. Green is also a community-engaged scholar. During the fall of 2021, she co-led UNCG’s Black Lives Matter Triad Collection ...

Listen & Subscribe at Anchor | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts   Anne Elizabeth Moore joins the Feminist Agenda to discuss her latest book, Gentrifier: A Memoir. From Catapult: In 2016, a Detroit arts organization grants writer and artist Anne Elizabeth Moore a free house—a room of her own, à  la Virginia Woolf—in Detroit’s majority-Bangladeshi “Banglatown.” Accompanied by her cats, Moore moves to the bungalow in her new city  where she gardens, befriends the neighborhood youth, and grows to intimately understand civic collapse and community solidarity. When the  troubled history of her prize house comes to light, Moore finds her life destabilized by the aftershocks of the housing crisis and governmental corruption. This  is also a memoir of art, gender, work, and survival. Moore writes into  the gaps of Woolf’s declaration that “a woman must have money and a room  of one’s own if she is to write”; what if this woman were queer an...

  Listen & Subscribe at Anchor | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts Show notes: Gloria Feldt  joins The Feminist Agenda to discuss her latest book, Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone's) Good . Gloria is a  New York Times  best-selling author, speaker, commentator and feminist leader who has gained national recognition as a social and political advocate of women's rights. In 2013, she co-founded Take The Lead , a nonprofit initiative with a goal to propel women to leadership parity by 2025. She is a former CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, directing the organization from 1996 to 2005. She has been featured in  The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Time , NBC,  Fast Company, Vanity Fair ,  and much more.  Download the Intentioning workbook Ways to support The Feminist Agenda podcast: Archer & Olive : Use code "feminista10" to save 10% ...

Blogger asks me for a title and I have no clue.  All I know is that I have a new job so I have more money, my daughter is now in college so I have more time for myself, and I am so lost. Now that I don't have to drop her off at school and take her to soccer (which I desperately miss) I am taking the train into work. I am trying to find my rhythm.  If I do the full commute on my own, I walk up the street to the bus stop, take that east for a bit, jump on the Red line to Jackson where I transfer to the Blue line and get off at my campus stop. I walk up the steep walkway to the street and head into the office. During this hour and a half journey I listen to a meditation app - which, to be honest may not be helping. Each time it asks me to clear my mind, a zillion rush in. Usually the ones that I have been keeping at bay. The ones that taunt me. When the meditation app asks me to locate where my body is holding the stress it reminds me that I have begun to clench my teeth s...

My mom took my sisters and me to visit a friend’s child who was in the hospital. I was maybe 12. I remember the age because I was shocked that the x-ray technician asked me if there was any way I could be pregnant and I was aghast. Wait? How did I go from visiting a friend’s kid to getting an x-ray? I fainted.  Why did I faint? Because I thought I saw a needle.  A nurse walked into this kid’s room to check on them, and I still swear on my life that she had a needle in her hand. And that is when I realized I was scared of needles.  Each vaccination was tortuous for me. I would tense up and make things worse.  My fear of needles wasn’t always bad though. It is coupled with, I suspect, sensitivity to anesthesia. When I had surgery to remove some fibroids, I passed out as soon as I got the IV. When I had my wisdom teeth removed, I passed out as soon as I got the injection.  I got better about needles during my pregnancy. As a pregnant person, you get stabbed a lot. ...

Braintown by Laura Hernandez My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Mary: The Adventures of Mary Shelley's Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Granddaughter by Brea Grant My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

They Didn't See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties by Lisa Levenstein My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews

WOW...this is my first post during the Coronavirus pandemic! I hope you and your loved ones are healthy and safe. Thanks to the Chicago Children’s Theatre, the city’s largest professional theater devoted exclusively to children and families, for launching a new YouTube channel, CCTv: Virtual Theatre and Learning from Chicago Children’s Theatre. To kick if off we are treated to Frederick. Here's hoping this helps with your little ones. Or is a comfort to everyone of all ages. Chicago Children’s Theatre’s all-new virtual puppet performance was created while all of the artists were sheltering in place, working with resources limited to what they had in their homes or on their laptops. Frederick is directed by CCT Co-Founder and Artistic Director Jacqueline Russell. Puppets and sets were designed, built and puppeteered in a home studio by Grace Needlman and Will Bishop, CCT’s Director of Production, the creative team behind CCT’s annual series of Beatrix Potter puppet show...

Yup...The fabulous Stacey Abrams, along with badass couple Megan Rapinoe & Sue Bird join HBO's THE SHOP: UNINTERRUPTED to chat about the state of the world. Also joining the conversation is EGOT Whoopi Goldberg, Malcolm Jenkins, And Hasan Minhaj. By the look of the trailer this is gonna be a great conversation. Check it out on Friday, February 7 (9:30-10:00 p.m. ET/PT) or later on HBO NOW, HBO GO, HBO On Demand and partners’ streaming platforms.    

Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy by Chynna Clugston Flores My rating: 5 of 5 stars I have loved the Lumberjanes franchise for many years. After taking some time off to read other series, I'm back and went with the this crossover event with Gotham Academy - a series I thought looked great, but never fit into my overcrowded comic book plate. And you know what? THIS WAS AMAZING. The Lumberjanes feel was still present - can't speak about the Gotham Academy feel - but it was wacky and sweet. Lumberjanes is ever telling stories of friendship and being true to yourself. This was doubly true for this collection. I hope these two gangs of adorable young people team up again. This is a great read for anyone wrestling with expectations - parental to societal. View all my reviews

Trapeze by Leigh Ansell My rating: 3 of 5 stars Trapeze by Leigh Ansell is an enjoyable fish out of water tale set in a high school. We meet 17-year-old Corey who is a budding trapeze star. When tragedy strikes, she finds herself stuck in a stereotypical suburb and enrolled in high school. The novel deals with not just Corey's struggle to fit into high school, but her journey to reestablish a relationship with her mother, her first love, and domestic abuse. Ansell wraps up Corey's tale with one too many tropes, but even as I was thinking, "Really?" I was also moved by the character developments. Considering Ansell is only 21, I look forward to her honing her gift of storytelling in future novels. There is an excellent scene when one character gaslights Corey and it is so well written I could feel my skin crawl. I recommend Trapeze for high schoolers and those us who survived those years, but still like to revisit through YA novels...

  Know My Name by Chanel Miller My rating: 5 of 5 stars Slight spoiler of first 100 pages....beware! You think you know what happened when two Swedish students found Brock Turner raping a woman next to a dumpster. But you have no idea. Maybe if you lived in the Stanford area you might know more. But I suspect that through gossip you might know even less than I do here in Chicago. That is why the courage that Chanel Miller displays in her memoir, Know My Name, is monumental. The first three chapters are heart-wrenching and required me to put the book down many times. Chanel wastes no time getting right to why she wrote the book. Why we need to know her name. The night of the rape. The evening where she spent with her family and later her mom dropped Chanel and her sister off at a party. The party. Then the morning after as she awakens in the hospital with zero memory of what happened. AND NO ONE FUCKING TELLS HER. Seriously. Chanel painstakingly takes us back t...

The Trouble with Becoming a Witch by Amy Edwards My rating: 4 of 5 stars If I could, I would give this book 3.5 stars. Rounding up cause I'm like that. Review: Content scrappers are the bane of a bloggers existence. They are bots that scrape content from blogs and then republishes them on another site and then steals your traffic. I won’t accuse Amy Edwards of being a content scrapper, but good gawd I felt like I had read so much of what she gives us in The Trouble with Becoming a Witch . Edwards beautifully has collected many of the complaints that wives and mothers have expressed over the years into a painful and realistic narrative of one woman taking control of her life. When I was pitched this book, I accepted it based on the mere fact the title has “witch” in it and the main character shares my name. I didn’t read much else. Thus when I started the book, the honesty hit me like a ton of bricks. I had heard Veronica’s thoughts over the years...

I needed to log into HBO GO to catch an episode of Real Sports that I missed about girls and baseball . The topic is fascinating for me. I played softball in high school and still play in a league - of course, Chicago 16" softball though. But as you know, I love baseball too. I did play Little League and never felt comfortable there. But you need to watch this episode. It goes through the history of Maria Pepe who sued Little League USA for the right to play baseball. They fought her for 2 years. And after she won, Little League started softball. I love both sports. And it breaks my heart each time I reflect on softball's role in discrimination against girls and women. It infuriates me to watch the clip of men giving bullshit excuses why girls shouldn't play baseball including: Dental injuries will make girls less attractive Getting hit in the chest will lead to breast cancer (isn't it FASCINATING how people who don't want women to do something will...

Maybe He Just Likes You by Barbara Dee My rating: 4 of 5 stars School is back in session and I know some of you are scrambling for good books for your tweens to read. "Maybe He Just Likes You" by Barbara Dee should be on your child's book list. "Maybe He Just Likes You" tackles a lot in short succinct chapters and amazing grace. Mila is in 7th grade and suddenly receiving attention from a group of boys at school. At first she thinks it is all in her head and then a girl friend accuses her of flirting. As things escalate Mila is overwhelmed with confusion and frustration. She does not like the attention, but all her friends dismiss her feelings. In the middle of all of this, her mother is going through her own drama. I need to be real with you. The way Dee writes makes you feel the action. This includes the anticipation Mila feels when she is expecting unwanted attention. I felt it in my body and flashed back to my own hellish time in 7th ...

Wait, What?: A Comic Book Guide to Relationships, Bodies, and Growing Up by Heather Corinna My rating: 5 of 5 stars "Wait, What?: A Comic Book Guide to Relationships, Bodies, and Growing Up" is the book I wish we all had when we were in middle school. And if you have a middle school human in your life, you should get them this book. One of the first pages, page 9 to be exact, sets the tone of the book. That humans develop in all ways at a different rate from each other. Some of us mature physically, some of us mature romantically earlier, and that's all ok. Heather & Isabella take great care to talk about all things puberty-related with not just great care, but in a gender inclusive manner. Vaginas are not talked about things women have, rather vaginas and breast development are things that happen to humans and if that what you are experiencing, great! If not, maybe you have a penis and other stuff is happening. Don't get me wro...