Murray’s list of unheralded accomplishments is a long one. Among many firsts, she was the first African-American to receive a Yale law doctorate (1965) and the first Black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. Her signal contribution occurred in the field of jurisprudence.
MoreTHREE AMERICAN LESBIANS whose importance to activism and literature cannot be overstated died within a few months of each other this year. Each was responsible for a remarkable…More
THE CALM, beautifully aged face of the poet Adrienne Rich gazes at the reader from the new book by her friend, Ed Pavlic, who explains that his relationship with Rich began when she (as a contest judge) chose his first book of poems for a prize, and they began exchanging letters in 2001.
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Although King would have you believe she is a great champion for social justice, she’s closer to Booker T. Washington than to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Like Washington, a master fundraiser and consummate people pleaser, King has always played to the crowd and kept an eye on the bottom line.
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The idea that Hansberry came out of nowhere to become an overnight success with A Raisin in the Sun is one of the misperceptions that’s dispelled by two new books on Hansberry, which show her to be a passionate and dedicated writer, artist, thinker, and activist.
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Willa Cather aspired to the status of Artist while living with, and getting help from, a very intelligent woman (Edith Lewis) who had given up the arts to earn a living by selling soap.
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WHY DOES Eve Adams, born Chava Zloczewer, in Mlawa, Russian Poland, in 1891, matter to us today? The answers to this and a host of other mysteries can be found in Jonathan Ned Katz’ new biography, The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams.
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THE TITLE of Judy Grahn’s sixteenth book beckons readers into a world in which all living species share a net of consciousness, a mind as distinct from the brain as a biological organ. The ten essays and “true stories” in the Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit exhibit an openness to phenomena that enables Grahn to explore what she describes as her sensory, cellular, and spirit-related consciousness.
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WAS SHE or wasn’t she? Again, we face that vexing question regarding the lives of lesbians and gay men, in this case of Molly Dewson, who was known as “the General” in the era of the New Deal. Dewson is the subject of a book by historian Susan Ware that suddenly seems relevant, which prompted me to seek a conversation with the author of Partner and I: Molly Dewson, Feminism, and New Deal Politics (Yale 1987).
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While [Martin] Duberman ferrets out the private side of Andrea Dworkin, [in Andrea Dworkin: The Feminist as Revolutionary,] with aplomb, the public Dworkin, “huge and hollering,” as Ariel Levy once put it, is ever-present too. The events of her political career, often inseparable from her private hurts, are examined: …
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