Book Review: Dance Lest We All Fall Down by Dr. Margaret Willson

(originally posted 08/08 at wordpress)



review by kristyn stolze

Hey shesheet readers… I just finished a fascinating book a couple of weeks ago by an anthropologist living in Seattle, and I think you might enjoy knowing about it. You can order it through In Other Words and I highly recommend it.

The book, titled Dance Lest We All Fall Down, is by anthropologist Dr. Margaret Willson. It describes her experience living in Salvador, Brazil and developing the non-profit called Bahia Street alongside an incredible woman and friend of hers from Bahia named Rita Conceicao. These two women put their intelligent and creative minds together and came up with a way to make change available to young girls trapped in poverty in Salvador. After lots of conversation and research within the communities of Salvador, these women created a non-profit that provides young girls with an opportunity to get education otherwise unavailable to them. With often painful insight to the realities of these young girls’ lives, the book lets us see into some of the struggle involved in getting a non-profit started in a way that keeps the focus on the people it intends to serve.

Herstory: bell hooks

(originally posted 05/08 at wordpress)



by mae stephenson

bell hooks Born Gloria Jean Watkins on September 25, 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. bell hooks uses lowercase letters for her name to shift focus from the author to the ideas within her writing.

bell hooks is arguably one of the most important authors of our time. A self-described "Black woman intellectual, revolutionary activist," "cultural critic," and "advocate of feminism," hooks has authored over thirty books and dozens of articles focusing on the interconnectedness of race, class, and gender oppression and domination. She coined the phrase "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" to describe these intersections. She also writes with an important and somewhat unique emphasis on self-love. In her dedication to ending class oppression she uses a writing style accessible for people outside of Academia and makes appearances on television and radio programs. Some of her titles include Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, Where We Stand: Class Matters, Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom, and The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. In addition, she's written a handful of children's books including Be Boy Buzz and Happy to be Nappy after having a difficult time finding children's books that didn't enforce patriarchal notions of boyhood and books that taught young black girls to be self-loving, respectively.

Herstory: Marjane Satrapi

(originally posted 04/08 at wordpress)



by Katie Johncock

Marjane Satrapi

 

A comic about life in 20th century Iran? No really! Marjane Satrapi retells the story of her life growing up in Iran first under British puppet Shah and then later Ayahtolla Komeini in her illustrated novel, Persepolis. The strength of Satrapi’s work is in her ability convey the politics and massive social change in 20th century Iran with humanity and, importantly, from a woman's perspective. Her graphic novel has recently been made into a film, Persepolis.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjane_Satrapi for more information.

Growing With My Child

(originally posted 02/08 at wordpress)



by Jennifer Collier

As a parent with a child in elementary school, I sometimes become overwhelmed and disheartened by what little influence I have over the content of what my son is taught in the classroom. It probably comes as little surprise that schools often teach lessons in history from a standpoint which celebrates white male dominancy and which underplays and distorts the contributions that women and people of color have made. So when my eight-year-old son came home and announced that his second grade class had been assigned the task of researching a famous American and that he had chosen to study Rosa Parks, I couldn’t contain my excitement. Finally…an opportunity to study an amazing female activist and the contributions that she made to the Civil Rights Movement from a feminist perspective rather than the traditional class room perspective which undermines and misrepresents Rosa Parks and the nature of the Montgomery bus boycott.