American Women Activists and Autobiography examines the feminist rhetorics that emerge in six very different activists’ autobiographies, as they simultaneously tell the stories of unconventional women’s lives and manifest the authors’ arguments for social and political change, as well as provide blueprints for creating tectonic shifts in American society. Exploring self-narratives by six diverse women at the forefront of radical social change since 1900—Jane Addams, Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day, Angela Davis, Mary Crow Dog, and Betty Friedan—the author offers a breadth of perspectives to current dialogues on motherhood, essentialism, race, class, and feminism, and highlights the shifts in situated feminist rhetorics through the course of the last one hundred years. This book is a timely instructional resource for all scholars and graduate students in rhetorical studies, composition, American literature, women's studies, feminist rhetorics, and social justice.

Explores how five turn-of-the-century women - Frances Willard, Anna Howard Shaw, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Emma Goldman and Mary Church Terrell - crafted autobiographies that became persuasive models for the women of their generation, and lead to movements for social change.

Angela Davis, Assata Shakur (a.k.a. JoAnne Chesimard), and Elaine Brown are the only women activists of the Black Power movement who have published book-length autobiographies. In bearing witness to that era, these militant newsmakers wrote in part to educate and to mobilize their anticipated readers. In this way, Davis's Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), Shakur's Assata (1987), and Brown's A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story (1992) can all be read as extensions of the writers' political activism during the 1960s. Margo V. Perkins's critical analysis of their books is less a history of the movement (or of women's involvement in it) than an exploration of the politics of storytelling for activists who choose to write their lives. Perkins examines how activists use autobiography to connect their lives to those of other activists across historical periods, to emphasize the link between the personal and the political, and to construct an alternative history that challenges dominant or conventional ways of knowing. The histories constructed by these three women call attention to the experiences of women in revolutionary struggle, particularly to the ways their experiences have differed from men's. The women's stories are told from different perspectives and provide different insights into a movement that has been much studied from the masculine perspective. At times they fill in, complement, challenge, or converse with the stories told by their male counterparts, and in doing so, hint at how the present and future can be made less catastrophic because of women's involvement. The multiple complexities of the Black Power movement become evident in reading these women's narratives against each other as well as against the sometimes strikingly different accounts of their male counterparts. As Davis, Shakur, and Brown recount events in their lives, they dispute mainstream assumptions about race, class, and gender and reveal how the Black Power struggle profoundly shaped their respective identities.

This collective book offers new insight on the genres of biography and autobiography by examining the singular path of those deemed to be ‘outsiders’, such as Winnie Mandela, Ida B. Wells, Malcolm X and Harvey Milk. Its specific focus on these female leaders and civil rights activists, who refused to be constrained by gender, race and class, shifts attention away from the great men of history and places it solely on those who have transformed their personal lives into a fight for collective goals. With an interdisciplinary approach that looks at literature, cinema and cultural studies, Women Activists and Civil Rights Leaders in Auto/Biographical Literature and Cinema argues that life writing is a key source of artistic creativity and activism which enables us to take a fresh look at history.

Through America's history women have contributed to more than their own goals of freedom and equality. This anthology redefines activism beyond the strict realm of politics to embrace the many reform movements that women have galvanized and revolutionized, including religious tolerance, abolition, civil rights, wildlife conservation, environmental protection, and nuclear disarmament.

Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian / Pacific American Activists presents the first-person accounts of 20 activistslife stories that work against common stereotypes, shattering misconceptions and dispelling misinformation. These autobiographies challenge familial and cultural expectations and values that have traditionally forced queer Asian / Pacific Americans into silent shame because of their sexual orientation and/or ethnicity. Authors share not only their experiences growing up but also how those experiences led them to become social activists, speaking out against oppression. Many harmful untruthsor storiesabout queer Asian-Pacific Americans have been repeated so often, they are accepted as fact. Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian / Pacific American Activists provides a forum for voices often ignored in academic literature to re-story themselves, addressing a range of experiences that includes cultural differences and values, conflicts between different generations in a family or between different groups in a community, and difficulties and rewards of coming out. Those giving voice to their stories through narrative and other writing genres include the transgendered and intersexed, community activists, youths, and parents. The stories told in Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian / Pacific American Activists reflect on: personal experiencesbased on country of origin, educational background, religion, gender, and age populations served by activism, including the working poor, immigrants, adoptees, youth, women, and families different arenas of activism, including schools, governments, social services, and the Internet issues targeted by activism, including affirmative action, HIV/AIDS education, mental health, interracial relationships, and sexual violence institutions in need of change, including legal, religious, and educational entities and much more! Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian / Pacific American Activists is an essential read for academics and researchers working in Asian American studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, and queer studies, and for LGBTQ youth and their parents, teachers, and social service providers.

This book investigates the autobiographical writings of Barbara Jordan, Patricia Schroeder, Geraldine Ferraro, Elizabeth Dole, Wilma Mankiller, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Christine Todd Whitman. These eight women represent the diversity that permeates the cultural backgrounds, life adventures, and ideologies women bring to the political table. From differences in race, class, and geographic location, to variations in personal and family experiences, religious beliefs, and political ideology, these women illustrate many of the divergent standpoints from which women craft their lives in the United States. Each essay focuses on the autobiographical text as political discourse and therefore, as an appropriate site for the rhetorical construction of a personal and civic self situated within local and national political communities. The collection examines issues such as the intersection between the "politicization of the private and the personalization of the public" evident in the women's narratives; the description of U.S. politics the women provide in their writings; the ways in which the women's personal stories craft arguments about their political ideologies; the strategies these women leaders employ in navigating the gendered double-binds of politics; and, the manner in which the women's discourse serves to encourage, instruct, and empower future women leaders. The analyses embody and explicate the political and rhetorical strategies these leaders employ in their efforts to act on their convictions, highlight the need for and reality of women's involvement in all levels of politics, and serve as an impetus and inspiration for scholars and activists alike.